Death, of course!, for GMs out there.... Options

[Everial]

(being, as always, a Shadowrun newb...)

How do GMs deal with characters who perish after a significant (however you define that) portion of a campaign has occurred, or after a long number of successive gaming sessions?

I suppose I'm asking if any GMs out there give replacement characters (if any) any compensation or bonus to 'close the gap', if you will, between the remaining characters and an essentially new character. (Ex. If the team has earned, say, 100 karma and 100k, would you give a replacement char 50 karma and 50k? Or whatever?)

[Fortune]

Sometimes, but Shadowrun's system is such that it isn't really as necessary as it would be in a game like D&D.

[Zazen]

I usually look at the existing character with the lowest karma total and give them half of that. Karma pool stays at 1 (because there's usually a team pool anyway). If they want nuyen, they can exchange some of that karma for cash.

[Strobe]

I just get them to make a new character as per the starting rules. Shadowrun is such that a good brain in the player can overcome the stats of a character.

-Strobe

[Crusher Bob]

Just give them the karma their last character had, along with a similar amount of 'stuff', it helps keep the 'new guy' from just being the gimp that sits in that car.

[TinkerGnome]

There's no one way to handle something like this, but one of the more interesting would be to take the former PC's karma and divide it by six. Then roll that many dice (allowing sixes to be rerolled to produce results of seven or greater) and add them up. That's the PC's new karma, up to the original total (it'd be possible to go over with this system). For cash, give them their die result x 2000 :nuyen: or so (depending on what your normal karma award to cash award is... usually about 1000-2000 :nuyen: per karma point).

It's probably one of the more fair (to both dead player and team) methods out there (since the PC isn't guaranteed anything, thus making death a big deal but still making the new PC's fate rest in the player's hands). If the PC comes right back in with full cash and gear, then death has no meaning. If the PC comes back as a stock newbie, he/she may loose some of their interest in the game (some players may actually become more interested, it's an individual thing), especially if the death was not due to their own actions. Plus it can be fun. A variant of this method appeared in the L5R game somewhere (I think in the newer edition, before it went to d20), though it was with d10 which lead to less average experience for the new character.

[Fortune]

[Phylos Fett]

Personally, I use BeCKs, so allowing the new character to start with whatever everyone else started with, plus the average of the group Karma awarded works okay. Maybe ease up on Availabilty, Ratings and Skill/Attribute Maximums, if appropriate.

[Zazen]

I do it because many of my players tend to start as specialists and then use their karma to broaden their characters to "cover the bases" after a while. When their characters have been around for a long time, they get just as good at those extra areas of expertise as a starting specialist.

I would find it frustrating to make a B&E electronics/communications/safecracker who is no better at those things than the sam who had some karma laying around and thought it'd be cool to crack a few office safes in between cracking skulls.

[tete]

If you throw out the max starting rating of 6 and other such things. There really isnt awhole lot of differnce between a starting character and an uber character. Usually, I'll give them their old karma pool in good karma just to be nice, (as long as they really didnt do somthing stupid) but thats about it.

[Abstruse]

I might give them a bit of extra cash, throw out the availability rules for starting characters, and MAYBE give them a few extra build points or karma, but not much. A 100 karma Shadowrun character isn't as powerful as a fresh from chargen character, but it's not nearly as big of a gap in level-based games like D&D. If you let them start with what they had before or even half of that, then it makes death less of a big deal.

Now if a player voluntarily retires a character, then I'll be a bit more generous when they make the new one, or even allow the old character to remain a close contact.

However, because of the way the Shadowrun character creation system works, I'm wary about giving out too large of rewards to starting characters, whether it's a new player to the group or a new character to replace a fallen one. What's the point of working hard to keep your character alive if he can just be replaced by someone with similar power? Why try to play smart when you can just make a new character? It makes the risk of death that much more real.

Then again, I'm nice and go out of my way to keep PCs alive, esp. ones that have been around for a while.

The Abstruse One

[Daishi]

We typically go with with fractional karma. A replacement character gets half of the good karma that the character he's replacing earned. Beyond that, it's chargen as usual. It gives the new character a bit of a leg-up to keep pace with the others, but leaves a strong incentive for not playing suicidal characters. (Of course, playing a suicidal character that just doesn't die is sometimes quite fun...)

[Atrox]

Chargen as usual, except no limits on gear. If it's a very high-level game, 10% extra CP. Plus, the new character needs to get "hired in" by the existing team, usually on the recommendation of someone the PCs trust.

[Namer18]

i'm a big fan of they get the karma they gained with their old character, but the GM decides how its spent. It gives them an incentive to stay alive, while making sure they can jump right back in the game with a new character without feeling "weak" compared to the other characters. It also gives some leeway based on how they died. If a character dies sacrificing themselves for them team then their karma may go into raising all of their new starting characters skills one point, or initiating them a level. If their character died because they went running into a hostile situation without a plan and figured they would just make a new character if it didn't work they may get a knowledge skill of Cubozoans level 17.

Namer18

[Ned]

Hahahaha!
New characters get jack in my game. Karma? Ha!
That being said, I usually run a session or three with the new PC by himself to get a feel for the character. After that, my players tend to keep their stats rather private, so there's really no way to judge a new character except by his word and actions.

[Ezra]

If the introduction of a new character comes at a time when he/she/it will be vastly over-awed by the rest of the party, then I give the party one or two milk-runs.....they do the runs and basically earn their karma as per usual. It gives the new PC a chance to be tweaked, and then it is back to the game proper.

Karma is never free. :D

(Besides, in SR, a smart player can get through almost anything.)