El

[Lord Pendragon]

...and diminished her enjoyment of the game.

This is exactly why I allow new PCs to come in at party level, and don't dock any xp for absent players. I don't think it adds anything to the game to penalize people for not being able to make a game occasionally. It's the same with PC death.

I suppose that if it ever got to the point where players were acting stupid because they didn't care if their characters died, I might change my stance. But so far, that's not been a problem.

 

[Darklone]

I never had problems with 2 levels difference between the highest and the lowest PCs, but not more.

Started 3rd edition in a group of a 10th level priest/wiz multiclass, lvl8 fighter (with level 6 sorcerer henchman), lvl8 cleric together with another friend as lvl5 chars. Even though the priest/wiz multiclass dude was weaker than his level usually is, we couldn't contribute much and if we had good ideas, the DM stopped us for gamebreaking

As for more monsters or bigger monster: I give a big yes for bigger battles. I had too many battles against biggies in large groups (10 people or more) who ended with a TPK because noone was able to beat the SR or DR of the monster.

On the other hand, we usually play from 7 pm to 8 am, that's plenty of time for RPing and fighting.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

They don't need more exp that the rest of the group, do they?

That's not the point. They deserve more XP than the rest of the group, cause for them, the encounters are more dangerous and difficult.

If you have a 12th-level char and an 8th-level char, you give both the XP a 10th-level char gets, right? So the 8th-level char gets less than he would get if he traveled around with another 8th-level char, and the 12th-level char gets more than he's due. So the lower-level chars get penalized twice for being low-level, and the high-level chars get rewarded twice for being high-level.

For the lower-level character, the encounter is harder, so he should get a higher reward, don't you agree?

They already need less to get to the next level than the higher levels do. So they will level quicker than the higher levels.

The difference isn't so big, especially at higher levels (there's no big difference between 15000 or 17000 xp to advance a level).

Grant it, they may never have the same exact number of experience points or even be at the same level, but what's the problem with that?

The problem is that they work more and get paid less.

Plus Roleplay experiece can adjust this as well.

Yes, IF they do better roleplaying. If they don't RPXP won't help. Plus, it's got nothing to do with the matter.

I'm generally against characters of different levels in one party. A difference of 1 level will occur occasionally (if some players stand out with their RP performance, or others create magic items ore us spells with XP cost), but everything beyond that won't happen IMC. The more powerful characters will dominate the combats, (either the encounters are so hard that the lower-level chars will be in constant danger, or they are so easy the higher-level chars will be bored the whole time) and the difference in power will manifest even outside of combat.