Party Level

[SolidSnake]

I was wondering what the party level for the following group of adventurers would be: 3 7th, 1 6th, 2 5th. I think I read somewhere that 4-5 members doesn't affect the party level...only when you start having 6+ do the numbers matter. That said, what would happen if another 6th level character were added to the party?

 

[James McMurray]

There's basically two schools of thought on this subject. One says that you should take the total party levels and divide by 4 to get the EL needed for challenges. With your group, that would be 9.

The other group (the one I agree with) says to find the average party level (in this case 6th) and add one to it for every 2 extra warm bodies in the group beyond 4. That would put your current party at 7th.

Adding another 6th level character would leave your group at 7th (although conservative estimate would give 8, it would depend on the power level of the specific characters.

Hope this helps

 

[Crothian]

The best thing you can do is estimate low then just improve challenges that apear to easy. If you guess to high, you might totally take out the party by accident.

 

[Sodalis]

And if you do that, there is always divine intervention.

Make it known ahead of time that the players are able to pray for assisatnce, cleric and paladins as major factors here. But let it be known that the God may not feel you worthy of helping you out...

And if they get into a pinch where they need help, or you make the EL too high, then you can always send a solar down to help them, and use that as a plot hook for sending them on a quest for something else...... as a thanks to the god for helping you out...

 

[Dimwhit]

It would be 6th average. Add the total levels and divide by the number of characters. Basic averages. You have 37 total levels divided by 6, drop any remainder. You could argue that this doesn't work well if you have a large variant in character levels, but this is what we've used and it works just fine.

 

[Mephistopheles]

This is just my personal approach but it has been working well for my group.

I would rate this party as level 6 but increase the staying power of the enemies by 50% over those listed in Table 4-1 of the DMG. By staying power I mean either numbers for multiple enemies, or hit points when enemy numbers don't multiply evenly or for single enemies. 50% because the number of levels in a 4 player level 6 party would be 24, but you have 37 levels so you have 37/24=1.54, rounded out to a 50% increase.

So long as you're not already using a large number of enemies before applying these increases it usually works out pretty nicely.

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

Don't total levels, total experiance. Consider that a 7th level char is better that a 4th and a 3rd combined.

3 7th=63000 exp
1 6th=15000 exp
2 5th=20000 exp

98000/4=27000 exp apeace for 4 chars. Barely under an 8th lvl party

With an aditional lvl 6 char.

113000/4=29000 exp apeace for 4 chars. About as powerful as an 8th lvl party.

 

[smetzger]

People lets remember that this is the Rules forum and we should be posting what the rules are; even if you disagree with them and you think you have a house rule thats better.

Ironically, Dimwhit's answer is the only one supported by the rules.