ECL's. (Effective Character Level's)

Kaz · Post by **Kaz** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:38 pm

For those of you who don't know what an ECL is, it's added to some subraces, which is supposed to make up for the racial advantages they recieve. An ECL of 3 means than a character level 6 is considered to be a level 9 when he is awarded XP.

I played an ECL 3 character for a while, and even managed to get up to level 8, but sadly, I realized that an ECL of 3 is just to painful to keep playing that character. I believe that ECL's need to be worked on, as right now they simply arn't worth the pain they bring.

To give you an idea of how slow you progress with an ECL of 3, I had a friend who played a little less then half the time I played, yet we were both level 8. The downside of this is that you end up killing the same creatures over and over and over again, making the game extremely boring, eventually leading to a loss of intrest. The increase of XP at high levels was supposed to be to help ECL characters out, yet unfortunatly the most xp I recieved at level 8, was 4 xp a kill for the basic rat. Not near enough to push me to the next levels needed.

ECL's need to be adjusted, and made less painful. At worst, an ECL of 2 should be the max any character recieves. I have heard a suggestion that ECL's allow the character to use higher level equipment as well. A characer that is level 3, with an ECL of 2, would be able to use level 5 equipment.

Basically, the system needs to be tweaked, and I would love to hear any suggestions that can be offered. Also, any feedback given by people who play/played an ECL character would also be very nice.

HealingBreeze · Post by **HealingBreeze** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 3:44 pm

I agree with the suggestion to allow ECL chars to use equipment as their true level rather than their class level. To me this only makes sense:

The stronger weapons are held back until a character is ready.
An ECL character reflects that they are more experienced than their mundane counterpart.

Put these together and the only conclusion I can reach is that the more 'gifted' characters should use the weapons ahead of the average learning curve.

Cobol · Post by **Cobol** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:58 pm

well knowing there is level 27 and higher Drow's out there.. just makes you go "wow"

Rhapsody_ · Post by **Rhapsody_** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:58 pm

my char is an Earth Genesi....im lvl 20 and getting 13xp each kill....not that bad....playing him for 2 week now

Denort · Post by **Denort** » Fri Aug 20, 2004 9:59 pm

My suggestion would be to increment ECL at a rate of 10% per level up to level 10. Hence an ECL +3 race would start out with ECL 0.3 at level 1, 0.6 at level 2 and so on until they reach ECL 3.0 at level 10.
Over 40 levels the difference in xp would be minimal between this and ECL as it is now. However it would help ECL characters get by the "completely useless* lowbie" levels as well as helping them keep up with their party members for a while.

* Other adjectives include; weak, boring, tedious and anything else to describe a characters whos death is always but one critical hit away.

turtlehermit · Post by **turtlehermit** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 1:58 pm

Before I lost my high speed internet access, my snivebfebilinwhatizhowsit spelled gnome ...ADOLF OLIVER NIPPLES... managed to become a 20/4/2 cleric/fighter/cot despite his ELC 3 rating.

I had Half-ogre to lvl 18...ME BASH AND SMASH... a dual Langers hammer weilding half ogre 8/7/3 fighter/ weapon master/cleric despite his ELC rating at that level in around 2 weeks playing time. YOU SHOULD SEE HIM HANDLE MOBS WITH WHIRLWIND ATTACKS!?!?!?! I was planning on suping up his cleric lvls for the darkfire/divine power/might/ improved invis/ haste/ ect buffs makin him rediculously wicked. Really neat too since he is large sized and med sized weaps are considered small to him. Trips his crits and chan lightnighs out the whazoo!!! With those cleric buffs the attack rates are like regoddamndiculous too.

Both of those chars have bad ELC ratings and yet they kick serious arse.

Seen a dual weilding accountants blade drow fighter/cleric/wpm that gave me that idea... He was sickly awefull to watch in mobs. Thanks for the idea. He is probably like 30th plus lvl bye now too.

AlienOverlord · Post by **AlienOverlord** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:10 pm

1/2 ogres are considered large size? I also gave up on my drow, he was only level 5 but it was taking way too long. The equipment idea is pretty good and would help you move on to new mobs earlier.

deathdearler1 · Post by **deathdearler1** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 11:26 am

i know the xp cap on the ecl char's are kinda hard for the 3's, but if they could use equipment of their true lvl it would help out lots. i have a lvl 4 drow monk(wanted to see how well drow and monk SR stacked :twisted:

) and he's too high a lvl to kill rats without doing it for days on end but not high enough to move to the larger creatures without getting seriously owned.

turtlehermit · Post by **turtlehermit** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:03 pm

Both of my high ECL characters were owned early on too. I just found fellow adventurers to arty with so that i could advance in lvl at an effective rate. Together we went where my partner could not quite handle alone. I admit that i was not too much help but what help i could give did make a difference. Together we rocked the areas and soon i was of appropriate powere to do whatever wherever i wanted. Remember that this game is designed for party play too.

Denort · Post by **Denort** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 11:56 pm

deathdearler1 wrote:i have a lvl 4 drow monk(wanted to see how well drow and monk SR stacked )

They do not stack at all. The only spell resistance that stacks is monk spell resistance and the monk epic spell resistance feats.
Racial, equipment and the cleric/druid Spell Reisistance spell do not stack with each other, or with a monks total resistance from feats. Only the highest one is used.

So if you are a level 40 drow monk with all 10 epic spell resistance feats you would have 50 resistance as a drow and 60 resistance as a monk. Only the highest one gets used so you would have 60 spell resistance.

Back on topic, I agree that the ECL is very harsh at low levels and that characters should be able to use equipment of the character level plus ECL.
The whole minimum xp thing seems crazy to me. Level 30 people should not be leveling on rats, bugs and other such trivial foes. If a character's level is roughly twice +5 the CR of the enemy they kill it should be worth nothing. That way a level 30 character would need to kill things of CR 20 or higher to gain any experience.

Wolfarus · Post by **Wolfarus** » Sun Sep 12, 2004 11:27 am

Do you realize how very FEW CR 20+ creatures there are out there? and how damned long it would take to lvl off of them? They respawn extreamly slow compared to rats n' bugs, there are LOTS of 20+ lvl characters out there.

The only things rated that are the faction bosses, the dragon in wastes and the dragon south of black hills,the amazon/vamp bosses and possibly the formian queen. Thats pretty much it. Thats why you see so many 24+ characters just hanging out on the noob grounds. For the speed they can carve thru the mobs, and the sheer number if you know the right noob areas, you can still make levels on a somewhat reasonable time frame. If the dev's would open up the epic areas, that would go a long way to fixing allot of probs in the mod right now.

Denort · Post by **Denort** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:45 am

Wolfarus wrote:Do you realize how very FEW CR 20+ creatures there are out there?

Yes.

Wolfarus wrote:and how damned long it would take to lvl off of them?

Yes.

Wolfarus wrote:They respawn extreamly slow compared to rats n' bugs, there are LOTS of 20+ lvl characters out there.

The current beta is not for testing epic characters.

LadyCheron wrote:Given that the areas for epic-level players aren't in the module yet, there's really no point in pushing characters up to level 25 or 30.

LadyCheron wrote:If your character is over level 20, consider making another one and doing this kind of testing for us.

Making use of low level areas to soak up lots of minimum xp is not only cheesy but it is also defeating the purpose of the beta test.

Removing the minimum xp award once you are a certain level above the CR of the creature would get the level 25+ people out of the newbie areas and hopefully into new characters where they will actually be helping with the testing process.