Am I correct in understanding that inheritance can only happen once per PLAYER ever?
While it’s not a HUGE deal at the beginning - I’m starting a bunch of L1 characters - once they get to second or third level it may be nice to allow replacement characters another path than “the henchman” to re-enter the party without entering strictly at 1st level.
As it stands, the players want to establish a “corporate” structure of sorts to ensure gold and items are banked for replacements brought in as partners (coincidentally, the replacement characters or the players), but if “inheritance” of XP can only happen once, I may allow banking that anyway at lower percentages than 90% - say 50%
So the line in question is “a player is only allowed to leave a character inheritance one time,” yes? I agree that the language here is ambiguous. I think the standard interpretation of this line is that no character may inherit multiple times (ie, “a player may only leave inheritance to each character one time [per character]”), rather than that a player can only nominate an heir once per campaign (“a player may only leave a character*'s* inheritance one time [per campaign]”).
In practice, I do not recall reading any campaign writeups which interpret the rule as only one inheritance per player per campaign - all that I know of, including mine, seem to have gone with the one inheritance per character implementation.
Though it’s not an out-and-out statement, this thread ( http://autarch.co/forum/reserve-xp-fund-0 ) suggests that the intent is normally that reserve XP is not consumed when used.
That is, once you have some reserve XP, no matter how many times your character dies, that’s your new zero mark for the campaign; all new characters you create begin with that much XP.
Oh. Oh WOW but I like that. I like that a lot. That would make me actually contribute to reserve instead of just playing henches. In my game, all my players love their henches and make sure they have personality and character enough that they’re essentially lower-level PCs anyway.
Hmm. A very interesting interpretation; it is true that the rules never say that the reserve empties when used, although the use of the word “fund” immediately suggests a financial metaphor, hence ‘spending’ the reserve (as I think most of us have been doing). That would definitely change the hench-or-reserve decision substantially (particularly as I like to use reserve XP as a ‘karma’ reward for behavior otherwise unlikely to generate in-game rewards).
Another variation I have been considering is some manner of party reserve XP fund, which would be useful for bringing in new players (not just new characters) at levels higher than the campaign’s starting point.
We’ve been playing so that when you use your Reserve XP it “empties” when you advance your new character. If I have 2500XP in my Reserve Fund, and I use it to increase my backup to 2nd Level, my Reserve Fund goes down to 0 XP again.
So, it’s totally possible to lose that new, advanced character as early as the next session and be back down to 0 XP in Reserve XP.
So, it’s a constant battle to keep that Reserve XP up and losing two characters back-to-back can be a huge loss. Definitely a good treasure-sink.
Alex
That’s a really clever idea!
In general, our playtesters usually aimed to keep their “reserve PC” at about 1/2 the experience points of their main PC. That meant they’d be 1 level behind, which was not too painful.
Sounds like Alex was surprised by that suggestion.
Given the geometric progression of XP/level, and the fact that fortresses and domains become a money sink later as implied further down the thread, I think I’ll stick to the implied “baseline karma pool”
THAT said, while I’m OK with my players banking equipment, and letting a new “explorers party” member “inherit” the leftover gold and equipment recovered when a party member is killed, that isn’t “recovered treasure” for the purposes of XP, and I’ll make them individually bank XP.
My interpretation, which may or may not be wrong, has been that Reserve XP carries over from character to character, but banked wealth was a one-time inheritence.
Example:
Gunther Darkblade, dwarven vaultguard, gets a share of 2200gp on his first adventure, leveling him up to 2. After spending 200gp on supplies and henchmen wages, He buys the most expensive kegs of ale possible and shares them with the entire tavern in town. He spends 1000gp on Reserve XP, increasing his reserve to 900XP. He also invests 1000gp in an inheritence for his nephew, Unther Darkblade, but the bank keeps 10%, leaving 900gp.
When Gunther dies on his next adventure, Unther arrives in town to collect his inheritence and befriend his uncle’s adventuring companions. Unther has 900XP and 900gp. If Unther, just as rash as his uncle, dies on the next adventure, the next character made by the player will have 900XP and 0gp (ignoring starting equipment).
No it doesn’t, but I would argue that if Unther decided to be a little less rash, and EXPLICITLY banked some of the gold he now had as an inheritance, then that’s fine. Either way, whether he banked it as XP or a cash inheritance, HE can’t use it.
But he’d have to explicitly do so. He would not get XP for the gold he inherited (he didn’t haul it out of the wilderness as treasure). If it wasn’t on his body AND recovered (assuming the party is honest), or explicitly “banked” as an inheritance or otherwise secured and subject to some sort of party agreement to pool resources to buy equipment for replacement members, then it is indeed, lost. (It would seem that Targeyeh the thief saw the body being carried back and decided to empty out Unther’s room before anyone could stop him)