Getting six characters to level 30 in HoF: my story

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The JUPP recommends against a six-man party, partly because of the difficulty in micromanaging it, but mainly because it will supposedly gain levels too slowly compared to a four-man party. I think most people agree with the JUPP view here. A recent thread inspired me to defy that view and attempt a six-man party.

I started in HoF with two drow sorcerers and a deep gnome cleric. Those races begin the game with 5k xp.

When the party reached 35k xp (still early in Targos), I added three drow monks. Just before those monks reached 10k xp, I had them each gain a paladin level, and just before they reached 15k exp, they each added a cleric level. Then they simply squatted.

I squatted the cleric after reaching level 6. Animate Dead is decent, but it stops improving after level 9 with the patch, and then quickly become outclassed by sorcerer summons and by the enemy. If I'd wanted to make things easier on myself, I could have gone to level 13 before squatting, to gain Giant Vermin, Raise Dead, and Heal. But it would have meant slower exp gains...

While the four squatters were sitting safely underneath Invisibility Sphere, the two sorcerers were doing all the work with their summons. Because summon duration increases with caster level, they didn't squat at all until level 22.

I desquatted the cleric right *before* she had enough xp for level 22. This gained me Giant Vermin, Raise Dead, Heal, Resurrection, Mass Heal, and more Gates. She then resumed squatting.

Drow need reach level 30 at 496k xp, and deep gnomes at 528k xp, so for maximum efficiency I would need the deep gnome to advance about 30k xp beyond the rest of the party. I allowed the first sorcerer to die and stay dead long enough for the rest of the party to each gain 30k xp. Then I resurrected her and repeated the process with the second sorcerer.

Just before the two sorcerers had enough xp for level 28 (this happened during the huge battle above ground in the Horde Fortress), I desquatted them. This increased the average party level from 12 to 14, and severely reduced my xp/kill. Just before the sorcerers had enough xp for level 29, I added a Monk level to both of them.

The sorcerers were at about 490k xp with only Sherincal left alive, so I gave the first one (the diplomat) a rogue level, and the second one another monk level. Sherincal's death yielded some 70k xp, and now the everyone had enough xp to hit level 30.

The two sorcerers each added a Paladin level. The cleric added nine Monk levels. And the three Paladin/Monk/Cleric guys each added 27 sorcerer levels. So now I'm outside the Ice Temple, and the party looks like:

Sorcerer[27] / Paladin[1] / Monk[1] / Rogue[1]
Sorcerer[27] / Paladin[1] / Monk[2]
Cleric[21] / Monk[9]
Sorcerer[27] / Paladin[1] / Monk[1] / Cleric[1]
Sorcerer[27] / Paladin[1] / Monk[1] / Cleric[1]
Sorcerer[27] / Paladin[1] / Monk[1] / Cleric[1]

So, now I have no use for more exp. There is no point in killing monsters unless they yield good loot or are essential to beating the game. Same goes for doing quests. I don't know if I'm going to finish the game.

The globe says 6 days, 23 hours elapsed.

 

That is why I gave up too. My party did something similar and was level 30 just before walking up the stairs from the warrens in the horde fortress. Why bother when it will simply mean agonisingly long fights for nothing. I couldn't be bothered. Perhaps if you added the hacks on SP for level 40 it might be another story?

 

Horde Fortress? Wow, you must have squatted even more.

Anyway, the problem with adding the level 40 patch is that now that the whole party is level 30 party I'll be getting crap for xp. Quests will probably yield a few levels, but knowing that the remaining 3/4th of the game is only going to bring me up to level 33 is pretty disheartening.

I blame the game. Squatting/muling (they are the same thing really) yields WAYYY to much exp, but if you level every character immediately, your exp drops to nothing as the game continues to throw hordes of level X monsters against your level X+5 party. And, especially in HOF, those level X monsters _are_ a challenge to the party, one that deserves to be rewarded with real amounts of exp.

When I pick IWD2 back up (I've been playing a lot of HOMM2 lately) I am going to try to go through the rest of the game as fast as possible with the least amount of kills. Unfortunately, there are a lot of areas that require mass slaughter to beat, even when it would make sense to allow the party to use a stealthy approach. Example: even after you activate the four fountains in Dragon's Eye, the hydraulic doors magically stays closed until you go kill the bad guy. Stupid.

 

JT, aside from the entire question about autobalancing and XP, I think that had I been in charge of the IWD2 design, I would have prevented the entire squatting tactic, by giving each character a hidden "effective" level that related to their XP total and ignored whether or not you had actually leveled up. Such a design strategy would prevent squatting by taking away the value of doing it. Oh, you wouldn't be forced to level up in my design, but if you are being treated as being of the level that your XP total indicates, there wouldn't be any value in squatting.


I suspect that the reason that such a strategy was not employed is perhaps because in P&P, DM's may require players to level up their characters as soon as possible or reasonable within the structure of their game.


I guess that this may come down to a design philosophy issue between a strict interpretation of the raw D&D rules and a bit of a desire to have the game designers and the game engine act in the role of Dungeon Master, and enforce some reasonableness into the game play that would normally be done by a good DM.

 

crucis, I would leave the game just as it is and allow each individual player the choice of whether or not to use level squatting. clever manipulation of the game's loopholes adds permutation to the gameplay and extra playability overall. Accomplishments such as JT's should not be dismissed because of the 'cheese' tactics employed. It could be argued that the designers approve explicitly of level squatting since it is not required to level up immediately nor has immediate level advancement been required by any subsequent patch. Given that the game can be paused at any time, it's always reasonable to level up as soon as is possible (I do). I couldn't play cheese in every game, other players maybe couldn't play the game without. Still others couldn't imagine playing with cheese at all.....they're all playing the game 'appropriately'. Cheese has it's place.

 

Cheese definitely has its place. But this kind of thing makes IWD2 a worse game than it can be. I believe all JT did was very hard and tiring. And is the result is satisfactory? Sure you proved your ability, but you missed the FUN factor of he game. And I play my games for fun. Proving that I can beat the game is fun too, but still...A game where I can't level up despite the fact that I have many many enemies left to kill. Boy it is boring. The best aspect of a RPG is the developing of your character, once it stops developing, it is no fun.

But, if you play the game normally, it gets boring again as this time you don'T get satisfactory XP due to unbalanced CRatings. This is especially bad in HoF. That single yuanti nearly killed my ranger THREE times (I healed with heal three times) but then it gave NO XP! This is simply, ridiculous and unbalanced! And not very satisfactory to say the least, considering the fact that there were many yuantis to kill.

Still, re-balanced Challenge ratings make up a little for this, you still get some XP for even the easiest battles, but still...I hate this system!

Yes I must admit I took my lesson and on my second try, I didn't level up my tanks after they hit level 23 or so in HoF. I leveled up my casters as they gained more and more power quickly. One was a multi-class Silverstar/Evoker so every single level up was significant for him, as he kept gaining new spells with each level up. My casters hit level 30 around Severed Hand, I leveled up my tanks then, and my Aasimar paladin or Drow ranger had to stay level 28 or such forever since we started to gain too few XP instantly.

 

The leveling system is not perfect as illustrated by your yaun ti experience, however it is a very good system IMO. I find that I am pleased with the leveling more often than I am dissapointed by it. Could designers create a perfect balancing system?....Maybe. Could they create one that EVERYONE would be happy with?.....hell no, never.

You can't definitvely say that someone is missing the fun factor...whats fun to you may be boring to me or vice versa. Maybe JT had a blast level squatting, maybe he didn't, in any case it intrigued him enough to hold his attention long enough to accomplish what he set out to do. I've found the fun factor using many tactics: cheese, straight role play, hacked, one, four, and six character parties with any combination of races and classes.

I agree that the best part of rpgs is character development, but i would add that it is certainly just one enjoyable aspect of this vastly rich medium.

 

Well I think JT had fun while actually doing the thing, but now he sounds like kinda bored. He is not even halfway to the game and he is not sure if he will finish the game. He does not want to do quests or kill monsters. He is not that willing to play anymore. That was my point.

 

Crucis, I agree that squatting should have been flat out prevented. Muling should have been prevented too; my party of three level 20s shouldn't suddenly start getting good exp because I add three level 1s and stand them in the corner of the map with invisibility on. A simple way to do that would be to calculate exp separately for each character, as though he was soloing, and then divide it by the number of characters in the party. A minor flaw is that low level characters added to a party would level up at a fast clip even though they would not be contributing anything, but arguably that is a benefit. And at least the main characters wouldn't be getting crazy amounts of undeserved exp.

Another problem is that the game simply calculates an exp reward for each monster kill. IRL, the DM sets a Challenge Rating for each _group_ of monsters, and then awards exp for defeating the group. The heart of the problem is that the game throws monsters at you which it has no intention of awarding exp for. These monsters are frequently (especially in HoF) dangerous to the party and require effort to kill. But they aren't worth anything if each one of them is far enough below the party level. This does not happen IRL unless your DM is a complete moron.

Exp is supposed to be given out for overcoming challenges; if the game thinks you are so powerful that the monsters on a map are not even a minor challenge, then it should make them fall over dead when the map loads, so you can solve the puzzles and pick up the loot in peace.


Silverstar, it wasn't really that hard and tiring at all, except maybe the first day in Targos where I had to reload quite a few times because the game is tricky when your party is very very low level. After that, it was no different from running a three character party through, except I had as a bonus three extra invisible guys who could scout, babysit summons, and carry loot. I suppose keeping them away from Call Lightning and the nastier traps was a little bit of extra work.

Part of the reason I don't want to do quests or kill monsters is that most of the quests are kinda (dare I say it) lame the second time through. The rewards are kinda lame too (exception: Holy Avenger). And the monster battles are all the same after a while.


edit: the board makes me reply to multiple people in the same post

[ January 26, 2006, 13:26: Message edited by: JT ]

 

Agreed with JT, IWD2 breaks a few to many tihngs for my liking though:

First thing is how the group divides XP, in P&P (Pen&Paper or IRL/In Real Life if you prefer) you add together all crea creatures in the fight, count the XP per character, and split it down on the number of people on teh group. one of those shares is your share. Redo for every character. one level 1 and one level 10 fighter beating up an orc, level 1 would get 150xp and the level 10 would get nothing. IWD2 just makes average team level and consider XP based on that, efficiently giving that level 20 sorcerer extra xp for killing a level 1 rat as long as you have enough mules in the party. It should never have been like that, its plain wrong and has nothing to do with differences from P&P and ComputerRPG, they just did the rules faulty.

The other, the Autobalancing system. Obvouslly they noticed how most monsters have an "HD advancement" in Monsters manual, meaning that you can make thougher versions of most of the monsters in D&D. They did this a bit more extreme though, and made them improove far more than they shoudl have, and then they obviouslly forgot to add a little "challenge rating increasement". *sigh* i wish i could disable entire autobalancing system. 100hp goblins, +10 hit and 1D6+10 damage, and savingthrows at +10 with a listed challenge rating of *1* gives you..... 0 XP for osmetihng that can take longer time to take down than dragons in this game.

And yeah, DM's usually force you to level up instantly. and heck in P&P most players are so thrilled about leveling up the consept of squatting is alien. Eitherway, even if someone didn't, i'd have considered them efficient level from XP instead. I just cant belive they didnt think of that.

And the way a low level character woudl advance much faster than a high level on in same group if the XP system worked, is intended. After all what is the fun of beeing a level 1 rogue in a group with a level 10 fighter and a level 15 wizard ? you'd be bored to tears. So this way you level up much faster, and thus can actually be more "active" in combats and puzzles etc. One of those things that works better in P&P then CRPG again


gawd, i rant to much...