BGDM House Rules Commentary

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HEEGZ
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Re: BGDM House Rules Commentary

Post by HEEGZ »

Just to clarify a few points. The previous BG house rule was not based on the derived statistic that is reported to DMs. This statistic is a percentage of rp/xp gained out of the total xp for the player character. It has already been explained above, but basically you can sort of determine how much combat farming a person is doing if the percentage dips too low.

Other DMs and tech folks have interpreted the original BG house rule incorrectly to read that players would only be farming if their rp/xp percentage fell below a certain amount (shadowfax says 7.5% rp/xp). However, the original rule was based on xp gain within a period of hours. I do not have access to the original post, but it was something like 200 xp per real life hour.

So if you use the derived statistic to explain the xp gain, then you could come to the erroneous conclusion that a person could never be considered to farm xp on BG. However, it is entirely possible to gain xp beyond the original threshold if you look at a snapshot of 5-10 hours of play. It was never the intention for xp gain on BG to be based off of total xp gain over the entire life of the PC, as reported in the derived statistic to DMs.

If HDM shad0wfax wants to change the xp cap to be based off this derived statistic, I don't see anything wrong with that. The proposed value seems okay and time will tell if it is too high or too low. I preferred the hourly based xp value as it gave more flexibility to the HDM to choose which window of time to run numbers for.
Last edited by HEEGZ on Sun May 25, 2014 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
shad0wfax
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Re: BGDM House Rules Commentary

Post by shad0wfax »

Thanks for the clarification on your past policy, HEEGZ. The 200xp/hour and the 7.5% thing came about because on can earn precisely 15 RPXP in 1 RL hour, so earning 185 combat/static/herb XP and 15 RPXP in one hour was the limit.

15/200 = 7.5%

While it may be possible to look at 200xp/hour, as a snapshot, doing so without the logs is troublesome, especially as some static quests are worth more than 200 XP, and some people have turned in 136 goblin ears at a time for more than 200 xp.

I was trying to use % RPXP as a gauge.

Then suddenly the sky was falling in ALFA.

So I removed the post entirely from the wiki. (You can still look back over revision history, where I wavered between 15%, 20%, and 25% and couldn't make up my mind. Looking farther back, you can see your original post.)

I hope it didn't seem like I was ragging on you for your policy. I interpreted it as lifetime RPXP as a gauge for 200xp/hour, not individual segments. That's where the 7.5% came from. (I actually thought it was 15-20% at first.)


Anyhow, the whole thing is moot. By attempting to change your old policy, I opened Pandora's Box and now this thread will never end. I think there's something about the path to Hell being paved with good intentions.
HEEGZ
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Re: BGDM House Rules Commentary

Post by HEEGZ »

The previous policy was not based on the derived statistic for a reason. For example, a person could have 40% and no past issues with farming. They could log in some Saturday and play for three hours and gain 1000xp from combat and statics. This would have violated the previous 200xp/hour rule, without showing up in the rp/xp percentage report. This has been misunderstood, and the few times I tried to clarify the misconceptions on IRC it fell on deaf ears.

I'm not offended in the slightest as this whole things stems from a series of miscommunications and confussion. The major problem here is that some DMs and players on BG did not understand the original policy. So when you changed it, players and DMs who were ignorant of the rp/xp statistic report were also confused. The resulting conversation between two sets of confused people has led to the discussion. Had I not been moving at the time, I could have posted sooner but it seems most of the conversation has already played out.

I would recommend returning to the original xp gain per real life hour instead of the derived statistic. Once doing so you could lower the gain to 100xp per hour, etc. Though I would advise using the BG DM thread discussion from the first go round to see what the other DMs are comfortable with. I wavered back and forth back when I typed up the first thread and opted for a more lenient value. Nothing wrong with tightening the screws a bit, though I always try to do so with agreement from others.

Good luck! 8)
shad0wfax
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Re: BGDM House Rules Commentary

Post by shad0wfax »

Thanks HEEGZ.

I've opted to simply do everything by seat of the pants. No one is "farming" unless they somehow catch my attention as flagrantly farming, and if that happens, exhaustive logs and hard work by the PA will sort things out.

I'm just not going to have a house policy at all.
HEEGZ
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Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
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Re: BGDM House Rules Commentary

Post by HEEGZ »

shad0wfax wrote:Thanks HEEGZ.

I've opted to simply do everything by seat of the pants. No one is "farming" unless they somehow catch my attention as flagrantly farming, and if that happens, exhaustive logs and hard work by the PA will sort things out.

I'm just not going to have a house policy at all.
That's how it used to be. For several months while I was PA we discussed coming up with some kind of specific guideline. When I became BG HDM I decided to trial a 200xp per real life hour cap for farming. As it was an experiment, I thought we would start lenient and become progressively more strict as needed. You've basically rolled that back to the status quo, which is fine and gives you plenty of freedom to make decisions.

I would think long and hard before re-implementation of a specific cap, and if I did so I might drop it to 120-180xp for a follow up experiment. ;)
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