A Party with a Wide Range of Levels

[Yellow Sign]

Have you ever had a party of characters who was intentially made up of a wide range of character levels. Lets say you have a group made up of 7th level, 5th level, two third level, and a 2nd level characters. Did it work? Would you consider doing something like this?

I came up with this idea after watching the Magificent Seven. When Cris has to recruit some guns to help the mexican villiage he has to check to see if those wanting to join where good enough. Now looking at who joins they seem to be about of the same level of experience give or take a level. Except for the last guy, Chico. Cris tests his reflex save and figures that it's not up to snuff even with a average or better Dex score. But later they let him join because what the heck he's a player character even though he is just some farmer with a pistol and some fancy gunfighter duds.

Now you can also look at the Lord of the Ring for an example of this to. Gandolf is way higher in level than the hobbits in the group. But it works.

For this to work you would have to have the support of the players but even with that could it be a viable way to organize a party?


YS

 

[sniffles]

I've often wondered about this too. Using LOTR as an example, Gandalf is like an epic-level character, and with the way he disappears during some of the story I'd probably label him an NPC. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Boromir are all fairly high level. But the hobbits are first level PCs at the beginning of the story. It works for them because the higher-level PCs protect the low-level PCs. And because the party splits up. I'm not sure how well it would work in actual play, though. It seems like it would be really difficult to keep the low-level characters alive - or may it would be difficult to keep the high-level PCs alive because they'd always be trying to shield the weaker members of the party.

 

[Wik]

Well, in our groups, if you die, your next character is going to be one level lower than the lowest character in the party. So, using that, you can get a bit of level variance. Of course, since the XP system is self-correcting, that's not going to last forever. In your example, I'd expect those two 2nd level PCs to catch up to everyone else within two or three adventures.

I generally don't think this would work, unless the GM provided various tasks for the group, or maybe imposed limitations on the higher-level individuals. In a primarily high-level game, low-level PCs could hold off the orcs storming the dungeon while the rest of the group deals with Franz Demoneater, king of the Disco highlands.

In a primarily low-level game, you could limit high-level PCs (much like how Gandalf's power was limited) by imposing restrictions on their behaviour. The fighter could have no gear, and be unable to use gear. The cleric could be attoning for a past crime, and thus unable to cast spells. Or you could just infect the PC with some sort of incurable disease.

In all, though, I wouldn't consciously create a game where there's an obvious level difference between the characters. While these things can come up during play (and probably will) I wouldn't build a campaign based around the idea that one PC is inherently more powerful than another.

 

[Plane Sailing]

In our campaigns currently the lowest level is 7 and the highest level is 11. I don't think it works terribly well, because

a) the lower level guy has much less capability
b) (most significantly) the lower level guy is much more fragile and dies much, much more often. ensuring that the replacement character is even further behind if you're not careful.

and for DMs in that situation it is difficult to balance encounters so that they aren't a pushover the top guys or a death knell for the bottom guys.

Cheers

 

[Umbran]

Now you can also look at the Lord of the Ring for an example of this to. Gandolf is way higher in level than the hobbits in the group. But it works.

It works because in LotR, but remember that it is a novel, and is not based upon the D&D level mechanic .

In play, you'll have a problem - the low-level characters will need to be shielded from the challenges the high-level characters face. This can be achieved in a number of ways, but it leaves you with players who have characters excluded from some activities. In a novel, those characters just aren't in the spotlight, and you don't worry too much about them. But in a game, they have a player attached to them. And that player's getting bored with inactivity, or frustated by not being able to contribute. That's not fun.

 

[Plane Sailing]

By the way, it is easy to overestimate how quickly the xp method will allow people to catch up. It sometimes seems more like xeno's paradox!

In other words, the lower level people can't actually catch up, but after about a dozen adventures they may start overlapping a bit (I just catch up with his level before he advances to the next one).

The xp method is a bit of a help, but in my experience (both running and playing) is that the rate of catchup is very, very slow.

Cheers

 

[Lanefan]

Given that in most games not everyone gets ExP for every encounter, and that some PC's die now and then and thus miss some adventuring, that some players like to cycle PC's in and out while others play the same PC's until they drop, and that some unlucky sods lose levels and don't get them restored, some level variance is almost unavoidable in any edition.

If the variance is roughly even - e.g. 11-10-9-9-9-9-9-8-7* - it's not much of a problem.

If the variance is uneven - e.g. 11-9-9-7-7-7-7-7* - it becomes difficult to seriously challenge the 11 without severely endangering the others.

* - this is in fact the approximate makeup of the two 1e-type parties I'm DM'ing right now, excluding temporary NPC's and ignoring some minor multi-classing. Note that class can also make a difference; in 1e a Thief-11, for example, is generally much less powerful than a MU-11.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Well, in our groups, if you die, your next character is going to be one level lower than the lowest character in the party.

I used to do this, and found that parties in a rough adventure occasionally went *backward* in level! So, I changed it to "one level lower than the party average", and that seems to have worked out better.

Lanefan

 

[Evilhalfling]

I have a Con game that uses 7-6-5-5-5-4
the premise is a family of nobles that seemingly accidently encounters an adventure.
the 7th lvl is an older aristocrat, the 4th lvl is a high stat fighter (his son)

The party could be even further apart, as much of the game is RP family problems, and solving the (scooby-dooish) mystery. Ran it twice with ggod results.