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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6227377" data-attributes="member: 1210">Well- I am of mixed mind on this. First of all, I favor a game style where resurrection, though possible, is rare. I prefer it if raising the dead is costly on the front end but comes with no penalty for the raised person.I also really prefer a game that allows all pcs to start at 1st level, even in a higher level party. Older (pre-3e) D&D worked pretty well with mixed levels, and I'm hoping that 5e will, too (though the damage escalation by level makes me a bit nervous, to be honest). So I like starting new pcs off below "party level" (at 1st), but not if the game system won't support it (3e, 4e).Currently, in my 4e game, a new pc enters the game with somewhat less xp than the pc he or she is replacing. Let's say the dead pc was 23rd level with 300,000 xp. The minimum xp for 23rd is 255,000, so that pc had earned 45,000 xp at his highest level. What I do is start one level lower, and add that 45,000 xp to the minimum for the lower level (22nd in this case)- which is 210,000. In this case, as it turns out, the pc starts at 255,000 xp- just at the bottom of 23rd. (It could easily have worked out that she starts a level lower, though.)Another thing I do, since 3e and 4e are so level-dependent, is give "catchup xp" to the lower level members of the party. The way this works at the moment is that at the start of each session and each time there is a new "highest level pc" (so if the party is largely 5th and 6th but someone hits 7th after an encounter), each pc who is lower level than the highest level pc gets xp equal to the value of one monster of the highest level pc's level.Example for clarity: The party at the start of the game is levels 5, 5, 6, 6 and 6. The level 5 guys get "catchup" xp equal to a 6th level monster. Later, one guy hits 7th; everyone else immediately gets "catchup" xp equal to a 7th level monster.</blockquote>

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