The fine arts of discrimination and injustice

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As well known, 3ed rules (and by extension IWD2) uses dynamic experience allocation for killing monsters. In other words, if you somehow manage to get more exp than you should have at a certain point of game, you'll get a subsequent exp reduction from monsters until your level matches with what you should be at. Or on the contrary, missing a major questline won't permanently set you behind as you're likely to be too low level for a while and thus gain more exp from killing stuff.

Powergamers bend the rules by level-squatting, muling and abusing respawning monsters. While that's most certainly effective - yes, you CAN have two level 24 Deep Gnomes in unmodded game on Normal difficulty by the time you reach Kuldahar if you really, really want to, I've tried - but leads to all sorts of metagaming dilemmas. Bend the rules too much and you might as well cheat from the start and be done with it, or suffer through most of the game just to enjoy doing the final battle with your 2.166666 (repeating of course) percent more effective characters?

However, one aspect of the game I haven't seen discussed is the relative power of various characters at their various stages of development.

As an example, my all-time favourite spellsword tank Deep Gnome Fighter(4)/Paladin(3)/Rogue(3)/Illusionist(20) is such a beautiful mesh of awesomely useful abilities for being just a tank. The thing is, I often forget that such a character is either a piddling weak wizard trying to melee or mostly just a plain-vanilla warrior until he has reached a level well into the teens. None of this BG2 stuff about getting your fighter/mage's first nine levels in both classes for practically free.

On the other hand, an average Joe battlecleric is pretty much done with development by level 22 or so - maximum amount of attacks per round, maximum level spells and all such things have already been attained, there's just smallish iterative improvements for being one level higher from there on.

This leads me into (yet another) way of fiddling around with the experience awards system. I call it selective discrimination. I start with the characters I deem need the most levels to complete their character build for a nice headstart, and start adding other members to the party going "backwards" in terms of how much experience I want them to have at the point my first characters reach the levels I want them to be at then.

Now for the actual question: I'd like to hear YOUR opinions about different character builds and whether you think those should work well at low, moderate or ultimate high levels only. Designing level 30 characters is fun, I've been doing it for ages now, but it's no fun if that character is practically worthless during the first 20 levels.

 

In terms of usefulness, I'd suggest starting with one or more battleclerics and/or a druid. They're strong enough in combat at the start, and stay useful later on. Some healing helps early on, not to mention the Entangle spell. Drow battleclerics are best, because they can use swords and bows. Human druids get to start with GSF: Transmutation to augment their Entangles.
It also seems important to have a character that can cast level 6+ Chromatic Orbs quickly for stunning - like a wizard, sorcerer or bard. I remember the battles with the White Dragons; there were 3 White Wyrms accompanying it. Since I had a wizard, sorcerer and bard, I only had to deal with the dragon.

So, you plan to add the less-useful-at-the-start party members as 'mules' into the party at a later stage? Personally I'd feel uncomfortable with a party with members of such different level, but there's no good powergaming reason not to do so. I'd consider this a major game exploit, though; much worse than level squatting IMO.
Are there any other considerations? Do you absolutely need a high-AC decoy? Will there be preferably no XP penalty, or definitely no penalty during leveling?

 

No, the other way around. If the character build "sucks" without having a good headstart in leveling, that would suggest that you need to have such a character in your start composition instead of adding it later.

Anything between two to four characters including at least a tank and a healer is reasonably easy setup to play through the Prologue and Chapter 1. You'll level up much faster, and it takes all the way to average party level six before that translates to any noticeable kill exp reductions. Going solo, playing on Insane difficulty and/or extending this setup period to later chapters usually leads to more trouble than it's worth - I've tested quite a few combinations, believe me.

I personally think it's a major game design flaw to throw a gazillion experience points to a newbie party during chapter two - not only as quest rewards but there's a whole lot of high exp monsters to kill, too! Chapter three seems extremely dry on both as a comparison, and the infamous Hook Horror cave have caused many a player frustration by being reasonably challenging while often granting zero experience due to your high level at that point. Same deal with the Yuan-Ti in Kuldahar.

Your case in point, the battlecleric. IMHO this is the guy you should add as LATE as possible, certainly not during prologue - unless you just absolutely, positively need this guy as a tank for your party of weaklings. I usually add mine as late as when I reach Kuldahar, and still I'd never recommend adding these before Chapter three. You don't find that many good weapons or armor to outfit them before that point, much less in a whole six-person party. Yes, they would be USEFUL from the very beginning, but I'd rather have my Sorcerer learn Fireball, Emotion:Hope, Stoneskin and Mass Haste a few areas earlier if at all humanely possible, thank you.

A few observations from my playtesting:
- Prologue is worth about 17000 experience points total, party size and/or ECL races do not matter at this point yet.
- Chapter 1 is worth about 69000 experience for a solo Deep Gnome (on top of the exp gained in Prologue)
- Adding another Deep Gnome to accompany the solo DG above after successfully concluding the Yquog delivery quests (last quest you can do before slaughtering the rest of the mobs in these two maps) made the new recruit emerge with 55000 experience after Chp1 was done for
- A duo Deep Gnome + Human group from start to the point described above had received 54000 experience each.
- Adding another DG and a Drow to the party above, massacring the rest of the Horde fortress with four netted 13000 experience for everyone
- The new recruits in the above case were both at 66000 exp at the end of Chapter two.

 

The game is difficult enough without trying to duo it with characters that are weak at low level. It's fine to theorize, but at what point does practicality enter into the equation?
Have you also considered that maps spawn more enemies for larger parties, and higher average levels? If you suddenly add XP mules in later chapters, chances are that many potential enemies won't spawn in new maps, reducing your potential XP gain proportionally. More members in the party will probably be outcompeted by the lower average level of the party.
Taking this all into consideration, I'd say the equation is too complex to make a proper estimate of XP gains, especially if you add mules at random points in the game. I try to get the most out of the game by not leveling until I rest and/or before entering a new map, preferably both. It's some minor level squatting, but it also prevents you from missing out on XP by leveling in a map, and getting less spawned enemies than your level warrants.
On a related note: never use vampiric weapons: If the opponent dies from hitpoint draining, you won't get the XP for the kill!

 

Sure, it's not one of the easiest of things to exactly predict the amount of experience you'll have at various points in game. But I don't think that's necessary, I take the experience as it comes. I'm just trying to be aware of the tradeoffs between letting my starting characters get "enough" of an exp headstart vs letting my new recruits become useful faster.

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that I'd suggest starting the party with your sucky-at-low-levels characters by themselves. That's why I noted "between two to four characters, inclusive a tank and a healer". At worst, you'd take your early suckage characters to be carried through the early stages by a strong tank/healer combo.

During the past, I've tried to keep my party as small as possible at least through Chapter two. The very last portions of Chp1 and the whole Chp2 is the most quest-exp instensive part of the game - you'll net a bit over 80,000 experience from quests alone during that rather short period of time. Having that split, say, to three characters instead of a full party of six ensures that the members of the smaller party get about 16k experience above and beyond what they'd get in a larger party.

However, taking a look at the party I started as a duo and expanded to four in the Horde Warrens, each and every party member got 61000 experience points from that point to the end of Chapter 2. In other words, they got just a bit over 20k quest experience and almost 40k experience from kills. Which means that kill experience - even in the most quest-intensive part of the game - still accounted for twice as much as the quest exp I've been so reluctant to share. Had I played that part through with my initial duo, I would have been waaaaay too high level to receive proper exp from kills, thus hurting my overall exp gain much more than it'd be worth.

Judging from the MONCRATE.2DA file, a good rule of thumb is that whenever you're three levels higher than you "should" in any part of the game, you'll only net half as much experience from kills. On the other hand, whenever you're three levels below that point, you will be compensated by double exp from kills. You get to higher levels by using a smaller party, and you will drop below by adding fresh level 1 recruits. Which leads to the logical conclusion that you'd be best served by adding the fresh recruits just before encounters with high CR monsters.

Two immediate candidates spring to mind. Enter the Ice Temple exterior map (the one where you'll meet Sherincal) with a small, high level party to spawn a lot of monsters, and add level 1's to reap lots of exp. The other one is just after you've completed the Eight Chambers in the Monastery - adding fresh level 1's here will let you gain a good bit more exp from slaughtering the monks, the duergar stronghold (you weren't thinking about letting the duergar live after what they've done - especially knowing they'll ambush you anyway) and the Iron Golems below the Monastery. And the goodness keeps on piling up in the Zhinda Citadel with yet more Iron Golem wannabes to kill.