Adding new characters to the party after level 0

[mAc Chaos]

How do you handle adding new PCs to the party? For example, in my own game, I had 3 friends, and 1 of them lost all of their PCs in the funnel. There's a 4th friend who wasn't there with us.

So 2 of my friends have level 1 characters, and the other 2 friends don't. Are you supposed to just make new characters at level 1, or run everybody through a funnel again, or do a funnel and have the existing level 1 PCs brought along? Or something else?

[Raven_Crowking]

Under the circumstances you describe, I would either

(1) Run a second funnel, or
(2) Run a 1st level adventure where some players have 4 0-level PCs.

[michaelsandar]

We've done the 'first level adventure' with a mix of 1st and 0 level pc's before, and it works fine. Give the players who have no characters four 0's each, and track their xp like normal.

[GnomeBoy]

What they said.

Also, next time consider those that still have Zeroes lending a character or two to a player who loses all of theirs -- unless maybe the Funnel is in it's final moments... Alternately, if there is *any* possibility of finding 'captives' or 'another party' or whatever, have the person quickly stat up 4 new Zeroes and play with those.

[mAc Chaos]

If I mix and match level 1s and 0s, is there a good measure for how many level 0s = a level 1 PC?

Like if I do a level 1 adventure, how do I know I'm not making it too easy or too hard when everyone isn't the right level.

[GnomeBoy]

The Zeroes are supposed to be squishy. And they level pretty quickly. If the player's of Zeroes have 3 or 4 that should 'count' as one 1st Level character, especially since that's what they'll end up with soon enough.

[Raven_Crowking]

I usually go with 4.

[Fenris Ulfhamr]

I've read in a couple modules where the recommendation is for like 8-10 level 1 characters or 10-20 0s, so I count two 0s as one 1.

[bfg2600]

I just let them pick a character class they like and roll up the character, I don't really like funnels I think they're kind of a waste of time, just have them roll up a new character or go to purple sorcerer and just make a pregen with their app

In your case you since your at level 1 you can probably have them make 4 level 0's and just treat the 1st level adventure as a module, I've actually run frozen in time as a funnel before, but at higher levels you most likely will have to just roll up a character of appropriate level

[Raven_Crowking]

I have done things like "roll 4 0s and choose 1 to promote to 1st level" as well. It depends upon what you want to do.

[Stonedog]

Something I've done is have the party find a few characters in a dungeon that were incapacitated somehow.....and those characters were rolled up to be at the same level as the other characters.....but at the lowest level of the entire party. I also made them figure out how to play their new "found" characters without any starting equipment....asking for loans from other characters and such...

That being said, I've only done this with my son and daughter (12 and 10 respectively) and any of their friends in the group.

[Losloris8]

Im sort of with stonedog; find characters with nothing or next to. We recently needed a new PC so I had the group meet up with other adventurers . It was a nasty scrap but all of the other party died but one. When the party started to question the survivor it became clear that she had been spelled by her party Mage, who was now dead and his spell affects were fading . As dm, that freed me of having to develop a whole backstory - hers was totally forgotten as a result of the spell.

LG