How do Epic characters gain XP?

[SinsI]

Class and Level Geekery threads are full of those assuming Xykon is level 28 or higher, having went epic in some of the prequel books.

But how could he get so high if one doesn't get XP for defeating enemies more than 10 levels below you? V at Haerta's effective level didn't get any for defeating 1/4 of the world's black dragon population - incuding an ancient spellcasting wyrm!

And OOTS world is supposed to be pretty low-level - they were even doubting that it had a 17-th level cleric at all!

[theinsulabot]

plane shifting to other realms and fighting higher level enemies therein?

[rewinn]

Class and Level Geekery threads are full of those assuming Xykon is level 28 or higher, having went epic in some of the prequel books.

But how could he get so high if one doesn't get XP for defeating enemies more than 10 levels below you? V at Haerta's effective level didn't get any for defeating 1/4 of the world's black dragon population - incuding an ancient spellcasting wyrm!

And OOTS world is supposed to be pretty low-level - they were even doubting that it had a 17-th level cleric at all!

Perhaps there's some sort of XP-cut-out on Epic Levels spells, such that the normal flow of XP is diverted away from the caster (...perhaps into powering the spell?)

Otherwise, someone would invent the Epic Spell "Kill Enough Stuff 9 Levels Below Me To Level Me Up" which would surely annoy the gods who'd set up the XP system.

[kusje]

Lirian?Durokon? Soon + Azure city?

[y2kyle89]

Role-playing?

[FlawedParadigm]

Maybe the reason OotS-world (it could use an actually name, don't you think? The Stickverse? Maybe Rich'll help us out here eventually) is a low-level place to begin with is because of Xykon, these days. Heh. I mean, within the confines of the story and excluding happenings we don't know about, the only other actual Epic characters anywhere were the Order of the Scribble, two of whom were killed by Xykon personally (SoD), and two more confirmed dead (Kraagor and Soon.) The other two may or may not still be alive.

Before Xykon got involved with the Gates, he spent a good deal of time flying around and randomly slaughtering things for his amusement, more or less. There's been hints that he spends a good deal of off-camera time continuing in this trend. It seems like he's put an awful lot of effort into ensuring he's the biggest fish in the pond, and it might be that he's succeeding.

[SinsI]

plane shifting to other realms and fighting higher level enemies therein?

A 20th level character has to defeat 32 other 20th level characters to get to 21.
Continue the progression - and you get one character of level 28 per more than 1 trillion of 20th level characters...

[Zerg Cookie]

He gets free "Main villian" XP

[Callista]

A 20th level character has to defeat 32 other 20th level characters to get to 21.
Continue the progression - and you get one character of level 28 per more than 1 trillion of 20th level characters...

Yeah, that's why you have epic monsters... otherwise it just gets stupid.

[Kish]

V at Haerta's effective level

There is not the slightest indication that Vaarsuvius was treated as merely equivalent in level to the highest-level character in the splice, and quite a bit of indication that s/he is treated as more than that.

didn't get any for defeating 1/4 of the world's black dragon population

You get 0 XP for killing any number of foes of any power level when you kill them by casting a single spell against which they have no way of defending themselves. That's commonextremely uncommon sense.

[Cizak]

He gets free "Main villian" XP

Yeah, remember that Crystal got free Xp for being a rival to Haley, maybye Xykon gets Xp for being the main villain?

[Zerg Cookie]

btw, there is no proof that Xykon is higher than level 26...
Where did you get that 28 from?

[The Glyphstone]

btw, there is no proof that Xykon is higher than level 26...
Where did you get that 28 from?

I'm betting the Class and Level Geekery thread. Seriously, those guys are nuts at overanalysis, but they've pinpointed the levels of basically every character based on in-comic evidence to a reasonable degree.

[Nerdanel]

I think Xykon had found an XP generator from defeating O-chul over and over again while O-chul also levelled up.

The best XP is reusable XP, especially if you have stacked the CR in your favor by increasing your power in ways that don't increase your CR while doing the opposite to the XP source. It also helps if you belong to a powerful PC class and your opponent doesn't.

[Ancalagon]

Where did you get that 28 from?

26ish +- is a rough enough estimate... why not 28ish +-, that could also lead to 26. I doubt it matters...

[Nerdanel]

If you think Xykon has crafted himself a ring of fire immunity like he implied, that would mean his level is 33+!

[Kairamek]

Role-playing?

Those repeated and well thought out Hannible Lectures gotta be worth something. I mean if I had a character doing that in all the major battles with a reoccuring villian (or hero in an evil campain) he'd be getting RP XP all the time.

Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions of this poster are his own and do not express those of other DMs. His experance as a DM is limited and and he has not run or played table top game in over four years. Do not take Kairamek's opinions if you nursing, pregnant or could become pregnant as he doesn't know anything about these subjects. For erect- We're Done Here.

[factotum]

Just because there aren't many high-level characters around doesn't mean there aren't high-level monsters to fight. Just as a simple example, the Ancient Black Dragon that V defeated would be CR23 (assuming she had several Sorcerer levels), and a level 28 Xykon would easily earn XP for defeating such a beast.

[Corwin Weber]

Just because there aren't many high-level characters around doesn't mean there aren't high-level monsters to fight. Just as a simple example, the Ancient Black Dragon that V defeated would be CR23 (assuming she had several Sorcerer levels), and a level 28 Xykon would easily earn XP for defeating such a beast.

....but that would still take literally dozens of fights exactly like that (or more) just to go up one level.

I have to say I'm not seeing this either. What exactly do epic characters do? Go pick fights with gods? That's a pretty limited xp pool as well.... there are only just so many of them. I don't have the 3.5 books, and haven't read them. (I'm looking for them, I'll probably have to get them off Amazon. Nobody local to me carries them anymore.... it's all 4) With the exponential increase in XP needed to level, I'm just not seeing how epic characters do enough to get beyond about level 22 at most. Roleplaying xp? Ok.... even if you scale it up for epic levels you're still only talking about 5% of the xp they need at most.

For those of us who dropped off at 2nd edition, what are we missing here?

[grautry]

For those of us who dropped off at 2nd edition, what are we missing here?

In normal D&D?

The fact that planes are just about infinite. There's absolutely no shortage whatsoever of other epic beings to fight and defeat.

You could easily advance to level ~30 just by decimating dragons. And that's not even going beyond the Material Plane.

A 20th level character has to defeat 32 other 20th level characters to get to 21.
Continue the progression - and you get one character of level 28 per more than 1 trillion of 20th level characters...

Two words: True Resurrection. Those 20th level characters aren't going to just disappear forever. In most cases they will have allies that will bring them back.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Killing a single monster of your CR on your own (without a party) counts as an encounter 4 levels higher (or rather, you count as a party ECL of -4).

Kill 5-6 of those and you level.

[Ancalagon]

For those of us who dropped off at 2nd edition, what are we missing here?

Monsters and encounters that are above level 20 (and therefore epic). OotS does not seem to be a high-power world, but there seem to be a few epic characters and monsters around... but I doubt Xykon had picked in such powerful creatures "off screen", so the only epic foes he defeated are those we saw in-comic (maybe the silver dragon in his old tower, then there are only Lirian and Dorukan, he cannot claim to have overcome Soon, so no xp here).

From the end of the Dungeon of Dorukan (apart from the Silver Dragon and other stuff in his old tower) to now... are only RP-xp possible, since he didn't fight anything that could have given him xp. I assume he might have gotten xp from defeating the Vaarsuvius-encounter (who might not have a CR of 80-something, but a CR at least in the 20s seems appropriate).

We do not know what he did in SoD in the gap before the end (before he collected new goblins). He could have gotten lots of levels in these years...

[Morquard]

....but that would still take literally dozens of fights exactly like that (or more) just to go up one level.

I'm sure there are other monsters there that are equaly high and easier to farm (because there are more of them) than dragons.

And why is it suddenly so bad that they have to "kill dozens of them to level up", when its basicly the same all the time?
A level 10 character has to kill dozens other level 10s and hundreds of level 5s to level.
As people pointed out there's no shortage on Epic monsters, so I don't see why the epic adventureres should have problems leveling further up.

And just bencause Haley knows of no 17+ cleric... doesn't mean there's none. And she was most likely exagerating anyway, just wanting to stress that they're rare and probably noone in the area.

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His fight with Durokan was a close one, but I think Durokan actually had a couple of levels on Xykon there. Once he was a lich he pretty much wiped the floor with Lirian though. Just took that long because he was toying with her.

But seriously about Xykon he gets his main xp from "plot".
Just like Crystal he's exactly the level he has to be at any given point.

[Ancalagon]

And just bencause Haley knows of no 17+ cleric... doesn't mean there's none. And she was most likely exagerating anyway, just wanting to stress that they're rare and probably noone in the area..

I do not know... the boss of the thieves guild of the main-thief-city in the world who also quite effectively farmed xp did not seem to be epic. Bozzok is level 18ish, but he surely did not seem much higher, so it seems safe to assume he's sub-epic.

And if he, as boss of the blabla in the thief city blabla is not epic, it seems also safe to assume there are not that many epic characters around. There are some... but not THAT many. I guess the same would be true for monsters - there are some, but it's not that the countrysides are crowded with them so you could "just go out and get epic-xp".

[Morquard]

I do not know... the boss of the thieves guild of the main-thief-city in the world who also quite effectively farmed xp did not seem to be epic. Bozzok is level 18ish, but he surely did not seem much higher, so it seems safe to assume he's sub-epic.

And if he, as boss of the blabla in the thief city blabla is not epic, it seems also safe to assume there are not that many epic characters around. There are some... but not THAT many. I guess the same would be true for monsters - there are some, but it's not that the countrysides are crowded with them so you could "just go out and get epic-xp".

Well you also have to assume that all the people that his guild captures and executes are most likely non-epic themselves, so that of course limits his potential rise.

I hardly see those guys arresting a gang of Ancient Black Dragons who go on an unauthorized thiefing trip in the city :D
And any other epic thief is most likely good enough to a) not get caught by them and b) good enoguh to still in a city thats not a complete mess and actually has stuff worth stealing :)

[Random832]

Class and Level Geekery threads are full of those assuming Xykon is level 28 or higher, having went epic in some of the prequel books.

IIRC those assumptions don't come from that, but rather from the fact that the number of epic feats he has shown evidence of having indicate he has to be at least - i thought it was level 26, not 28. I think it was 28 if you assume his item of Fire Immunity is a ring.

[Jaltum]

Lirian was

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completely unprepared, and didn't seem to recognize that Xykon was a lich, also. She wasted a lot of attacks on things he was immune to.

In general, despite the high level of D&D background knowledge, people seem pretty ignorant about liches in OotSverse; it's not like the flanking rules or something. That's been a big advantage for Xykon all along.

[Underground]

Class and Level Geekery threads are full of those assuming Xykon is level 28 or higher, having went epic in some of the prequel books.

But how could he get so high if one doesn't get XP for defeating enemies more than 10 levels below you? [...]

Xykon is not a PC and therefore the DM simply assigns him a level that fits the DMs purposes.

Other than that, yes it doesnt really make sense that Xykon is that powerful. If he would be a century old lich, OK. But he is an old human who allied with a Goblin, became a lich, and is already level 28 now ? Hard to understand ... unless Redcloak himself got some anti-aging enhancement too.

[Finwe]

unless Redcloak himself got some anti-aging enhancement too.

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He did

[Morquard]

Xykon is not a PC and therefore the DM simply assigns him a level that fits the DMs purposes.

Other than that, yes it doesnt really make sense that Xykon is that powerful. If he would be a century old lich, OK. But he is an old human who allied with a Goblin, became a lich, and is already level 28 now ? Hard to understand ... unless Redcloak himself got some anti-aging enhancement too.

Actually Xykon is over a century old :)

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But he's been a lich for about 30 years of that. And the Crimson mantle slows Redcloaks aging considerably