level cap and penalties

Ningengirai · Post by **Ningengirai** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 12:29 am

Acleacius wrote:Not only is total xp determined by how many quest but also how you play them.
Often times if you play some form of Good you will not get max xp, because you will often let NPCs live where mostly evil characters will not.

There are some instances in the game, though, where trying to make sure everyone stays alive gives the best XP. Example? Tavorick. You get a truckload of XP if you manage to keep him alive throughout the attack on his mansion.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:03 am

Ahh, I didn't know you could fail it. or rather I figured you would have to redo it if he died, since its part of the main story.

Ningengirai · Post by **Ningengirai** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:45 am

Hmm, no.

(spoiler -> )

Spoiler

As I understand it, there are two ways of doing that part of the quest:

- not being quick enough in saving Tavorick up in his chamber, thus finding him on the ground where, with his last dying breath, he tells you who really has the shard

- being quick enough in saving Tavorick up in his chamber, and then herding him and Ballard and his men down into the Tavorick family crypt, where you have to fight Yaggothsomething and a host of other things

I've never managed to NOT save Tavorick's life. I don't know if he can die down in the crypt or not, since that demon/devil/fiend never makes it past the door down there. Also, I don't remember how much XP exactly you received for saving Tavorick's life, but I do remember it was not a small amount and it comes with a special "XP rewarded for saving Tavorick's life!" message.

( <- spoiler )

Neverborn · Post by **Neverborn** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:08 am

Actually, the ammount of XP is NOT limited! Oh no, you say?

Indeed i say, because at certain places if you rest, you have a chance to get disturbed by some monsters looking for a fight...

My Aasimar Paladin got to L20 BEFORE the final fight by continually resting in the area right before you go to the final battle, every few rests you will be awoken by enemies, netting you around 300-400 xp each fight... At this point my Pally needed around 6K xp to get to L20, which took me about 20 mins of resting-fighting-resting-fighting-etc...

So if you have the patience, you could get even a Deep Gnome to L20 without cheating...

Who Cares · Post by **Who Cares** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:26 am

Magrus wrote:Wrong, the game was made with a set amount of XP in it. As stated above, the only way to get past a certain amount of XP is to cheat, hence, both are limited in the game. Now, if there were random encounters and a respawn function, this would be a different story, but there isn't either of those.

This is not true, the amount of XP you get from encounters is level based varying between a min of 4XP and a max of 600XP depending on your level versus the level of the mob you just killed.
Also it is possible to lose XP due to encounters where you have allies not in your group whacking mobs. For example the Act 1, the attack on West Harbor. I've in all my different attempts (seeing I suffer from restartitis

) I've varied between more then enough XP to reach third level (6000+) or barely enough to get to 5500.
Like Khelgar says "Hey those are our Orcs."

That said the XP cap ingame is enough to get a Svirfneblin to level 20. I might be able to get there with a dirty trick exploiting how the game awards XP without having to resort to console commands. Offcourse to test that I'm going to have to use the console commands on a group past the tutorial

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 5:58 pm

I know how the XP works for the game system. The level of characters are added in according to a formula based on the group, which the game does not calculate properly for one. Secondly, the enemies are calculated in a manner based on Challenge Rating, or CR. Depending on the Effective Party Level opposed to the CR of the enemies encountered, it affects your XP. All of that is really irrevelant to the point being made.

Why? The game is made to have a set amount of XP in it, as there are no random encounters. At least any which I have seen. Which was my point. If you proceed as the designers planned you to, you will level in a certain manner. Which, will produce a set amount of XP based on your level. Regardless of how much you get based on avoiding various quests or NPC's stealing your XP by killing others, or how you deal with others and quest XP there is a set max XP you can get in the regular campaign. If you were to somehow miraculously kill all of the enemies you encounter before any NPC's could take any from you, do all of the quests available and in the "best" way possible to get the most XP there would still be a limit to XP earned for you.

The actual amount will change based on your levels at the time of the encounters. However, and this won't make sense to those who do not know how the Effective Party Level to Encounter level thing works, the encounters are set. Max XP is therefore set. It is just a variable of your party level which effects the net XP earned. The gross XP available will never change however. Not unless you edit files or use cheats.

Using exploits is the same as cheating btw. It is just a different approach than using the console. That, isn't a factor in saying that the game allows you to get more XP. That is abusing a programming error in order to get something you weren't supposed to get in the first place.

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:51 am

Interesting. Is that why, when I take one char through Tutorial she will get to level 3, almost lvl4, but another will only get to level 2, almost lvl3? And I'm not talking about races with level penelties here, but ordinary-level races.
I would have thought ordinarily-leveling races would all gain the same XP in the Tutorial, and I have found it puzzling.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:01 am

Fljotsdale wrote:Interesting. Is that why, when I take one char through Tutorial she will get to level 3, almost lvl4, but another will only get to level 2, almost lvl3? And I'm not talking about races with level penelties here, but ordinary-level races.
I would have thought ordinarily-leveling races would all gain the same XP in the Tutorial, and I have found it puzzling.

In NwN there was a differentiation of classes as well on XP gain, where some type of enemies yielded more to one type of class ... for instance I think fighters would gain less XP from killing fighter enemies but more from magical types etc and vice versa with rogues in between.
It is possible that differentiation is also in effect in NwN2 but I've not bothered to look much at it myself yet. Perhaps if I play the game through again then I'll pay more attention to XP gain.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Wed Dec 13, 2006 9:11 am

That is a part of the CR system. For example, if you play through an area with a lot of traps without a rogue in your party who is capable of dealing with the traps you should gain more XP. If you run through an area with a ton of enemies without a cleric or someone in your party that can heal you, you should gain more XP as well. If you go through an area with wizards but without one of your own to counter the enemy casters spells it will affect your XP as well. A well set up string of such encounters should have things relatively balanced in order to give every group a similar number of XP, but that cannot really be guaranteed every time.

I didn't think they would bother with this to be honest, it is complex, but perhaps they did.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:00 pm

Why are Bioware/Obsidian so obsessed with level caps? I was already starting to have doubts about this game, this thread has almost spelled it's death knell for me. Hopefully it wont take too long for someone to come up with an XP/Level cap remover.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:25 pm

galraen wrote:Why are Bioware/Obsidian so obsessed with level caps? I was already starting to have doubts about this game, this thread has almost spelled it's death knell for me. Hopefully it wont take too long for someone to come up with an XP/Level cap remover.

You don't make any sense. ALL games that have a level based system have level caps. Every single game. There is always a maximum level to be attained. Second of all, you would need to make an entirely new game within the toolset or add to the original campaign in order to make use of the game without a level cap.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 3:44 pm

Magrus wrote: You don't make any sense. ALL games that have a level based system have level caps. Every single game. There is always a maximum level to be attained. Second of all, you would need to make an entirely new game within the toolset or add to the original campaign in order to make use of the game without a level cap.

There have been games without level caps, or at least without level caps that are so low that yu can hit them before getting to the end of the game. In KOTOR 2 Obsidian had a cap, but at least it was so high you never reached it. Unlike KOTOR 1 and the Baldur's Gate series, but thankfully there were level cap removers for the latter. Just because a lot of software developers do it (Arcanum was another game that was bad for this) doesn't justify it IMO. Why do it, when a lot of their customers get seriously ticked off by it and it's totally unnecessary? I know for sure what my players responce (in a PnP game) would be if I told them 'that's it level cap reached I'm not giving you any more XP.', it would be short and to the point!

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 4:28 pm

galraen wrote:There have been games without level caps, or at least without level caps that are so low that yu can hit them before getting to the end of the game. In KOTOR 2 Obsidian had a cap, but at least it was so high you never reached it. Unlike KOTOR 1 and the Baldur's Gate series, but thankfully there were level cap removers for the latter. Just because a lot of software developers do it (Arcanum was another game that was bad for this) doesn't justify it IMO. Why do it, when a lot of their customers get seriously ticked off by it and it's totally unnecessary? I know for sure what my players responce (in a PnP game) would be if I told them 'that's it level cap reached I'm not giving you any more XP.', it would be short and to the point!

You're missing the point. The level cap doesn't limit you to a max level and then you have to play the game through without gaining any more XP for a while. They built the game to go from levels 1-20. There is no more campaign to play with past level 20, hence they made the level cap at level 20. It isn't like there is enough game to get to level 25, and the developers decided to be sadistic and cap the levels at 20 to piss people off.

If you want a version that has a higher level cap, wait for them to sell an expansion that incorporates epic level characters. The only way to go past 20th level is to go into epic characters. To me, that makes perfect sense. Granted, I would love to get 2 games for the price of one. However, it does take time, money and effort to create a game. I know I make PnP versions of campaigns, and I know how long it takes to simply create a PnP campaign for a few levels. That's without coding, level designing, modeling and debugging on a computer.

What you are wanting is unrealistic, and would demand a lot more time and money. Which, if you had wanted a longer game, which would have allowed you to level your character say another 10 levels would have required more of everything on the developers end. You would have had to wait another 6 months to a year before release in order to get level 30 as a cap. The game would have cost $75 rather than $50 too.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 4:52 pm

Magrus wrote:You're missing the point. The level cap doesn't limit you to a max level and then you have to play the game through without gaining any more XP for a while. They built the game to go from levels 1-20. There is no more campaign to play with past level 20, hence they made the level cap at level 20. It isn't like there is enough game to get to level 25, and the developers decided to be sadistic and cap the levels at 20 to piss people off.

If you want a version that has a higher level cap, wait for them to sell an expansion that incorporates epic level characters. The only way to go past 20th level is to go into epic characters. To me, that makes perfect sense. Granted, I would love to get 2 games for the price of one. However, it does take time, money and effort to create a game. I know I make PnP versions of campaigns, and I know how long it takes to simply create a PnP campaign for a few levels. That's without coding, level designing, modeling and debugging on a computer.

What you are wanting is unrealistic, and would demand a lot more time and money. Which, if you had wanted a longer game, which would have allowed you to level your character say another 10 levels would have required more of everything on the developers end. You would have had to wait another 6 months to a year before release in order to get level 30 as a cap. The game would have cost $75 rather than $50 too.

Thanks for the responce, no point in us continuing the discussion, as I've had it with this lousy game for many other reasons, so in the end the level cap was redundant as far as I'm concerned anyway. Sorry for having wasted your time.

Sweethart Rose · Post by **Sweethart Rose** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:25 am

question leveling tiefling Rogue

I started a tiefling Rogue. When Amie and Bevil level to 1 and my tiefling Rogue didn't. So I play more. When they level 2, I leveled to 1. We have same experience points. Is this a bug or not?

swcarter · Post by **swcarter** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:28 pm

Sweethart Rose wrote:I started a tiefling Rogue. When Amie and Bevil level to 1 and my tiefling Rogue didn't. So I play more. When they level 2, I leveled to 1. We have same experience points. Is this a bug or not?

That's how it's supposed to work. Tieflings have a leveling penalty of 1, so your character will always be 1 level behind characters with "normal" races. The good news is that if you're careful, you can still get your character to level 20 by the end of the campaign.

SWC

Sonevar · Post by **Sonevar** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:40 am

Level Slides?

Not to be argumentative but I believe that an ECL (Effective Character Level) Cap of 20 is incorrect. My deep gnome Character's (+3 penalty) party has just returned to crossroad keep in act 2 yet it is only 47.6k xp behind my Drow Character's (+2 penalty) party which has just completed Elanee's quest in act 3.

I noticed early on during my approach to the ruins outside west harbor that my Drow character level 2 Racial 1 Bard 1 Fighter total 4(no multi-class penalty yet) was recieving 15% less xp than my gnome 3 Racial 1 Warlock also total 4 did for the same enemy (Drow 36 Gnome 42 for beetle).

Furthermore I noticed that if party members were incapacitated during a fight or I got far away from them after commanding them to Hold Ground I would recieve greater experience for a target of the same type that my party had fought as a whole, and yes I Did check to make sure that the target in question was still a plain orc and not an orc captain (example)

Another thing to remember is that NPCs "kill steal" in NWN2. That is to say that any kill made by an npc which is not shown as a portrait in your group (this includes main npcs who have not yet officallly joined you) you will not get credit for, thus reducing your chances at gaining xp. This is why, in any battle involving non-party npcs I pause frequently and look for the most injured targets and try to use my character or any group members with me to kill them off and get the xp before a non-party npc finishes them. When using this tactic, I noticed a significant difference in xp gained during a major battle over the time when I simply let the battle "play out" normally.