What do you do with characters at different combat power levels?

[Janx]

So I've played the half-orc barbarian AND his Minotaur henchman before...
Yes, they kick butt.

And they had a good AC. I don't know where people think being high damage means easy to hit. Just gotta wear the right stuff.


In my current game, one player has a 5th level Paladin with a +10 to hit. AC=18 and he's probably one of the easiest to hit. He's definitely the combat monster of the party.

As a DM, I agree with the advice of running a mixed enemy party. Then you can try to front an appropriate threat against each player.

The last good fight I ran was that way. I basically had a party of bugbears, leveled and classed to match the party (same classes). I was a little short on the levels, since I had a couple levels wasted on the monster classes. But still, it was a good fight.

I kept my cleric in back, casting useful spells like Protection From Good (which helped immensely). Sadly the player's cleric cast Hold Person on my leader guy, and lopsided the fight for a bit. But even still, it was quite a challenge for the party to face differing tactics from each character (including my own attempts to get in a Sneak Attack from flanking).

 

[S'mon]

In my current game, one player has a 5th level Paladin with a +10 to hit. AC=18 and he's probably one of the easiest to hit. He's definitely the combat monster of the party.

This doesn't sound like a very strong PC for 5th level - AC 18 is extremely low, and +10 to-hit is nothing great - I'd expect at 5th level on average something like +4 from STR (certainly at least +3 - even Default Array gives +3 at 5th), wpn focus and a +1 or +2 from the weapon, ie an average to-hit bonus around +12 before buffs. AC around 25-26 with a shield or 21-22 without.

Different games have very different standards - eg unlike Thanee's experience, in my high level game (currently 16th), 2-handed weapon clearly far outstripped weapon + shield in player preference, the few points of AC were far outweighed by the enourmously greater damage from 3.5 2-handed power attack.

 

[Rackhir]

I was in a campaign where the new characters were 9th while the long term char were 12-13. It was a disaster.

In original D&D starting new char off at lower levels worked because the XP to advance a level doubled each level iirc. So if you were higher it took a significantly longer time to advance. That is not the case in 3.5/3.0 where it is only several thousand more.

Compounding the problem is the CR system. Higher level characters drag down the XP for ALL the characters. So that the lower level PCs would be getting substantially less xp, while facing creatures that are really tough challenges.

That said, anyone who is complaining that their Lv1 caster is ineffective in combat, compared to 3rd level melee machines has only themselves to blame. You get one to three spells per day, effectively no combat skills and low HP. You are simply not going to be able to do that much until you start hitting at least 3rd and don't really start getting an equivalent power level until you are hitting 7th.

Further more, I'd definitely have to agree that if you are running a caster anything that hurts your caster level is bad. So unless those paragon levels give you some really useful stuff for the character's entire career. They are a bad choice for casters.

In short, don't let the characters start off at different levels. It really doesn't work well and any "penalties" you are imposing are unlikely to compensate for the substantial and continuing advantage the extra levels provide.

 

[SteveC]

I'm in a similar situation, though at a considerably higher level. My current Thousand Years of Darkness (a Rokugan-based game) game consists of mostly casters, a diplomacy-focued Courtier/Marshal, two monks and a single heavy-hitter. Anything that can threaten the monk's ACs (both in the mid-to-high 20s at 8th level) can take apart the other PCs easily. Anything that can deal significant damage to the only tank can rip apart anyone it actually manages to hit. Anything that's a decent but not overwhelming threat to the pile of caster-types just gets ripped apart by the tank.

Yep. That's about the size of it. I find it interesting that we've come to the point in D&D where characters can be this optimised, even at relatively low level. The minotaur I can understand: that character is a little over the top, but the orc is as well.

I've tended to solve this by throwing mixed groups at the PCs. A single boss-type doesn't fare too well, with all the casters dropping spells on it until it fails a save and is hit by something debilitating. A horde will just be ignored by the monks and ripped apart by the tank while destroying the casters. Therefore, you have to have a group that's capable of dealing with a mixed threat. Fortunately, one of the PCs is intended to be tactically-minded, so they have an in-game way of being able to identify who is the biggest threat, and can react appropriately.

I think that's the best plan. The only problem with that is when characters don't always want to pick their targets accordingly. I think this requires a little out of game agreement with the players...we need to talk about that.

From the sound of things, a similar approach might work for you. Mixed groups tend to be more difficult encounters to run, but I usually enjoy them more. You can have PCs deal with the difficulty of both actually fighting, and channeling the fight in ways that they can win. You see much more tactically-minded actions (such as wall spells and other battlefield control stuff) if the PCs have to channel opponents toward their heavy hitters and away from casters.

I think this will end up working out in the end. What remains to be seen is if some of the characters will be able to accept being second fiddle in some ways. It's difficult, but even if the group was more traditional, a low level wizard is not going to be the terror of the battlefield. Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[SteveC]

I'd ditch the 'one level lower than the lowest level character' rule.

Start people at exactly what they need to equal the lowest character level, otherwise you will keep killing the same player's characters over and over. I was in a game where this became a real problem, though the DM was of the 'You always start at first level' persuasion, and then would throw dragons at the party in order to challenge the more experienced characters... His excuse being that if you lived you went up levels very quickly, problem was the only ones to live were the ones who hadn't died earlier...

The Auld Grump

This is a super good suggestion, but out of the question, unfortunately. In our group there seems to be some super big issue with having characters get too many levels they didn't "earn." I don't really get it. I suppose it can be a lot easier to create a character artificially at a higher level than having to get those levels in play: you seldom see characters created at higher than first level who have Toughness, but I've seen my share of starting ones who do...
Anyway, I am hoping to be able to argue for new characters to come in at the same level as any other character but I don't think this will fly. I have been in other campaigns where this rule ("start one level down") happens and then the group starts to slide backwards. I wonder what it is that makes people argumentative on this issue...is it a sense of "I had to EARN those XP, you just had them handed to you," I wonder?

 

[shilsen]

Throw opponents at them who are also at different power levels?