of what consequenz is a level adjustment (or effective character level for that matter)? does a lvl 1 drow gain less experience from defeating a lvl 1 foe for example? Or does defeating a lvl 1 drow yield as much exp as defeating a lvl 3 character? sorry for asking but so far i find these formulations a bit confusing
- You've got the basic idea. When calculating experience points from an encounter, a Drow character will be treated as if he or she were two character levels higher than actual for the purposes of the calculation. This should normally result in less XP being awarded than to a character with no level adjustment. As far as I know, this should NOT affect the amount of XP awarded for quests, in contrast to a multiclass penalty which does affect all sources of XP. Faldred 05:26, 28 September 2006 (PDT)
thx it wont affect the lvlcap however? i mean a lvl 20 drow could be a lot stronger than a normal lvl 20 character although it might take longer ...
With a lvl cap of 20, a drow wont be able to actually reach lvl20, though he will be able to reach a lvl20 equivalent (i.e. 20 lvls = drow level adjustment + class levels) . --Defunc7 09:07, 30 September 2006 (PDT)
- I don't think that's correct. The devs I think said something to the effect that level-adjusted races can still reach level 20. Now, whether there's enough experience "available" in the OC to reach level 20 is another question. Faldred 07:30, 1 October 2006 (PDT)
Well i thought you would have to re-import your character anyway to reach lvl 20. I would feel kinda awkward being at the lvlcap before the end since it would somehow reap less reward than the rest of your adventure. On the other hand it could be disturbing not to be able to reach lvl20 at all when you have a race with leveladjustment since some classes get their most powerful abilities then. Either way this will be tough to balance. I mean afaik the rulebook has no real cap and thus this kind of balancing seems sufficient ... with a cap however ... well we shall see. Though magic resist might be awfully powerful early on it might lose usefulness in the end when you have equippment with it anyway and it doesnt stack for example. I just hope that in the game this will all be self explanatory with the help of tooltips or whatever.
The way the game handles ECL, is it takes your ECL in levels to show the required xp for gaining the next level. You can still hit the 20th level cap provided you can find enough xp (this was immediately prior to the final battle in the OC for my 1 ECL PC). For instance: A drow with 2 ECL will be first level while the rest of his party levels up to third. When the rest of the party reaches fourth level, he will gain his second level and require an amount of xp to gain third level equal to what a normal character would need for fifth. With the way party XP works in the OC, this means that if you select an ECL race, you'll be that many levels behind the rest of your party until everyone starts hitting the 20th level cap. I have no idea how it handles your level when determining CR with ECL.
Is there an offsetting positive side-effect from ECL? In campaign settings, the ECL PC is encountering foes at a lower level than a non-ECL character, due to the level adjustment. If the ECL PC is lower level, then it should earn more XP from each battle than would the non-ECL PC. Over time this leads to faster XP accrual and a "catching up" effect, not in comparison to his/her companions, but in comparison to another PC. Or am I missing something? 71.38.151.217 06:45, December 3, 2009 (UTC)Corvus
D&D -- classes, characters and how leveling works[]
I think you need to start using the right terminology. A 1st level drow doesn't make sense. It's either a 1st level drow fighter, barbarian, cleric, wizard or some thing else. The point is that in D&D a character has classes, which have levels but a character has it's own levels as well, which may come from for example, the race or some other form of template. Thus a 1st level drow fighter is a 3rd level character (2 for being a drow and 1 for being a 1st level fighter). A 1st level fighter human on the other hand would be a level 1 character (1 for being a first level fighter and none for being human). Since the experience you need to level is based on total charcter level, and not class level, that would mean said drow would need the same amount of experience to reach character level 4 as a 3rd level human. The drow would also gain the same amount of experience for overcomming the same challenges as a 3rd level human would. Also the level caps in both Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 are character level caps, not class level caps -- you could look at as an experience cap if that makes it clearer. This is not true for nwn2.