XP - Fair?

[Daniel]

I know the Xp earned for slaying enemies changes depending on your characters level, but there were still points in the game where I thought the Xp gained was unfair. I mean for killing the games first crystal Golem, I earned 4100XP so ok yes its one of the tougher types of enemies, but I would hardly call it a challenge. The big dragon in chult however earned me only 2100XP and I considered this the most difficult battle in the entire game, even compaired to the holy avenger and the Isair and madae battles. I felt a bit dissapointed at at the meager xp reward. Anyone else feel the same way as me?

P.S A quick question about the chult portal guardian, when I beat it, it said somthing about my characters feeling more resiliant to acid and venom, but on inspecting my character sheets no one had gained any resistances, was I supposed to or not?

[Luvian]

The xp you get when killing a monster depend on your level. A level 1 character killing a troll might get 10000 xp for it. a level 10 might get 10 xp or so.

You should have gained a few more hit points and resistance to acid.

[Imrahil]

I tend to agree with you on the "relative XP" awards. It's one of the big downsides of the game. My take has always been... Monster X should ALWAYS be worth XP Y. If Monster X is no challenge to you, then XP Y should be of little benefit. If Monster X is a big time challenge, then XP Y is a big reward, where X & Y are always constant.

So, if you're 5th level, earning 10,000 XP for a monster is pretty significant, but if you're 15th level, the same monster for 10,000 XP isn't that exciting. This relative XP idea is a significant, though not overwhelming, detractor from the game, IMO.

- Imrahil

[Luvian]

In pen and paper, the relative xp thing work fine, your Dm won't make you fight monsters that give little or no xp, he'll just give you monster for wich you can get 90-100% of the xp.

But the computer does not do that, sadly. If they did, we would hit the cap in one regular game with a party of 6, so I guess they wanted to restrict the xp we are getting, but that's stupid.

Someone could do a MOD that would make monster give a fixed number of xp, if that's possible.

[Magness]

There's also the problem that battles against monsters that are individually not terrily tough but in groups are tougher, the XP is still assigned relative to the death of each individual monster.

Take a party of a dozen orcs. Individually, each are not terribly difficult. But make that dozen orcs a party of, say, 2 wizards, 2 clerics, and 8 fighters using decent class appropriate scripts, and you have a much more challenging battle ahead of you that the XP of those 12 individuals does not account for.

Simply put, the whole (in terms of XP) should be greater than sum of the individual parts. Furthermore, this issue is exacerbated by the use of "relative XP".

I realize that this is almost certainly an engine related issue.

[9_1_6]

Originally posted by Imrahil: I tend to agree with you on the "relative XP" awards. It's one of the big downsides of the game. My take has always been... Monster X should ALWAYS be worth XP Y. If Monster X is no challenge to you, then XP Y should be of little benefit. If Monster X is a big time challenge, then XP Y is a big reward, where X & Y are always constant. So, if you're 5th level, earning 10,000 XP for a monster is pretty significant, but if you're 15th level, the same monster for 10,000 XP isn't that exciting. This relative XP idea is a significant, though not overwhelming, detractor from the game, IMO. - Imrahil

I agree... it was like that in BG and that was good.. but now, I fell like I sometimes don't get rewarded enough for my efforts!

[Micah Foehammer]

IMO, the Challenge rating XP system is both fair and reasonable. It's supposed to represent how much difficulty your party encounters in overcoming certain obstacles. E.g. A 6 strong party of 10th level adventurers should not get the same xp for clearing a stronghold full of gnolls as a group of 6 5th level adventurers - the lower level group is facing a relatively tougher challenge and should be awarded higher xp as a result. It makes sense to me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Ar-Cunin]

Here is a mod (part of the ease-of-use one) that insures that you always get some (but not a lot) of xp for killing an enemy (IIRC half of normal value)

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~weimer/bgate/iwd2.html

[Daniel]

Originally posted by Micah Foehammer: It's supposed to represent how much difficulty your party encounters in overcoming certain obstacles.

Its supposed to yes, but I don't think it accomplishes it that well. As I stated above 4100XP for a relatively easy enemy as opposed to 2100XP for an enemy that took me at least a dozen reloads. I know by the time I got up to the dragon that my level was much higher than what it was when I fought the golem, but the dragon is also heck of a lot tougher and harder to beat and so IMO the dragon should still have fetched the higher XP value.

Don't get me wrong I think the new XP system is a great Idea, but in my opinion I just don't think they have implemented it as well as they could have, with a bit more work, it could have been so much better.

[Imrahil]

Magness & Luvian both have excellent points (which I wish I'd thought to include in my first response, but will echo here [img]smile.gif[/img] ). The fact that you would get 0 XP for defeating a horde of goblins (given the game engine, even if it were 10,000 goblin archers vs. your party, still... 0 XP) just doesn't work for a CRPG. The computer should not decide what is a relative challenge to your party. Only a human DM could decide that. Which is why XP should be constant in a CRPG, but would work as a relative value in a P&P game.

When I used to DM, I would tend to wait til the end of the adventure, once I had seen how much of a challenge it was, then assign a group XP award, with little bonuses for particular characters (admittedly, this helped in that I didn't have to add up... ok, 10+150+220+1000+18+18+18+18+230+... you get the idea). This always went over well - my group knew as well I as I did if they'd had an easy time of it, & rarely complained (& even if they did, sometimes they'd persuade me that I needed to give more, sometimes not). A computer isn't capable of those same judgments, which is why XP awards should be constant in a CRPG. IMO, of course... [img]smile.gif[/img]

- Imrahil