How does EXP work?

Valferys

Kinda thinking about something, and apologies if this has been discussed in other posts...

I understand that EXP is shared (6 EXP points = 1 per member in team of 6)... What if I drop a character, my remaining chars max out EXP and I scoop up the dropped one. Does all the EXP I gain go solely to that character?

Example: I have currently a full team with Branwen and Jaheira. I will be dropping Branwen before I go into the bandit mines so that I can try out Yeslick. When I decide whether to keep Yeslick or Branwen and my other characters are maxed levels, I need to know if she will gain levels quick enough to max out (or be as close to max as I can get her) by the time I am ready to go through the end game.

Does this make sense?

Gallowglass

Valferys said:

What if I drop a character, my remaining chars max out EXP and I scoop up the dropped one. Does all the EXP I gain go solely to that character?

No, it continues to be shared, each character gets 1/6 of the xp earned.

Valferys said:

When I decide whether to keep Yeslick or Branwen and my other characters are maxed levels, I need to know if she will gain levels quick enough to max out (or be as close to max as I can get her) by the time I am ready to go through the end game.

You're still at a fairly early stage, so presumably a long way from maxing your characters. The xp cap is 161,000 (separately for each character, not in total), and you surely can't have got anywhere near that yet.

You can easily max out a full party well before the end-game (after which you gain no more xp and whatever you earn is effectively wasted). I generally expect my protagonist to cap out around 2/3 of the way through the game, although other party members (who haven't been with me all the time) may take a little longer. You'll have plenty of time before the Final Battle to max whichever of Yeslick or Branwen you decide to keep (even though they won't reach the cap quite as soon as those whom you've kept throughout the game).

You can even take companions whom you meet later than Yeslick, and still have time to max them before the end. So don't worry about it!