Character Pool

History The concept of a character pool comes from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition official campaign setting, Dark Sun. This campaign, set in the harsh scorched world of Athas, was extremely deadly. To help address the problem of such a violent, tough campaign, it introduced character trees. In a character tree, each player has three characters. Only one is active at a time, and when one gains a level, one of the other two of the player's characters gained a level. Although this system did help the problem of characters getting killed often, it was a tremendous amount of overhead for the players and DM. Age of Worms Problems The Age of Worms campaign starts at level 1 when there is almost no chance of access to spells such as raise dead. If a character dies, the player is now out of the game and must roll up a new character within a week. Even worse, one TPK could crash the entire campaign. Also, not every possible character type can be respresented. For example, the adventure may really need a tracker, or arcane caster, or rogue, and such may not be available among the characters currently playing. Cohorts and hirelings are a good solution, but not everyone wants to control two characters, and low-level funds are slim to get hirelings. The solution is a modified version of the character tree, a character pool. The Character Pool The character pool consists of three or more characters created by the Dungeon Master. A player may choose to play one of the pool characters under two circumstances. First, if the player's character is killed in the game, he may bring in one of the pool characters after the encounter and continue play. The player then plays the pool character until he either "adopts" the character permanently or gets a replacement PC created. The second option allows a player to decide to "bench" his character and play one of the pool characters for one or more game sessions. For example, knowing the party is about to set off into the wilderness, the party fighter may opt to play a ranger out of the pool for the duration of the wilderness portion of the adventure and then switch back to his normal character. Level Ups When the party increases a level, all of the pool character increase a level. If a player is controlling a pool character when a level increase occurs, he may choose to do the leveling of the pool character or his own character; the Dungeon Master will level up the other one. Thus, a player can influence the development of a pool character at the cost of losing some influence over his own character. Benched Characters A player's character placed on the bench does not go into the character pool. Thus, player A cannot bench his character, pick up a pool character and player B come along and take over A's normal PC. Adoption A player can choose to adopt a pool character as his permanent character at any time. If the player does so while his normal character is still alive, he must make a choice. He can either retire his normal character, which removes him from the game and he no longer levels up, or he can add his character to the pool. In this situation, such a character is now fair game to be played or adopted by any other player. Death Without access to raise dead or reincarnate, most deaths will result in a character being removed from play. A slain pool character will be replaced by another character created by the Dungeon Master. In the event of a TPK, all pool characters activate and are distributed to random players and benched characters return to their owner to continue play (although they will begin in a central location, not involved in the encounter that destroyed the party). The pool characters will remain active until all players have rolled up new characters or adopted a pool character. Treasury Any equipment left in the party treasury for over a week is considered "fair game" for the taking by pool characters. If your character has an interest in an item, claim it. Pool characters will not claim items they cannot use.