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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5898263" data-attributes="member: 1210">I'm a pretty high-lethality dm, but the game gradually advances.How do you set the level of incoming pcs?I have a twofold approach to "keeping the levelling going" despite pc deaths. First, when a new pc enters play (I'm talking 4e here- my actual preference, "everyone starts at 1st level", hasn't been viable since 2e), I start them about a level lower than the old pc of that player.My current method is- look at the dead/retired pc's xp total. Take the number of xp into his or her current level he or she is, and the new pc has that many xps more than the minimum needed to enter the level below.To make this a little clearer, let's say that Bob's old pc, Horri, was 7th level with 12,700 xp when he died. You need 10,000 xp to enter 7th level; so Bob's new pc will be 2,700 xp above the entry point of 6th level (because Horri was 2,700 xp above the entry point). Since you only need 7,500 xp to be 6th level, Bob's new pc, Gellis, has 7,500 + 2,700 xp = 10,200- enough to still be 7th level! Hurray for Bob.The other thing I do is, at the start of each session and any time the group has a new highest-level pc, I give everyone lower level than the top level in the group "catchup xp" equal to defeating a monster of the highest level pc's level.So let's say our party consists of five 7th level pcs and two 8th level pcs. At the start of the session, everyone who is 7th level gets 350 xp- as if he or she has defeated an 8th level monster.Now I give xp per encounter as we go in 4e. Let's say that one of our 8th level guys goes up to 9th. Everyone else immediately gets catchup xp for defeating a 9th level monster. Let's say that propels one of the 7th level guys to 8th level- okay, great. But there aren't any more catchup xps awarded for that- the top level guy is already 9th. Until someone enters 10th level (or the start of the next session), that's it.</blockquote>

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