Linked Party XP?

[ericgrau]

Crafting isn't so bad as long as you play nice and make items for the party too.

My bigger concern is death, level loss and new characters. I know a lot of people remove the level loss, but that makes people too casual about dying. The built in way for dealing with being a level behind is to give higher xp to that player, about 25% more on average (16.67-33.33%). And he's only halfway to the previous level not all the way. The equivalent with this system would be to have a player who is behind a level catch up after 3 levels. It would be 2 levels (25% is half of 50%) except under the normal system there are times when you are behind on xp but on the same level so you don't gain xp faster. If a player is 2 levels behind then he catches up twice as fast. So every time his allies gain a level he gains an extra 2/3 of a level until he is 1 level behind, then he continues to gain an extra 1/3 of a level until he is caught up with the party.

The alternative is to make the entire party share the xp loss on the dead guy, for failing to keep him alive. But then there will be infighting any time someone gets reckless. Or people will be afraid to take risks they would normally take out of fear of ticking off the party whether other players express disapproval or not. Besides making the game less exciting and uncomfortable people tend to be excessively cautious when there is something more to lose than the game and it can actually be to the party detriment.