[Zakizo]

If this has to happen, it might be a good idea to allow an option to join a party as a "scaled down" version of yourself, where you become the party leader's level if your level was higher. Realistic? I would think of it as "holding back to teach," but the important thing is that it would ensure finding assistance doesn't become even more frustrating. In terms of how stats are handled, it could just subtract the difference between your original and modded levels (as a temporary modifier) from all statistics, but would not lower them past your base racial statistics + class modifiers, for as long as you're in the party. I don't know if it's difficult to implement, but if you're dead-set on increasing the difficulty for players, it seems only right to take on some difficulty yourself in making it more fair.