V Needs to Check...

[phoamslinger]

...his/her/it's character sheet.

V soloed a dragon. Then s/he cast a spell that soloed LOTS of dragons. Rich is telling a lovely story, but this is about an RPG.

Why hasn't anyone asked the question "How much xp was that worth?"

I'll grant that V was effectively epic level when the "combats" took place, but then again, dragons are big xp pools with wings and a tail. I guess I'm channelling Belkar today...

[Tempest Fennac]

The Fiends said that V wouldn't get any Exp. at all due to his/her CR being so high, so V isn't likely to have leveled due to things which happened while Soul Spliced.

[Squark]

I don't know, there has to be one or two black dragons out there that would have been worth a decent chunk of xp.


Say, an advanced Great Wyrm with class levels?

[phoamslinger]

"Well, technically you could..." is the exact quote. And yes, I'm thinking of those elder wyrm types.. :belkar:

Add to which not so much the individual dragons, but the dragons in quantity stack up the CR of the encounter to ridiculous levels. It was a single spell, it should be treated as a single encounter.

[Kish]

Only an insane Santa Claus DM would give so much as a single experience point for killing anything, up to and including the gods, by casting a single spell which kills them without a saving throw, any warning, or any chance to defend themselves. The challenge was manifestly trivial. Experience in 3.xed D&D is for "overcoming challenges," not for "killing"--so you get full experience for an enemy who surrenders, or a trap you disarm, but no experience at all for slaughtering the currently-defenseless-against-you.

[Herald Alberich]

Exactly. No risk, no reward. V was never in danger from any of those dragons, so killing them didn't get him anything.

[Voice of Reason]

Ok, first time poster here in the forums, but I felt compelled to add my two cents to this ever-recurring topic.

No, V. does not gain experience. Firstly, s/he is probably of so high a level as to not have gained experience in the first place. However, on the hypothetical level that some of those dragons may have been worth XP, I still uphold that there can be no XP gain.

V did not fight those monsters. There was no "encounter." To give V experience for that would be to say that an arsonist suddenly gains epic amounts of XP for lighting the forest alight, and just happening to have killed a few hundred monsters in the process.

[phoamslinger]

However,

A single character reduces the effective ECL of the party by 4. So V's first combat with the ancient black dragon, s/he was effectively level 10-12. So V casting that spell alone actually improves her chance at some xp.

The other thing you're not considering is that 1 kobold against a level 14 is no challenge. 128 kobolds against a single level 14 character is itself an effective CR of 14 and is considered a high challenge risk encounter.

So V's effective level may have been up there, but the CR of the encounter was probably in the 40's-50's as well. And high end xp is big even when it's a smaller amount.

[Squark]

But She had 3 epic spellcasters souls bound to her, which would probably put her ECL up to 30-35.

[phoamslinger]

ok, I found a decent calculator here, http://www.geocities.com/edymnionii/EPLvsEL.html

Plugging the numbers in, a level 60 character (effectively 56) against 256 CR 20 dragons only works out to an EL 36 encounter, ie. "trivial, why waste your time?". (I like software that won't crash if you use out of the box numbers.)

But again, this assumes that the soulsplices stacked V's levels and a generic number of dragons. Either number could be way off. Don't ancient dragons go into epic CRs themselves?

[Herald Alberich]

I'd like to hear your response to what three people in a row said: You need risk to earn a reward. Your calculations would matter if V had actually faced those dragons in combat, but he did not: he cast a spell that killed them all without warning, without any chance to defend themselves or force V to defend himself in turn. That's not an encounter, it's a slaughter.

[Mant]

No fight, no xp. Easy as that.

[Kish]

The other thing you're not considering is that 1 kobold against a level 14 is no challenge. 128 kobolds against a single level 14 character is
...with some minor differences of a "fill-in-the-blank" nature (the DMG used orcs, not kobolds), exactly what the Dungeon Master's Guide presents as an example of an "encounter" that shouldn't actually earn any XP, because a brute-force calculation of its "CR" ignores the simple fact that a level 14 wizard can kill all those kobolds with a single spell without ever being in danger.

If you're determined to ignore any suggestion that anything but the CR the dragons would have had if Vaarsuvius had faced them in battle matters, certainly no one can stop you.

[factotum]

I agree with the general consensus: V wouldn't earn XP for what he did there any more than he'd get some for successfully casting Dancing Lights--in fact, he's even LESS likely to get XP, because it's not really him casting the spell; it's Haerta doing it on his behalf. If he'd been the one who researched the spell a friendly DM might have given him some XP for the very first time he cast it, but once it becomes routine, no way.

[phoamslinger]

Risk? What about the last panel of #667? I'd say that in light of that comic, it was a very risky spell. V cast the spell blind (remember omnipotent megalomanic feelings?) S/he could have accidentally drawn some fire with hir targeting a little sooner than actually happened. It didn't happen, but it might have.

[Herald Alberich]

Oh, and on another note:


Rich is telling a lovely story, but this is about an RPG.

Not really. It's actually about an RPG's world and rules used to tell a lovely story.

[Forbiddenwar]

"Well, technically you could..." is the exact quote. And yes, I'm thinking of those elder wyrm types...

There is also a hidden assumption here. We don't know how effective the spell was against ancient great wyrm black dragons. Or even if they were targeted. How many people are directly related to someone alive who is over 100 years old? Over 110 years old?

[Herald Alberich]

Risk? What about the last panel of #667? I'd say that in light of that comic, it was a very risky spell. V cast the spell blind (remember omnipotent megalomanic feelings?) S/he could have accidentally drawn some fire with hir targeting a little sooner than actually happened. It didn't happen, but it might have.

Ok, so V might earn some XP when he faces vengeful dragons or clerics coming after him. He wasn't at risk from the dragons he killed, so he doesn't earn XP for killing them.

[phoamslinger]

You all are clearly missing the thrust of my arguement. What no power gamers out there today? No munchkins? And again, I'm channelling :belkar: who ran down the goblins after beating Xykon the first time.

Anyway, I just thought of a cogent arguement (against my question). (from the comic) that beats all of your replies and justifications quite handily:

After Belkar's "God of War" battlecry against the hobgoblins, the comments of the other characters show quite clearly that Rich (the DM) doesn't run his game that way.

best arguement. :smalltongue:

[BRC]

Here, think about it this way.

Experience is not how much of something you have done, but how well you know how to do it.

If the thing in question is killing things, the idea is that you learn more about killing things, but if the things in question were very easy (Like a 1st level kobold vs a 20th level fighter), then you get no experience, because you don't learn anything new.

Now, in this case, V was so supercharged with magic, that s/he didn't learn anything from killing the black dragon, because, while it may be difficult to take down a modern tank, it's not that tough if you're in an antimatter-beam spewing giant robot from the 34th century. You just push a button and it happens.

You're argument that, since the "Familycide" spell killed lots of dragons, V should have gotten experience from it, and maybe s/he would have if all those dragons were attacking her at the time.


Here, let me put it like this. Do you think the Order ever got experience from battling the Linear Guild. Remember that, with the exception of Belkar, the order has never actually killed any linear guild members. They have fought and defeated them, but not killed them.

According to your interpretation, that the killing itself is what gives the experience, not the fighting, the Order shouldn't have gotten any experience for beating the Guild. Nor for beating the Bandits, because they just knocked out and tied up the leaders, then Durkon became the new leader and disbanded them.

As for the "God of War" battlecry, the other characters comment that Belkar won't get any EXP for killing the Hobgoblins, because they were all too low level. So how does that prove your argument again?

[Herald Alberich]

You all are clearly missing the thrust of my arguement. What no power gamers out there today? No munchkins? And again, I'm channelling :belkar: who ran down the goblins after beating Xykon the first time.

Anyway, I just thought of a cogent arguement (against my question). (from the comic) that beats all of your replies and justifications quite handily:

After Belkar's "God of War" battlecry against the hobgoblins, the comments of the other characters show quite clearly that Rich (the DM) doesn't run his game that way.

best arguement. :smalltongue:

:sigh: We all assumed that was understood. This isn't a game, it's a world that uses D&D mechanics. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0606.html) None of the characters are in any way optimized. Of course Munchkining doesn't happen.

[Moriato]

The souls bound to V kept talking about "My spells..." and "I didn't get to cast..." leading me to believe that V wasn't actually casting any of those spells, the souls were. So technically, V didn't even cast the spell that killed all those dragons, Haerta did. If anyone was going to get xp from it, it would be her, not V.

[Turkish Delight]

Honestly, I think Xykon needs to check his character sheet. V was so high level that he couldn't really expect to earn experience from killing much of anything, and yet Xykon took on this juggernaut of magical power and took him down. That has to worth a good chunk of exp.

[Timberboar]

As for the "God of War" battlecry, the other characters comment that Belkar won't get any EXP for killing the Hobgoblins, because they were all too low level. So how does that prove your argument again?


Anyway, I just thought of a cogent arguement (against my question). (from the comic) that beats all of your replies and justifications quite handily:

Proof that you see what you expect?

[BRC]

Proof that you see what you expect?
...If this was Highlander, Timberboar would have just cut off my head.

[Herald Alberich]

And again, I'm channelling :belkar: who ran down the goblins after beating Xykon the first time.

Back then, Belkar clearly wasn't aware of the rules: Killing ≠ defeating, necessarily. They surrendered, so he would have gotten XP for them anyway. Or maybe he was aware of the rules, and just wanted to kill them for fun. Anyway, if he had succeeded in killing Elan in the inn (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0124.html) soon afterward, I don't think he'd get XP for that, because Elan didn't put up a fight. He didn't defeat him.

[Bibliomancer]

You all are clearly missing the thrust of my arguement. What no power gamers out there today? No munchkins? And again, I'm channelling :belkar: who ran down the goblins after beating Xykon the first time.

Anyway, I just thought of a cogent arguement (against my question). (from the comic) that beats all of your replies and justifications quite handily:

After Belkar's "God of War" battlecry against the hobgoblins, the comments of the other characters show quite clearly that Rich (the DM) doesn't run his game that way.

best arguement. :smalltongue:

Actually, Rich follows the DMG. If you check the experience tables in chapter two (maybe three), you'll see that one character gains any reward for defeating a creature with a CR 9 less than the player's level. The book also points out that 2 CR 3 creatures don't equal a CR 5 creature, they equal a CR 5 encounter. It also points out that 32 orcs don't challenge a group of 9th level characters, so they should gain no experience for killing them, even though it was technically an EL 9 encounter. Thus, if no dragon had a CR within 9 of V's modified level (which is easy to believe, given that dragons only gain 1/2 CR for class levels OR additional HD, and V's modified level could easily have been above 40 depending on how the splices stacked) then V would not have gained any experience from defeating those dragons, purely by the numbers.