Carrying High level players between quest

[j_spencer93]

This is sort of building off a previous post of mine. Soon i am going to be running a megacampaign where basically the players play all of the official materials (including some D&D Next adventures). However one player has openly stated he does not want to switch characters after completing a campaign, and wants to take a high level character into the other campaigns that build the overall megacampaign.

So basically he wants to keep his level 10+ character even if the others want to build new people for their organization.
Is there anything overly wrong with this? I know he would be more powerful not does the lower AC in 5th edition balance it out?

[MintyNinja]

Most of the campaigns published for D&D 5e start characters at level 1-3. If you have a Level 10 character stomping around during these maybe-balanced situations, your other players aren't going to be having as much fun as there'll be practically no reason for them to be there. I'd say talk with your player about relegating his uber-level character to a mentorship or guidance role. That way he's still around, but he's not solving the characters' problems for them.

[JAL_1138]

5e is sort of loosely structured into tiers that line up about with the standard ASI/feat levels, but not exactly. He'll be way overpowered for material intended for levels 1-4, and a bit overpowered for material meant for 5-10 even if you adjust the encounter difficulty up a bit. It will likely skew things such that to challenge him effectively, the enemies would have to be so strong that they stand a real chance of wiping the rest of the party in a few rounds. Granted, that would level them quick if they lived, which is a big if, but then you lose one of the big advantages of prewritten modules and have to start rebuilding every encounter to be higher level.

Parties are meant to stay within a few levels of each other, generally.

What you might do is tell him he can bring back his high level character when everyone else has caught up to within a level or two.

Enemies that inconvenience a single level-10 character can TPK a party of level 1 or 2 characters. Not drop them to zero--actually TPK, no death saves.

EDIT: You might also allow him to rebuild his character at a lower level and call it a "flashback," as though the character had been involved in more than one aspect of the megacampaign by the time he reached high level.

[lunaticfringe]

Party splitting? The rest of the party rescues Princess Leia while Obi Wan shuts down the tractor beam. I dunno I have never had a player straight up refuse to explore a different area of a campaign like that. That's a tough.

His higher level character is if off doing super secret Dragon Ball style training and when you switch back he has a Boon or Bonus Feat or slick magic weapon/item?

Give his character a debilitating disease that keeps him bed ridden til you switch back.

His character is framed for a crime, thrown in Magical super max, and the new arc is about clearing his name & freeing him.

[j_spencer93]

Some good advice her. Thing ill regulate him to a mentor until near the end then he comes in to help against the bosses.

[mgshamster]

Another idea is to rebalance the other campaigns that you play to his level, and then when the other players introduce new characters, have them start at the same level as him. That way they're all the same level; those who want to keep the same character can, and those who want to explore a new character concepts can.

[j_spencer93]

might do that. that isnt bad.

[Sigreid]

I think what he's really saying is "I don't want to abandon my character just as he's really coming in to his own". What you can do, if the group, and you are game, is in the same mega campaign setting have multiple characters for each player that do different missions. So, you run through a section and the characters get up to level 10. For your next phase, you have a new trouble mounting and ask them to make new characters that they then play to level 5 or so as they discover the new threat. Discovering a threat they cannot defeat they scamper off to bring warning of the impending doom. Now the lower level characters get set aside for a while while the "real heroes" step up to the plate to take care of business. When that runs its course, you can switch characters again.

This lets your table explore all levels of play, preferably with players playing different character types. The guy who started as a fighter? When the new batch of novice heroes start maybe he wants to change it up and play the wizard, but know he gets to go back to his fighter.

This is what I'd propose to the group anyway.

[j_spencer93]

Damn. I think we have a winner. Will take some roleplaying, and altering the stories slighty but that right there is the answer.

[Drackolus]

Is there any problem with having the whole party stick to their characters? I know our group has done that for a long time.
Honestly, rebalancing campaigns is quite easy, in my experience. I'm running a ghestalt CoS and I pretty much just throw more stuff at them and they're fine. I've taken the Chris Perkins approach of figuring they'll probably deal with whatever I throw at them, and if they don't, I'm confident I can BS something. They just did the drawing last session (which I did double-blind and actually shuffled the deck instead of doing the drawing ahead of time. I wanted to be surprised too.) and got the Bride of Evil as an ally (if you don't know I won't tell you, but I was considering stacking that particular card because it's my favorite for that one). I figure, I can just have her pull some special power. Because I write the environment and what I say goes.
Anyway, my main point is just swap out the encounters. And to be honest, once you play with the math a little bit for how much exp your party can deal with in a day/encounter (closely study "Creating Encounters," DMG p. 81). You can run any campaign for any level as long as you can make up encounters easily.

[j_spencer93]

Could do that.They have all intentions of fighting tiamat and the demon lords so don't think level 20 really will be that big of difference at the end.