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<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 4875047" data-attributes="member: 1210">I run a game with certain characteristics that tend to exacerbate the gap between the top pc's attack bonus and the bottom pc's attack bonus- the party isn't all the same level, nor do new pcs have nearly the level of gear that established pcs start with.The warden in my campaign- who is our most recent addition- tends to need a 16 or 17 to hit what the fighter needs a 7 or 8 to hit, but the fighter has been played up all the way from 1st level, so she has good gear and is one of the highest level members of the party. At the time the warden joined, she was 14th and he was 10th. Now, with the gap narrowing (because I tweak the game a little to help lower-level pcs catch up) the warden just hit 14th and the fighter 16th. The gap between them is still a good 4-6 points (I think- not quite sure, since I don't keep a copy of the pcs' character sheets) but narrowing. The fighter has also invested in Expertise, while I don't think that the warden has. So, yes, there's a gap- but even starting with a pretty extreme gap, it has closed rapidly. One thing that really helped the warden out was after he realized he couldn't hit a monster's AC and he realized that every one of his powers targeted AC, he leveled, took a 'vs. Fort' power and retrained another to a NAD-targeting defense as well (I think also vs. Fort, but it might be vs. Reflex). Is the gap a huge problem? Not if the player and the dm recognize it and work to avoid having it be the overwhelming determinate of whether the pc can ever accomplish anything. A few brutes make my warden very happy, for instance. Just like anything in the game, it just takes awareness and intention to smooth out this issue.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 4875047, member: 1210"] I run a game with certain characteristics that tend to exacerbate the gap between the top pc's attack bonus and the bottom pc's attack bonus- the party isn't all the same level, nor do new pcs have nearly the level of gear that established pcs start with. The warden in my campaign- who is our most recent addition- tends to need a 16 or 17 to hit what the fighter needs a 7 or 8 to hit, but the fighter has been played up all the way from 1st level, so she has good gear and is one of the highest level members of the party. At the time the warden joined, she was 14th and he was 10th. Now, with the gap narrowing (because I tweak the game a little to help lower-level pcs catch up) the warden just hit 14th and the fighter 16th. The gap between them is still a good 4-6 points (I think- not quite sure, since I don't keep a copy of the pcs' character sheets) but narrowing. The fighter has also invested in Expertise, while I don't think that the warden has. So, yes, there's a gap- but even starting with a pretty extreme gap, it has closed rapidly. One thing that really helped the warden out was after he realized he couldn't hit a monster's AC and he realized that [i]every one[/i] of his powers targeted AC, he leveled, took a 'vs. Fort' power and retrained another to a NAD-targeting defense as well (I think also vs. Fort, but it might be vs. Reflex). Is the gap a huge problem? Not if the player and the dm recognize it and work to avoid having it be the overwhelming determinate of whether the pc can ever accomplish anything. A few brutes make my warden very happy, for instance. Just like anything in the game, it just takes awareness and intention to smooth out this issue. [/QUOTE]

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