Xp and level spread in your campaign

[Legildur]

On experience, I play in 2 live games (converted to 3rd ed as soon as it was available) and observed a few different things:

1. Aside from Scribe Scroll and Brew Potion, no one has taken any other Item Creation feats, so no (or negligible) impact from item creation.

2. Rogues seem to gain additional experience through dealing with traps (either activating or disabling) since they are the only ones to bear the risk and consequences.

Other things that seems to happen in both games (cross over of players and DMs) are:

1. DMs recently started the clerics one level above other characters as it is not the most popular class selection given it is mostly viewed as a medic. One player in particular has tried to break the mold through careful spell and feat selection, but he mostly ends up spontaneously curing. The bonus level is an inducement, which soon gets overwhelmed if we started at 1st level (only 1000xp difference).

2. Characters that die are typically 'replaced' by a new character one level below the party average, in line with Raise Dead results.

 

[kamosa]

Our group tends to stay within 2 levels of each other, the differences typically being the result of multiple missed sessions or PC death.

While reading a little about item creation being the cause of a lot of differences in other groups, it occured to me that the following might be a workable house rule solution: XP are not lost at all during item creation. Instead they are considered 'used' which means that your PC's current XP total reflects the total XP gained, which is used as a pool for item creation. A PC would be able to keep up with his/her colleagues, but still only be able to use each XP once in item creation/spell use. In other words, the XP used to determine current level is the total of used and unused XP.

To make this balanced, you may have to increase the XP cost of item creation a little bit, say by as much as 50%. Has anyone else tried this type of thing yet? None of my players regularly engage in item creation and perhaps this might encourage them... if they ever go back to town.

On a similar note, I've been thinking of putting a hard cap on the XP value that the players can spend on item creation per level and then removing the XP burn for creating items. That restricts the creation of items, but doesn't force the players to give up levels to create items.

 

[the Jester]

I prefer the party be within a coupla levels of each other, but presently my epic game ranges from 18th to 23rd level. My low level group is from 1st to 4th.

 

[Fenes]

We do not use XP - all characters have the same level, and level up as the group sees fit.

 

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

We generaly have the same level, rarley do we have people who make items much. When someone changes characters they keep thier XP totals but they don't get XPs if their character isn't actually present at an encounter and they don't get RP XP if the player isn't there. I've been working out some house rules for us to avoid unlucky deaths as well as a new version of Raise Dead-type spells that doesn't make you loose a level but make there still be a cost to dying.

In my experience people don't like level differences much and it's easier on the DM and generaly more fun for everyone involved if everyone is about the same level. Because of this people almost never bother to get Raised and that generaly hurts the game more than helps.

Because of all this (and the FR/3.5-style XP system that lets people catch up), we're almost never more than a few sessions difference in level.

 

[schnee]

Everyone in my group gets the same XP, and stays approx. the same level. Crafters can spend out of this 'pool'.

I don't like unequal XP. Our 'reward' is getting together to have fun. The XP is merely another metric for how to build encounters.

 

[Li Shenron]

We are mostly always in a couple of levels range, the character who are behind the party usually are because the players missed several sessions of game (otherwise characters normally get the same share of experience).

 

[Bigwilly]

No more than 1 level

I award everyone who turns up at a session the same xp, with the occasional 100 xp for a particularly brilliant (bad or good) bit of RP. This does mean that one player who has an awkward schedule is sometimes a level or two behind. If its just the one then no problem, but when it gets to two I level him up automatically - he's obviously been doing something else while the rest of the party have been off adventuring. This has included being captured and tortured by drow (handled by e-mail) and spending 6 months as a cavalryman in service to the local lord in return for a restoration after being level drained by a succubus - note that he's a dwarf and took a lot of ribbing for being in the cavalry.

Bigwilly

 

[Ranes]

In my campaign, there is only one character who makes anything and all she does is scribe scrolls, so there isn't much of an XP hit there. Characters have died and (in one case) been raised, so a 1 level gap has materialised there but it's shrinking. I also award individuals XP for roleplaying but I keep the awards tiny - no more than 50 XP.

There was the time when I awarded XP for a combat encounter (in which everyone had been at the same level and would be awarded the same amount of XP) and everyone levelled up, except the mage. I hadn't been keeping a close eye on who had what, XP-wise, that evening. The mage, who had created one first level scroll that session, missed her level by 1 XP. She scowled at me, wondering if I was teasing her. After she had explained what her expression was about, the conversation went like this.

"So, are you going to let me have one more XP?"

"No."

"Oh, come - "

"But let's handle the individual RP awards now, shall we?"

And lo, everyone was happy and there was much feasting on popcorn, garlic mushrooms and fruit bats.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Well, we use the old FRCS XP system, which is now standard in 3.5.

So, if a PC dies and gets raised, the level hit will probably be there for a couple games, but eventually they all keep up with the rest.

This is the system that I use too, but I find that it takes about 10 games in order to catch up a level (!)

Dying is the main reason for people being behind in my campaign at present. This is one of the reasons that I instituted a houserule that allows someone raised from the dead to take either the level loss or a permanent 2 CON loss (1 CON loss with resurrection, 0 CON with trurez). If a current dead character is to be replaced with a brand new character they always come in one level behind.

Cheers