Question regarding calculation of XP.

Remove all ads!

Question regarding calculation of XP:

I am curious how IWD2 calculates it's XP, since it obviouslly does not do it like originally written in the D&D Core books.

Example: party of 5 killing 5 orcs (CR1)

Lets say the party is:

Fighter level 10
Fighter level 10
Fighter level 10
Fighter level 10
Fighter level 1

Normally that would mean that all the level 10's gain 0 XP since orcs are simply to "weak" for them to gain experience from. And the level 1 should gain 300 XP becose he gets 1/5th of how much experience the group would get it all was level 1.

Basically, it calculates XP for each separate character, compared to their level vs the enemies challenge rating. and then divide it on the number of people in the party.

Okie, boring facts aside...

In IWD2, you have have level 10's still gain XP by simply have a "tag along xp bag" level 1 character, becose he suposedlly reduces the party "level average". Im curious if anyone knows exactlly how this works ? or is it just "averaging" levels between all party members, and then use that for calculating the XP ?

Thanks.
-rap

 

I think that IWD2 just averages the party levels and decides that you get no xp.

 

So it just takes level 10+10+10+10+1/6=8.5 (round up or down) and gives XP accordingly to everyone beeing that level ?

interesting, and dumb.

 

It rounds down. So (10+10+10+10+1)/5 = 41/5 = 8.2 ~ 8EPL
Thus in your case if all the L10 guys were to squat and the L1 guy leveled up to L4, you would still continue to get the same XP since (10+10+10+10+4)/5 = 44/5 = 8.8 ~ 8EPL

 

Yes, it is definitely based on your average party level, which establishes the total amount of XP to distribute for that kill. So a party of 10 / 10 / 1 will earn more XP than a party of 10 / 10/ 10.

The XP is then distributed equally between the party members, with the slight exception that the last party member usually gets slightly less if the number of party members does not divide equally into the total XP on offer. This is why your party members will sometimes end up with slightly different amounts of XP after a while.

 

And the last character noted above is the character in last position during party creation, not marching order. Even though the last character will always get slightly less XP per incounter, it does seem to add up to a lot over the length of the game. So I would advise making your spell casters first, then the tank last. Then sort character order afterwards. In my 5 person party, my human bard (last character created) dropped one, the 2 levels behind by level 22 in HOF. Quite depressing when trying to level up as bard11/socX.

 

There are other possible causes of such a large level difference:

- xp penalty (obviously not the case with a human bard/sorc)
- you don't gain exp when dead or in ORS, and possibly not when charmed
- I think some quests only give certain character classes/races exp.

 

All in all a rather anoying system. But ironically it does counterweight the dumb way the "no xp for weak kills" thingy.

Thanks for all the replies people!

Well, it seem i will be running with on person lowlevel for a long long time then, just to keep the average level down by one or two.

Unfortunatelly the IWD2's autobalancing system makes this XP system that much worse. I really think the autobalancing should have been an option to turn on or off. meeting 100+hp goblins with +10 hit and 1d6+10 damage goblins with challenge rating 1 is just silly.

 

XP is awarded sequentially.
So if a 5 member party gets 11XP for killing a beetle, Char1 gets 3XP, Chars2-5 get 2XP.
If that 5 member party gets 24XP for killing a wolf, Char1-4 get 5XP, Char5 gets 4XP.
Every creature you kill or quest you complete, you get XP. Each time this XP is divided thus. So you can see how easy it is for the last party member to have less XP. The accumulated difference can be large enough that Char5 is a level or two behind Char1.

 

In my game it works totally different.
Only marching order affects the XP share for my party members.

I guess your bard was dead when your other party members got XP since the XP difference because of marching order should be far less than 1/2 level and even decreasing compared to levels when the party advances.
You need 45,000 XP to get from level 22 to 24, so you have to gain an XP value which is not divisable by 5 45,000 times in order to explain the difference.

[ December 28, 2005, 13:58: Message edited by: kmonster ]

 

Hmm, what kmonster says seems to make sense actually.