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I'm trying to play through the game with only two characters, and I had some questions. So far in the game, both of my characters are Aasimar, one is Fighter3/Wizard4, the other is Thief3/Cleric4 and both just gained a level that I haven't applied yet. The reason I took Aasimar was to get the extra stat points, which I need a lot of when I only have two characters. It didn't occur to me when I created the party to make a Pal/Sorc instead of a Fighter/Wizard, and I'm not going to start over just to change that. I did have just a couple of questions about exp penalties, though. I had originally intended to go Fighter4/Wizard26 and Thief3/Cleric27 but I'm not sure anymore

First of all, if I added fighter levels to the Thief/Cleric right now up to level 4, then continued to add cleric levels, would the exp penalty be 20% or 40%? And if I added 2 Paladin levels instead, then added cleric levels, would it still be 20%, or would it be 0% then?

Second, if I do decide to add either the fighter or paladin levels to the thief/cleric, would it be a better idea to do it now, or later once I have all the cleric levels I want? I would save a bit on exp by taking them now (assuming that the penalty is 20% in both situations) and I would get the bonuses of those levels, but do I need the cleric spells more than I need the fighter or paladin levels?

Finally, with these builds, and with the 20% penalty kicking in, how far into the game will I be before I get them both to level 30? And will I be able to get that far without tons of reloads anyway?

Thanks for the help

Hi Melondar.

First of all, if I added fighter levels to the Thief/Cleric right now up to level 4, then continued to add cleric levels, would the exp penalty be 20% or 40%? And if I added 2 Paladin levels instead, then added cleric levels, would it still be 20%, or would it be 0% then?

An Aasimar's favoured class is Paladin so that is ignored under the XP penalties. An Aasimar T/C/F xp penalty would be 40% unless the levels in those classes are only one apart. So a Level 10 Thief/ Level 9 Cleric would get no penalty, but if you add one fighter level you will get a 20% penalty due to the gap.
Paladin levels are ignored so it wouldn't matter how far the levels are apart.

Second, if I do decide to add either the fighter or paladin levels to the thief/cleric, would it be a better idea to do it now, or later once I have all the cleric levels I want? I would save a bit on exp by taking them now (assuming that the penalty is 20% in both situations) and I would get the bonuses of those levels, but do I need the cleric spells more than I need the fighter or paladin levels?

I would choose to keep either Fighter or Paladin, the cleric role negates the bonus of Paladin spells.
One good option would be to take high levels in T/C and take Paladin (without any penalties) later in the game, but I would say this depends on your requirements. If you need a tougher melee character, it would probably be worth going for a fighter early on and bringing it closer to your T/C levels.

If you only have 2 characters the early Fighter levels will probably come in more use.

Good luck, Melondar .

Thanks for your reply, but I don't think you understood my first question. I understand how the penalties work in theory, but I was asking about those specific examples, because they are somewhat ambiguous. In the case of the CX/F4/T3, would the penalty be 40% because I have 2 classes which are more than 1 level away from my highest class, or only 20% because those two classes are also within one level of each-other? And in the case of the CX/T3/P2, would the penalty be 20% because the cleric and thief levels are more than 1 level apart, or 0% because the Thief level is ignored due to being 1 level away from the paladin level and the paladin level is ignored because it is a favored class?

With Aasimar and CX/T3/P2 you get, according to the manual but not proven in the game, a 20% penalty as the paladin class is to be ignored and the cleric and the thief levels differ by more than one level.

The question if the penalty for a CX/F4/T3 Aasimar is 20% or 40% is tricky. Most of the time, the penalty would be 40% as your level as cleric differs by more than 1 from your levels as fighter or thief. This matches an example in the manual where a gnome with Illusionist2/T9/F1/C1 gets a 40% penalty. Only if your level as cleric is 3 or 4, your penalty should be 0%. If it is 2 or 5 it should be 20%. If your level is 1 or 6 or greater the 40% penalty applies.

I think in both cases the penalty would be 20% as only one class is apart from the others.
If you had an arrangement such as a Level 6/Level 4/Level 2 (in any classes) you would normally get a 40% penalty.

Unless you're character is human (highest class ignored) or one class is your character's favoured. In both these cases the XP penalty for that class would be ignored.

I hope that makes sense. Doesn't make much sense to me...

[QUOTE=Ravager]I think in both cases the penalty would be 20% as only one class is apart from the others.
If you had an arrangement such as a Level 6/Level 4/Level 2 (in any classes) you would normally get a 40% penalty.

Unless you're character is human (highest class ignored) or one class is your character's favoured. In both these cases the XP penalty for that class would be ignored.

I hope that makes sense. Doesn't make much sense to me... [/QUOTE]

nope, Raedwulf got it right.

the xp penalty checks highest non favored class vs all other non favored classes - the fact that both secondary classes are close doesn't matter. (humans and half elves check the 2nd highest level class vs the 3rd and beyond classes)

there will be some time where the penalty is reduced for a mix of 3 non favored classes when all three are around the same level.

ie rog 3, ftr 4, cleric 3&4. beyond that the cleric level will check off vs both the rogue and ftr levels.

the moral of the story is:

go with pally / sorc aasimar (or monk / pally / sorc human) (or stick w/ the ftr / wizard and go with a wizard fave race) however you're still limited to scrolls so i'd stick w/ sorcs in this kind of party.

and a use a drow female or human (or half elf) for your cleric mix.

and you reduce the multi penalty to zero, w/o compromising much of your initial concept - from a mechanics perspective, obviously the roles change a bit. .

alternately one could choose any of the rogue faves (most halflings & tieflings) and go with a rogue / cleric mix.

I dont know if this is still relevant, but since the orignal question has already been answered, Id like to add that you dont have to "start over", if you want to use different characters in you party.
Just click on the "group-button" and create a new char, than delete the old afterwards.


Ive been doing this sometimes, because frankly, Ive played through this game already almost twice and Im really not looking forward to force myself through some of the, in my opinion, very tedious locations for the n-th time.
So, if my party is in the ice temple and I realise that character X isnt really to my liking (for whatever reasons), Ill just add a new char, give her the equipment of the old (if appropriate) and use the cheat console (*gasp*) to set her experience points to equal those of the old char (I round them down to give her slightly fewer Xp, as to "penalize" the newcomer.)

Yes, I know some people will probably now scream "cheater!" at me. *shrugs*
In my opinion, it doesnt hurt anybody and makes the game more fun to me.
Last time I checked, thats what Im still playing games for.