Experience penalties

[AuraSeer]

And we're sure it's 1 level and not 2?

I'm nearly positive it's 2.

IIRC one example in the book refers to a character with a level split of 9/3, picking up a new class to become 9/3/1. If the 9th-level class is favored, the character suffers no penalty. It's possible that I'm wrong here, but I really don't think so.

(Unfortunately, since this isn't in the SRD, I can't post the exact quote right at the moment... I'll do so when I get home unless someone beats me to it.)

 

[Tabarnak Smokeblower]

That build isn't so bad. You'll only have XP penalties for 1 level (ie Monk 3 / Fighter 1), ie you'll need 4,800xp to go from 4th level to 5th level, instead of 4,000.

TS

 

[Wippit Guud]

I'm nearly positive it's 2.

IIRC one example in the book refers to a character with a level split of 9/3, picking up a new class to become 9/3/1. If the 9th-level class is favored, the character suffers no penalty. It's possible that I'm wrong here, but I really don't think so.

I had thought it was 2 as well, but that was 3.0, didn't know if 3.5 had changed that.

 

[Dash Dannigan]

Nothing has changed, always has been that a level difference of two or more exorts a XP penalty. You folk with your funky memories eh? (I bet the way it was worded originally as 2 or more prob is the culprit behind all this...)

 

[eryndel]

FYI
"<b>Uneven Levels:</b> If any two of your multiclass character's classes are two or more levels apart... Your multiclass character takes a -20% penalty to XP..."

Players Handbook 3.5, Chapter 3: Classes; Multiclassing, XP for Multiclass Characters (p. 60)

Hope this helps.

Werner Hager

 

[Skullfyre]

If your classes are within 1 level, there is no penalty(4th level paladin/3rd level fighter)
If the classes exceed by 2 or more then you incur the 20% penalty
If one is the favoured class, it is ignored when determining xp
(Gnome 7th level bard/4th level fighter/1st level rogue). On this the penalty is 20% since the fighter and the rogue are 3 levels apart.Bard is ignored.

Hope this helps(even if it is late in the conversation)

 

[AuraSeer]

Well color me stupid, it is one level. I've been playing it wrong the whole time.

Something else I didn't notice before: the penalty is per class that's too far from your highest class. If you have three nonfavored classes, 5/1/1, you take a 40% penalty. Yow.

I wonder what happens if an elven Brb9 multiclasses to level 1 in Fighter, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Rogue. Does he really incur a 100% XP penalty, and get stuck at that character level forever?

 

[Crass]

Well color me stupid, it is one level. I've been playing it wrong the whole time.

Something else I didn't notice before: the penalty is per class that's too far from your highest class. If you have three nonfavored classes, 5/1/1, you take a 40% penalty. Yow.

I wonder what happens if an elven Brb9 multiclasses to level 1 in Fighter, Bard, Sorcerer, Cleric, and Rogue. Does he really incur a 100% XP penalty, and get stuck at that character level forever?

No, it takes twice as much XP if you have a 100% penalty. Eg A character normally needs 15 000 XP to get from level 15 to level 16 (105 000 to 120 000 XP). Say he was an elf, level 7 fighter/2 rogue/2 cleric/2 bard/1 paladin/1 barbarian (!?!) In this case you have 5 non-favoured classes. Each non-favoured class penalises you a cumulative 20%. Although you still need 15k XP, you EFFECTIVELY need 30k XP to level (you basically halve the amount of XP you earn). Using the same example, if you only had 4 non-favoured classes you'd be penalised 80% and need - effectively - 27 000 XP. With 3 classes your penalty is 60% and you'd need 24 000 XP, and so on and so on...

Hope this helps!

 

[Li Shenron]

No, it takes twice as much XP if you have a 100% penalty

Well, I don't think AuraSeer was so much wrong about this. An "experience penalty"... what is it? I was also confused when I read it, and to me it could have meant that you "burn" 20% of your gained Xp.

Does it say in the PHB exactly which is of the following two:

- for every 100Xp gained, you effectively get only 80Xp

- your next level is 20% higher

I always thought it was the first of them, even if I know that this would mean to get stuck if you had 6 more-than-a-level-uneven classes and none favored.

This is a problem that never became real to me, since yet I have met no player who wants any kind of Xp penalty, whichever the way

 

[Crass]

Sorry, I should have wrote "No, it EFFECTIVELY takes twice as much XP if you have a 100% penalty".

The exact wording (PHB 3.0e, p. 56) states:

"Your multiclass character suffers a -20% XP penalty for each class that is not within one level of his most experienced class".
But beware the caveat of the next paragraph, Races and Multiclass XP: This paragraph just describes which class is not counted against the penalty, ie favoured race for each class.