Asymmetric Party Balance

I read an interesting idea about how to handle party death - if someone in the party dies, new characters join the party at a significantly reduced level - let's say a level 5 party loses two guys; they then would gain two fresh level 2 recruits.

Obviously, this wouldn't work with a certain kind of player - for some people, the progression is the most important thing, gaining levels and wealth is the whole reason they're playing. It also would require careful design on the part of the GM, making sure that things were still challenging enough for the high-level player without being immediately lethal to the lower level one.

That being said, I really would like to try this - I would love the party being two veteran survivors of the Archlich's wrath (level ten) recruiting and leading the best young recruits they could find from the local town and caravans (level four) because nobody else was fool enough to join them in their quest.

Does anybody have any experience with asymmetric parties? What was it like?

Does it sound like the kind of thing that would fly at your table? If not, how would you make it do so?

Also, pictures of characters with lopsided power, because why not?

The issue with that is you soon run into 'Well, I'm low level so I'm more likely to die...which will make me even MORE low level'.

It's an unfortunate death spiral. Or the higher level characters stomping over the problem without the lower level ones being able to contribute.

I think it works better in systems that don't have explicit levels. I play in Cortex mainly, which is a level-less rules light system, and I feel like it would fit right in there. It's also story based, so there's a lot to be said for something like pic related. Three veteran heist men, but their safecracker died last year - so they have to bring his kid on board, who learned everything he knew.

There's a great amount of story potential there.

>The issue with that is you soon run into 'Well, I'm low level so I'm more likely to die...which will make me even MORE low level'.

I hadn't considered that - I suppose there would have to be a standard lower level. Let's say half the level of the highest level member, rounded down. That way, you lose your level four guy, you get another one, and are still in the same ballpark compared to the level eights.

>Or the higher level characters stomping over the problem without the lower level ones being able to contribute.

That part, though, I think is fallacious, because contribution means different things. Let's say those level ten players have their four level four companions - suddenly, they've gone from equals on the battlefield, to sergeants and commanders leading and training their soldiers.

I like that mechanic - I like it a lot. I like imagining the Bard and the Cleric, who weren't in the front line, surviving the Lich's blast to run away, and serving as epic support to four new frontline fighters to try and save their old comrades.

I think it naturally lends itself to military systems as well, which naturally assume a person with more experience and skills will be leading several more with less of each.

When the issue becomes "The new character is X levels lower than Y" you run into an issue. Levels like this exist in games primarily devoted to Combat, so you need a threat that challenges the capabilities of both parties involved. So that Perry the Paladin can have a cool fight with the Necromancer while Bill the low-level Barbarian is entrusted with holding off the mooks so that Perry can beat Nick the Necromancer without interruptions.

It sounds cool in theory, but would any player want to be that second wheel? The answer more often than not is no.

This is dumb and even though you won't, you should feel dumb.

I do pretty much this for my Exalted games, with the check that the new characters are also awarded outright double XP until they catch up to the most experienced partymember. Mentoring, it works!

As a side effect, it makes people a lot more willing to tag along with and do work for a GMPC when they can then invoke this same rule to all get double XP for "catching up to" the GMPC that they're taking notes from during that arc.

Helpful response.

Not.

Remeber kids, only you can prevent shitposting.

That sounds like an interesting idea actually, I'd never thought of it before. Not so sure about the GMPC aspect of it, especially if it's just an excuse to justify a GMPC.

When those levels exist in combat games, though, don't those games also develop role specialization? As in, a party without a healer is less effective than a party with a lower-level healer, which makes replacing a healer a priority even if there's a level disparity.

I like what suggests, a lot - the idea that you're learning from someone who knows better, whereas that first person had to learn essentially by trial and error, which is a much slower process.

Why not just have the characters be weaker in fluff by being younger, less experienced, or less confident. This kind of role play doesn't need gameplay to reinforce it.

I suppose I didn't answer your whole point - "Would any player want to be that second wheel?"

I agree, that's an issue, and strictly speaking the answer is yes - I've enjoyed playing "Second Wheel" characters before, like the nobleman's bonded bodyguard, or the wizard's hired assistant. In both of those cases I was the same level as the other player, but it would have been a similar game even if I wasn't.

That's the strict answer, at least, "Would ANY player." I agree, a lot of players wouldn't - they want to be the star of the story.

Would there be a way around that? Make the new character plot important - maybe make HIM the nobleman, who has been attached to the party by regal decree, and who is both technically in charge and must be guarded by the group?

If that works for you, okay. I personally like the crunch and fluff to support each other - it always bothers me when a first level character is an aged wizard, and doesn't have a lifetime's worth of experience behind him mechanically. It bothers me in the other direction as well - when the kid who joined the party is as effective a frontline fighter as the thirty-eight year old mercenary.

I also want to answer debates like popped up in , where a person kept insisting there was no reason a "superior being," in this case a half-dragon, would ever go adventuring with lesser ones.

I think there are a bunch of situations where the more experienced characters would take on more novice charges, not the least of which being that they can't find people on their own level who care to assist.

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A sergeant usually isn't more powerful than all of his soldiers put together, though.

Define powerful? He could very easily have as much experience as all of his soldiers together, and more authority.

My stepdad was a gunnery sergeant, and I watched him on a beach day with his unit wrestle six lance corporals, all of them younger, stronger, and taller than him, into the ocean with him when they tried to dunk him.

Don't fuck with Gunny.

Fuck off, you know full well what I meant.

No, I am literally asking that question. What do you mean by powerful?

I've given examples of both experiential and hierarchical power, and one firsthand experience of watching a sergeant be physically more powerful than six men his lesser. I would give examples of magical power, but that's... you know, not real.

What do you mean by powerful, that isn't covered by that?

I can understand that but to that i rebuff that in DnD, even a first level character is a cut above normal people.

That being said, it fits into some systems and not others. It would probably fit into say, a world of darkness game more than a DnD campaign. No one wants to play second fiddle. The low level player is just more likely to die in fights designed to challenge the higher leveled characters.

Yeah, I understand the issue. I don't generally justify GMPCs in most of my games, but Exalted is big on the setting conceit that there are century-plus Elders hanging around the setting doing stuff towards their own goals, with whom the PCs can meaningfully interact and trade favors. Maybe "GMPC" is a bit strong, but "NPC" is a bit weak, and the Elders in Exalted are somewhere between that in terms of how much PC-unrelated agency they show.

This idea is quite troublesome in systems like D&D, where a differenze of a few levels has a huge impact on what a character can actually do. Twice the levels means almost twice the hp, not to mention that monsters of a given CR have AC, saves, attack and effects DC thought to be a fair challenge for characters of thr same level alone.

So, let's turn this into a DMing problem. How would you design an encounter, adventure, or campaign to allow for differing levels in the party?

Something like the Superhero/Sidekick shtick has already been discussed, with the hero fighting the Necromancer and the sidekick fighting his minions - are there other models we could draw on? Particularly for a larger group, say six, of mixed levels and skills?

I do it by not making people have to make a lower level character. I mean, raising the previous character from the dead doesn't cost levels.

>How would you solve [specific puzzle x]?
>I would solve it by not solving the puzzle.

I get what you're saying, but this is a thought experiment. GIVEN that you're going to have differing level characters, what are the ways that you would design encounters, adventures, or campaigns to adjust?

Well, the issue is you basically can't do it in D&D. There isn't really much that a higher level character can do that lower level people are not stuffed with. You'd need to avoid all multi-target or AOE spells as anything the primary guy can deal with the lower guys are fucked. A skill check that remotely challenges a higher level character is nearly impossible to pass for a lower level character unless he super focuses for that skill.

No. This isn't a problem with a solution that isn't clunky as hell. Just don't do it.

This.
It is not a "GM puzzle", it is a "makes the game worse for all involved shitstorm".
What challenges one group doesn't challenge the other, what challenges the other makes the rest bystanders who can only contribute at personal cost and risk beyond the pale.
Your entire premise is based on idea that this is somehow salvageable when YEARS OF PRACTICAL PLAY has shown it's not.

I haven't had anyone die in my games (it's been veeeeery close some times) but even if they did, I'd let a new character come in at the same xp as everyone else.

If we're still inside the first three sessions, I even let people completely remake their characters pending approval. (They can't change if they're just 'meh' on it, but if they really aren't like the character or how they plays then it's a maybe)

I don't see a reason to punish death even more, or to force a player to continue playing a character they don't like.

Not him, but that one example doesn't really make the point. Granted your stepdad might be one bad-ass dude but most sergeants aren't going to be able to wrestle their whole squad into submission and they certainly aren't going to be able to beat their whole squad in a (fair) firefight. Sergeants don't even have to be good soldiers in their own right (by "good soldier" I mean in the direct combat sense, marksmanship, weapon drills, CQC, etc), they have to be good at leading a squad.

The definition of "powerful" will depend heavily on the system. In most level systems a lvl 10 character will have more than double the effective combat strength of a lvl 5 character.

The idea might work better at lower levels, the effective power delta between a lvl 2 character and a lvl 4 character is easier to balance for than a similar lvl difference at higher levels when access to crazy spells & abilities comes into play.

My premise is that it is fundamentally how certain games - cortex comes to mind - can work, and work well, and if there is anything that can be done in the more level based systems that would mimic that interesting situation. Given, as says, that there are strict progressions of skills assumed at each level, "There isn't really much that a higher level character can do that lower level people are not stuffed with."

That, to me, is a challenge - not one that I'll put in front of my players to test, but one that I'm thinking about here. My first thought that it means you have to refocus from purely mechanical challenges to tactical and plot challenges - if all we're going to focus this on is combat, then it means target identification and selection is important, and other groups they meet have to be designed with a similar makeup. The lower level players distract the kobold archers, for instance, while the high level rogue sneaks up the fortress wall to open the gates.

I fully admit that this is not what the system is designed for - but subverting the system's assumptions can be a lot of fun to play, like when a whole team of artificers aid eachother on item creation, and make magical and mundane gear that shits all over enemies that were supposed to crush them.

Fuck, it's hard enough to balance the game around the existence of massive class and build disparity like a bear spammer Druid and a sword and board Fighter in the same party, why the fuck would you want to introduce mechanics that make this WORSE?

>The lower level players distract the kobold archers, for instance, while the high level rogue sneaks up the fortress wall to open the gates.

If the Kobolds are weak enough to threaten but not slaughter the level 4s, how the blue blazes are they remotely able to worry the level 10 rogue?

You run into the issue of 'But why are they NEEDED?'

He's not particularly badass, he's five foot five and bowlegged, but he'd been a marine for much longer, gone through more CQC training.

Still, I take your point. Most of my play in D&D has taken place in lower levels, where the discrepancy would mean less. I forget where it was, but I saw someone do an analysis of LoTR, suggesting that all of the big epic heroes - Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn - were right around level seven, just with more feats than normal. The kind of play I'm thinking about is very much in that category, where nobody is Gandalf, with living god reality warper status.

In my experience this doesn't work in any system with levels, and even then most systems recommend keeping players around the same experience level.

In this specific example, I'm talking about the kobolds being a combat threat to the Level 4s, but a dangerous distraction to the rogue, where taking an arrow would be a major inconvenience when sixty feet up a wall with no line.

Except they are...not. The kobolds would be lucky to hit him on 20s or even SEE him.

This depends entirely on what characters are brought to the table, but using enemies that are weak to the lower level characters could work out. If one of the veterans is an archer, and the new guy brought a warrior with a big hammer or a divine caster, a good challenge for each could be skeletons. Holy power and crushing force do more to a skeleton than piercing it, which could balance the party a bit more. That particular example is completely fucked if the new guy is the archer and the veteran is the cleric or warrior, though, but there might be something that is weak to arrows and not so much to the others.

The level disparity could actually end up making the problem lesser, if not solving it. What if the Fighter were higher level than the Druid, to make up for the common belief that Druids are more powerful than Fighters?

That may be the case. In a non-level-based system, I've seen it be pretty effective. An example.

Cortex is an entirely skill-based system, where everything (Catching a lie, Shooting a pistol, Shitting yourself on command to complete your hobo disguise) is a combination of an Attribute die and a Skill die (Alertness+Diplomacy(Reading), Agility+Guns(pistols), Willpower+Discipline, if anyone's interested). In that, a veteran character and a pure novice might have the same score when firing a pistol (Let's say d8 Agility, d10 Guns(pistols)), but the novice has a much shallower skill pool to draw on, and fewer true specialties.

I know for a fact this kind of system would work in cortex, because of that - my last game had a ship's crew consist of two stone cold veterans (the captain and the doctor, old war buddies), three mid tier talents (a somewhat damaged sniper, a drunkard engineer, and a woman who's "good with her hands"), and two novices (a medic and all around gopher, and the pilot, who is fuck-huge-fantastic at piloting, but not much else).

It may be the case that there's no way to evoke that pleasantly in a more level-based system. I hadn't considered AC when talking about , so he's right - they wouldn't even threaten the rogue.

I don't see the harm, though, in trying to see if there IS a way to do it, or to stretch my DM muscles to imagine how I would design around that problem.

>What if the Fighter were higher level than the Druid
Highly unlikely. In fact, it's way more likely to be the other way around, given that Druids have way better survivability than Fighters do and aren't susceptible to rape by Will save.

Okay, but I said "What if," as in, "This is the situation I'm describing, what results from that?"

The situation you are describing makes no fucking sense. It's flat out not what would happen.

That's not really true. I didn't say that there once were a Fighter and a Druid, and then the Druid died so he rolled a new Druid. If there were two Fighters, and one of them died so he rolled a lower level Druid, that would be the premise of the situation.

Not the guy you're responding to, but fine - imagine that the druid stayed to hold the gap against the horde so the rest of the party could survive, precisely BECAUSE he's more durable in a fight.

I suppose what you could do is design each challenge such that the goal of the higher level character is to help the lower level character succeed at something they would otherwise fail. The most important part would be to set up a context where the lower lvl character failing counts as a failure for the higher lvl character. If you don't do that then the lower lvl character will feel pointless.

For example lvl 10 veteran paladin needs to stop evil necromancer ritual but can't actually do that herself. Unfortunately the senior priest was killed so instead she must enlist the aid of junior priest boy to do the job. Her goal then is the get the priest to the ritual, failing to do so is a failure state for the paladin.

If you set up something like that then you can design the challenges such that the priest would fail on his own and the paladin would breeze through. Maybe the necromancer knows that only the priest can stop him so he sends his minions to specifically kill the priest. The fight would be easy for the paladin on her own but if she isn't careful the priest will die.

Another alternative might be to set it up so that the lower lvl characters are specifically in charge. Maybe the wealthy noble or low lvl mage hires a couple veterans to help him accomplish x goal. Then the challenge for the low lvl character is in figuring out the best way to accomplish the goal while the higher lvl characters just do most of the leg work. That would also let the low lvl player feel important in a meta sense.

So we've got Hero/Sidekick, and Bodyguard/VIP, both of which seem very doable in a two-player game, especially if the physically weaker of the two has skills the stronger doesn't have.

In larger groups, you can have the Hero/Sidekick dynamic instead be a Sergeant/Squad dynamic, where members of the squad have specialized skills that the Sergeant is directing the utilization of. Each individual enemy isn't particularly a challenge to the Sergeant character, but collectively they present a tactical threat - and part of what the Sergeant is trying to do is to bring his men through alive.

Alternatively, you can have a dickbag as the commander, who has hired on the men as meatshields - and the challenge for them is surviving the things that the dickbag thinks of as distractions on the way to his goal.

Likewise, the Bodyguard / VIP dynamic works just as well for larger groups, where they are a protection detail, and the weaker member is for some reason in charge of or valuable to the group.

And, largely, this doesn't work in D&D.

Good thoughts so far. Anything else?

Oh, and give the newbie an XP bonus to "Catch up," as he's learning from the people ahead of him.

As I said here you can use weaknesses that favor the less powerful/experienced.

I'd adjust the campaign by making everyone the same level.

Splitting levels is just another means of splitting the party. Don't fucking do it you mongoloid.

there's a vast difference between a level 4 PC and a level 8 pc in most d20 systems (swd20 and 3.pf come to mind), invariably beginning with the level 8 having nearly double the health and skillpoints to spend
and this is before class differences, features, feats, etc come into play

having new characters start at the party's level is more of a way to cut the knot than to 'not solve the puzzle'
you immediately get rid of the main problem - the difference between levels and all the balance fiddling that entails

>implying shitposting is preventable

All caps means his inane anecdotes are right!

Could never work in DnD.

In a d20 or class based game, he's right, tho.
In a classless game, where different players can be skilled at different things, OP's situation doesn't apply nearly as much.

Played once where one of the characters left everyone else in the dust with how powerful she was. She went as far as killing characters that could counter her, or may be a threat to her.

Overall the game and group functioned well enough (partly because her power allowed her to get away with horrible things) but there was always a concern about falling in her sights. As well the DM had to be creative and whip up enemies that weren't just as OP as she was to pose a threat, but immediately grease the rest of us.

I like pretending to be retarded too, sometimes I also go around and pretend that level-based games don't let people be specialized in different things.