Making a party member catch up in XP?

Comments

• jmerry Member Posts: 3,829

  February 2021

  The standard NPCs - all of the original BG2 NPCs, plus the Beamdog additions - get the same joining XP triggers. The thresholds are 125K, 250K, 500K, 750K, 1000K, and 1250K. Or, for BGEE, 2K, 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K.
  This is a one-time trigger; while you can defer it if the character starts in the same XP range as the protagonist, you only get the gain once. Kicking Keldorn out will only mean he falls further behind, now that he's gained experience once.
  
  Where is it in the game files? It's in the characters' .bcs script files, at the end. When they join, if player 1 is past a threshold and the NPC isn't, that NPC gains experience up to that threshold. In the case of dual-classed characters, the full experience amount goes to their second class; for example, if Anomen (Fighter 7-Cleric) joins and your protagonist is at the 500K mark, he gets 500K XP as a cleric in addition to his 64K as a fighter, and can immediately level up to cleric level 10 (450K XP).
  
  You can tweak your party composition to favor some characters over others in gaining XP, but there are very few ways to give experience to a companion without giving the protagonist at least as much - just a few triggers in personal quests. Honestly, 100K difference isn't a big deal in the long run. My most recent run had over 400K difference between the protagonist and the lowest XP companion at the end ... although that was invisible, since everyone was at the cap.

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• jsaving Member Posts: 1,083

  February 2021

  If Keldorn's relatively minor XP issue bothers you, then I would just give him the 100K XP he is missing. Not a big deal, especially since the intent of the cut-point system mentioned by @jmerry is that NPCs join with roughly the same XP you have.
  
  Alternatively, I've heard of players who watch their XP carefully and only recruit after hitting multiples of 250K. You could try that approach if you aren't comfortable modifying XP.

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• dunbar Member Posts: 1,603

  February 2021

  To be honest, 100k XP difference in a game where each party member ends up with millions of XP is not worth worrying about.

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• sarevok57 Member Posts: 5,975

  February 2021

  with the machine of lum the mad, if you dont mind taking some risk you can actually get more rewards than just the stat boosts, the portal to warp to the lower level and the mace
  
  if you put in a random combination and dont get a bad result ( which has a high chance of getting a bad result ) you will either get a potion of superior healing or 100 000xp for that character that clicked on it
  
  so my suggestion would be that once you hit the machine of lum the mad, put every single protection spell in the universe on him, do a quick save and keep reloading ( or keep trying if you dont get a truly horrid result ) until you get the 100 000xp bonus
  
  i do this with sarevok sometimes because if i do a full bg2 run he will usually be behind about 1.1 million xp, so i just have to succeed 11 times and then he catches up with the rest of the party

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