My headmate and I do this all the time, actually. The West Marches group we play in keeps it kinda simple, so quests have a level and organizing players can join if they're within a level of it (and parties split between the extremes, e.g Lvs 2, 2, 4, 4, are discouraged for being hard to balance). The underleveled characters get double XP rewards for that quest until they level up, like the book suggests, and the overleveled characters can enjoy the slight power trip and chance to protect the others while getting a standard XP payout (and gold for a level below).
Since there's a server-wide mechanism for player characters to spend three actions warping to a safe home base and ending their involvement on a quest if things go poorly, there's space for GMs not to adjust for the underleveled characters or even be a little harsh. But we generally don't like to be, and in our experience it's been pretty alright playing underleveled for catch-up XP and such. It can certainly get a little desperate in harder encounters, but play-by-post format, relics, and somewhat generous access to items allow for a good few ways to deal with them, on top of the escape option. :>
If I was going to run a campaign where characters might come or go and be different levels from each other, I would use proficiency without level, and a variant of Free archetype where the free archetype feats were gained levels 3/5/7 etc, to prevent the dead level feel of PWL. I would also use the variant rule where attribute boosts are spread out rather than bunched up every 5 levels.
My groups just use "Shared exp" so no matter if the player are there that session the still get exp, that way the levels stay the same always.
A DM of ours did this for 2 players when they had to make new characters, they started 1 level lower than us and cause we did milestone, after they completed an adventure with us, they'd level up.
It was surprisingly okay, but I definitely do not recommend it. It caused way more issues than it was worth, and those tended due to a combination of poor tactics and lower level ended up going down more often than the rest of us.
How: I calculate XP using the formula that's heavily implied by the rules about encounter budgets.
Not sure that it is that heavily implied, but it is probably a reasonably functional houserule. What is explicitly stated in the rules though is that Party members who are behind the party level gain double the XP other characters do until they reach the party’s level.
How: I calculate XP using the formula that's heavily implied by the rules about encounter budgets.Not sure that it is that heavily implied, but it is probably a reasonably functional houserule. What is explicitly stated in the rules though is that Party members who are behind the party level gain double the XP other characters do until they reach the party’s level.
Yeah that's right. I figured that was predicated on a party-level based implementation, which I am not doing. Everyone gets XP according to their own level relative to the challenge (x4 / total number of players regardless of level).
I suppose that I use the highest level in the party as a benchmark for crafting encounters but I pay almost no attention to the recommended balancing mechanics (for multiple reasons).
- Jee
let M(i) represent the XP for a single enemy based on PC's level i
(this comes from the Table in the rules that tell you how much XP an enemy is worth dependent on the level difference between it and the player)let F(n, i) represent the XP awarded to n Characters all of level i
F(n, i) = (M(i) * 4) / n.
I just realized I had an error here. It should be:
let = p equal the total number of players
let M(i) represent the XP for a single enemy based on PC's level i
(this comes from the Table in the rules that tell you how much XP an enemy is worth dependent on the level difference between it and the player)
let F(p, i) represent the XP awarded to all Characters all of level i, given p Characters in total.
F(p, i) = (M(i) * 4) / p.
Does this forum not you edit posts more than a day old? I wanted to go back and correct old one, but I see no edit button.
- Jee
