Extremely varied party level (Cydra players stay out!)

[the Jester]

So I'm getting ready to restart my campaign, five game years after the last game I ran, and I'm letting pcs from a number of different groups get together. The levels run from as low as 8th to as high as 16th... any tips anyone has on how to challenge them all without killing the lower-level party members would be appreciated! I got a few tips in another thread, but it was as I was designing the first adventure that I realized just how tricky it can be.

I have already realized that the multiple monsters challenging the party is a good route to go- i.e. one CR14 bad guy with a bunch of, say, CR 6 or 7 henchcreatures. Anyone else have really varied party levels like this? How'd it work out?

 

[Crothian]

What are the classes and levels? I think that will be most important. Also, are the 16th level guys equiped like 16th lervel guys and the 8th level guys equiped like 8th level guys?

I like the multi threat appraoch. You can also give the higher level characters a reputation so the more powerful monsters, or all the opponents would perfer to strike at them then the weaker characters.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

they're listed here

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33137

 

[the Jester]

they're listed here

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33137

Beat me to it! I'm happily building adventure for them now, and the traditional style dungeon that I'm designing for them to go into has the ol' traditional sort of organization (lower ELs on the earlier levels) which may make it easy for the higher level guys at first, but I hope to use a few RBDM-style tricks and environmental issues to give them a few things to think about...

 

[Larry Fitz]

Seems like the real problem is the uber-multiclass character, everyone else seems within a range of 3 or 4 levels, I would create encounters for the group as if they were an average of 12-14 level and let the chips fall where they may. Yes it will be a little easier on the 16th level character, but then their will be an xp difference as well. In fact there could be encounters where the 16th level character simply doesn't get xp. As the lower levels catch up then the encoounters will become more challenging for the higher level character... Of course this assumes that you are pro-rating xp and not just giving everyone an even share of what the group earns overall.

 

[Crothian]

You can also have some creatures that the high level character won;'t be as good against. Foir instance creatures immune to the sneak attack or something like that.

 

[the Jester]

Well, the 15th level guy is pretty amazingly powerful too; elementalists are a little more powerful than other classes but at a cost (they suffer subdual damage from their own spellcasting). Oops- I left him off the list! Let me go edit that really quick...

I plan on using a variety of creature types, so the sneak attack immunity is bound to come up sometimes (undead, plants, oozes, constructs, etc), and I do award xp with the FR system, so the xp difference will come up a lot- though I will give smaller ad hoc xp awards for weaker creatures as long as there's some level of challenge).

 

[Crothian]

You might want to check out the book of challenges. It has some good advice on different types of encounters. It doesn't really go into this particuliar problem, but the many different enviroments paired up with certain monsters might help get something a little more challenging without the need for a very powerfuil creature.

 

[the Jester]

One thing I'm sort of experimenting with is using lots of advanced or levelled creatures with templates and weird combos. For example, I'm using a 9th-level fighter dire loxo (even though you can't normally put the 'dire' template on a monstrous humanoid, I thought a mastodon loxo was too darn cool), advanced shadow bile monster slicer beetles (bile monster's a template of mine), a loxo sorceress ghost, etc. Also I'm mixing prestige classes into the mix (death knight gladiator, for instance).

Got to keep them on their toes...

 

[the Jester]

Well, so far the adventure has EL's from about 7 to about 19... but I expect the party to run screaming from some of it (hopefully- it's obvious that they're outnumbered and severely outgunned in the worst of those encounters).

Anyone have any actual experience running games in 3e with levels split this much??