Experience Penalties versus EXP Gain

[Cadfan17]

Alright, dumb question.

 

Does the lowered exp for monsters below your level take into account characters who's level is artificially lowered by lots of special abilities and racial penalties?

[Student of Trinity]

I don't know, but it's an interesting question. Does the level differential factor really just go by level? Or does it try to go by total party power, which is higher than level for characters with good traits, and lower for characters with bad traits? I think the latter is what it ideally should do, and easily could do with a little arithmetic.

[Men are from Slars]

There has been some debate about the exact mechanisms at work here. The short, practical answer is that a party full of standard humans will only have a handful of levels (= a handful of thousand XP) beyond a party full of divinely touched demihumans at the end of the game. For most of the game the highly advantaged party will be 1-3 levels behind.

[John S]

EDIT: Late

[Evnissyen]

I'm sorry, but that last post intrigues me far more than the original question. I could spend hours pondering the possible meanings behind it.

 

(Really. I like it.)

 

But as for levels vs. exp.: I've always thought that it was by level that experience gain is determined, which is why, I thought, a small roster who gains levels quickly soon finds themselves (or his/her self) going through very long periods without gaining level. The game assumes you're far more powerful than the monsters.

 

I guess it seems to me that if the game took into account the power of the total party: then that would be more beneficial to singletons and thus he/she wouldn't have to spend long periods, after the first 7 or 8 levels, without a level gain simply because they're still in Chapter 1, or whatever? (Haven't played an Avernum singleton yet, so I don't know yet how quickly a singleton's levels are gained in the beginning, not calculating in the trait penalties.)

 

...Hmm... . It's a little too late at night for thinking these things through, mathematically, but perhaps it's worth thinking over.

[Randomizer]

After complaints about level maximums in the earlier Avernum games and the experience plateaus of Avernum 4, the experience was reworked to take into account smaller parties. A singleton will have roughly twice the levels of a party of 4 with the same penalties. Figure level 6 to 8 for the demo with a normal 4 character party and 13 to 16 for a singleton.

 

Going up faster means that experience from monsters drops quickly. Quest experience becomes important and it tied to the expected party level to do that quest. Avernum 4 had stretches where a singleton wouldn't go up until the next town and its quests.

[Men are from Slars]

I never finished my singleton game, but I'm fairly sure that "roughly twice the level" is true at the very beginning, but then it starts to decay. Otherwise we would expect reports of level 60 singletons, right? I don't remember hearing of any above 40 or so, though I could be getting my games mixed up.

[Randomizer]

SoT finished at 51 for human divine touch natural mage.

Bryce finished at 45 with a slith divine touch natural mage, but missed a few areas.

 

Avernum 4 was the mid 40s because of the XP decreases. Most of the earlier games were about that point too.

[Grimm]

I'm pretty sure someone said that the experience you gain is reletive to the highest level present in your party. So a Level 10 singleton-no-trait-human will get the same as 4 level 10 no-trait-humans. Thats part of the reason singletons got so hard to play with in avernum 4 and 5.

 

I think this was said in Synergy's Singleton Playthrough post in the avernum 4 boards.

 

So that means that unless your playing singleton, your character with no traits (if you have one) will define how much experience you get.

[Men are from Slars]

Various things have been said about whether it's the highest level or not. Some of them have turned out to be wrong -- I know I made one or two disproved statements. But I don't know that we ever figured out for sure how it works.

[johnson]

oh i dont like that

 

It would make more sense if the exp each character gets is based on their level

[Alorael at Large]

Quote:

Originally written by Grimm:
I'm pretty sure someone said that the experience you gain is reletive to the highest level present in your party. So a Level 10 singleton-no-trait-human will get the same as 4 level 10 no-trait-humans. Thats part of the reason singletons got so hard to play with in avernum 4 and 5.

A singleton still doesn't divide experience among four party members, so it will have a higher level than an equivalent four person party. The problem is the dropoff in experience gained as you hit higher levels: the singleton quickly stops getting experience in areas where a larger party trailing by a level or three can still level up.

—Alorael, who wonders why it's so much more common to reduce experience gains than to just make experience for levels increase at a rate much higher than linear. If level 1 to 2 takes 5,000 experience and 11 to 12 requires 500,000,000, no one will grind rats even if it's technically possible to do.

[Men are from Slars]

I don't think it's actually more common. Ultima used that system, but most of the games that borrowed from Ultima used the standard D&D system you describe. Exile was one of the few games that did inherit it from Ultima 3.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Randomizer:
SoT finished at 51 for human divine touch natural mage.
Bryce finished at 45 with a slith divine touch natural mage, but missed a few areas.

Just for the record: Bryce heroically completed the game with a singleton on Torment, while I just strolled through on Normal, and with Lores edited up to the sky. So the fact that he missed a few areas is understandable.

[Randomizer]

Bryce went through on hard.

 

I'm going through on torment and I'm grinding through the Azure Gallery. Stupid AP draining slimes at Shafrir's Tower are making it hard to get inside. I think I figured it out.

 

Some areas are surprisingly easy as a singleton. I got the Howling Depths unstable mass without it ever splitting. The Lake of Trials west test is too hard right now because it's based on total damage between stone demon head nods. I'm not even close to wanting to burn up invulnerability elixirs to do the center island test.

[Men are from Slars]

Hey Random - care to give an update on your build, some of the relevant stats, and how enjoyable/frustrating it is? I am debating whether or not to pick up my own Torment singleton again.