In my recent HotU game, I was getting about 50Xp for killing Driders. I then encountered a Drider Assassin who died pretty easily and I ended up getting a massive 2,000 XP for him. This is the second highest amount of XP I have received from a kill(after the 5,000 XP I got for the Grim Statue Dragon). This made me wonder: how exactly is the XP from a fight calculated? I know it must be something to do with how 'hard' an enemy is, but what factors go into that rating? Why would this seemingly lame Drider Assassin cough up 2,000 XP when the toughest opponent of all, the Greater Wind Zombie, is only worth about 100XP?

Something must be wrong because I remember such things too. Another one was stupid challenge ratings and getting some 100 or 200 XP for killing a creature marked Impossible without much effort. Some XP rewards for kills were quite surprising, as well, although I can't recall getting 5000 for anything.

I can understand the 5,000 for the Grim Statue Dragon because that is quite early in HotU and if you have an imported level 13 character, they tend to get lots of XP at the start because they are a couple of levels lower than the standard level 15 HotU character.

But why 165 XP (+/-) for Mephistopheles? That sucked. It didn't matter at that point, power-wise, but the impression was bad.

XP is weird. From different amounts of it, depending on the class, to CR that seems to vary from every game to another. If you go and undersand how it works in one module, some other will prove it wrong.

I just gave up on it ;)

Harbourboy I started the game maine NWN game as a rogue and went to talk to the guy they levels you up before I killed any baddies. I than went out and killed all the baddies. Before I even was back to the location he was at I was level 3. By the time I reached the end boss in the prologue I was level 4. As a monk I would be level 4 only after completing the prologue. Same held true for a fighter and bard. I think the games looks at everything to determine your capabilities vs. your opponents (magical items, level, spells casting, skills, feats, etc...)

None of this explains why some hard battles are worth almost nothing and some easy ones are worth a lot - for the same character.