Too much experience!
atcDave
Member Posts: 2,791
Yeah, yeah, I'm an old fart. I guess this makes it official.
I'll start with the observation I've played this game a lot of times, and have grown used to knowing which NPCs I want at the start of the game, and putting the team together then as I go. I almost never do the recruit someone, kick them out, re-recruit them tango.
The last time remember doing this was over a year ago, with a different build of mods. I don't recall exactly what all I've changed.
Well I was actually playing around with some different NPCs on my current run. I've discovered with NPC Project that Ajantis and Kivan really annoy me. At least with a female protagonist they do. So both got kicked to the curb. And a I brought Minsc back in. He was 3rd level when I kicked him out. The team is all around 6th level now. So I took him back and *ding*! What the heck? Minsc is immediately able to level up to 6th level!
Okay, this sort of ticks me off. My team worked hard to gain their levels. Minsc got a freebe! I've DMed, run AD&D games since 1E was new. I have a certain sense of balance and how things ought to be from a World Building sense. I think regardless of level, a character who is just idling for a bit, maybe gets into a spat with hobgoblins or something, might gain *tens or hundreds* of experience points during down time. But *never thousands*! That's what adventuring is for!
This is bad game design, bad world building.
When I last did the recruit someone, kick them out, re-recruit tango a year or so ago the EE game was at the same build (2.6.6). I did have NPC Project running. And CDTweaks with about the same options installed. But Jaheira and Khalid were re-recruited at 2nd level and they had to *earn* their lagging experience.
Anyone have any thoughts on what changed? What mod or setting? Or what I might have done to cause this?
As I indicated, this seems like a cheat to me, I *don't like it*!
I'll start with the observation I've played this game a lot of times, and have grown used to knowing which NPCs I want at the start of the game, and putting the team together then as I go. I almost never do the recruit someone, kick them out, re-recruit them tango.
The last time remember doing this was over a year ago, with a different build of mods. I don't recall exactly what all I've changed.
Well I was actually playing around with some different NPCs on my current run. I've discovered with NPC Project that Ajantis and Kivan really annoy me. At least with a female protagonist they do. So both got kicked to the curb. And a I brought Minsc back in. He was 3rd level when I kicked him out. The team is all around 6th level now. So I took him back and *ding*! What the heck? Minsc is immediately able to level up to 6th level!
Okay, this sort of ticks me off. My team worked hard to gain their levels. Minsc got a freebe! I've DMed, run AD&D games since 1E was new. I have a certain sense of balance and how things ought to be from a World Building sense. I think regardless of level, a character who is just idling for a bit, maybe gets into a spat with hobgoblins or something, might gain *tens or hundreds* of experience points during down time. But *never thousands*! That's what adventuring is for!
This is bad game design, bad world building.
When I last did the recruit someone, kick them out, re-recruit tango a year or so ago the EE game was at the same build (2.6.6). I did have NPC Project running. And CDTweaks with about the same options installed. But Jaheira and Khalid were re-recruited at 2nd level and they had to *earn* their lagging experience.
Anyone have any thoughts on what changed? What mod or setting? Or what I might have done to cause this?
As I indicated, this seems like a cheat to me, I *don't like it*!
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Comments
I avoid that component for the very same reasons you mentioned.
I'll need to remember in the future, when using this feature, dismissed characters must stay dismissed!
Thank you much Dyonis. You answered my question exactly.
On that note though, is there a safe way to remove mods or single components without messing up your entire install? There are some mods that I now wish I didn't have but they are so far down the list that I would have to manually uninstall dozens if not hundreds of mods to get to them. Uninstalling them directly is no option because then Weidu does it's thing, uninstalling and reinstalling every mod that came after and that usually leaves an unplayable dysfunctional mess...
I recently did the simplest sort of fix on an IWD run, I had forgotten the "Dual into Kit" mod breaks Wizard type spellcaster creation (I think not in BG, just IWD!) and made the mistake of installing before I'd created my party. Fortunately, I'd installed it last, so simple enough to uninstall, create my party, then put it back on. And that's about the only success I've ever had with such things!
If it's in the middle of a run, just don't. Many of the game's resources become incorporated into the save, so installing or uninstalling mods leaves you with a patchwork of resources from different mod states. The results are hard to predict and usually undesirable. Only a few mods with particularly light touches are safe for mid-run changes.
Honestly, I like that it encourages people to experiment with some of the less popular NPCs.
I think (can’t say for sure since I don’t use this component) that it bumps up the XP cap for NPCs when they join. That would make sense, since that’s a big factor in deciding who’s worth recruiting.
For context:
- In vanilla BG1, the highest joining XP is about 32,000.
- In SoA, it goes up to 1.25 million.
- And in ToB, every joining NPC comes in with 2.5 million XP.
That might sound like a lot—especially if you last saw them at around 100k XP—but by that stage your main party’s probably way past that anyway. If you’ve already done Watcher’s Keep in SoA, would you really consider picking up Aerie in ToB?In the end, though, the game repeatedly pushes everyone’s XP up to match the protagonist’s progress—mod or no mod.
You can either accept that as part of the system, refuse to let anyone leave and come back stronger (sorry, Imoen), or micromanage everyone’s XP through the console.
There are other XP oddities that bug me more, honestly. Like how you can sometimes recruit Aerie (a total beginner) at a higher level than Keldorn, who’s supposed to be a legendary veteran. Or how in BG1, seasoned agents trusted by major organizations to uncover a massive conspiracy are somehow… level 1 or 2. (Okay, that’s the opposite problem—too little XP.)
And then there’s the general absurdity that a party made up of both old pros and total rookies can wander around Faerûn for a few months and end up as demigods.
Yes, I realize a CRPG is sort of a whole different thing. If I didn't realize that I think I'd struggle with enjoying the game.
But what brought up my question, my point, was there is a change of behavior I didn't like. When I did this with Khalid and Jaheira a year or two ago, I kicked them out at 2nd level. When I re-recruited them, my core party was 6th level or so (it was when we were heading to Cloakwood, so it was at the same place in the story). And yet Khalid and Jaheira were still 2nd level like I left them. They did catch up fairly quickly. That's a consequence of the way the AD&D experience tables are scaled. And that makes sense to me. Especially since they were removed and recruited at FAI. They gained no experience for chilling at the Inn for a few weeks.
But now Minsc did the same thing, and he jumps from 3rd to 6th level. (Yes, just like Imoen does that when she's abducted in BG2. I don't like that either!).
I'm satisfied to have found why its happening, and I can avoid it in the future.