Story time: Tell about a difference in power of characters in your campaign.
There was an evil campaign, where we had an airship and did evil stuff. I wasn't paying much attention, but mostly pillaging, searching for treasures and capturing slaves. Our crew consisted of:
- A kitsune ninja/shadow creature. That's my first ever character in D&D. And I needed to make her at lv10. So no surprise, I needed a lot of help from other players. As a result, she was a perfect stealth specialist with horrible perception, and did almost no damage to creatures immune to sneak attacks (which DM loved a lot for some reason).
- A cleric. Mostly healed and identified things.
- A druid. I never was in the same session with him, so I have no idea what he did.
- A human gunslinger. Did a good damage, and we made a good team with her.
- A tiefling (I think?)... something. I didn't get this guy. Most of the time spent in corporeal state inside a weapon or armor, did a buff on his turn, claimed his share of XP after battle.
And then there was this guy.
- An elf swashbuckler/ranger/druid/something else multiclass nightmare. He was more powerful then all of our team combined. He also was capable with stealth (not on my level, but good enough), and had some immunities which made in very hard for DM to come up with a dangerous challenge to him that wouldn't mop the floor with the rest of us. And most of the battles he killed every enemy anyway. He had a habit to get us into trouble because he knew he can get away from it, but he also was aware that he's soloing the game, so sometimes he decided to not get involved so the spotlight could go to someone else.
Ah, I’ve got a good one.
Meet the cast of Dragon Artifacts, my current campaign I’m in. In ascending order of power.
-Wave, Changeling Swashbuckler, a fairly powerful rogue who just got the Artifact of Water that we’ve only scratched the surface of. When he rolls, he always gets what would be the funniest thing to happen. We’ve recorded data and everything, he’s cursed.
-Elfis Elfington of Elfghanistan, Light Cleric of Helm who doesn’t actually believe in Helm. Used to have the Dragon Artifact of Life which made him the strongest, but he’s really hurt since he lost “Planty”. Gotten a lot more smite-y since then.
-El Diablo, the Strongest Man in the world. Goliath Rune Knight Fighter/Barbarian Dip. Probably the best tank build I’ve ever seen since he can reliably grapple dragons. Canonically can bench press 2400 lbs.
-Jeb, Goblin Paladin of Devotion. Noble and kind, if a bit sheltered, he has earned the respect of kings and queens of all domains. The Fairy Queen graced him with a second subclass of the Ancients. He could likely take on the rest of the party solo and take down two of us.
Wave is a pretty good Rogue, and Jeb is a Paladin who once soloed a Mid-rank Ice Demon.
- An archaeologist in her 30s who can turn into a gargoyle:
superstrength, flight, claws
- a teen hero with a magic shadow cloak:
various dark/shadow powers
meanwhile:
- an old redneck in his 70s with a shotgun and pickup truck.
a wide variety of equipment, different types of ammo and range settings, many features built into his truck, a tricked out home base, favored enemies for animals and favored environments of forests and jungles.
In one way, there's the power imbalance that he's a frail old man on a team of young actually superpowered folks.
On the other hand, like Batman among the Justice League, he was the crazy-prepared badass-normal among others who are less prepared because they are used to relying on their powers for things.
Author Notes: