Character Level Disparity in a group

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I would say "What Darkness said", but I feel like elaborating because I'm not ready to trundle off to bed just yet... so here goes:

In most games (both meaning systems and campaigns/stories) I prefer to keep all the characters at the same point of progression. Not for any real reason beyond a lack of intentionally creating a disparity, and because I don't generally think that things that cause experience disparity like missing out on a session need to have more of an impact on the player's experience than that they weren't at the table having fun that night.

In certain systems, however, level disparity happens naturally and I don't worry about it (i.e. AD&D, where even if I keep all the characters at the same experience total, they might differ in level by 1-3 levels or so).

But only in very rare cases do I intentionally allow or create disparity in characters' advancement. The only ones I can think of currently are Call of Cthulhu (where advancement is all about what your character did well during a scenario, and luck of the dice) and HackMaster (where there are different strategies a player is in control of choosing, such as having 100% of the earned experience applied to their active character and just hoping they never end up dying, or splitting some earned experience off to a protege so that if their active character does die their next character will already have more than 0 experience). The reason why being that I feel the advancement style is a significant part of the flavor of the system, and the reason I run more than one system in the first place is because I like a variety of flavors, but not when they are all blended together.

 

[The Human Target]

RPGs are cooperative group games.

Or at least the ones I play are.

Level differences serve no purpose in those circumstances.

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't like my players to be vastly different in level, but I won't award XP/levels for things that a party member didn't participate in (the flip-side of not being present, your character can't die when you're not here, but you can't participate either). If a player misses enough sessions regularly enough to fall more than 3 levels behind the party (and we usually level monthly) I'm going to have to have a talk with that player about attendance.

I should add: if absent player knows they'll be absent and gives another player (I won't be DM-PC another player's character) permission to run the character while they are absent I will award the missing player the XP for the missed sessions. The trade-off is of course: you might die while you're absent.

 

[Gilladian]

I run 3.5e. I use milestones for leveling, and in this campaign I have disallowed tier 1 classes. In this situation, I will bring in new or replacement characters AT PC level. They're currently 3rd, and will soon be 4th. I am hoping to have a new PC today...

 

[KahlessNestor]

I run 3.5e. I use milestones for leveling, and in this campaign I have disallowed tier 1 classes. In this situation, I will bring in new or replacement characters AT PC level. They're currently 3rd, and will soon be 4th. I am hoping to have a new PC today...

Sorry to go off-topic a little, but I have seen this phrase "Tier 1 character" several times, and it doesn't seem to mean what I know the phrase to mean (from AL, meaning characters level 1-4). Usually people seem to be talking 3.5 edition, which I haven't played (unless you count Pathfinder).

So can anyone explain "tier 1 characters" to me?

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[pogre]

As many others have stated - it is system dependent for me. If I am running D&D it is fairly important the PCs are close to the same level.

Currently, I am running a city campaign using WFRP 2e. The campaign is a drop-in/drop-out campaign where folks show up on game days when they want to. I purposely used WFRP because beginning PCs can make significant contributions to a veteran group in this system.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

So can anyone explain "tier 1 characters" to me?

The phrase, when not being used in the way 5th edition uses it, refers to tiers of potency that character classes were ranked into by character-optimization-minded folks. Tier 1 being the highest and most potent tier.

 

[Imaculata]

Party exp all the way. All players start at the same level, and if they die, -and have to make a new character... guess what? They start at the same level as the current party level, with the exact same amount of exp.

The last thing I would want to encourage, is for the players to be fishing for bonus exp. So I decided a long time ago that any role playing exp, is a reward for the whole team, and not just one lucky player.

 

[KahlessNestor]

The phrase, when not being used in the way 5th edition uses it, refers to tiers of potency that character classes were ranked into by character-optimization-minded folks. Tier 1 being the highest and most potent tier.

Thanks. That's what I got from context. Just curious what thise were. CODzilla, I assume? Not having played 3.5 (unless Pathfinder counts), and not an optimizer (I don't have the patience).

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[AaronOfBarbaria]

The last thing I would want to encourage, is for the players to be fishing for bonus exp. So I decided a long time ago that any role playing exp, is a reward for the whole team, and not just one lucky player.

I went through the same thing, but with the added downside of the thing that prompted the change being that I noticed one player that wasn't just fishing for his own bonus experience, but was upset enough by an instance of not getting it that he then stopped someone else getting their bonus.

To elaborate, because that sounds confusing to me and I am sure I know what I meant: We were playing AD&D 2nd and using the optional individual rewards. The guy playing a cleric tried to gain some bonus XP by casting an entangle spell on a group of enemies the party was facing, but I pointed out that the spell wasn't furthering the cleric's ethos in any way so it didn't qualify for the bonus... and then the cleric player, obviously upset, brings up "...but then the fighter doesn't get his bonus XP for defeating monsters because I helped him with the entangle, right?"

Thanks. That's what I got from context. Just curious what thise were. CODzilla, I assume? Not having played 3.5 (unless Pathfinder counts), and not an optimizer (I don't have the patience).

Yeah, the CoDzilla build is an example of that kind of tier 1 character I think - I've let that stuff slip my mind because I didn't have much use for it beyond that it highlighted things I already knew about the system at the time, and even my players during that era that would have wanted to know and use those kind of CharOp details didn't because they never went looking online, and never managed to figure it out for themselves.