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Level discrepancy between PCs is a definite Don't of PF2. Level has a far too strong impact on power. More than it had in PF1 IMO.
Way I would do it would be when one person reaches level x, everyone follows suit. Doing otherwise entails lots of numbers checking AND the very real pitfall of even slight level discrepancy (been there, done that).
Note also that your adventuring party might not end up as tactically and build-synergies strong as a usual AP party. So I would advise to keep the encounters on the easy side, as done in PFS. Because you will meet similar issues of players not always used to adventuring and fighting as one team.
Again, been there done that, though that was as a player in Abomination Vaults and not a GM in Kingmaker.
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West Marches is cool and Kingmaker is cool, and they seem similar because of the focus on exploration. But there are also some definite differences, that you need to consider to set up a successful campaign.
The original West Marches had some pretty particular premises:
* There was never going to be adventure in town.
* There were some really dangerous things that you'd be better off running away from at first, but later on you could bring back a party of powerful characters to take it on. On the other hand, a party of all the most powerful PCs might not be that interested in taking on an easy sidequest.
* It was a rule that adventures had to be strictly one session.
* A lot of the responsibility for forming parties and scheduling was put on the players.
* The map was maintained by the players. It didn't use hexes. It might not be entirely accurate; the GM had his own map. Players colored in the map as they had adventures. Other people might say, what's that squiggle there, we should go see what that is.
* There wasn't much of a long-term plot to the adventure.
* People got XP for showing up. If you didn't play, you didn't advance.
Now, you can do all of this in Pathfinder. The rule system can handle it. However, there are some difficulties if you try to do this with Kingmaker;
* Kingmaker does have a lot more going on "in town", i.e. running the kingdom.
* Kingmaker is an adventure path and as such, has long term story goals. If you let players wander around freely and choose their own goals, you're going to have to make up some more content of your own. Because some parties are just not going to be chasing the main storyline. Or, if they start chasing the main storyline a lot, then some of the exploring is gonna fall by the wayside.
* Keeping up with the main storyline is gonna be hard for people who aren't there all the time. They're gonna miss out on story and they're gonna miss out on XP and treasure.
And here's a tricky one:
* PF2 is scary for parties with split levels. West Marches encourages the idea of "okay, that's too scary for now, we're coming back here later when we have a stronger party". But recognizing that a monster is too dangerous, and then managing to escape, is not easy. Dangerous monsters are often just as fast as you, and have good perception so hiding isn't easy either.
I think you'd need some good house rules to make scouting and running away easier than they are in the current game.
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For level discrepancy, I strongly encourage you to use the Proficiency without level optional rule. It should help a lot.
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This is a West Marches game, there is a next close to 0%chance that the entirely or even a majority of intended dozens of players are going to be happy using an alternate rule system that completely changes how every number is calculated, makes them feel less powerful, and makes the differences in power scale between different PCs even more apparent. The more participants in a given game the more vanilla and average/standard you should run it, esp if the burden of tracking a ton of stuff is put on the players instead of the GM. Running it with X optional rule, Y homebrew, Z options limited, certain Uncommon things allowed by default but other being NEVER available is not a good recipe for that type of campaign/game/world. Just my 2c of course, but I suggest running it all as close to "default" as possible to eliminate as many pain points as well as cutting down on the inevitable grumpiness and accusations of favoritism that tends to crop up in these type of 7-50 player groups.
As for XP/Leveling I say use milestone leveling for the entire game ala whatever organization your marches is using being the representative "thing" that is leveling up instead so you flavor it as the members of the organization are more powerful/influential/trained. I abandoned tracking XP some years ago and I'll NEVER look back, it was pointless meta-gamey and encouraged grinding out encounters no matter what and actively discouraged trying to avoid conflicts when possible or retreat when it is wise.
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Classic West Marches (and keep in mind that that's not using PF2 rules, it was probably D&D 3.x rules) is kinda the far opposite of milestone leveling. It embraced the idea that parties were pretty all over the place in level and sometimes it made more sense to run away and come back with a different party. Or to gather an all-start party to take down that one dungeon that you'd been tiptoeing around for a while now.
But like I said, that's a bit tricky in PF2 rules, mostly because of how risky it is to go around exploring and running into things you can't handle yet, and escaping to tell the tale. That's why I think that kind of campaign needs house rules for scouting and retreat. For example:
- If enough of the party manages to slip off the map, the party escapes.
- If the party says "we want to run away" and there's even the faintest excuse why they might, the GM lets them
- If the party says they want to run away, the GM uses chase rules to see how that goes (with DCs set much more mildly than the monster's full strength).
- When scouting, powerful creatures are easy to notice from afar by the effect they have on their territory. If there's a big dragon living in the area, you're gonna see scorched trees, t-rex skeletons and so forth.
- Powerful creatures don't really pay that much attention to things multiple rungs down the food chain from them. Maybe treat Stealth results as one step better when used to scout (but not engage) creatures more than a few levels above the party.
Classic West Marches, and I mean full on classic, is really quite a particular kind of campaign. It looks fun to me, but for a campaign to run well it's good to really take a good look at the differences from a typical Paizo AP and decide which of those differences you want to adopt. For example, if you go fully into letting the players set the pace and direction of what they do, then the typical fairly linear AP plot may have to go on hold a lot or be shelved entirely.
For level discrepancy, I strongly encourage you to use the Proficiency without level optional rule. It should help a lot.
True but it doesn't work so well in a multiple GM game as you have to tweak other things. If you are new to PF2 don't start there.
For level discrepancy, I strongly encourage you to use the Proficiency without level optional rule. It should help a lot.True but it doesn't work so well in a multiple GM game as you have to tweak other things. If you are new to PF2 don't start there.
Between different levels and an imperfect proficiency without levels, I know which one I'd encourage a beginner to use. I was the GM of the AV game the Raven Black is speaking about and clearly the level discrepancy is impossible to handle. The main issue (unlike games like PFS) is that the players who are behind in level are always the same: The ones who can't play often. So they end up always feeling they are not contributing much. This is even more impactful as they play less often and as such don't follow the story as much as the ones who are always there. Overall, I have slowly lost these players and ended up with the ones who were always there.
The issues of Proficiency without levels are limited to a small amount of spells and items. I don't think it breaks the game that much even for a beginner.
And I'm with Ascalaphus on milestones: Being able to track one's own XP is a big pleasure of these types of games. I've never seen such a game played with milestones.
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For level discrepancy, maybe try taking a gander at what PFS does? They have a level bump thing and things tend to be restricted for a range of maybe 2-ish levels. So people gotta make sure party members are within level range of each other.