How should characters gain experience points?

Alexisisinneed

From what I know the experience gain by the party is split up with the character on the top of the list receiving the most. I was wondering what you think of this? Should it be the same as it is or should everyone get the equal amount of experience points. I personally enjoy the way the experience points is divided though I wish bg:ee would give out quest points like in Bg2, but I'm sure there's a reason for the that.

TJ_Hooker

As far as I know, XP is already divided evenly between party members. Characters higher up in the party order end up with more XP because of XP rewards that are not evenly divisible by the number of characters in the party. The XP remainders trickle down, so characters at the top will often end up getting an extra point or two when XP is rewarded, which over the course of a game can add up.

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Alexisisinneed

I know that the experience points is distributed even, but what I meant was you kill winter wolf so the party gains 900xp but instead of it being divided up by six every party member gains exactly 900xp.

KidCarnival

I don't think the characters higher on the portrait bar gain notably more XP. It's split evenly, and even if the character in #1 gets 125 XP more, it doesn't make a difference.

Jalily

The remainder could be awarded randomly to reduce the unevenness, I guess.

FinneousPJ

Alexisisinneed said:

I know that the experience points is distributed even, but what I meant was you kill winter wolf so the party gains 900xp but instead of it being divided up by six every party member gains exactly 900xp.

Then you'd get up to six times more XP than normally which would unbalance the game.

KidCarnival

I still don't see how the character in #1 gains notably more XP. Doesn't matter if it's 1000 XP, or 10000 XP - it always results in the #1 getting 4 XP more than the others. You wouldn't even get from level 1 to level 2 with the total amount you collect that way.

I guess it would make sense if everyone got some minor XP for class-specific things, i.e. trap disarming XP would always go to the thief, healing XP to the cleric or something. But I don't really see a need to change this.

lunar

I don't see the need for change, really. In the current system the leader of the party ends up gaining %1-2 extra xp, thanks to left overs after the xp being divided evenly. It's not a that big of a deal. Actually makes sense that leading a party is somewhat a more teaching experience.

Aasimar069

Alexisisinneed said:

I know that the experience points is distributed even, but what I meant was you kill winter wolf so the party gains 900xp but instead of it being divided up by six every party member gains exactly 900xp.

Thjen you'll hit the level cap very quickly, and the game would be unchallenging. (It's already enough unchallenging).

The current system is the best.

franco

So in the present system, the party member in the top slot may gain 1 or 2 more xp. It's negligible. But historically, in war, the member in the scout position is really less secure and has to be more careful, so some extra xp's makes some sense. I know of an old gentleman who was a platoon leader in Germany who told me that when he had to choose a soldier to go point, they would sometimes plead with him not to select them. I don't like thinking about it. In BG, I've often seen Imoen get shot up pretty good with arrows in places like the Nashkel Mines.

ChildofBhaal599

That would really uneven the game. You would easily be at the cap without the TOTSC content, and removing the cap and leveling 6 times higher would destroy the balance.

franco

@ChildofBhaal599. Maybe I didn't make it clear. I voted "Keep it the same". I was just saying that the extra 1 or 2 xp's (which are negligible) in the top slots make a little bit of role playing sense.

ChildofBhaal599

franco said:

@ChildofBhaal599. Maybe I didn't make it clear. I voted "Keep it the same". I was just saying that the extra 1 or 2 xp's (which are negligible) in the top slots make a little bit of role playing sense.

I was actually answering the original question

Kaltzor

Uneven XP sharing kind of hurts when using certain tactics... Such as sending in a fighter to clear out a group of enemies alone...

Aasimar069

franco said:

So in the present system, the party member in the top slot may gain 1 or 2 more xp. It's negligible. But historically, in war, the member in the scout position is really less secure and has to be more careful, so some extra xp's makes some sense. I know of an old gentleman who was a platoon leader in Germany who told me that when he had to choose a soldier to go point, they would sometimes plead with him not to select them. I don't like thinking about it. In BG, I've often seen Imoen get shot up pretty good with arrows in places like the Nashkel Mines.

When you kill a kobold, you earn 7xp.

they had two choices : either you give 2xp to 1rst character/ Charname and one to the others, and not giving the last xp point to anybody (or until enough more xp is gained for 1xp more).

the_spyder

I agree with @KidCarnival in that the negligible amount of 'Extra' XP isn't enough to really complain about. Even through ToB, I'd bet you don't end up with enough XP to make even a single level difference. And if you think it is, simply change the order of the party icons on the right of the screen every once in a while.

However, I do feel that character specific jobs such as scribing scrolls and removing traps should only give XP to the character performing the action. In what way would Minsc gain any sort of knowledge or experience from Xan scribing a spell into his spell book? None that I can see. Combat? Sure. completing quests? Absolutely. But no one should gain XP wise from a successful lock pick other than the thief who picked the lock. IMHO.

TJ_Hooker

Yeah, when I said "over the course of a game can add up", I wasn't suggesting that it'd eventually make a significant difference, such as one character ending up a level or 2 higher than the rest. It's actually more noticeable when playing IWD 1 or 2, because unlike in BG all your characters will start with identical XP. As the game progresses, you'll start to notice your characters levelling up in a more and more staggered fashion. But still, by the end of the game I'm thinking the difference may be around 1 to 2 thousand XP, which, by that time, is pretty insignicant.

KidCarnival

I had a blackguard charname and Dorn in one run. Charname was at best less than 30 XP ahead of him. Sure, they didn't level up at exactly the same moment, but they were never more than a "4 wild dogs have waylayed you" encounter apart.

the_spyder

And once you get to BG2 the whole thing goes out the window. Your party can start out several hundred thousand XP apart. Then the difference is so negligible that it isn't worth worrying about because there are other disparities.

TJ_Hooker

@KidCarnival was that run with only you and Dorn? Because the less characters you have, the less pronounced the effect will be.

KidCarnival

No, that was full party. Charname, Dorn, Coran, Kivan, Edwin, Xzar. (Don't ask.)

TJ_Hooker

Ok, I guess the effect is even less pronounced than I thought. To come up with the 1 or 2 thousand number that I stated earlier, I just loaded up a IWD2 save in which I figured I was about 1/3 to 1/2 through the game, and looked at the difference in XP between the first and last characters; it was around 500.

Mathmick

On how to divide up experience throughout the party when uneven amounts of exp are given around, I have two simple ways to solve this:

1) Experience is effectively given one point at a time, rotating between each character for each point. When all experience for an event has been rewarded, the next character in line will be the first to get experience the next time.

2) Fractional amounts of experience are recorded by the game but not shown.


Let's have an example using a party of four: CharA, CharB, CharC, CharD
The party completes a quest and is rewarded 6 XP. They then kill a Kobold worth 7 XP.

1) Experience is divided up by giving points in rotation until there is no more XP left to give.
For the quest: A gets 2 points, B gets 2 points, C gets 1 point, D gets 1 point.
For the Kobold: C gets 2 points, D gets 2 points, A gets 2 points, B gets 1 point.
For a total of: A - 4, B - 3, C - 3, D - 3

2) Experience is divided up evenly giving fractional experience it cannot be divided into exact integer amounts:
For the quest: They all gain 1.5 points.
For the Kobold: They all gain 1.75 points.
For a total of: All - 3.25 each

EDIT: Assuming it doesn't already work in one of these ways already.

atcDave

Mathmick I'm pretty sure what the game does already is close to your option one. The exact mechanism is slightly different (divide equally among all characters, with extra being assigned by party order slot). But it doesn't rotate who gets the extra "next time", so characters higher in the party rank will get slightly more experience over time.

The only problem I have with this, is that fractional XP is deleted. So when I was battling Kobolds with a six person party, my triple class PC, even in the lead position, was getting zero experience. I sure didn't spend much time in the Neshkell mines...

Loremaster

atcDave said:

The only problem I have with this, is that fractional XP is deleted. So when I was battling Kobolds with a six person party, my triple class PC, even in the lead position, was getting zero experience. I sure didn't spend much time in the Neshkell mines...

So, do characters in an only multiclass party get zero xp from kobolds?

atcDave

Loremaster said:

atcDave said:

The only problem I have with this, is that fractional XP is deleted. So when I was battling Kobolds with a six person party, my triple class PC, even in the lead position, was getting zero experience. I sure didn't spend much time in the Neshkell mines...

So, do characters in an only multiclass party get zero xp from kobolds?

That might be fun to try, a entire party getting nothing for fighting ten Kobolds!

IkMarc

franco said:

So in the present system, the party member in the top slot may gain 1 or 2 more xp. It's negligible. But historically, in war, the member in the scout position is really less secure and has to be more careful, so some extra xp's makes some sense. I know of an old gentleman who was a platoon leader in Germany who told me that when he had to choose a soldier to go point, they would sometimes plead with him not to select them. I don't like thinking about it. In BG, I've often seen Imoen get shot up pretty good with arrows in places like the Nashkel Mines.

Makes sense, they didn't have hide in shadows back then.

CoM_Solaufein

As it is, so it shall be.

Loremaster

I did a check on this, killing Reevor's rats at Candlekeep. Multiclass elven T/M. I got one xp for both classes every second rat i killed. Apperently, fractional xp are counted for in some way, but I don't know how this works with a several caharacter party.

atcDave

Loremaster said:

I did a check on this, killing Reevor's rats at Candlekeep. Multiclass elven T/M. I got one xp for both classes every second rat i killed. Apperently, fractional xp are counted for in some way, but I don't know how this works with a several caharacter party.

Interesting, thanks!