ECL differences and xp

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i'm trying to figure out how my party gets xp. i have 2 aasimars, 2 humans, a 1/2-orc and a drow in my party. they are all 2nd level. they all leveled up at the same time. how are some characters getting more xp than others? my drow has the most of all with 6996 xp and needs 10,000 xp to get to 3rd level. my 2 aasimar characters have around 4000 xp and need 6000 xp to get to 3rd level. my humans and 1/2-orc all have around 2000 xp and need 3000 xp to get to 3rd level.
my questions is, how did the drow get so much more xp than the others?i know the aasimars got more than the humans and the 1/2-orc too. this is just crazy. how are they getting different amounts of xp? no one has died so it's not that.

i only have the official patch installed. no mods or fixpacks.

 

Your Drow are effectively level 5 characters and your Aasimar are effectively level 4 characters. That's why they take so much more exp to reach the next level as opposed to characters with an ECL of +0.

 

i know they take more to level but how did they GET more.

 

Because all characters start only 1000 exp away from their second character level. You could play as a deep gnome with a +3 level adjust and still start 1000 exp away from that second level, despite despite the threshold for reach the deep gnome's second level being the same as reaching level 5.

 

It's been discussed before, but in the original game, the deep gnome starting XP is wrong. They get 5000 XP at start, when they should get 9000 XP, so that they need 1000XP to reach level 2 (ECLevel 5).
it's fixed in ease of use:
~SETUP-IWD2-EASE.TP2~ #0 #6 // Deep Gnome Starting XP

 

not only that but if the exp doesnt evenly divide between the chars, the char is slot 1 gets the odd point (maybe slot 2 gets the other odd point depending on # of chars and such)

 

I'm fairly sure there is a slight unevenness in XP distribution according to which character scores the higher percentage of total party XP earned.

 

in my experience, the characters in the first slots get more points whenever XP gained is not dividable by 6 (my party number). But if it actually has to do with kills/XP earned, like AjaX says, please tell me. I moved my deep gnome illusionist up from the 6th slot to the 3rd so that she'd earn a bit more XP.
But I still think it's only got to do with the leftover XP being given to the first in line. A flaw in the game unfortunately.

 

Dude, I'm not sure about it, but if the unevenness is there, its small.

 

There is a cheat to add xp to your characters, let me know if you want it. The thing is, once you have cheat codes, it's very easy to spoil the game for yourself

 

how bad would it be to take a party of just drow and deep gnomes? also, what does miscellaneous +4 to ac mean? does it mean they naturally have a +4 bonus to their ac?

 

It works really well. Because of the way the game calcualtes ECL, your average party level will be a fraction of a level behind a human party.

Right, a generic bonus that stacks with all other bonuses.

 

The nice thing about taking a party of all ECL characters is that the game calculates average party level on actual character level and not effective character level.

Say you had a party consisting solely of drow, level 8. Compared to an equivalent human party, they would be the equivalent of level 10 (because of ECL adjustments).

But, as I said, IWD2 uses their actual character level when determining average party level and thus challenge rating, which means that, in the long run, you will end up at about the same level as a human party would be, because the game adjusts experience if it thinks you are too low or too high a level. With Drow, it would think you are too low most times, because of their ECL.

So it ends up working in your favour.

 

Yeah, and if you have an ECL party with like a human in between them, the human is actually at an advantage, because his party members push his XP rewards up, and help him level quicker than in a non-ECL party!

I chose a gray dwarf barbarian mainly for this reason, I wanted him to help raise my human sorcerer and druid's leveling speed slightly, instead of detract from it.

I have a party of 2 drow, 2 humans, a duergar and a svirfneblin, and they get decent XP for kills a lot longer than a non-ECL party. They need it of course, to catch up with non-ECL party level. The number of levels they are actually behind later in the game, will probably be only 1 level, because of this dynamic leveling.

Proteus, your quote seems irrelevant to the subject... wrong quote?

 

Yes, my bad. I meant to only quote the first sentence of his post, where he asks about a party of solely ECL characters.

 

A Deep Gnome duo of Something Meleeish(1)/Illusionist(x) and Dreadmaster(x) have little to no trouble getting through the first two chapters by themselves, and just to prove a point, keeping them at average level 9 all the way to Kuldahar wasn't hard by any stretch of imagination either. Having 30+ AC pretty much from the beginning of the game on all ( = both ) of your characters is just that good.

Althought it was kinda lol when the Illusionist jumped to level 20 in Kuldahar, without even a single level 7 spell scroll in sight yet. (That's when I added the rest of the party.)