Legatus Legionis
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Character Level Disparity in a group
The Crimson Binome
Hero
The sticking point, for me, is that fifth option - where someone brings in a higher level character than everyone else. So what, your level 10 druid dies and you replace them with a level 13 wizard?
If that option wasn't listed, then I would have no problem with saying that anything goes, with the only assumption being that new characters aren't going to be higher level than old ones.
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Jacob Marley
Adventurer
In theory, anything goes. In practice, it's a little more complicated. I run a sandbox with a character stable. Each player runs 3-5 active characters, and has a number of inactive (retired, captured, lost) characters in reserve. This provides a lot of flexibility when assembling a party. I don't determine which characters participate in a given session - the players do. So while I theoretically allow anything, in practice, in most sessions, the characters are within a couple of levels of each other.
There have been a few instances in which a large disparity has happened. One instance that springs to mind had a group of roughly 5th/6th level PCs adventuring in the Cold Marshes in Greyhawk. During the adventure, David's ranger perished. David had a retired character, a 13th level Paladin/Cavalier (3.5), who had a keep in the Howling Hills nearby. Rather than return to Greyhawk, or bring in a 1st level PC, the players decided to recruit David's retired character to join with them, and they continued on the adventure. However, these situations are few and far between.
When a new player joins us, as Mike did two-and-a-half years ago, typically the players will make a new 1st level PC to adventure, use one of their followers (if they have Leadership), or one of their lower level PCs (active or retired) if they have any, until the new player has a built a character stable of his own.
There have been a few instances in which a large disparity has happened. One instance that springs to mind had a group of roughly 5th/6th level PCs adventuring in the Cold Marshes in Greyhawk. During the adventure, David's ranger perished. David had a retired character, a 13th level Paladin/Cavalier (3.5), who had a keep in the Howling Hills nearby. Rather than return to Greyhawk, or bring in a 1st level PC, the players decided to recruit David's retired character to join with them, and they continued on the adventure. However, these situations are few and far between.
When a new player joins us, as Mike did two-and-a-half years ago, typically the players will make a new 1st level PC to adventure, use one of their followers (if they have Leadership), or one of their lower level PCs (active or retired) if they have any, until the new player has a built a character stable of his own.
It varies.
When I'm running an old-school D&D game (AD&D 1e, Rules Cyclopedia, most OSR, etc), I don't worry about level differences much at all. Those games are designed to quickly catch lower level players up, and the level differences don't matter nearly as much as they do with D&D 3.x and 4. A lot of the games I run don't have levels, games like RuneQuest and Burning Wheel where your skills go up as you use them (a simplification, but good enough for the purposes of this discussion). In those cases, there are no levels to worry about.
One thing I've notice in the games where I'm a player (and this is completely subjective, YMMV, and all that). In my group, there are a couple people who will run 5e. In both cases, they use party XP and/or party level. Currently, one of those GMs is running a Ravenloft campaign. The GM was giving me a lift home after this last Saturday's game when he mentioned there's some post-raise dead effect he'd like to try out, but no one in this group ever bothers with trying to get slain group members raised.
I hadn't thought about it, but it's true. Out of the last few 5e campaigns, and several 4e campaigns prior to that, only once has someone bothered to get a slain party member raised. The problem is, the players of the slain characters never care that their character has died. One GM used to be apologetic when a PC was killed, but he'd get back an "eh", a shrug, or other reactions along those lines. A bit of time with a character sheet/builder/spreadsheet, and he's back in action, no fuss no muss.
O death, where is thy sting?
When I'm running an old-school D&D game (AD&D 1e, Rules Cyclopedia, most OSR, etc), I don't worry about level differences much at all. Those games are designed to quickly catch lower level players up, and the level differences don't matter nearly as much as they do with D&D 3.x and 4. A lot of the games I run don't have levels, games like RuneQuest and Burning Wheel where your skills go up as you use them (a simplification, but good enough for the purposes of this discussion). In those cases, there are no levels to worry about.
One thing I've notice in the games where I'm a player (and this is completely subjective, YMMV, and all that). In my group, there are a couple people who will run 5e. In both cases, they use party XP and/or party level. Currently, one of those GMs is running a Ravenloft campaign. The GM was giving me a lift home after this last Saturday's game when he mentioned there's some post-raise dead effect he'd like to try out, but no one in this group ever bothers with trying to get slain group members raised.
I hadn't thought about it, but it's true. Out of the last few 5e campaigns, and several 4e campaigns prior to that, only once has someone bothered to get a slain party member raised. The problem is, the players of the slain characters never care that their character has died. One GM used to be apologetic when a PC was killed, but he'd get back an "eh", a shrug, or other reactions along those lines. A bit of time with a character sheet/builder/spreadsheet, and he's back in action, no fuss no muss.
O death, where is thy sting?
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
For games like 3e and Pathfinder, I just have the PCs level up when it makes sense for the way the campaign is developing - which works really well for Adventure Paths. It's also an issue with 3e/PF and 4e that those editions aren't as tolerant of level spread as 1e/2e or 5e. Level means a lot more in 3e/PF and 4e, particularly in the design of your opposition, than in the other editions. While 5e also determines a lot with level, by reducing the number bloat in general, they widen the game's tolerance for variance among the levels of the PCs.
KahlessNestor
Adventurer
When it happened in my game, I had the new character comenin at same level, but minimum XP for the level. I was afraid of just one-shotting a level 1 (the rest were 3).
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