Dam the River

[kulosle]

While xp may or may not be a river. It is certain that you can dam any river you please. Including experience rivers. So the way my DM runs games is by telling us how much starting exp we have. This games we started with exactly enough to be level 12. Well early tonight we realized that we all spent a level doing one thing or another and now we all have a little more exp then 11th level. The DM told us that hes not going to change anything about his campaign to suite this. We should still be able the same CRs. What does the forum think? We all built characters planning on being below the level curve for a while in order to ride it back up. Is this going to be a problem? I haven't done the math yet, and if anyone wants to that would be amazing. The party will be gaining more exp as a whole because we are fighting higher CR monsters but will we ever catch up to where we would have been? Any thought on the matter are welcomed.

[Bhaakon]

I don't see the problem with your DM's decision. For one thing, a one level difference, once you get out of the low single digits, generally isn't that big of a deal (CR isn't that fine of a tool anyway). Second, the extra equipment (or whatever else you spent the XP on) should make up most or all of the power difference anyway. Finally, not only is that gap going to close because of CR-based XP scaling, it's going to become less relevant as the the group levels up and the XP difference between levels increases.

The only thing I'd balk at is if your DM decides that spending XP down to level 11 means that the group only get level 11 WBL. It's still not likely to make the campaign unplayably difficult (assuming that it was properly balanced for a level 12 group in the first place), but it would suggest that your DM may be kind of a horse's rear.