Shattered Kingdoms

I have a pet, and I moved to position m1.

I don't do any of the fighting, but will cast spells once in a while.
I can still go to sleep in the fight.

Am I getting any experience? I've killed 15-20 creatures like this, and my experience hasn't visibly changed.

Thanks!

If you are leveling by using spells, you gain experience for both the damage your spells do, and for successfully casting. Depending on your natural charisma, the variance in alignment between you and your enemies, as well as what spells you are casting, you may need to kill a fair bit more than 15-20 npcs to see an experience shift at all. If you are a good-aligned character killing good-aligned NPCs you will gain almost no experience for killing them, not to mention this is against the rules. Most creatures you would be fighting to level are obviously good or evil, or the race makes the determination (angels are good, demons are evil, deep-elves are evil, elves are good, etc).

Hope that helps.

That does help. Let me ask a few clarifying questions.

If I do nothing at all and let the pet do all the work? 0 experience for the kill?

You mentioned kill good aligned versus evil aligned. In some case this is obvious. However, what if it's not?
For instance if I see a bandit or a farmer. How does one know the alignment of an NPC?

Bandit is going to be evil, or selfish aligned but is obviously described as being predatory to travelers or the countryside. That makes them fair game for a good-aligned character.

Farmer is usually going to be peacefully hanging around on or in a field. It makes no RP sense that a good aligned character would be randomly killing farmers as he or she travels.

In most cases there is going to be some kind of in-character, alignment-based incentive or reason for a particular alignment to be killing particular kinds of NPCs. More specifically and accurately there are spells and magical devices (potions, pills, wands, etc) that will provide the effect of the spells to you, which will tell you what alignment NPCs are. The Know Alignment and Detect Aura spells will tell you.

And, failing access to those, you could always as someone on the who list whose title seems to imply they might be sympathetic to your character's moral ideals if a particular NPC seems likely to be opposed, or at least mostly so, on the alignment scale.

Forgot to address the pet vs exp issue, sorry. You get only exp based on damage your character does either from weapons or spells.

Thanks!

I picked up a few "tough challenges" and did more casting in the fight. I definitely noticed. So, double thanks!

although sitting back while my pet does the work was safer.... hah

Welcome to SK!

As has been stated, you gain XP in SK by doing damage, and the number of kills and/or killing blows is almost completely immaterial. IIRC, you also don't get any XP from damage of storebought pets, but it used to be that some classes got a really small amount from xp from damage their summons dealt (e.g. necromancer undead). Combat healing also provides xp pretty consistently, though not as much as damaging spells.

The best way to gain xp is to ensure that you are constantly doing damage. In addition, you gain more xp in SK by using skills or spells to do damage than by melee damage, so for example, you'll gain more experience by killing 1 NPC with magic missile, shocking grasp or cause light than by killing it by hitting it with a staff. Finally, if you are light or dark, you almost always want to train against opposite aura NPCs, as that also gives an experience bonus with the added caveat that lighties gain zero experience from killing other light-aura'd NPCs (in addition to being against the rules as mentioned).

TL;DR: Fight opposite aura NPCs that consider as "tough challenges" or maybe "much more powerful," and don't bother fighting if you aren't casting damage spells the entire time. Feel free to ask around in-game with tells if you want some advice!

Here's something I've always been curious about....if a hellion insta-cleaves someone, or a necro gets a FoD to work and kill something instantly, do they get all the damage experience for that creature, or do they get a reduced amount, for having got the insta-death?

I'd believe so, but maybe not the way you think. While hellion crit cleave would give more xp than a normal cleave, it wouldn't give as much xp as just killing the creature from spells would, because you'd only be doing the full damage on one body part: Normally your damage in killing a NPC is spread all around different body parts.

Finger of death, however, actually is a damage spell, which unlike any other spell in the game is based on the target's current HP. It's funny, because necromancers level the easiest from master to GM than any other class because of the sheer amount of xp that a one-shot from FoD gives, and so quickly at that.

Petrification, on the other hand, doesn't give any XP aside from the casting itself, as it doesn't actually deal HP damage.