Level Differences - How long to catch up?

[nittanytbone]

Alternatively, switch to PARTY based XP. In that (house ruled) system, the party earns XP which is then divided evenly among the characters regardless of attendance.

It keeps everyone at the same level, but much like communism, reduces incentives for individual accomplishment (or attendance!).

 

[moritheil]

It will also make encounter management much easier for you as a DM, as you don't have to worry about how to challenge the highest level guy without slaughtering the lowest level ones (or alternatively giving the highest level guy a walkover).

What, other DMs worry about this?

On a more serious note, if the enemy is intelligent, they're likely to be gunning for the high-level wizard, so it shouldn't be a problem with the OP's party.

 

[pawsplay]

What surprised me is how much more quickly a player will catch up if the DM picks the encounters in favor of the lower guy or how much he can delay the catchup by selecting the encounters to favor the rest of the group. A 9th level player will catch up much more quickly to a 10th level party if the DM allows them to fight CR 10, 12, ir 14 opponents. He will take more time to catch up if they face off against CR 11, 13, or 15 opponents..

I don't see it as much of a difference... in any case, the lower level party member will catch up soon enough anyway, since they don't need as much to level.

In my experience, catchup is not "glacially" slow. In my group, which started at 1st level and had a player join when the group was 4-5th level, the new guy (who started at the low end of 4th level) now has the second highest XP total thanks to regular attendance (the PC who hasn't died and has missed no sessions is first). In other words, if everyone attended regularly, the difference virtually vanishes in about three levels. The greater the gap, the faster the catchup.

 

[Quartz]

With regard to the mage, surely he should be expending XP to create scrolls, wands, etc? A medium or higher level mage should be a walking library and arsenal rolled into one.

 

[mvincent]

...14th level Wizard
13th level Dervish

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?

That seems odd.

At that level, the Dervish should be earning say: 5850 xp per session (i.e. 4 average (CR14) encounters per session), and the Wizard would be earning 4200. So she'll be catching up about 1,650 XP per session at this level (and 1,800 per session if/when they both level). Assuming she started at 13,000 xp below the Wizard, she should be caught up in about 8 sessions (even without doing more work than the wizard)

Some points:
- Having less encounters will slow this down (of course).
- Giving flat rates (example: 1000 XP for everyone) for role-playing encounters (rather than basing it on a CR) will slow this down greatly.
- Giving the wizard XP for not being there seems unfair.
- The wizard might be cheating, or the Dervish might be missing something. Perhaps you could ease XP book-keeping by using a running (public) spreadsheet for everyone.
- If the wizard and cleric are so far ahead of everyone else, they could consider burning XP on creating items for the others to use. Believe it or not, this can actually allows both them (and everyone else) to level faster than they would normally.