Experience and level-up (Bonds of Blood)

A player does not need to ”party” with another player to receive experience points. Experience is granted on a radius basis. It is recommended that you party anyways.

Summons, familiars, henchmen, and dominated creatures no longer take experience points in battle. It is not fair to penalize a player for his natural abilities, spells, and creatures.

A soloist no longer gains a lot more experience points then a party as it did with the old Neverwinter experience system.

If a player wishes to gain good experience then they must fight creatures rated moderate, challenging, very difficult, overpowering, or impossible. Therefore the key to getting good experience is to always fight creatures at least the same level as the player.

Party experience
If there are more then 4 players within a party’s battle radius or more then a 8 level difference between any party member then the party will not receive experience. The 4 player max is important because D&D Challenge Rating formula is based on a party of 4. It also helps to reduce lag by traveling in smaller parties. The 8 level range is important because D&D does not give experience to a player or party if the monster’s challenge rating is 8 points less then or greater then the players/parties average level. It also stops power-leveling to some extent.

There is an experience penalty for parties with less then 4 players. A party of with 1 player gets a large experience penalty, a party with 2 players gets a medium experience penalty, a party with 3 players gets a small experience penalty and a party with 4 players gets no penalty.

A party is any pair or group of travelers within 30 meters of each other.

Maximum party size is 4.

Maximum party member level difference is 8.

If more then 4 players fight a boss it will become invincible temporarily.

Party balance
It is very important to travel with not just an organized party but also a balanced one. Standard RPG parties have always consisted of at least one healer and one fighter. Since the maximum party size is 4 here, the last 2 members could be should be either archer/fighter build, or archer/rogue build, or a mage of sorts.

Non-combat experience
There are several ways to Gain Non-Combat Experience, including:

Players who can unlock or disarm traps not set by another player will gain bonus experience points from the task. If a mage uses a spell to unlock or disarm the object and either fails or succeeds he will not receive experience for the task, nor will any other player who tries thereafter.

Crafting items gives experience points.

Identifying items with an Idem Optical gives experience points. This is the only form of non-combat experience that cannot be used after a level up to gain the 5% non-combat experience due to a cheat.

Healing a player ally, with a spell, while he is in combat with a creature may give the healer some experience points.

Doing jobs and quests also give experience points. Jobs may include delivering goods, patrolling, whipping players, taxing players, making item, etc. Jobs are assigned through a conversation with an NPC.

You are only allowed to get JOB non-combat experience for the first 20% and last 20% of the experience for your level. The remaining 60% must be gained through other types of non-combat experience or through combat experience.

Level-up
After a player levels up he must gain 5% (50 x level) of that levels experience from non-combat experience. This experience can be gained through crafting, healing, disabling traps, unlocking doors, jobs, quests, etc. If all experience was based on combat then this would be a pure action module.

Before a player levels up he should remove all items that give ability bonuses and skill bonuses so the anti-cheat scripts can work appropriately.

If a player ever loses a level he should remove any gear that he can no longer use due to item level restrictions. If a player does not remove this gear and leaves the server the character may become invalid due to the item level restrictions enforced by the server.

When leveling up, disregard the Familiar and Animal Companion selection screen. These NWN creatures have been disabled and have been replaced by the real Familiar and Animal Companion system from D&D 3.5.