PC 4 or more levels below the highest-level PC in the same party?

[Darkness]

Do you have one? What are the respective levels? Does he fill a niche nobody else in the party does? How does he do?

(Since 3.0/3.5/d20 only - things worked differently in earlier editions.)

 

[Kalendraf]

The current party I'm DM'ing has had some wide gaps in levels. Originally, the gap was with an NPC they rescued, who ended up joining the party. That character began as 1st level while the party was around 7th. Since then the party has levelled up toward 11th/12th and the NPC is now 9th. In 3.5, the exp system awards more exp for the lower level characters which helps them level up faster, narrowing any gaps that exist. IMHO, it's one of the better changes introduced by 3.5.

One of the PC's is currently an afflicted wererrat which makes him effectively a level 14 character while one of the PC's is only 10th level.

In either case, the gap really has not been a big problem to deal with. I use the EL calculator available from ENworld which currently suggests the party's effective level is 12.6, but I also factor in the fact that there are 9th/10th level characters hanging around, so I don't go too far overboard.

 

[S'mon]

We used to have this, I found it sucked for the players of the low level PCs so now I keep level disparity to 1 level.

 

[Arnwyn]

Not now, but we have in the past.

There wasn't any problems - but my players don't mind taking a support role in combats with larger/dangerous creatures, and they easily fill the niche of taking out the weaker creatures in multi-opponent combats if they want to start hacking away. As well, the lower-level characters closed the gap quickly thanks to the 3e XP rules.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Tried it, not fun at all for Mr. Low Level. Then he died. And died again. And we said to heck with it, and now start folks off at the start of the lowest current level in the party.(Exactly enough XP to be that level.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Hammerhead]

Well in my current party, we have a 9th level Favored Soul, a 9th level Sorcerer, a 6th level Half Dragon, and a 5th level Half Celestial. The Half Celestial is a little weak compared to the others, but he compensates by often being resistant to the enemy's damage and being able to fly.

 

[IronWolf]

I think large gaps in level are no fun for the person at low-level. Sure it may be okay playing that support role for a session or two, but after awhile he is going to get tired of playing that support role time and time again.

I don't like the character level gaps to get much past 1 1/2 or 2 levels. When a character dies in a game of mine the replacement character comes back in at one level below the party average. The amount of experience for the replacement character depends on how close the party is to kicking the party level average up.

 

[the Jester]

I have a large group of players, some of whom come all the time when we game and some who don't (sometimes due to work, etc). So level disparities develop. I prefer a game where everyone's the same level, but with a group like I've got (and dealing with absent players by having their pcs fade out into the background) it simply doesn't happen that way.

I don't think we have significant difficulties with it; I try to give everyone their own stuff to do, subplots, etc.

In my low-level game, the high level guy just hit 8th and the low-level guys are 4th (two of them, though I'd bet one is going to level when I award xp before we play today). One of the fourth level guys often misses sessions, and often has to leave early (he's got a baby and more real life commitments than most of us), so he misses out on a lot of xp. The other one has missed quite a few of the 'big' sessions and has died a lot- so he's had a little trouble progressing in levels. (He just died again a couple of games ago, in fact!)