How to Balance the Party with The Campaign?

[DJ_draken07]

Hey Everyone,

I got a issue with making the next campaign, How in the heck am I suppose to balance the party with the Campaign.

Kitsune Bito (Homebrew Fox race) - Lv 10 Ninja (ECL 11)

Human - Lv5 Fighter , Lv 2 Rogue

Genome (Homebrew Humans with Monkey tail race) - lv 5 SoulKnife lv 1 Rogue.

High Elf - Lv 2 Sorcerer , lv 4 Favored Soul

Vashar (evil human) - Lv 6 Dread Necromancer

Human - Lv 5 Paladin

Thri-Kreen - Lv 4 Psi-Warrior (ecl 6)

Now.. what am i surpose to do?

 

[Starbuck_II]

Hey Everyone,

I got a issue with making the next campaign, How in the heck am I suppose to balance the party with the Campaign.

Kitsune Bito (Homebrew Fox race) - Lv 10 Ninja (ECL 11)

Human - Lv5 Fighter , Lv 2 Rogue

Genome (Homebrew Humans with Monkey tail race) - lv 5 SoulKnife lv 1 Rogue.

High Elf - Lv 2 Sorcerer , lv 4 Favored Soul

Vashar (evil human) - Lv 6 Dread Necromancer

Human - Lv 5 Paladin

Thri-Kreen - Lv 4 Psi-Warrior (ecl 6)

Now.. what am i surpose to do?

Why is almost everyone a different ECL?

Did the paladin die?

What houserules are you forgetting to mention...

 

[milo]

The easiest would be to bump everyone but the ninja by 2 or 3 levels. Doesn't make them even, but they are a lot closer. Another option would be to kill the ninja and have him roll a new character at level 5 or 6. Kind of a bad move, but it would work.

 

[Loonook]

raise the levels so that you aren't playing a game with one mid-level character and a bunch of low-levels? That's the largest issue you have here... you've created a game where you have one guaranteed uber-character, with a bunch of players who have multiclassed in some strange setups to compete with an ECL 11.

That's what I figure... but ehh, maybe I'm wrong.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[DJ_draken07]

Well.. I give Bonus EXP for playing their characters

such as alignment, Character flaws

Risking their lives to SAVE PCs and such and live.

That kind of stuff

 

[Loonook]

Well.. I give Bonus EXP for playing their characters

such as alignment, Character flaws

Risking their lives to SAVE PCs and such and live.

That kind of stuff

And so someone has gained 4-5 levels above the rest of the pack for alignment and character flaws?

That's not really balanced... at all. As we said, adjust your ECLs, and it would work better.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Jlord]

you could have the high level player make a second character to use and have it the same level as the lowers and when everyone gets back in line with the higher level characters they can choose to play the old character or stick wither their newer one.

 

[Arkhandus]

You REALLY shouldn't give SO MUCH MORE xp for those things......I only give a small amount of bonus XP for good RP and such, which at most has made a few PCs in my games 1-2 levels higher than the lowest-level party members (newbies who hardly RP at all). Roleplaying should generally result more in roleplaying benefits, not more raw power.

The ninja is more likely than the others to have earned themselves an enemy, but without knowing what's gone on in the campaign, none of us here can be sure if that's a possibility. If the ninja isn't taken out by another assassin or something, you should either boost the other PCs' levels a bit (bring on some forced downtime, fast-forward the game a few months, and say that the ninja had a relatively peaceful time during that period, but describe some little adventures and such that the others ran into during that time, which brought them up in level).

Otherwise, you need to run battles that are too tough for the other PCs by themselves (but still include enemies they can handle), and that include one or two boss NPCs that are a match for the ninja, have that one beaten and either slain or captured, then have them bring in a new PC to fill in until the remainder of the party has caught up with the escaping BBEG and freed their ninja ally. There are some demons and other critters that can see invisible creatures at will.......and anything with blindsight (such as a dragon) can ignore invisibility as well. ......but isn't level 10 where ninjas get the ability to go ethereal with their ki power? I forget. If so, then throw in some ethereal marauders, ethereal filchers, phase spiders, or similar critters to challenge the ninja if he or she tries to evade the dragon/demon/whatever by going ethereal.

This sideplot could give the rest of the party a chance to at least catch up partway with the ninja in level (say get them up to 8th or 9th level, at least), while the ninja's player tries out something different for a while. Try to be diplomatic with them about it......it was your over-compensation for roleplaying with XP/raw-power-rewards that got him or her so far above the others in level despite not facing more combat challenges (i.e. not really testing his or her mettle in combat and honing their combat skills to earn those extra levels), so you want to give the others a chance to catch up a little bit in level before he or she reprises their role as the kitsune-bito ninja.

Let him or her make a new 6th-level PC to join the others, maybe an old acquaintence of the ninja (but preferably some other race/class) that wants to help them out while they try to find and free their companion. Of course, they should have a few other adventures along the way before they find where their ally has been taken, and/or before they figure out and complete any preparations needed to storm the place or infiltrate it or whatever. But any RP-related bonuses to this (probably temporary) PC should comre more in the way of RP benefits, not XP, and those benefits won't transfer over to the ninja when they later free them. The replacement PC should have a reason to go home or whatever after the ninja is freed, unless the player decides to keep their new PC and instead send their ninja home or whatever at that point.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I got a issue with making the next campaign, How in the heck am I suppose to balance the party with the Campaign.

Well, your best bet is:

I give Bonus EXP for playing their characters such as alignment, Character flaws Risking their lives to SAVE PCs and such and live. That kind of stuff

. . . don't do that.

 

[Herzog]

1. Run a lvl 7 or 8 adventure.
The paladin will have a rough time, and the ninja will probably be bored. Make sure the challenges aren't easily circumvented by the ninja's abilities, but actually require the other characters to take an active part.
2. Use the XP table in the DMG.
this will reduce the XP progression of the Ninja to a crawl, while making sure the paladin will get up to speed.
3. Don't give out story awards unless you know exactly what you are doing:

Sometimes you may want to estimate experience point awards for actions that normally don’t result in an XP award under the standard system. These are called story awards, and they should only be used by an experienced DM.

4.If you DO want to keep giving out XP for good roleplay, follow the advise in the DMG:

XP awards for roleplaying are purely ad hoc. That is, no system exists for assigning Challenge Ratings to bits of roleplaying. The
awards should be just large enough for the player to notice them, probably no more than 50 XP per character level per adventure.

Note that suggestion 1 will never work if you ignore 2-4.

Personally, I don't give RP XP to my group, for the following reasons:
1. They all roleplay. Making a distinction would be hard.
2. I'm biased. I know beforehand I will notice some good roleplay, while missing some other piece of brilliant interaction altogether.
3. I have a hard time keeping the characters at the same level as it is

One of my groups now contains a 7th lvl barbarian, an 8th lvl wizard, a 9th lvl duskblade, a 9th lvl cleric, and a 10th lvl rogue.
Until (very) recently, the barbarian was lvl 5, the wizard lvl 7 and the duskblade and cleric lvl 8. The rogue has beenlvl 10 for quite some time.
Of course, that was also when I was still using the OD&D rules for those characters..... Only when i switched to 3.5 and used the DMG XP tables did I get anywhere near progression.

Now, if you have the same problem as I did (not enough XP per session to see any progression based on the amount of 'kills' they make, and not enough sessions per year. I'm happy if I get to play 3 times a year with this particular group....) just double, triple or quadruple the amount of XP per challenge. The progression will increase, without losing the inherent re-balance system presented in the XP tables in the DMG.