Xp and monotony

[adzling]

good idea meldor!

[luna]

Jan 30, 2009 10:16:52 GMT -5 adzling said:

*cries at all the wondrous monsters on the surface*

Hey.. no crying. The UD got all the hak pack critters. The surface got none of em!

[luna]

Jan 30, 2009 4:22:39 GMT -5 hnefi said:

Jan 29, 2009 17:51:30 GMT -5 DEV Jlf2n said:

I guess I left some sort of lump between 5 and 6 in my last monster tweak. I've heard other people complain about them before. At level 5 you shouldnt be fighting a lvl 3 Gnoll. Are the Lizards and Ogres to hard for you? Whats your race and class?

You're right, there IS a weird discontinuity in the difficulty at sub-10 levels. I have two low-level chars; one rogue dualwielder and one strength-based bard. For both, the levels went something like this:

Lvl 1: Very difficult, due to low HP and enemies rolling 20's. Bandits give 20 XP, much less when partied. Given enough healing potions, killing 50 bandits as a bard wasn't hard - but my ECL+1 rogue had a very rough time (no weapon finesse possible at lvl 1!). Only wolves and bandits are possible to kill with reasonable chance.

Lvl 2: Extremely easy. Twice as many HP, better AB, better equipment, and now the bandits give 36 XP each - almost twice as much as lvl 1! Still only bandits are reasonable.

Lvl 3: Easy for the bard, because he can now kill gnolls thanks to better equipment. The rogue had it hard because of his low melee damage and AB, though at least it's better now thanks to Weapon Finesse. But those gnolls have a LOT of HP when you do 1d6 damage/hit.

Lvl 4: Very difficult for both. Gnolls and bandits give very little XP (12 or 15-ish for gnolls), and while lizardmen give decent XP they take forever to kill and have to be singled out. Shamans and especially chieftains are out of the question. Forget bugbears or ogres!

Lvl 5: (haven't reached this level with the bard): Unbelievably tedious for the rogue. Low damage, low AB, decent AC means it takes forever to kill lizardmen, which are the only things available to kill. As soon as a shaman or chieftain appears, running away is the only option.

Lvl 6: Almost quit the rogue here. Hasn't gotten a decent offensive increase since lvl 2 or 3, so lizardmen are still the only option. A quest saved me by giving me enough XP to FINALLY get through the level.

Lvl 7: Low XP on lizardmen, bandits and gnolls, and anything else was way too hard. Thank god I found a pal from another server who got a big party going and took us on a rampage through the orcs.

Lvl 8: Second attack and better equipment! Suddenly, lizardmen are way too easy. Bugbears can be attacked with caution. Leveling is ten times easier than lvl 6, and I soon reached...

Lvl 9: Second off-hand attack; damage output is now rather high since Feint doesn't consume half the attacks in a round, AB is decent, and the second level of the mines is no problem (except the bugbear leaders). Ogres still do too much damage and goblins are death incarnate, so Beregost is off-limits, but the buggers give enough XP to get through this level with adequate speed.

So around lvl 4-7, things are extremely slow and boring for these two chars. Before and after that, things are fine. As a comparison, I can mention that a warlock I played was almost impossible to level at lvl 1 (but that was due to the death penalty bug - lost several times the first level due to that). Once he got to the second level and Draining Blast, he could kill gnolls... and lizardmen a level or two after that. He had it easy all the way up to level 9.

I think the worst part is that partying actually gives an XP penalty when there are only two people in the party. XP drops by something like 40% when you find another person of equal level and start hacking away; it's only when you find a third member that it starts getting worthwhile, because you can kill so much faster and XP per kill recovers somewhat (still generally less than soloing though). IMHO, it should never be a disadvantage to group up with people of similar level to yourself; XP for partying should not decrease under any circumstance except when there's a big level gap (6 levels, maybe? That would coincide with the Effortless/Impossible labels on chars, making choice of party members a quick and simple process).

This XP is almost exactly the same for me.. dead on. Right now the char I'm playing is almost level 8. I can solo a few bug bears, so XP has shot way up now.
But ye, around level 5 and 6 it slowed down.

I think the best way to solve this is to just add more area's with more choices instead of continually fine tune the creatures that are already in.

Then things will not be so limited on what you can do/kill per level range if you can't find a party to go with.

[mrdeadman]

I think most people should feel lucky the xp is the way it is. If you were to model it on PnP if you got 50 xp for killing something solo, a two man party would get 25 each. As it stand here now, a two man party would each receive something like 40 xp. That's a very generous bonus.

[hnefi]

Yeah, but in PnP you get about ten times as much XP for each kill. IIRC, if you manage to kill monsters at the same CR as yourself, you'd level once ever four kills or so in PnP.

[DM Sir Carnifex]

Well, the way I see it, being in a party SHOULD reduce the XP per kill. But you still gain XP MUCH faster. The other day I was soloing phase spiders with my druid/barbarian. He could take out about ten of them before his protections spells wore out. Then he'd have to leave and rest. He got 70 XP per kill.

Well, after that, he joined up with a warlock who could do consistent damage to the spiders. My PC still had to do the tank part, but with the additional help, he could stay there much, much longer fighting. XP was 56 to 49 per kill, but the spiders were going down three times as fast.

After this, a warrior/mage joined up. Now there was somebody who could tank and whom I could buff with spells. Now my PC could attack second, get the +2 bonus for attacking from behind and deal out more damage without taking too many blows. XP was something like 46/52 per kill and the spiders went down about 10 times as fast as they did when soloing.

So, if you take the time to do the math, party XP does not penalize anyone. You gain XP much, much faster, plus you have the chance to RP. Do people really need even MORE incentive to party? Sure, solo XP seems like a lot more, but in reality, when you solo, you are only making leveling SLOWER, not faster.

[adzling]

this makes sense carn but from my limited experience in the UD partying doesnt pay off from an xp perspective and this make some folks not want to party.
the exception to this is if i can tag along with a higher level group then i get more xp by being able to kill higher level critters ;-)

but that doesnt seem to happen very often.

overall i have no problem with xp on the server at all.

its just odd to me that i get less when partying then soloing and it seems to stop some people from partying.

[hnefi]

Well, sure, at level 15. But you can't really expect a level 2 wizard to help a lvl 2 fighter much, leading to the fighter preferring to take on mobs on his own rather than party up (and potentially RP).

[adzling]

and there's my problem to date. Ding!

[luna]

Jan 30, 2009 14:16:29 GMT -5 DM Sir Carnifex said:

Well, the way I see it, being in a party SHOULD reduce the XP per kill. But you still gain XP MUCH faster.

I don't think this is always the case.
Weather solo or partied, you can only gain XP as fast as the monsters re-spawn in an area.

Just as an example, I can clear the trade way of gnolls solo. Adding 1, 2, 3, or X number of people to my group will not increase the killing rate in that case because I can already clear the map on my own faster than the gnolls re-spawn.
So adding more people here actually waters down the XP.

I'm not suggesting the spawn rate should be faster either.

But party xp should be examined a bit more.

In most cases I'm in a party, the xp has been worse than if I solo.

The only way I could think of getting around this is if we ran from area to area as fast as we could killing everything in sight. But that would be a bit lame...

[Erulaan D'Anhoor]

Just a heads up...jlf2n and I were chatting yesterday and he couldn't contain his glee with something he has up his sleave. It will most definately require a large diverse party.

that is all.

Now back to your regularlly scheduled ranting...







(don't worry I am one of the biggest whiny b1+(#&$ here)

[DM haunted]

I would say a party of 3-5 ,15%increase in xp....A party of 6 or more , go with what we have going already.

[zemlock]

Ok so the OP is back and guess what, the gnolls took me out 3 times, that means im 100 gnolls back from where i started. that makes 300 to go. Ill find out what happens today, lets hope its fruitful.

[luna]

Hmm.. well not that I'm trying to pile stuff onto this thread, but I had one other odd xp experience.

With a party of 3, two low levels, and one really high level, being low level I got decent xp.

But with a party of 4, me being the low level, and 3 high levels in the party, I got 1 xp per kill.

So there is still some odd distribution between the level ranges....

[Tiefling]

Back in the IWD2, the avarage level of the party was compared to the creature challenge rating in order to determine the experience point gain.

As an example, we got a party with one level 15 character and five level three characters.

The levels of each party member would be added together: 5 x 2 + 15 = 25
Then the result would be divided by the actual amount of party members: 25/6 = 4.166667

Thus the party would gain experience as if it was full with level four characters, making the level 15 character gain a lot more experience than it would normally have.

In the case where every character would have leveled normally they would have been around the level eight, and earned experience accordingly.


I do not know for certain if this is the case, but from what Luna described it does sound like it works in a similar fashion.

Thus in the party of three, the low level characters were low enough to bring down considerably the average party level, where as in the party of four one low level character was not.

Yet, I am in all honesty just speculating how it works.