New party member

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How do you add a new party member?

I am in Black Raven monastery, with a party composed of 1 barbarian, 1 priest, one druid/fighter, a mage and a bard. I had some fun in the River Caves with all the hook horrors dropping out of the ceiling and going straight for my spellcasters, so I figure I could make use of one more melee character (I am thinking a paladin).

I understand this will also help with the XP gained by the party, which I think is nice (right before entering the monastery, I fought around 15 yeti without getting any XP for it). My party has about level 13 by now; is the new character going to get enough experience to catch up with the others by the end?

Also, where could I find some equipment for him? (I am thinking heavy armor). I did not find anybody selling armor/weapons in the monastery (I guess the monks do not need it). IIRC, the duergar in the caves did not sell such stuff either (although I did not spend much time in their camp, and it is possible I missed some vendor.)

 

I don't remember any good heavy armor in the game, but I do remember some excellent medium armor that was better than most of the heavy armor in terms of AC bonus.

If you take a Paladin, remember not to use him as your talker if you want to get money from completing quests. And don't forget to get Cera Sumat if you're looking for a good weapon for him.

 

hey, just a quick question - is "mage" a wizard or a sorcerer?

 

mage as in wizard; as about armor, any type of heavy armor would be good, since all I have extra so far is some studded leather +2, or equivalent. (and I wanted to get Oswald to make me an extra pair of full plate, but I did not have the patience to wait for him, I went into the ice temple and when I got back he was already gone)

 

You just go to the character arbitration screen and modify one of the empty slots there. I do this all the time (adding and removing characters). I usually start off with 1 character and add others as the game goes along, to kind of simulate the idea of NPCs joining the party.

 

does the bard handle rogue skills?

 

There are quite a few full plates in the game, better than any medium armor for your paladin.
The best one can be bought in chapter 5 in Kuldahar.

Although full plate allows only a +1 dex modifier I would give 13 dex to him since many feats like rapid shot require 13 dex.
I would create an aasimar paladin3/fighter X with the stats 18-13-18-3-8-20.

The XP difference between your newly created character will always stay the same, about 100,000.
When your other characters will be level 17 or 18 at the end of the game your paladin will be level 10 or 11, but tanks don't need high levels as much as spellcasters.

 

Thanks, HB, I got it. It is funny because at some point I stumbled upon that screen, but then completely forgot about it.

Why would the XP difference between the new char and the old one stay the same? In my experience so far, the lowest level char gains XP at a faster rate than the others.

Stats I used : STR 13/ Con 14/ Dex 10/ INT 10/ Wis 15/ Cha 18. Further increases will go in Str (maybe with another one in Wis)

matko: the wizard handles rogue skills (human with lot of skill points). are you going to contribute something to the discussion, or are you just increasing your post count :

 

In my game everyone got nearly the same XP.
The only difference is that the first characters get more than the last if you cannot divide the gained XP evenly among your party members.

 

sry, but your party looks interesting, and i just want to know who handles what

 

khaavern, old and new characters gain XP at the same rate. The new characters will advance in level faster than old ones, due to the nature of the XP/level tables.

And technically speaking, IIRC, the characters who get the most XP are those in the #1 slot, then 2, then 3, and so on, because when there are odd numbers of XP, the leftovers end up being given to the characters in the lower number slots.

 

Ack, that doesn't sound so good. It seemed to me that my bard (which is a level behind the rest of the party, being a tiefling) gets more XP than the others (in fact, he does have the most XP of the party, by about 2000XP), but the effect is small (since there is only one level difference).

 

Races with +1 ECL penalty like tieflings get 2000 XP at the start, races with 2-3 levels penalty even 5000.

 

The reason that highest level and lowest level get the same XP is that the developers did a quick "cheat" in the XP Calculation. So your level 20 mage and level 2 fighter both get the same XP as if both was level 11 (average, 20 + 2 = 22 / 2 = 11). Instead of per the D&D rules where the XP is calculated per character in regard to the CR's.

 

The way starting XP is handled, any character will start 1000 XP away from level up. That's why the higher the ECL, the higher the starting XP. But this really doesn't affect the game on the long run.

 

Not totally true. Duergar and deep gnomes start with 5000 XP and not with 9000.

 

@Kmonster: and that is actually known as a bug

 

Well, this is not working out quite the way I hoped; I thought a pally would help with screening the spell casters, but the only change so far is that instead of having two weak chars to take care of, I have three . And of course, you guys are right, the new char gains XP at the same rate as the others. She does level up faster, but not as fast as I'd wish

Fortunatelly, I found some mechants in the Underdark and bought some decent armor. But I hope there aren't too many tough fights ahead.

 

@raptor: Actually, I seem to remember that that was originally implemented on purpose by the devs. It wasn't a true 'bug.' Specially considering by true 3E rules, taking an ECL race wasn't supposed to give you any starting XP. If you took an ECL race, you were supposed to have to earn 10000 XP to get to level 2.
Admittedly, virtually everyone changes it so that a Duergar & DG start with 9000 instead of 5000. Because in the long run that difference doesn't have much effect as levels get higher. But it was truly, originally, intended the way it was released.