My home group has some variability to who can make it to each session.

Should I give XP to missing characters anyway, or does EotE run fine with PC's in the group being of variable XP levels?

Well there aren't really "levels" per say...

I actually think the game is pretty well balanced. Characters will more xp will be better "experienced" so to speak in that they have more real world working and time under their belts and naturally should be better at some things.

For instance, I don't believe Han and Chewie when we first see them in Episode IV were starting characters.

Luke?

Totally a starting character.

Hey Grimm,

To answer your question, you should NOT give XP to characters who are not present at your sessions, and a mixed group works just fine.

Good luck!

Awesome! Thanks guys.

When Chewbacca 'first appears' in Episode IV, he's a veteran of the Clone Wars with over a century of life behind him.

The game lends itself to mixed xp groups, even for those who show up, what with the personalized 5 xp for playing your motivation.

We give 5xp a session to no-shows (though that is rare). It allows them to keep up somehow but not get all the goodies that everyone who was there got.

I've only played with one GM so I thought his way was given i the rule book! So YMMV with any of the suggestions offered in this thread.

My GM has asked the players to keep current versions of our characters in his Yahoo group file folder thingie. If someone is going to miss a session, they can ask someone to run their characte and the missing player's PC will stay with us and earn xp or they can opt out so long as there's a logical way for him to do so and he's not critical in some way but he'll get no xp.

I've seen someone play someone else's character twice. Both times, the players did their best to run the character like the player would but they still seemed kind of secondary. Like, for that night, they were the minor costars rather than one of the lead actors.

Oh... If they opt in, they also have to deal with whatever happened to their character. I've heard that at least one character died while he was being played this way in another gamethe worst I've actually seen is a lost piece of equipment.

Its totally up to you and your group. Have a talk with the rest of the group and make a decision and do not listen to dogmatic opinions here. Its your group and its YOU who decided how you wanna roll with missing players. The game is all about having fun, right. In our group we rather kick people that have a tendency for missing out(doesnt prioritize game-nights) and bring someone who actually can attend and bring some fun to the table