How do you handle bringing in replacement PCs?

[garhkal]

A combat goes bad and you have a dead PC (or two).. How do you bring in the replacement ones? Lets say they are in/near an imp base.. Are the new PCs assumed to be prisoners inside that the party must rescue? If so, wouldn't that mean they are probably wounded? Have no equipment??
Does the player need to wait a little, till the party is in a "safe spot" to where said PC can be introduced??
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[thedemonapostle]

depend on the overall situation at hand. when near an imperial base, ive introduced the new characters, and sometimes new players, as having just finished being part of a cargo run delivering supplies to the base and they got screwed out of payment over some bureaucratic nonsense. the owners of their ship leave angry as hell and the new characters are stranded. they learn the other characters are nearby but they hear that the imperials are also looking for them for "questioning."

other times ive had the horrible escape astrogation rolls. they escaped but some point down the road they collide with another ship in hyperspace and just barely managed to survive. the new guys are on the ship the old guys collided with. plus they got a new ship, sadly its in need of extensive repairs, and so is the old ship. but 2 halves make a whole right?

introducing new characters hasnt always gone smoothly in my group. in my early days as a player, half the group missed the first few games due to school, back when we were young. so when we got there we didnt know they were all pirates, the meanest being a defel. so a new character took up the defel's seat but didnt know it was his seat, nor could he actually see him. the defel let him, and everyone else, know it was his seat but stealing the biggest gun on the ship, a medium repeating blaster, getting behind the seat and emptying the power pack into the back of the seat and the back of the other player. yep new character died 15 minutes into the game, killed by his own team. i ended up "accidentally" killing that defel later on, cause ya know, explosives are heavy and one really shouldnt practice juggling with grenades...
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[Error]

Oh man, this gives me so many ideas. I really like your Imperial prisoner idea, for example.

- Where are the characters?
- What resources do they have?
- How many out of the total party died?
- How were the PC's killed, and by whom?
- How advanced were the PC's when they were killed?
- Do the PC's have reason to be in any location that would have people? If not, what is the nearest of such locations?

These are all factors I would take into account. Of course they don't point to a particular answer, but answering them might help you get a better picture of the environment. If PC's are on an ecumenopolis, for example, you really don't need a whole lot of explanation for why two new seemingly random PC's show up. However, let's say the PC's are killed in a mining colony on the fringes of Wild Space. Newcomers are going to be a bit harder to explain in a situation like that. But it can be done! You might even design a table or two to consult when reasons are needed for introductions.

In combat situations, you can literally have new characters jump out of nowhere. During a firefight, PC's generally aren't paying attention to much except that which is in front of them, so it would be easier to sneak up unnoticed. New characters could have heard the fight and wanted to join (on the PC's side, of course!). This would even work during a space battle.

I have let PC's take over NPC's in the past when their primary character kicked off. The trick is to include one with their party sometimes, or at least make one available for hire as a guide or a gun. Most adventures kick off from a "base" of some kind, and generally there are going to be handful of people hanging out there for their own reasons. Incorporating extra stuff like that helps keep your options open 8)
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[Whill]

Good stuff, guys. It happens in various ways, however it makes sense to introduce new characters into the story at that point. The new PC's needs and goals at the moment they get introduced need to somehow align with the group's. It may not be in the same adventure the original PC died in, but it might be if it can be worked out.

During character creation, I have the players also create some of their PC's NPC contacts. Not to the full detail of a PC, but just name, species, gender, general age and appearance, signature skills, occupation, brief background and personality, and connection to the PC. I tell the players to keep at least one of these NPCs in mind to be possible replacement PCs. The players turn the the contacts into me and I may add a couple notes of my own. When PCs have died in campaigns, players sometimes chose one of the contacts to be, and then we expand the capsule into a full-fledged PC. Sometimes the character had already appeared in the campaign as an NPC so it is not a stranger to the story. I have even had one player chose an NPC contact of another player's PC as his replacement PC (with that player's approval). I know this question was more how then who, but I thought I'd mention it.
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