Giving EP to group with lvl differences?

[kreynolds]

What does the FRCS system do for extreme level differences -- i.e., a Level 1 hireling along with an 8th level party? If he survives, does he get humungous XP?

If he participated, then yes.

 

[Darklone]

Yeah, the FR system is meant to equalize levels rather fast.

 

[Maitre Du Donjon]

What does the FRCS system do for extreme level differences -- i.e., a Level 1 hireling along with an 8th level party? If he survives, does he get humungous XP?

I don't have my books with me (and i can'T find it in the SRD), but what would happen to said hireling? For argument's sake, lets say he received 5000 XP for helping his boss defeat a CR 8 creature. Would he jump rigth to lvl 3?

Maitre D

 

[kreynolds]

Would he jump rigth to lvl 3?

The only thing I recall the DMG saying is that its up to you (the DM). Personally, I tend to allow jumps like that.

 

[Leopold]

Yeah, the FR system is meant to equalize levels rather fast.

theres a program out there called XPGEN that does just that...

 

[Plane Sailing]

I used to use the FRCS version to eliminate the "squire effect" of bonus xps for high level characters in a mixed level party. However, I found that it gave too many bonus xps to the lower level characters!

The happy medium which I use, is treat the party as if they were all the same level as the highest level member of the party.

This is dead easy to work out, and works well - the highest level character isn't getting bonus exps beyond what he normally would, and the lower level characters are getting less experience than they would if they'd fought the powerful beastie themselves, sure... but they *are* getting more xps than they would normally be getting by fighting creatures of CR appropriate to them, so it all works out nicely.

Lower level characters do slowly catch up with higher level characters and eventually spend a portion of each level at the same level, without causing headaches for the DM when calculating exp.

For the next few adventures, why not calculate xp all three methods and see what it looks like (easy if you have spreadsheet help). That should help you decide what will work best for you.

Cheers

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I don't have my books with me (and i can'T find it in the SRD), but what would happen to said hireling? For argument's sake, lets say he received 5000 XP for helping his boss defeat a CR 8 creature. Would he jump rigth to lvl 3?

Maitre D

By the rules, you cannot gain enough XP in one encounter to advance two levels. You would, in that case gain enough XP to have 2999 XP - 1 less than the amount to get to 3rd.

Of course you can overrule that and let him gain several levels at once.

The important question, however, is: will he survive that? In the very extreme, he will have 20 HP (barbarian with high CON and toughness feat), and he'll probably have between 6 and 15 HP. And that's not much in an EL 8 encounter: The attention of another enemy, even for only a round or two, will finish him, and even a spell he happens to be in the blast radius of will put him down...