PCs vs. Spawns: mechanics decisions for the Rewards system

[AcadiusLost]

There has already been a fair bit of discussion on this, but now that I'm trying to actually code some of it, there are some questions that we should try to resolve.

CR vs. EL: Unfortunately, it's likely not feasible to generate XP and loot on the basis of encounter level- it needs to be awarded/placed at the death of each individual creature, meaning decisions have to be made before we know how many creatures of what CR were killed by the end of the "encounter". Bodies may well be looted midcombat as well, especially if it's a long game of cat and mouse, baiting and sneaking, etc.

Is it acceptable to just calculate individual creature CR vs. party strength, and calculate things that way?

Next issue: "party strength"- we've already resolved to use the party's highest level PC in-party and in-area to determine the challenge level for purposes of XP distribution, and to make sure party members are present to receive XP- should we also be testing for non-partied PCs close to the combat? Otherwise a Highlevel could follow the lowbies around, healing them up and/or softening up the enemies (unpartied) with the low levels receiving all the XP as if they'd done the work.

On the other hand, were we to account for this exploit, it would mean a highlevel stealthing or invisibly watching the lowlevels' progress would nerf down their XP gains just by being nearby, even without participating. This may also apply to CvC situations as well... the PC rogue sneaking up behind you to finish you off once you've looted the goblins, might actually cancel out your XP gain from them in the process, which seems odd.

Is there a preference between the two, or ideas on how to resolve them? I could check hostility between nonpartied PCs in area and the prospectively rewarded party to avoid the last problem, but not really an ideal fix.

(( let's leave dimrets discussions out of this thread, they've been extensively argued elsewhere))

[ç i p h é r]

I'm fine with a CR based reward system. However, thinking on it some more, if the spawns are triggered as an encounter, we could create a unique encounter ID to track the creatures in that encounter and only generate loot for that encounter once all the creatures have been defeated. The loot could be placed in the corpse of the encounter leader, or maybe introduced as a "pile of loot" at the spawn point. Obviously this gives us more leeway in the system. We can drop creature gear for the sake of realism and still generate a decent reward for the party since ELs will exceed individual CRs.

XP awards will still be CR based however (and rewarded per kill), so it's a minimal loss if the PCs cannot defeat the encounter.

[Veilan]

Well, if anything this is a huge argument to making mobs drop only a smaller amount of loot as static content, and keep the real rewards to DMs who can actually judge the encounter's difficulty.

[ç i p h é r]

Only, our goals were to move in the opposite direction for NWN2 and not place as much dependence on a DM corp for players to have fun on our servers. With that in mind, I'm definitely less ambivalent than I was before and feel that if we can implement an adequate EL based solution, we should.