On Tuesdays, I play Starfinder. On Thursdays, Pathfinder. In both, I am using experience points (XP) to level, and the players love it. After years of milestone leveling in D&D 5e, going back to XP is fun and gives them something to strive for.

The problem comes in, as it always does, with some people missing sessions. With XP, that means they lose out on hundreds of points toward their next level. In Starfinder/Pathfinder second edition, every level requires 1,000 XP. So hundreds can be a lot.

In my current SF2e game, three of the six players are level 4. But a couple are level 3. The level 4s have never missed a session, while the couple that are 3 are at different levels for missing multiple nights, but different ones.

So I’m thinking of having a catch-up mechanic by giving the stragglers extra experience based on the encounter-building budget.

RAW Says No

In the rules for PF2e, it says that if you have a party of different levels or with more/less than 4 people, they all get the XP for an even-leveled party of four.

So looking at the chart above, the party would always get the 80xp for a moderate encounter, even though I have 120 experience to spend on it.

I’ve been running my Star- and Pathfinder games as close to RAW as I can. I’m pretty lenient about a lot of things with TTRPGs, but one of the main reasons I like Paizo’s systems are that there are rules for just about every situation.

The GM doesn’t have to make rulings on nearly as many things as with 5e because there are explicit rules for even the smallest quibbles that might pop up.

So I tend to be as RAW as I can be. But…I’m thinking of breaking the rules.

Doing so will make for a better, more fun game for my players.

Beej Says Yes

I’m just not entirely happy with the level discrepancy being permanent. And I don’t want to just boost them to the next level artificially. So I’m looking at giving them a few extra points every session, so that they will eventually catch up to the others.

In a different group of players, I can see how this might cause drama at one player getting more of a reward for the same encounters.

Luckily, my group is extraordinarily good about being nice to one another and not causing drama over something like that.

So I’m gonna give it a shot and see what happens. Hopefully, it’ll work out great and since I’m already having to look at the charts to make sure things are working right, I’ll already have the XP math done.

Have you ever used a catch-up mechanism to keep players at the same level? Hit reply or let me know in the comments!

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