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I have been doing just fine without them with my panther and dire boar (am a wizard) and they take away experience from me, so do I really need them? Also, does using familiars and/or summoned creatures reduce the experience I get from killing opponents? Is it feasible to go without a henchman the whole game? If not I want to pick up one now to level him up. DO they stay with you the whole game? Thanks.

No - you certainly do not need a henchmen.
I've often soloed much of the games, although in SoU and HotU there is a henchman I always play with, because I find him funny.
However, henchmen (in NwN) has quests that yield nice items as rewards. But you don't need them to travel with you for a prolonged periode of time. You can let them join your party, talk with them, then kick them out and continue adventuring withouth any hard feelings from them at all.

The henchmen levels up as you level up. This means that if you have leveled 5 times since last speaking to a henchmen - you can let him team up with you and ask him to level up. The do not gain XP in the manner you do, but are solely depending on your level.

The henchmen are availble throughout most of the game. THere is a part of chapter 2 where they aren't availble unless you take them with you (which means that in effect only one can join you in that section) and also for the chapter 4 where there is a part where they can't join you. I'm not terrible sure if they can join you in chapter 4 at all, unless you bring them with you from chapter 3.


Yes - both familiar and summons, as well as henchmen reduces the XP you gain per monster.

I hope this helps a little

Thanks, that helped a lot.

Oooooo thats why my druid had such a problem with gaining levels, thats kinda.....well bad towards classes who summon.

No you dont need to use a henchman, but theres a lot of bonuses for that, including the cool items they give you, and the experiance loss with a henchman alone is minimal.

[QUOTE=Volk]Oooooo thats why my druid had such a problem with gaining levels, thats kinda.....well bad towards classes who summon.

No you dont need to use a henchman, but theres a lot of bonuses for that, including the cool items they give you, and the experiance loss with a henchman alone is minimal.[/QUOTE]

Well - you don't need to travel with the henchmen to get his/her questrewards.
Simply pick them up occasionally and talk to them, and then drop them afterwards.

As for exp-loss, I've only done some superficial calculations (nothing to complex, but simply keeping an eye on rewards in the game), but so far it seems that for each extra "element" (henchmen, summon, familiar, companion etc) you have in your "group" the game treats you as if you are 1 level higher then you really are, in terms of giving out XP.

For instance, if you are level 3 and you solo get 100 EXP from a monster. Then by adding a henchmen the game will give you exp as if you were level 4. Add a summon and the game will give you exp as if you were level 5.

This is not a problem later in the game, where the exp reward difference between level 14 and 15, but it can slow your leveling in the ealier levels where there is a relative larger difference between the exp rewards of a level 3 and level 4.

You don't need a henchmen, although I personally always use henchmen in SoU and HotU. My usage in the original NwN is rather limited because of the easiness of the game (with the right equipment ) and the rather boring henchmen.

i hate to say it.. but if you like to roleplay (like me), but don't think your familiar should count against your experience, you can use the cheat code and add the experience lost back in (or as much as you want). i won't post it here, it's not that hard to find if u want to do this.

don't let loss of xp keep you from having fun with your familiar or henchman!