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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6415285" data-attributes="member: 29398">A little late to the party here...guess that makes me the 1st-level guy in the experienced group. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />What I started out doing is to start new PCs 1 level below the lowest in the party.  I learned the folly of that when I ran a party that just couldn't do anything right, and the average party level went backwards quickly.Then, I went to bringing new PCs in 1 level below the party average.  Problem there became that once a significant level disparity arose (and it always does) sometimes new PCs were coming in at a higher level than some of the established PCs; making death a viable choice in order to advance.So, on to plan C: for this campaign I've been setting a floor - it was 3rd for a long time, now it's 4th or 5th depending on which party it is (highest level PCs just got to 9th, average is about 6th-7th).  So far, so good.And in all cases there is a significant exception: if you are a new player to the game your first character starts at the party average.Something that hasn't been brought up yet is that sure, one might find oneself bringing in a 1st-level PC to a 9th-level party; but that's pretty unlikely in that if your old PC died chances are there's been some other deaths along the way as well, leaving the party's levels spread all over the place between 1st and (for this example) 9th.Preach it, brother!  In multi-party campaigns like the ones I tend to run, time management can become a complete PITA.  It's doable, of course, but it needs some player co-operation sometimes and can be a tricky juggling act.It gets really messy when there's a) some sort of key world-altering event or plot twist (e.g. the moon inexplicably vanishes) that you want all parties to experience at about the same real-earth time so players in one group don't spoil the surprise for the others; or b) an in-game reason for all the various parties to meet at the same place and time (e.g. the King has called all adventurers based in his kingdom to defense of the realm, they are to report to place X on date Y and may the gods have mercy on them should they fail to appear).Lan-"right now in one game I'm running a 5th-level Fighter in a party where nobody else is lower than 8th; and somewhat shockingly he is still alive"-efan</blockquote>

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