Your experience

This is a thread in which to discuss one aspect of game play here within Dohral:

Experience.

Obviously the module(s) is(are) in Beta testing so things are being tweaked and adjusted often. One thing I've noticed not much discussion about is experience. If you're not a fighter-type, you really don't see a whole lot of experience.

Too slow or too fast a leveling curve can drive people away from a server very fast. People like to feel accomplished when they see their character has gained a level and eventually, for most characters they get a fair amount of their experience from adventuring.

There are alternate ways to get experience, crafting, finding books, and more. But these are very small amounts, and are all class-based.

Fighter-types currently get 100% of experience from combat gains, while non-fighter types get 15%. What this amounts to is essentially a standstill for non-fighter class characters if they choose to go fight a bit.

For example, I made a druid who was level 4 fresh out of Noob U. She went for a stroll through some fresh trog/goblin infested lands and met her end many times. Unfortunately though, for all the tiny bodies who painted the grass with their blood a very small yield of experience was gained. Even fighting level appropriate foes, or a bit higher she made very little gain in terms of experience.

Please post your own thoughts and experience with these systems, so the module can have some more feedback on the issue.

Personally I don't see a really good reason for why experience should be lower for non-fighter chars. You gain experience for the actual kill of a monster, not for the swinging of your sword, thus the experience you gain has nothing to do with actually practicing your weapon. In all fairness if a wizard gains less for the killing blow, then so should a fighter. o.O'

I just put together some notes on how i would change leveling and experience on AR. If i'm unclear about anything, or if i left holes in the information (i think i may have) feel free to question me.

First off, lets fix how much everyone gets. Don't worry, we'll get be removing the exp penalty later. We're going to define acceptable ranges for player level and monster CR.

Impossible: Deadly, but rewarding (100-200 exp)
Overpowering: Dangerous, but rewarding (80-140 exp)
Equal Level: Managable, but not easy (40-60)
Lower Level: Easy, but still capable of hurting (10-30)
Worthless: Boring, but practice is practice (1-10)

That puts leveling at a slower scale, but not impossible, and by setting exact numbers we dont have the "i gained 400 on this last level, but now i only get 1" problem.

The next step is to add bonus exp for damage dealt. It sounds like it could be dangerous territory, but its not if you think about it. A low level Fighter would do, lets say 8 damage a round, whereas a Wizard would do 4 (i suggest including spell damage in this list, since practice -is- practice.) And a high level fighter would do close to 100 a round (between crits, attacks per round, and whatever weapon feats) and a high level wizard would do maybe 30 (spells would make the difference, since damage is normally below 100, but metamagic can be taken to help increase damage per round. Like Quicken, Empower, Maxamize.)

As a failsafe, you can never get more exp than the creature had health. This prevents Epic characters from Blasting chickens (or anything with 2 health) with their 600 damage crits, or Maximized IGMS.

With exp set so low, theres no real reason for a penalty, wizards and sorcerers can stew in a library and read books and gain the same exp as a fighter facing equal level creatures.

Now, lets add something that the world so desperately needs. More Encounters. How about (since the extra exp is worthless if theres nothing to gain it from) Fighter classes gain a random creature/encounter for most areas (any area without a rest trigger perhaps?) Like ruffians/thugs/pickpockets in the city, or bandits along the road, animals in the wilds.
Barbarians can gain extra exp on kills done during rage, less for a short time after.
Favored Enemy can give extra exp.
Spell focuses increase spell exp from School?

One to three creatures isnt so bad on the DM, since areas are so big that often players would have to search (a fighter who wants to fight would go looking for one) for their specific spawn in the barren area, and the DM can quickly dispatch (or even turn it off via Wand of Misc) before the players can get to it, unless the DM wants it there.

I would just like to suggest that the floor for exp/creature should be at least 5, not 1.

Maybe boost that scale a bit too. For example:

• +10 500
  
• +8 400
  
• +6 300
  
• +4 250
  
• +2 100
  
• +0 50
  
• -2 40
  
• -4 30
  
• -6 20
  
• -8 10
  
• -10 5

Possibly a bonus for certain monsters (bosses, champion types, favored enemies, etc). Rather than a penalty for non-warriors, why not a bonus for warriors? Perhaps +25%.

It is much, much slower than the current scale but still allows for decent leveling rates (not snailish). For the record, the current scale allows for gaining 1-3,000+/kill.

The old scale used to allow for you to gain more exp at higher levels too so expeing never really slowed down. I suppose that is the way it works currently, even. I found a monster at level 39 (thankfully fixed now) that actually gave me 4000+ exp when I killed it. Needless to say, camping that spot made level 39-40 a breeze.