I'm running an online game of Pathfinder using a combination of published adventures and home brew. It is likely that the cast of players is going to rotate, with up to 8 or 9 people playing, but likely only 4-6 showing up regularly, with 3-4 core players.
I need to be able to run the published adventures and if I end up with a lot of level spread in the party, it is going to make it more aggravating, given that I'm going to have to make some adaptations on the fly to keep it entertaining when I don't know how many people are coming. I plan on leveling up the party every 3-4 games or when they complete an adventure and I need them to level to start the next one.
On the other hand, I don't really like it when I show up every week and my character is only equal to someone that comes like once a month. I know it is about the journey and not the destination, but there is just something about the reward being sapped that sucks.
Wealth by level is pretty important. The difference between a broke character vs. one with level appropriate stuff is pretty large. Interestingly, there isn't much of a difference between a character with normal wealth and a character with double wealth. Doubling a 3rd level character's wealth, for example, still doesn't get him a +2 sword.
I think what I'm going to do is just litter the game with a lot of treasure - about double what I would drop to get X number of players to WBL over 3-4 games. That way, even if I start new characters at normal WBL, it seems like experienced and actually played characters have an edge.
I might also include land, wealth, titles and followers as common rewards that you can only get by playing.
What do you think?
Everything you do to tweak the rewards systems will end up causing YOU more work in the end. More "on the fly" tweaking of encounters each session, depending on who shows up.
I suggest to do nothing. Let nature take its course. The guys who show up most or all of the time will be at the proper level and WBL point that they should be. Everyone else will lag behind.
This is as it should be.
Those who lag behind in levels will find themselves leveling faster when they do show up. For example, the group fights a few monsters and earns 6,000 XP. Divided 6 ways, each gets 1,000 XP. For the highest level guy, that is only a tiny fraction of the XP he needs to go up a level, but for the lowest level guy, it might be 1/2 of what he needs, or 1/4, or whatever, but it's a bigger percentage of his level than it is of the higher level guy. A few of those, and the lower level guy gains a level but the highest level guy isn't even halfway to his next level yet. So it balances out.
Those who lag behind in gear will find themselves on the receiving end a little more often than the rest. For example, the group fights some monsters and finds a +1 sword. All the most frequent players already have one, so when the rare player says his character wants it, he probably gets it. Conversely, if it was a +3 sword, maybe nobody has that so a frequent player speaks up for it, and an infrequent player, but the group will almost certainly let the frequent player have it (reward for his greater contribution as well as higher probability that such a valuable item will be frequently used in future sessions) but even then, the infrequent player might get the other guy's old +1 sword that he doesn't need anymore. So it balances out.
I would take Harry Seldon's advice: do nothing, let it work itself out.
Cranefist wrote: I might also include land, wealth, titles and followers as common rewards that you can only get by playing. Now THIS is a great idea.
Another option might be having the regular players have two characters each, but only play one at a time. You could either have two strands of plot with one character on each, or just encourage them to play with the level-appropriate character to allow the non-regulars to contribute.
I do like the noncombat wealth, titles and land idea too. You give the core group more sandbox town/kingdom building events that develop the area as a whole rather than individual XP. Everyone plays in the same world but regulars get to steer it a little.
DM_Blake wrote: Everything you do to tweak the rewards systems will end up causing YOU more work in the end. More "on the fly" tweaking of encounters each session, depending on who shows up.
I suggest to do nothing. Let nature take its course. The guys who show up most or all of the time will be at the proper level and WBL point that they should be. Everyone else will lag behind.
This is as it should be.
Those who lag behind in levels will find themselves leveling faster when they do show up. For example, the group fights a few monsters and earns 6,000 XP. Divided 6 ways, each gets 1,000 XP. For the highest level guy, that is only a tiny fraction of the XP he needs to go up a level, but for the lowest level guy, it might be 1/2 of what he needs, or 1/4, or whatever, but it's a bigger percentage of his level than it is of the higher level guy. A few of those, and the lower level guy gains a level but the highest level guy isn't even halfway to his next level yet. So it balances out.
Those who lag behind in gear will find themselves on the receiving end a little more often than the rest. For example, the group fights some monsters and finds a +1 sword. All the most frequent players already have one, so when the rare player says his character wants it, he probably gets it. Conversely, if it was a +3 sword, maybe nobody has that so a frequent player speaks up for it, and an infrequent player, but the group will almost certainly let the frequent player have it (reward for his greater contribution as well as higher probability that such a valuable item will be frequently used in future sessions) but even then, the infrequent player might get the other guy's old +1 sword that he doesn't need anymore. So it balances out.
I would take Harry Seldon's advice: do nothing, let it work itself out.
Isn't the big problem in treasure acquisition having too little for level, not too much? The core rules even suggest double wealth as a normal feature of high fantasy. There is a massive loss of bonuses when you are without gear, but the jump from normal wealth to double wealth is almost meaningless. The jump from normal to triple is still less than from disarmed to normal.
Recent threads in General Discussion
|
