Shattered Kingdoms

Rather than have experience be earned by (MobXP * %damage done), I think it would be interesting to have it be earned as a group and distributed evenly amongst party members, still granting a bonus for grouping, of course.

Why, you ask? Because even with the "group bonus" to XP, there are often disincentives to working together which do not encourage characters to maximize their group's potential and which sometimes make it better not to group up at all. Here are a few examples:
* Party is in the ToM. To maximize the group's potential, the priest should cast frenzy on the warrior, hold armor and sanctuary, and strike with a polemace to kill ax'lotls. Instead he casts frenzy on himself and casts harm or spear of faith until exhausted, then needs to sleep.
* Warlock/shaman/priest/sorcerer/bard should group with others of similar level and help fortify the potency of the group. Instead they are better off finding a GM friend who will just sit in the room with them (or just going alone) while they spam spells like fireball/flamestrike on groups of NPCs and sleep between rounds or when they are exhausted.

I'm sure there are reasons this hasn't been considered in the past. Perhaps it's because it would be too hard to calculate xp real-time and distribute across the group? Theoretically you could fix this by just not granting any xp until the NPC is dead. Perhaps it's because this would encourage AFK leveling? This happens already anyway to a certain extent and I don't think it would change anyway.

Curious what people think about this. I think it would have a pretty profound impact on characters like warlocks/priests being willing to come along on trips where they know they're not going to do much damage and be expected to heal (and I know Dulrik made healing xp "viable" but this xp has a cap on it and is really not viable relative to damage xp).

While I don't necessarily agree with a complete communist group spread, I wouldn't mind seeing a high percentage (say, 40-50%) of the xp that grouped characters earn going to an even split to all the PCs in the party (including themselves) if they fall within the 5 level range used to calculate familiarity bonuses in groups. Addressing the issue of casters slowing the group is a noble pursuit, but at the same time I wouldn't want to discourage casters from using their damage spells: Just to give them a viable alternative to emptying their mana pool and then sleeping.


Mainly, if this were an easy addition to the code for group xp calculation, I think it would better the game. Refactoring the entire xp code, however, seems to be too much work for this particular issue.

Alternate idea, how about everyone that isn't a front row fighter, gets a bonus to xp above and beyond the group bonus when they group with a front row fighter.

I prefer the spread of communism in the group.

I do to, I actually meant to say that non-front row fighters would get extra bonus xp on non-magical attacks.

None of this is necessary. Grouping as it is pumps up the xps earned relatively high.

I think this idea merits exploration, it would promote a group acting like a group instead of a race to see who does the most damage and thereby secure the most XP as it is now. I've been rejected from a party because I was a rogue at the time and I would "leech all the XP with my circle stab."

Heh, I remember people OOCly complaining about my first character "sucking up all the expees" in some leveling areas.

This is honestly not true at all, and those people are jackasses for rejecting your rogue. In its current incarnation, it actually makes people GM faster because players are trying to kill the NPCs faster, and thus saving time.

Not a big fan of this idea. In order to make it equitable between casters and non-casters, the exp from casting spells out of combat would need to be removed. No more exp from enchanting, resurrecting, identifying, locating, gating, etc. I actually like that I don't have to grind as many NPCs when I play a caster due to exp from non-combat spells.

The trade off is that casters usually get less exp from NPCs, since the melee types do more damage. I can't say I feel too strongly either way, though, since it is pathetically easy to level pretty much any race/class combo to grand master in less than 50 hours.