It is fair to point out that the pencil-and-paper rules let you summon creatures without incurring an XP penalty. On the other hand summons are way, way stronger in NWN than in the pencil-and-paper game because of NWN's small party size. So something needed to be done there even if the exact way BioWare did it wasn't the best answer.
Overall the changes NWN made to the ruleset heavily favor mages over other classes, and we should keep this in mind when debating things that would make them even stronger than they already are. NWN's highly generous rest rules let mages recover their spell slots almost instantly almost everywhere. NWN's highly forgiving friendly-fire rules let mages sling area-of-effect spells almost anywhere. Not to mention the hard-coded rule that lets NWN mages gain XP faster than other classes at low to mid levels, which was introduced specifically because BioWare wanted to offset the summoned-monster penalty at low to mid levels for mages.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a "rules as written" check-box for people who really want to experience 3rd edition, but it's hard to see how eliminating just one change would be a great idea, especially if it makes the game's strongest class even stronger.
The key differences are that the summons are different or weaker, gained at a later spell increment, and have a duration of 1 round per level.
The experience however should be 300 per equivalent encounter at level 1. 150 for a 1/2 CR encounter, 100 for a 1/3 CR encounter, 75 for a 1/4 CR encounter, 50 for a 1/6 CR encounter, 37 for a 1/8 CR encounter, and 30 for a 1/10 CR encounter. Goblins for example would normally provide 75 experience points each during the first 3 levels of a solo adventurer if you're going by table top rules instead, in 3.5 they get improved to 1/3 over 1/4 in the 3.0 version.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the normal campaigns as long as you summon your summons before you enter a new area, the engine will spawn more creatures to account for your larger party size, so it more or less corrects itself.
I've done summoner based builds through the OC and I don't recall being behind in level, if I was it was 1 at most.
Whether you expend consumable resources such as scrolls or whether you use renewable resources like feats and spells, there should be no difference. Everything a character does is the character expending resources in some way and so it is considered as part of the character in terms of rewards.
I feel like we should either penalise every class for using its class abilities or penalise none, asking wizards to take up a spell slot and then also punish them by taking away xp gain is one reason i currently hardly ever use summons.
Maybe we should penalise classes that wear heavy armour? Surely the benefit of heavy armour should out way the exp loss for you? If we're going to say giving a class a benefit should come at a cost of xp why not apply this to everyone? As the current system pushes people away from using their unique class abilities.
Comments
Overall the changes NWN made to the ruleset heavily favor mages over other classes, and we should keep this in mind when debating things that would make them even stronger than they already are. NWN's highly generous rest rules let mages recover their spell slots almost instantly almost everywhere. NWN's highly forgiving friendly-fire rules let mages sling area-of-effect spells almost anywhere. Not to mention the hard-coded rule that lets NWN mages gain XP faster than other classes at low to mid levels, which was introduced specifically because BioWare wanted to offset the summoned-monster penalty at low to mid levels for mages.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a "rules as written" check-box for people who really want to experience 3rd edition, but it's hard to see how eliminating just one change would be a great idea, especially if it makes the game's strongest class even stronger.
The experience however should be 300 per equivalent encounter at level 1. 150 for a 1/2 CR encounter, 100 for a 1/3 CR encounter, 75 for a 1/4 CR encounter, 50 for a 1/6 CR encounter, 37 for a 1/8 CR encounter, and 30 for a 1/10 CR encounter. Goblins for example would normally provide 75 experience points each during the first 3 levels of a solo adventurer if you're going by table top rules instead, in 3.5 they get improved to 1/3 over 1/4 in the 3.0 version.
I've done summoner based builds through the OC and I don't recall being behind in level, if I was it was 1 at most.
Maybe we should penalise classes that wear heavy armour? Surely the benefit of heavy armour should out way the exp loss for you? If we're going to say giving a class a benefit should come at a cost of xp why not apply this to everyone? As the current system pushes people away from using their unique class abilities.