How Many Points to Give New PCs in an Existing Game?

The initial batch of characters for DF Whiterock started at 150 points.  (For this post I'm just going to focus on positive points: I'm ignoring points from disadvantages, negative attributes, quirks, and the bonus language at Accented.)

Four weekly sessions in, the most experienced PCs are at 170 points.  Though, other than the Knight with his ability to buy weapon skills at any time, they haven't actually managed to spend any points yet, so it's really more like 150+20.

There's a possibility that next week the PCs will actually manage to return to the town of Cillimar, where they can spend character points and money.  When they get there, it's possible that we will see some new PCs, either due to a new player joining, an existing player wanting to try a different character, or an existing player being forced to try a different character.  (Cue ominous music.)

Through 4 sessions, we've seen 6 PCs played at least once.  So far, everyone has earned 5 points for each full session, 2 points for each partial session, and 0 points for each missed session.  (Don't assume it'll always work that way, though.  There will be bonuses when the PCs accomplish something significant.)  So we have two 170-point characters, one at 167, one at 165, one at 160, and one at 155.

So, now that the original PCs have picked up some experience, it's time to think about how many points new PCs should start with.

There are two extremes that I don't really like.  One is "everyone starts at 150 forever; deal with it."  That's very simple, and brutally fair, and works okay in games with a flatter difficulty curve.  But this dungeon gets much harder as the levels get deeper, and I don't want to send 150-point characters to their doom.  The other is "new PCs get the exact same points as veteran PCs."  That yields a nice balanced party, but removes any real penalty for getting your PC killed, and might even give an incentive to retire PCs and make new ones.  Feels unfair and wrong to me.

The first idea I had is that a new PC gets barely fewer points (maybe 1 less, maybe 5 less) than the least experienced active PC.  The trick here is what counts as "active."  Does a PC who's still in the game but not playing much hurt the starting points of every other new PC?  What if a player toggles between 2 PCs; does that reduce starting points for other new PCs?  That feels not so fun to think about.

The next idea I had was to just give some bonus points to new PCs, based on how deep the party has reached, or significantly explored, or cleared.  (Probably significantly explored, as giving points for just touching a dungeon level and running back upstairs seems silly.  And requiring totally clearing levels seems a bit harsh, especially if there are hard-to-find secret bits, or if restocking happens.)  So if I give 5 points per dungeon level, and I decide the current group has significantly explored level 1 and just started level 2, maybe new PCs start at 155 points.  I worry that this might leak some information to the players, like how much of a level they've explored, or what counts as a level versus a sub-level.

Another idea is to base the points for new PCs on the most experienced PC, rather than the least experienced.  For example, say you get half as many earned character points as the most experienced PC in the game so far.  So, with the most experienced players so far having earned 20 points, a new PC would get 10, added to the starting 150, for 160 points total.  One thing I like about this is that it scales well to total party kills, by just using the most experienced PC ever, rather than the most experienced current PC.  One thing I don't like about it is that it's possible that a new PC would get more points than a current but not very active PC.  What do we do to the inactive PC at that point?  Give out free points to give parity with a new character?  Or just say "tough?"

A final thing to consider is equipment.  New PCs typically start with $1000 worth of gear, unless they spend points for Wealth or extra cash.  DF/DFRPG default characters are 250 points and still only get $1000, so I guess it's reasonable to have starting PCs not get any more money, at least for a while.  I'll revisit this if the game reaches the point where new PCs start well above 250 points.

So far I've listed a bunch of options, but not really picked one.  Because I figure I have at least a couple of weeks, and might have better ideas in the meantime.  And when this actually matters, I might just wing it.  Maybe I'll update this post when we actually have a new PC join beyond the 150-point level.

Update: We're adding a new PC this week, with the continuing PCs at 163 to 178 points.  The new PC is starting at 160 points.