Expected levels for a large party?

Has anybody done the calculations to compare the levels of a standard
party of four and a larger (or smaller party) facing the same
challenges?

Specifically, my Age of Worms group is seven people. By the time in the
adventure the standard party of four has gained 20 levels, what level
can we expect to reach?

Obviously, we're only getting 4/7 of the XP each of them gets, but then,
once we lag in levels, we'll be getting more...

Has anybody perhaps worked out a convenient formula? If such even
exists?


--
Jasin Zujovic

On Feb 13, 3:52 am, Jasin Zujovic <jzujo....TakeThisOut@inet.hr> wrote:
> Has anybody done the calculations to compare the levels of a standard
> party of four and a larger (or smaller party) facing the same
> challenges?
>
> Specifically, my Age of Worms group is seven people. By the time in the
> adventure the standard party of four has gained 20 levels, what level
> can we expect to reach?

Formula's are complicated by the roundoff artifacts in the system.

But roughly speaking in the time a standard party goes from 1 to 21
your party will have gone from 1 to 19 (and be roughly 1/3rd of the
way to level 20). So you are likely to be a bit less than two levels
behind.

This assumes that more lower levels don't loss lots of levels to death/
raise. Note that death/raise is more likely given a larger party and
tougher foes and will chew up a larger than expected share of
treasure. Also you are giving the party a smaller number of higher EL
encounters which IIRC is a recipe for too little gear even ignoring
the raise dead cost issues.

> Obviously, we're only getting 4/7 of the XP each of them gets, but then,
> once we lag in levels, we'll be getting more...
>
> Has anybody perhaps worked out a convenient formula? If such even
> exists?

I can't think of an easy recursion to produce a closed formula. But
you can easily solve for any particular situation.

Except at relatively low levels the party's EL should be about right
(if you calculate it like you would for monsters), so everything
should work out. (Except for the likely gear shortage and frequent PC
deaths.)

DougL