Level Spread in Your Party?

[Darklone]

Re: Re: Grrrw

Yeah I think this definitely illustrates why too much spread is a bad idea. This doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

That's why the lvl11 char lost a lvl in wizard and has to raise his priest levels now more... an attempt of our DM to keep him from being too strong. It wouldn't be too bad if we were more into roleplaying but I can try to talk us out of situations as much as I want, nothing works if I don't roll more than a 18 for diplomacy or intimidate or whatever is needed (I do have those skills nearly maxxed with decent charisma).

Does not help either if the wildelf barbarian bard tries to intimidate a few guys and the rest of the group pulls jokes on silly elves who are supposed to smell odd since they are barbarians.

Spread is no problem if you have your emphasis on roleplaying. As soon as the dice start to roll, it's definitely a problem.

 

[buzzard]

I have a spread between 13th and 14th. It had been wider, but I expanded the exp requirements for 13th level to try to tighten the group. If someone new starts I have them come it at about 2 lower than the highest.

Buzzard

 

[trentonjoe]

We have a pretty big spread too.

11th level monk
10th level cleric
5/3 Barbarian Cleric
8th Fighter
2/2/1 Fighter/Mage/Thief


In Combat the 5th level guy is limited but I can challenge him w/o killing him. He usually runs arounf Coup de grace downed bad guys or sneaking around trying to sneak attack. The two eight level characters are equal combatwise to the 11 and 10.

Our last combat was the above party vs 8 of the gargoyle things from the back of the FRCS. I gave them a couple of class levels so they were CR 4.

I put only one gargoyle on the 5th level guy, the fighter took on two away form everyone else, and it was essential 5 on 3. The Priest helped the 5th level guy out and held the one attacking him.

It worked out pretty well.

The one thing I have found is that the fifth level guys saves are alot lower. The hit points, attack bonus, and everything else I can control as a DM but the saves are real hard for me.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

In one game we have a spread between 14th to 23rd

14th lvl cleric w/prestige classes
15th lvl paladin w/devine agent levels
18th lvl fighter w/ one sorcerer lvl
20th lvl socerer w/ knight of orion (home brew prest.) lvls
23rd lvl fighter/ sorcerer w/ two levels in weapon master

our other game and every one's low level and closly grouped.

 

[Psion]

Currently my group has character levels 11-13, but class level 8-13:

IIRC, the main* party is currently:
Semere -- M Elf Ranger/Ghostwalker 9/4
Andrinor -- M Human Sorcerer 13
Meara -- F Elf Rogue 12
Xander -- M Elf Monk 11 or 12 (I forget if he made 12th last time... he was close)
Neimad -- M Half-Elf Paladin 12
Quarion -- M Half-Dragon Elf Bard 8

* - I say main because we run an alternate game when it appears that there are going to be a lot of abscences.

Replacement characters come in one level below the party average (I don't think it is fair to bring in new characters above the level of a raised character.) Absentee players earn half xp. The 2 most regular players whose characters have survived continuously are 13th.

 

[Tcheb]

10+ spread

We have a 10+ spread, from lvl 3 - 16, but it works nicely. We have one group that is at the upper end, they're regarded as the 'heros' of the game world. The other low level group is just a bunch of starting adventurers. Well, I've mixed the groups, so you have some 'heros' adventuring with the younger guys. From a role-playing perspective, this works great - the younger generation of heros gets to adventure with the true heros they grew up hearing stories about.
Normally I'll throw a similar mixed group of enemies at them, for example a high level orc leading a bunch of weaker ones. The 'heros' handle the leader, and the young guys fight the regular enemies.

However, we have had the occasion where the players guess wrong, and high level heros slaughter the weaker enemies, leaving the low level PCs to fight the high level enemy...lost all the low level guys. I had a lot of dice thrown at me that session. Despite that, everyone has loved the wide level mixing.

Tcheb

 

[Isida KepTukari]

In our group it's a little bit odd. Our DM writes down all of our individual XP on old business cards and hands them to us, face down, at the end of each sesssion.

Thus no one knows exactly the XP totals anyone has. I believe we're all between 5-7. Most are 6th right now if memory serves me right. Our 5th level player is actually an assimar, so he's actually a 5th level player.

(Oh the stories I could tell about our assimar paladin. I've tagged his character, Elic, with the name of Elic the Unlucky if that helps. His first fight with us he was nearly drained to 0 Str by a shadow after falling down a hole. Things got worse from there... )

 

[mmu1]

I generally try to keep everyone at the same level - naturally, things like death or making items might affect that, but I never penalize people for missing a session - if they have a good reason for it, I'd be an ass to force them to fall behind because they has something important going on in real life, and if they are actually blowing me and the group off, I prefer to just ask them to leave instead of playing games and messing with the characters... As for new people joining, I always start them off at exactly the xp needed to be the same level as the lowest-level character - making someone start at 1/2 the level of the other players (Hell, I actually ran across a fool once who wanted to start me off at 1st level in a 2nd Ed. game with 10th level characters.) is pointless - making someone feel like a newbie is not going to help gameplay or role-play any.

 

[Victim]

In 2e edition though, a level gap wan't as bad because of the XP progression. I saw a person take a first level character to 7th in one combat, mostly because he had the good fortune to be turned to stone early on, and then cast protection from evil to ward against the fiends when he was freed. The rest of the party was about 9th after that fight.

 

[Quickbeam]

Without including ECL's, the largest level discrepancy we've had is 8th-11th, IIRC. Character death accounted for part of this differential, and roleplaying awards took care of the rest. For the record, there were six PC's spread out over these four levels.