Disparity

Let's start with a simple premise, shall we?

You have a noble.
You have her knight.
You have the knight's squire.
You have the noble's friend. Let's say a court magician.
You have the magician's apprentice.

They go out on an adventure!

But are they the same level?

Probably not. We mean, why would they be? You've a knight, trained in the sword, and lance, and horseback riding. You've a noble, who may have never had to train for anything, because she's third-or-fourth born. The noble's friend has studied magic, but not much of anything else, and then there's the squire and apprentice, who are absolutely green.

Why should they be the same level?

Want an example? Lord of the Rings.
You can't tell us the hobbits were the same level as Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli, and there was no hope in hell that any of them were up there with Gandalf.

"But Gandalf was an NPC!"

Was he? Why should he be? Why couldn't he be a PC along with everyone else? And there's a game which actually sort of plays along with this concept, called Ars Magica, where one person plays the wizard, and everyone plays the grogs who serves that wizard. One player can, if they choose, play a 'companion', which is sort of a half-way between the wizard and the grogs. And each adventure, they rotate.

But don't believe for a minute anyone powers the mage.

Want a different example?
A teenager and their younger sibling find their home razed to the ground, their parents slain. The older one takes an oath of vengeance, and plans on hunting down and killing those responsible. The younger sibling comes along - the older sibling is not about to abandon them. The teenager may have had some training in things here and there, not much but something. The younger one? They've got nothing, they're not even in their teens yet.

And if you want an example of this in play? The Dragon Prince.
Oh, hey, and Willow!

So, why should characters all start the same, and have the same level and advancement and powers? Why would that matter? You've a world to explore, and different perspectives, and it's more about how your character interacts with that world than it is the numbers, isn't it?

Let's go with a pair of examples. Legend of the Five Rings, and 7th Sea.
In L5R, you usually play a member of the noble caste. This puts you above pretty much everyone you're going to run into on the road or in town. But on top of that, there's status, and the PCs aren't always going to get the same amount of status. One might be from a lesser vassal family, while one's from a direct 'blood of the gods' noble line. One might be a yojimbo, sworn to protect their charge, while another one's a yoriki serving the local daimyo.

And then you have the non-humans like the nezumi, who have zero status, and can't even use one of the most important attributes in the game because they're not human. Then you have those who want to play the lesser castes, the person who handles money for the samurai, or the person who cleans up or runs errands for the samurai, because they can get into places that the samurai wouldn't be caught dead exploring. Or moving bodies. Or whatever.

Not only are their character sheets going to be vastly different in power -- even if they start at the same point -- the temporal status between these characters can be a vast gulf, and if you're a roleplayer that has more of an influence on the game than your attributes will.

In 7th Sea, a character can be a minor noble, while someone else has to take a merit to get pay for working, or has to take the noble as a patron. Nobles can get sorcery. Those without noble blood don't. Nobles can get into sword schools on the cheap. Those who aren't, don't.

You have a good table, that doesn't matter, because it's the interactions which make the game, more than the numbers on your sheet.

So, let's swing this around to D&D.
Should the characters all start at the same level? Meh, sure, at the start of the campaign, possibly. But what if new characters come in?

If we're running milestone, we'll usually start new characters at Level 1, or half the level of the initial characters. And every time an initial character levels, those of lower level gain two, until they catch up.

If it's an XP system, we leave it alone. New characters are Level 1. It takes less XP to level than those who are higher level, so they'll slowly creep closer and closer to the higher-levelled characters. Every now and then those initial characters will bump up a level before the others, but so what?

And if you're worried about PCs surviving? If you're the game master, this should never be an issue. You have full control of the environment.  "The Ogre and his goblin pack see the party. The ogre sees a guy in full armour, and decides that's the one he's going to beat on, because that's the one that looks 'important', while the goblins charge the weaker ones - being the cowards they are."

The weaker characters shouldn't be on the front lines, anyway. If there's a big threat, they should be hiding, or using ranged weapons, and let the veterans take the front line.

In other words -- the players should be thinking realistically.

We've had the odd yutz who says that experienced / skilled characters wouldn't adventure with those who aren't.

Excuse us? Have you read fantasy fiction or watched fantasy movies? It happens all the bloody time.  Ben + Han Solo + Luke Skywalker + Droids. Do you think, even for a minute, that these characters were even remotely 'on par' with one another?

Someone with status (a PC) might hire the group to travel with him while he's adventuring. They get paid, they do their job, eventually they become friends and it isn't about the pay anymore.

Someone loses everything except their sibling, and they're not, for a minute, going to dump their blood relative while they're out and about.

A knight and squire, a wizard and apprentice, a group of friends, two or three who'd stayed on the farm while one had gone out and trained in magic, while another served as a soldier for a few years.

The world isn't a balanced place, there's no reason it needs to be at the table.

And here's the thing.
Once the game's begun, there's going to be a shift in power. It can't, honestly, be stopped. You will have those players who dig into the world - making contacts and gathering favours. You'll have those who push for status, while another might be the face of the group, and handle all the social interaction, getting them influence other characters don't have.

And there's a point there - some players want that, other players don't. As a game master, you don't say, 'well, this time, let X be the face because you were last time'. The characters slip into the roles the players are comfortable with. And that, plus how they built their character, plus the magic items they picked up, plus their class abilities, plus how they assigned skills, means that they're going to veer off in different directions, power-wise. And don't kid yourself, the Type-A players are going to pick up a lot of temporal power in the setting, because it makes sense that you get out of the game what you put into it.

Not surprisingly, we tend to have characters that gravitate towards leadership positions, because we're the kind of person who thinks tactically, and our autism allows us to speed along a hundred miles an hour when it comes to planning and interacting with NPCs. It's just what we do. And if we're not in charge (as in, deliberately push back against being in charge) the characters we create still gravitate towards being a step or two (or three) above other characters just from the choices we make - both on the sheet and in roleplaying.

It's just a natural progression, not something that can really be controlled.

And if you've got a GM who can handle this, and players who are mature enough not to get all bitter at someone being 'better' than someone else - if they're there for the roleplaying, then it really shouldn't be a problem.

Though, heh. It reminds us of one player.  Two sentences tells you all you ever need to know about him.

1) The PCs help an NPC, give them money and gear, and send the NPC on their way.
Player: Why would you do that? It's only an NPC.
Group:  So?

2) The PC had made a monk. We'd made a barbarian with a greatsword. We mowed everything down when and where we could with reckless attack and cleave and everything else.
Player: Why am I even here?
Group:  To roleplay.

And that's just it. Some of the best moments in the campaign had nothing to do with dice or attributes. It was about the character's personalities, how they interacted with the environment.

Example:
Our character (Aztec-like barbarian) comes across two slaad and a rust monster. The character succeeds in identifying the rust monster as the slaad prepare to attack and are making threatening noises.

Character: "Oh no, a rust monster, a warrior's worst nightmare!"
Character looks their maquahuitl (a sword made of wood with obsidian for the edge).
Character: "Oh, wait. Not metal."
Slaad: "Are you mocking us?"
Combat ensues.

Anyway, that's our meandering thoughts on the subject.  Agree? Disagree? Discuss!