D&D General Disparity in PC levels from same party

[Charlaquin]

I use attendance for leveling in my F2F 5e games. You play as many sessions as your level and you advance (so you play 1 session at level one, 2 at level 2, etc). Newer players or those with poor attendance can be quite a bit behind, but catch up relatively quickly.

I recently had a L1 PC in a party who's highest level PC was L6. It's true that they need to be cautious and hang back a bit in a fight, but everyone was aware of that. I don't think anyone e minds it.

I had a similar situation in a 4e game - we used the standard rules for experience, but you only gained experience for sessions you were present for. That did not work well for 4e, because of the way you added half your level to everything, combined with how tight the numbers were. We realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t working and changed to everyone levels at the same time. But I don’t think it would be nearly the same problem in 5e.

 

[Lanefan]

Another reason for disparate levels in 1e was the occasional appearance of level draining foes.

Me, I take mixed levels within a party for granted. Hell, the crew I ran last night ranged from 8th to 11th, except for the hench who's merely 6th.

It's also a question of the steepness of the game's power curve. In 3e, for example, a one-level difference was relatively huge; while in 1e it's nowhere near as big a deal. From all I can tell, 5e is much more forgiving than was 3e but maybe not quite as forgiving as was 1e.

 

[Distracted DM]

My last 5e campaign went about 130 sessions. When your PC died the new one started at half XP of your last charachter. I also tracked XP ( milestones are not for me) so if you missed a session you fell behind.

At somepoint we had a range of levels a few 6th, some 7th and one 8th. It worked.

I ran a 5e West Marches game for some years, it worked pretty well there as well as long as everyone was within 3 or 4 levels.

But for regular games, I tend to keep everyone on the same XP track. The only thing that throws that off are magic items that grant XP, like Deck of Many Things and a few others that I might pull from early editions. I track XP for the party, typically because I don't want to calculate XP right after I finish a session and would rather do it at my leisure.. and that resulted in people getting lax in XP recording. I could say, ofc, "if you're not recording it then oh well" but it's not much trouble for me to track party XP.

 

[Charlaquin]

But for regular games, I tend to keep everyone on the same XP track. The only thing that throws that off are magic items that grant XP, like Deck of Many Things and a few others that I might pull from early editions. I track XP for the party, typically because I don't want to calculate XP right after I finish a session and would rather do it at my leisure.. and that resulted in people getting lax in XP recording. I could say, ofc, "if you're not recording it then oh well" but it's not much trouble for me to track party XP.

Notably, the 2024 rules has different effects for the cards in the deck of many things that mess with levels or XP, since a lot of groups don’t even use XP any more.

 

[Li Shenron]

Are you OK with level differences? Or do you think it would be a problem if your PC was a level lower than everyone else?

I don't have any problems, if we're talking about reasonable differences, not 10 levels. A 3-level spread has been OK in all editions I've played.

 

[Bill Zebub]

One of the criteria I look for in an RPG is how well it handles parties of mixed experience levels. It's one of the things I really appreciate about ToR and Dragonbane.

 

[Distracted DM]

Notably, the 2024 rules has different effects for the cards in the deck of many things that mess with levels or XP, since a lot of groups don’t even use XP any more.

Wow I just looked them up- there are some heavy nerfs to the Deck in 5e24, both benefits and detriments!

 

[aco175]

We don't see a lot of disparity in levels in 5e these days since we level by milestone in our home games, but in cases where I have seen it (Adventurer's League) it hasn't been a particularly big deal. PCs at the lower end of the tier matched with higher end suffer only a little in the comparison and mostly just seem to need more frequent healing than anything else.

I noticed this with AL as well. Mostly in Tier 1 with some people showing up at a table of 1st level PCs with a 4th level PC. I think most of the modules are designed for 3rd level and it tells the DM how to adjust, but I seem to see it run as is most of the time.

 

[cbwjm]

In earlier DnD it was definitely common to have mixed levels, I think when a PC died back when I ran becmi or 2e, they started with enough xp to be one level below the party average. With 3e onwards, it turns out that xp doesn't matter as much when everyone is on the same xp track. Not sure if I did it in 3e, but in 5e, I would track the xp for the party and anyone new joining or any replacement PCs would start at the same level as everyone else.

 

[Charlaquin]

Wow I just looked them up- there are some heavy nerfs to the Deck in 5e24, both benefits and detriments!

I guess. It’s only the XP/level effects that have been changed, so it’s only really a nerf if your group was actually using XP. And most of the altered effects are like, advantage/disadvantage on all d20 tests for a year, or something similar. Which is far from an insignificant effect.