Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Proper XP

Why are we not getting the proper XP in EA? An owlbear should be 700xp and we are only getting 25!

Obvious isnt it? Balancing and pacing. Also remember that XP is divided between characters. Now thats 100, not 700 But still.

Imo characters lvl a bit too fast. But thats just me I guess. It does slow down a little bit after lvl 3 granted.

I tend to do everything on my playtroughs. I cant remember off The top of my head But I am lvl 4 and I think 15-50% on my way to lvl 5. And I have yet to face Gnolls in hills, Githyanki, Goblin Camp, Toll booth or underdark.

Pacing wise considering there are 3 chapters, and 10? Announced lvls. You can already out lvl quite a few encounters.

If you were to use xp from MM The game would be broken and unbalanced as F :P.

Larian designs their games to be jampacked full with enemy encounters. And due to the lack of long resting restrictions in the game (and Larian's design tendencies leftover from DOS1&2), they kind of have to assume that players will come into each fight with most, if not all, of their resources to ensure non-trivial combats. Thus, each fight has to be on the Hard to Deadly level. When we add in xp for exploration/quests/other non-combat solutions, using "proper" MM XP for each of these fights would result in leveling up way too fast.

Using 5e XP guidelines, it's roughly 3-4 Hard/Deadly fights to reach each of levels 2 and 3, and then on average ~8 Hard/Deadly Fights to reach higher levels. In Act 1 of BG3 (not counting Grymforge), there's over 30 combat encounters the average player will find if they visit all the areas. Using Proper XP, this would take characters to level 6, maybe even 7, before reaching Grymforge. Again, not counting exploration/quest XP.

Just to clarify, I killed the owlbear without recruiting any companions. 700xp is due to my Tav NOT 25xp

BG3 doesn't actually split xp between participating party members. Instead, it gives Tav the xp for the encounter, and then all companions (whether they participate or not, I think?) are given matching xp. As the game assumes that you're playing with a full party of 4, you're still effectively getting 1/4 of the encounter xp even if you fight it solo.

Which brings us back to the Owlbear being a total of 100 xp, not 700: see the posts above.

Or to shift the question back to you, why do you think BG3 enemies need to be worth exactly the same xp as in the MM?

Personally, as long as the game doesn't make me feel like I need to grind/craft/farm to gain experience, I'm fine with it.

And currently, the xp rewards seems fine by me.

The 100 or 700 xp points sound like a lot (even if RAW), especially early on, when the Character Advancement in Dnd looks like this :



Do they adapt the xp reward based on Tav's level?
I wonder.
Does anyone know?

Yes, me too. If anything, I agree with folk who have said progression is a little too fast, but I’m also happy it errs slightly in that direction as it makes it easier to make decisions for RP reasons that don’t maximise XP. Such as leaving an owlbear alone in its cave rather than bothering it for no good reason.

If monster-killing XP were to be brought in line with TT I agree the number of enemies would also need to be brought down to match, and that wouldn’t feel right in a cRPG. Encounter frequency in BG3 at the moment feels pretty spot on to me. Not so many that each battle doesn’t feel significant, but enough to show off our combat prowess.


I confess I don’t.

BG3 should split up XP according to your party, I don't see a reason for this not to be implemented. Your logic also also flawed, as if you have 5 party members you also only get 25xp.

In answer to your question, what is the point of the license if you don't use 5e rules? D&D is difficult by design, we should not be encountering Imps, Intellect Devourers or Owlbears at the level we are in BG3. I have been hiding to kill the Intellect Devourers which should not be possible at 1st level "The intellect devourer can sense the presence and location of any creature within 300 feet of it that has an Intelligence of 3 or higher, regardless of interposing barriers, unless the creature is protected by a Mind Blank spell."

Larian have cut xp due to the monsters they have put in the game, in my opinion too early. They are devaluing the monsters, Owlbear only getting +5 to attacks when it should be +7. There are loads of 5e rules they are not following, the Rangers duelling passive +2 damage is also not being applied. It's a joke how much they have wrong, I just hope it is all fixed for release.

I will agree with criticism Larian’s loose adaptation when it comes to misrepresenting monsters.

XP though is a bit different matter. Computer experience will be different that Tabletop and more combat heavy, as being the most robust system that is what computer RPG can take best advantage off.

The game needs to provide an appropriate progression and that means tweaking numbers (xp gained per kill, or xp necessary per level up). If Larian didn’t do that than they would have to match content they make to 5e xp progression table and that would be silly (we want to add more content, but we can’t because we already have too much XP in this chapter!).

So the thing to do it is make content, see how much xp players can gain on their playthrough, see how you want them to level up and adjust numbers appropriately (xp per kill, quest or/and xp needed to level up).

How xp is distributed is interesting - I think it tells you more of how Larian intends the game to be played, than an inherent design flaw. Solo play is just not supported in the way it was in BG1&2. You can still have freedom to do it, but you don’t seem to get rewarded for doing it in any way.

5E xp is like resting rules, there's no one system we all use in TT. 5E is a unifying system, incorporating different play styles in the same rule set. So when you say you just want 5E implemented, be aware the DMG doesn't present just the one system.

BG3 has waaay more encounters than in a TT game. And frankly the AI goes soft on us compared to a DM. Imagine if after angering the goblins they sought out your camp and sprang ambushes. We're already getting a lot of soft xp. So they award lots of small awards for the series of easy encounters.

I think in my last play through I hit level 3 before 3 hours. That's fast! Levels 3-4 and 4-5 were slow enough to remind me of BG1&2 progression.

bg 2 xp was best xp system to date... i miss that xp allocation...

I agree that BG3 should split XP evenly between participating party members. But I'm currently just reporting what is actually happening. Larian is balancing the game for a party of 4 and BG3 encounters give equal experience to all companions regardless of who participates in combat. Party of 1? 25 exp to *all* characters, calibrated to level up your party such that a party size of 4 remains of appropriate strength for encounters. Party of 5? Same thing.

Misrepresented monsters is, as @Womerine says, an entirely different issue than xp. Players familiar with D&D will approach encounters against certain enemies in specific ways, based on foreknowledge they have of those monsters. But BG3 sometimes drastically changes their abilities/stats without changing their names. Some argue this is a good thing ("new and unexpected = good"), and others argue this is bad ("I'm being punished for being knowledgeable about D&D, in a D&D game!")

Xp, however, is different. Unless you're selectively fighting encounters based on how much XP you think they'll give, it doesn't change how you play the game, just how fast you level up. As others have said, the tradeoff is # of encounters. If Larian increased enemy XP to match MM, they'd have to drastically reduce the # of encounters in the game. Imo, monsters having non-MM experience is a very small price to pay for more content.

I agree BG3 is combat heavy, but 5e has lots of depth to choose from. Who wants to see a cockatrice, rust monster and shrieker? (these are all low xp and CR=1)