Level Differences - How long to catch up?

[sus323]

Hi there,

I'm currently into my second yeard of running a game (my first as DM) and things have gone pretty good. However, due to some character deaths, abandoned characters...etc, I find myself with a problem.

Here's the setup: My players are...

15th level Cleric
14th level Wizard
13th level Dervish
12th level Psychic Warrior
12th level Rogue

Here's my problem:

The player who runs the dervish joined the game last year and started her character one level below the wizard. Since then she has been to every game and handed in roleplay notes for extra XP.

Meanwhile, the guy playing the Wizard has been absent for a good number of the games (his wife just had a baby) and does not hand in many roleplaying notes.

My houserule for absent players is that they get monster XP but no roleplaying XP. So shouldn't the dervish character have caught up to the wizard character by now?

Has anyone noticed that even with the increased xp you get for being a lower lever character you never seem to catch up to the higher level people?

I'd appreciate any imput that people have.

Thanks.

 

[moritheil]

This was not at all the case in my 10-player campaign that ran for a year. We had one player who was there from the start, but only got up to 9th level or so by the end of the campaign due to an untimely death, whereas one of the players that came in near the end attained 12th despite starting a level under the lowest person (she started at 5th, I think). The whole experience put me against boosting XP for lower-level characters.

 

[sus323]

Thanks for the response, moritheil!

How long did it take for your new player to make up the difference between her starting level and the next highest character?

Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing, but a year in real time (playing every other week) seems like a long time to close the gap even in the 10-13 level range.

 

[moritheil]

Thanks for the response, moritheil!

How long did it take for your new player to make up the difference between her starting level and the next highest character?

Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing, but a year in real time (playing every other week) seems like a long time to close the gap even in the 10-13 level range.

She probably closed the gap with the next lowest player in a couple of sessions. At the time her character retired (wandered off to undertake a personal side quest), she may actually have been 13th or 14th level, and there was certainly no one at a higher level than her. On the other hand, the person who wound up at 9th loved to play front-liners, so his chars got killed a few times, which was often not really his fault (10 players means that when they fought a single nasty monster, it was capable of putting the melee line in serious pain.)

While I gave out lots of RP XP in that campaign, I gave it out evenly, so her above-average RPing was not the source of her fast advancement.

 

[sus323]

Then maybe I'm doing something wrong....

Because we've played for almost a year now without the dervish character catching up to the wizard. She started two levels below him, but she should have caught up by now, right?

 

[Plane Sailing]

The standard xp method in the DMG (that gives a little more xp to the lower level characters), in my experience pretty much never allows them to catch up. As in, a character who was a level lower at 9th level was still a level lower for almost all the adventures by the time she was 13th level (she reached 13th level for about 1 adventure before the 13th level guy made 14th level).

The standard xp method provides for a glacially slow catching up in my experience.

 

[sus323]

Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. I am using the standard XP stuff from the DMG, and, you're right, it is really really slow.

In your experience would it be worth it for me to bring the lower level party members to within 2 levels of the highest level guy?

 

[moritheil]

I'm scratching my head. I've never had problems with players catching up in levels (I'm not discussing overall XP, just whether or not at any point a player becomes the same level as some other, higher level player.)

Levels are further and further apart as one gets higher in level, so even uniform XP should allow a lower level player to catch up to a higher level player.

Sus, do your NPC enemies ever deliberately target and kill the wizard? If not, a mage is generally unlikely to die as often as a front-liner.

 

[sus323]

Thanks for your help on this.

I think my problem is that it is just taking a long time for the lower level people to catch up to the higher level ones.

Like you said....its glacial....

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Actually, assuming that I am doing it correctly, a level 9 player starting out with a level 10 party should be behind the party by a whopping total of 1 XP by level 18.

Here are my assumptions:

1. XP by CR chart as noted on DMG p. 38
2. Party faces CR appropriate encounters (just to make the math have fewer variables.)
3. XP is awarded per encounter
4. Level-up is allowed to happen as soon as it is available.
5. Part of 4 players (again, just to make the math easier)
6. No XP is lost by any means (again, just to make the number crunching easier)

Assumption #4 is important because the character that is behind is going to level sooner than the rest. If they delay their leveling until the rest of the party can level they will continue to earn XP at a higher rate and will actually reduce the time needed to catch up.

If these are true, I have it worked out on an Excel spreadsheet so I know thee number crunching is correct. The only mistake that could be happening here is if I told it to crunch the wrong numbers. Shoul I upload it? [I.E. Any mods mind if I do?]

EDIT:

Just to crunch the numbers a bit here, the 9th level character is behind in XP by this much each time the ECL normal characters gain a level:
11th level: 6,638
12th level: 4,838
13th level: 3,488
14th level: 2,738
15th level: 1,913
16th level: 1,013
17th level: 526
18th level: 1