Friday, June 10, 2011

Neverwinter Nights 2 mod - DMG 3.5 XP Table


Neverwinter Nights 2 mod - GQ XP Table (2012-Sep-21 -- new link)
Important: UPDATED July 26st, 2011 to correct formatting in the table -- Microsoft Excel wasn't exporting properly.

This is a modified xptable.2da for Neverwinter Nights 2. Put it in the override folder to change xp awards.

The XP table in Neverwinter Nights 2 has various oddities, such as giving you more XP for certain creature challenge levels when your level becomes higher. For example, if you are level 17, you earn 63 XP for defeating a Challenge Level 14 creature. If you were level 18, you would earn MORE when you should be earning less -- you get 65.6 XP (rounds down to 65 in-game).

This xptable.2da revision follows the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 more closely instead of the erratic table in Neverwinter Nights 2. To install, copy the xptable.2da file into the "override" folder.

The pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 XP table is calculated as follows:
  • Based on a 4-person party, 13-1/3 encounters of Party Level = Creature Level would raise the party by 1 level.
  • Therefore, 4 characters x (level x 1000) * (3/40 encounters) = XP award when Party level = Challenge Rating.
  • This works out to (300 x party level) when Character Party Level = Creature Challenge Level.
  • For every 2 points the CR increases, then you double the XP (XP*2). For every 2 points the CR decreases, then you halve the XP (XP/2).
At levels 1 and 2, this does have a quirk of awarding more XP when your level is higher.

Our xptable.2da adapts the information above to Neverwinter Night 2's engine:
  • We use the formula starting at party level 3, and back-calculate x2 XP for +2 party levels (so level 2 gets about 141% more than at level 3, and level 1 gets 200% more than at level 3) so that the XP award always increases when monster level increases, and decreases when party level increases.
  • Since the game engine awards xp per kill instead of per encounter, we divide xp by 4 to get a per-kill figure -- here, we assume the number of monsters will equal the party size in each encounter.
  • The party size varies from 1-6 depending on the campaign and whether the player decides to solo, but xp is given to all characters, whether they are in the party or not, so we are still going with a party of 4 and further dividing the XP award on the XP table by 4.
  • We also artificially cap the maximum award to be the XP required to advance a level (a situation unlikely to happen in any case), and set the minimum award to be equal to the creature's challenge level.
Overall, XP awards start to be about 150% more when encounters are rated at +/- 2 of the party level.
The formulae can be viewed from the Excel worksheet included.

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