ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The question may seem a little odd but here is what I mean : most races have an experience penalty, 25% for dwarves, 15% for Highers, 0% for Cornacs and so on...
The higher the penalty, the slower you earn XPs
On the other hand, when you enter a level, it looks like it is often generated to match your current XP, with some minimum requirements.
Thus, if my character has an experience penalty, he will enter easier levels for the same dungeon, right ?
So, how far experience penalty really is a... penalty ?

It prolongs the grind. It should go.

I have brought this up myself. With level scaling, even if limited, sometimes it's not an actual penalty.
I say sometimes because the player might benefit more from extra levels than the AI (since the player is well, smarter most of the time )

That and, outside the ID, there is a level cap anyway.

I personally consider the experience penalty a sort of 'relic of the past', since games like *band and such had it and perhaps it is seen as mandatory
I think it would be perfectly fine if, in a single player game, some player races end up being plain better than the others. Race would then be a bit like difficulty (in fact, there is one *band variant which works somewhat like that, Sil: some races are meant to have an easier time and that is a feature).

Zonk wrote:I think it would be perfectly fine if, in a single player game, some player races end up being plain better than the others.

Agreed. That's the case in some roguelikes like Stone Soup and it's part of the fun. You can choose easy races or difficult ones, easy combos or impossible mixins.
Well, "easy" is not the appropriate qualifier anyway, not in Stone Soup at least