Character Disparity

[zean]

I need some GMing and Coordinating Advice for when there's a huge gap in player levels.

Currently, in our group, a wide gap of player levels has more or less emerged. This is because some play every weekend, and some, only every other weekend.

Tomorrow, I'm set to lead a Level 2 Fighter, Level 2 Cleric, Level 3 Wizard, and Level 5 Gunslinger.

The Gunslinger is somewhat problematic for the fact that the character is a Striker/High DPR character that hits at a small range and with Gun Training shoots with a Double-Barreled Pistol that does 2d8+DEX Modifier damage... and then can Rapid Reload to shoot again.

I'm just trying to figure out how to go about this (and possibly any scenario selection advice for such a table).

Also, this kind of situation is likely to happen a lot, as the year goes on and we get days where a high level character and some low level characters all show up together.

[Kyrie Ebonblade]

I figure that the gunslinger is about to level himself out of the range of the scenario's soon, or he's going to put the rest of them into a they that they aren't ready for.

[Caderyn]

2+2+3+5 = 12/4 = APL3 which means they can choose to play up or down, recommend that the lower levels play down and the gunslinger might change to a level 1 PC giving you a nicer spread of 1,2,2,3 for levels or even 1,1,2,2 if the wizard drops to a level 1 as well.

If people have multiple PC's that they can play it makes sorting levels alot easier if they insist on playing their high level PCs encourage the lower levels to play at tier (it massively reduces the rewards for the gunslinger which is what encourages him to swap PC's).

He will level to 6 in a few sessions anyway and be forced to play a level 1 afterwards when everyone else is 3+ and wants to play up in T1-5 as they are unlikely to want to play T3-7 6,4,3,3 as their levels (APL in that case is 4.25 which means the gunslinger must play down).

[Take Boat]

If you can't seat a table for people who show up every week, you could encourage them to start another character so you can avoid gaps like that, although this isn't particularly bad. I did a 3-3-3-4-7 a few weeks ago.

If they decide to play up the Gunslinger shouldn't be that scary and you might even have to pull some punches. If you expect them to play down you might read over the module and think of tactics that hose the gunslinger (getting her in a flank ought to shut her down for a bit).

[Kyrie Ebonblade]

Well I know that if I was going to do things to shut down the gunslinger.. Will saves are their bane. I've been hosed with Cause Fear (which still hits 5 hd, I think) then you can also slap things like confusion and/or blindness on them (Played Shipyard rats tonight.. whammied a bunch of players in it)

[DarkWhite]

Slow track is also an option, if friends want to advance in levels together, though I haven't seen many players use this option.

However, Caderyn has pretty much called it - players should create secondary characters once their lowest-level character achieves 4th level, so they'll always have a tier-appropriate character to play.

[Jason S]

Gunslinger should make a new PC and wait while everyone else levels up. He plays enough that he might have two level 5 PCs by the time everyone else has one.

If he continues playing, he's either going to make the group play up (and probably die in season 4) or he'll end up having less gold per level than he should. In any case, very shortly he'll outlevel everyone.