Thoughts on a "Character Stable or Tree" For the DCC RPG

So, we just finished the 2nd session of G1 run by +Joe D and it was a fucking blast. As we wrapped up for the night, we got to talking about the DCC RPG and the idea of playing a few sessions after we finish up with the current series.

Which got me brainstorming out loud with the group.

My previous thoughts on a higher level character funnel were addressing character replacement from a needlessly complicated direction.

Dark Sun, as originally presented in AD&D 2e, gave each player a "stable" of characters or a "character tree". When the active character leveled, the player could level another character in his stable and swap out characters between adventures. No inactive character could be raised in level higher than the active character. No trading between characters. Each player has four characters total at any one time - one activer and three in their "stable".

Doing a variation of this for the DCC RPG is pretty easy, especially as many groups default to some level or episodic play in their DCC campaigns. It allows replacement if the player's active character dies / goes missing for a year and a day / etc with a character the player has some investment in.

I would probably allow a player to form his character stable upon reaching 2nd level. Generate 3 sets of 4 0-level characters and choose one from each set to survive to level 1. The player will now have 1 2nd level and 3 1st level PCs.

Depending on the type of campaign, a player may choose to level two PCs in tandem and forget the other two for now, or the Judge may throw in some lower level adventure more appropriate to lower level characters in the stable as a change of pace and to allow the players to experiment with other classes.

I need to tweak this a bit, but I think it could fit in very well with the DCC RPG's theme and flavor.

Always open to ideas and thoughts on the matter...