Downtime can be a frequent issue amongst various PCs.
Many things require down time: Initiating, purchasing special equipment, gathering materials for talismongering or enchanting, actually enchanting, going to your day job, or even being captured will pull you out of the adventure.
Multiple characters can be a good way to get around this.
In this system, each player makes 2 characters. The characters all belong to the same team. The player decides who to play during each session, and the other character is considered "busy" and "unavailable" doing downtime activities.
This way a PC who gets captured need not sit out during his rescue, or if he has a time sensitive mission, another PC can get his down time to initiate while his alternate adventures. It is also a way to guarantee never to get a TPK as each PC will have a backup on hand.
Both characters will have to pay for their lifestyles seperately, and will gain mission money seperately (and should not share resources any more than other PCs do with each other). They may or may not gain karma equally depending on how your GM handles players who are not there that session.
This way, the game can continuously run, without being dragged out by excessive downtime. Just make sure each player earns enough to cover his lifestyle, or there may be trouble there.
I'm doing this slightly differently in the game I recently started running, though no one has bothered to make any extra characters yet.
ReplyDeletePlayers have the option to make multiple characters at any time, though it's not recommended to make more than 2 or 3. Players will generally have one characterthat I will consider their primary. Players may only play one of their characters on a given run, and unless they've specified that they'd like to get some use out of a secondary character it will usually be their primary one getting the call.
Whenever a character is sitting out due to not being played, they have to pay %10 lifestyle costs out of pocket. This represents that while the character is not in the spotlight they are still probably making some income somewhere, but it's 'safe' income (as you won't find out that your character was killed during downtime) and so they're not making enough to pay for everything. Whenever a character is out because they are incapacitated or otherwise occupied with a demanding task, they must pay their full lifestyle costs. No using multiple characters as a way to save money in those situations, but it does mean that you can still play the game while your main character is busy healing bullet wounds. Similar to your system, there's no sharing karma or nuyen between characters normally.
Players also have the option to 'retire' a character during downtime between runs, if they're tired of a character they've made. The character stops being a PC and is no longer focused on in the game, either due to actual retirement, a change of heart, or even simply that they go their own way as a Shadowrunner. In any case, they take all of their equipment with them. The player may then make a new character, starting with karme equal to half of the retired character's total karma earned (distributed to karma pool as normal) which they may use to improve the character. They may also be able to spend this karma to get equipment not normally available to starting characters, though it's not something I've used yet (possibly spending karma to reduce availability by 2, at an incremental cost? That would put APDS at 6 karma...not sure.). If the character is forcibly retired (death, brain damage, fragging off too many Johnsons to ever get hired again, etc.), then the player only gets 1/4 of the TKE for the character (rounded down).