Experience Math Help

[willpell]

Can someone who's better than me at math give me a formula for how much faster a character who's using Level Adjustment Buyoff, spending XP on crafting, or the like will earn experience by being lower ECL than his party? I just can't seem to make the knowledge fit in my head, but if you give me a simple equation with numbers I can plug in, I'll probably be able to do it.

[sonofzeal]

Too many factors. How many fights, against what enemies of what levels? Fights against single even-CR monsters will give a different progression than fights against multiple weaker enemies. And there's also issues about when exactly session is called and xp is earned; a long session between xp bundles will allow the lower one to occasionally leapfrog above the higher ones.

However, this (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) will help you get started.

[willpell]

Too many factors. How many fights, against what enemies of what levels?

I mean like a ratio: X experience for a level N character equals Y experience for a level N-1 character.


However, this (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/) will help you get started.

I'll check it out....

[Salanmander]

I mean like a ratio: X experience for a level N character equals Y experience for a level N-1 character.



I'll check it out....

Sonofzeal is right: it depends. However, it does seem like being one level behind results in roughly 30% more experience.

If 3 7th level characters and 1 6th level character fight an EL 7 encounter, the 6th level character gets 28% more experience. If 3 11th level and 1 10th level character fight the same encounter, the 10th level character gets 21% more experience.

On the high end, if the 10th and 11th level characters fight an EL 10 encounter, the 10th level character gets 36% more experience.

[willpell]

So how unfair might things get if I just ruled 30% across the board? This would be a particularly fitting figure given that I've already applied a quick fix to crafting in the case of my NPCs (that's what this question pertains to). Instead of spending XP, which doesn't make sense for NPCs, they spend 5 gold per XP, which makes the cost of crafting the item work out to 70% of the cost of buying it, or a 30% discount. So it would be fitting to apply the same percentage here.

PS, either that encounter calculator is borked or I did something wrong. It took me all of five seconds to produce a nonsensical result.

[Jasdoif]

Looking at the big table on page 38 of the DMG, I'm seeing two themes:
For a (ECL=CR) monster, the experience is a linear multiple of the ECL (this is how the "certain number of even encounters gains a level" idea is implemented)
Except at levels 1 and 4, a character gets 50% more experience for a CR+1 monster than for a CR monster.

So past those weird levels, the character one ECL behind could be expected to earn....1.5x/(x+1) times as much experience as one with equal ECL to the CR.

Spoilered for table space....
So rounding to two percentage points....
{table=head]Lower ECL|Bonus XP
5|25.00%
6|28.57%
7|31.25%
8|33.33%
9|35.00%
10|36.36%
11|37.50%
12|38.46%
13|39.29%
14|40.00%
15|40.62%
16|41.18%
17|41.67%
18|42.11%
19|42.50%[/table]

So an ECL 14 in a party of ECL 15s would earn 40% more experience than the ECL 15s do.
You'll have to forgive me for not analyzing the entire table :smalltongue: But oddly, on the ECL I checked (main party 13) this percentage holds across...half the board for varying CRs. Of the CRs listed for an available ECL, that percentage seems to hold for encounters whose CR is ECL-7, ECL-5, ECL-3, ECL-1, ECL, ECL+2, ECL+4, and ECL+6 (for the main party). The other ECLs seem to have a different formula, but the percentage bonus among them is pretty consistent, around 23%.

Since you're looking for a single formula, though, the one that works at the ECL of the main party and the ECL of the LA-bought-off straggler is probably the one you want. So I'm not going to bother trying to figure out what the other (and lower) one would be :smalltongue:

[Salanmander]

So how unfair might things get if I just ruled 30% across the board? This would be a particularly fitting figure given that I've already applied a quick fix to crafting in the case of my NPCs (that's what this question pertains to). Instead of spending XP, which doesn't make sense for NPCs, they spend 5 gold per XP, which makes the cost of crafting the item work out to 70% of the cost of buying it, or a 30% discount. So it would be fitting to apply the same percentage here.

PS, either that encounter calculator is borked or I did something wrong. It took me all of five seconds to produce a nonsensical result.

That seems entirely reasonable to me. The XP table in the DMG is kinda arcane magic anyway, and I know lots of DMs that fudge the experience (myself included).