Advice: How to handle a party of mixed levels?

[Kahuna Burger]

Interesting...our group has always been run as, "You aren't there? You don't get xp!"

Is this common? Or do people often hand out xp to characters whose player wasn't even at the game?

Cedric

If you have a dedicated group with few variable outside commitments where people miss a game once every few months and its pretty evenly spread out... That would work.

As the entire point of this thread demonstrates, if you want to game with people who have more complicated lives without making the game eventually pointless for them, you need to examine the actual point of XP.

Why shouldn't a missing character get XP? She might have been off doing something just as XP worthy. (half experience is also an option) More to the point, what purpose does it serve for the group? You play at one power level, then you get to play at the next. Why hobble the entire group with book keeping on missed games?

Groups that are so picky about who gets XP are setting up an internal competition for the better character. If thats what you want, fine. If it isn't, don't do it that way.

(one final note, its particularly silly to do the "players who show up more often deserve more XP" line in groups where one or two players has more influence on the scheduling than others. If you would reschedule or even move the venue for the Bard but say "well the palidan couldn't make it so no XP", you have a group dynamic problem.)

Kahuna Burger

 

[S'mon]

Groups that are so picky about who gets XP are setting up an internal competition for the better character. If thats what you want, fine. If it isn't, don't do it that way.

(one final note, its particularly silly to do the "players who show up more often deserve more XP" line in groups where one or two players has more influence on the scheduling than others. If you would reschedule or even move the venue for the Bard but say "well the palidan couldn't make it so no XP", you have a group dynamic problem.)

Kahuna Burger

Re internal competition - I think the comperition to gain XP & go up levels is at the heart of D&D, a competition internal to the individual player, rather than intra-group competition though. Giving players xp for nothing cheapens XP's value as a reward mechanism IMO. There are plenty of (less successful) games that lack this reward mechanism. You can run D&D as a non-competitive game, and some people do, but I would think there were better-suited systems out there for non-competitive play.

Re rescheduling - luckily I as GM have the last say, as long as the group is quorate (typically 3+ players available) we'll play on the weeks I schedule. Those who can't attend, their PCs of course get no XP, but they don't get killed off either (at least not yet...)

edited for typos.

 

[Arravis]

My 2 cents...

As a DM and as a player, you have to look at the reasons why you play. If it's to compete against each other and feel superior by being rewarded more then someone else, I suppose the way you are doing it is fine. If you play simply to have fun and to make sure everyone in your game has fun, not giving out equal XP for everyone doesn't work out.

People don't want to play in a game that they feel their character's are "second" best or that their characters are just a third wheel there to support the more powerful characters. No matter how good of a DM you are, in a party with such diverse levels, that will happen. You'll have the high-level players feel dissatisfied cause the game is "too easy" for them, and you'll have everyone else feel like they are just there as stage props and extras. It doesn't work.

3rd edition D&D isn't about competing with the other players, that's the old-style thinking from the war-gamers that started playing 1st ed in the late 70's.

As a DM I feel that I'm simply there to make sure my players have fun. All of them, not just some of them. I make sure I have a good story to tell, I make sure everyone feels good about their characters and gets their moment in the spotlight, I make sure everyone feels challenged by the game (not each other), but most of all I make sure they have fun.

If I were you, I'd do some "epic" event that equalizes the party XP (probably raising everyone to 12th lvl, so that even the 11th lvl players feel like they got something) and give up this competitive BS. If some of the players aren't consistently showing up to the game, and you and the other players feel it's unfair to give them XP, boot them from the game. It's that simple. If a person isn't dedicated to your game (to a reasonable extent), then they shouldn't be in it. As a DM you have more then enough to do and don't need to write your adventures for people who are just as likely to show up as not. (For me, if a player doesn't show up at least 2/3rds of the time, he's not in my game).

Anyway, just my opinion.

 

[Valiantheart]

My advice:

In the future run the missing players PCs as NPC so they dont suffer from not being there. Some people do have lives to lead and shoudlnt be penalized for it.

 

[Cedric]

Well...right now we are playing 1st edition...so it's going to be a bit different. But people who miss the game get their share of the treasure...and the xp that comes from that.

They only get magic items if it's really appropriate for their character or no one else wants it...

They get no xp for encounters or monsters.

Cedric

 

[Voadam]

I've played in games where the campaign had been going on for 20+ years and new characters started from level 1 and marched right next to the level 32 ranger. The emphasis was on story, not combat and 1st level knights charged because it was what knights do.

If your game is just a hack and slash dungeon bash then keeping everybody on par all the time is a way to keep players feeling they can participate equally. This seems much more a competition style game where it is not fair to be "penalized" for lower levels, items, etc.

However, in most campaigns I've played or DM'd while characters start out on an equal balanced footing things happen in the game to change the characters, making them more powerful or partially crippled by in-game actions. a fighter who puts all his money into magic armor and weapons can be financially ruined by a simple rust monster. dealing with these ups and downs is part of the game.

Story-wise different power levels are fine as long as everyone can participate, has their own niche, and has fun.

 

[RigaMortus]

We pretty much are running the same type of campaign, with the lowest character JUST hitting level 6 now and the highest level at level 12. The rest are between 7-9.

Our DM pretty much mixes up the encounters so we have a little bit of everything to fight. For example, we are fighting Azers and Fire Giants. The higher level folk take on the Fire Giants while the lower level folk take on the Azer, and sometimes they feel bold enough to engage a giant (usually ranged or for a killing blow), but that often ends in tragedy (thus, why some people are at level 6; our rule is - character death = make a new character with HALF the exp of the current character, including the exp from the encounter that killed you, assuming the survivors overcome it).