In RPGs, should Party Members who don't participate in combat earn experience?

[gsilver]

Unless it's a Suikoden-like system where underleveled characters can easily get within 3-4 levels of your main party within just a few battles, then not making benched party members gain levels just makes them useless.


I don't play a lot of RPGs, but I recently played through Lisa, which doesn't really have a way for you to get lower-level party members caught up, since nearly every battle is a one-time event.
A lot of the party members are fine when they join, but unless you switch out right away, you probably won't be using them.

 

[Drathnoxis]

SNIP

Dude, I was playing JRPGs on my SNES in the 90s, and they were grind-tastic. It was a grindalypse. FF6 anyone?! Getting every character to 100% every Esper to even have a chance against Kefka?

Super Mario RPG was a grind.

Whaaaat? Mario RPG was so easy you could handily beat the game just from the XP you get from bosses and the occasional power star, which lets you quickly take out 10+ enemies without battle. Since the enemies are present on the overworld you never have to engage a non-boss enemy unless you want to. It's actually more of a grind to beat the game without gaining levels.

OT: It depends on the game. In an RPG where you have a large degree of control over your party composition like Pokemon or Disgaea, half the fun is creating new members and leveling them how you want. Just having a blanket leveling system that levels everybody up would lose the sense of progression that comes from building a team.

However, in story based RPGs with a set cast of characters a party level system works well since it allows you to play around with different party combinations without dragging the narrative to a halt. Otherwise, the player might feel obligated to stick with the same 3 members because all the cool new characters that keep joining up are 10 or 20 levels lower.

 

[Achelexus]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LeakedExperience

Much better, IMO.

 

[Jarrito3002]

Yes the grind in the RPG is a grind oh it is a grind. The grind can probably never be taken away but it can be alived. Now most of rpgs I have been playing cut that no shared XP thing out. The only ones that don't are throwbacks or releases.

I am ok with a grind I can understand just don't use it to pad the game like force you grind just to take a boss or do unnecessary detals like party must be in to get XP.

 

[Barbas]

Sure. There has to be an option for them to gain out-of-combat experience and level up, or they'll be underpowered and ineffective when you do switch them in. It means they don't simply warm the bench and you may yet have a use for them at some point in the future.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

In tabletop gaming, any character that is present at an encounter gets a share of the experience. After all, the party ranger does not need to physically engage in combat to notice how the rogue picks out the weak points of armoured enemies, and will know to aim for these points in future. A mage carefully observing how a bard disarms a tripwire will gain knowledge from the act, and should be given exp to reflect that. A monk might not be able to track animals like a ranger, but by watching how the ranger moves through the forest will be able to better understand how to move silently, and so gains from the experience without being directly involved in the hunt.

Bottom line: If a character can legitimately argue that they have been in a position to learn something from an encounter then they should get a share of the exp.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Many factors in my opinion. Are there limited enemies or something for example? Do you *have* to use certain characters? Are characters taken away then reintroduced later?

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Depends on the way exp works in the game. In RPGs where the PC and their allies gain the most amount of XP from combat, shared XP isn't all that necessary. So rpgs like Fire Emblem (Especially since characters always level up at 100), Pokemon, and generally speaking almost every turn based rpg, don't really need it. Grinding in these games tend to work fine.

Action RPGs like Inquisition, on the other hand, benefit from it. Especially since the best way to gain xp is to complete quests and defeat bosses. Grinding off of random grunts is the wrong way to gain exp in such a game. Inquisition also requires every character to be built to fulfill their roles. As such, taking a level one tank to a boss to help it level up faster will fail.

 

[Lieju]

Depends on the game. Definitely if it's going to split your party or make you use one specific character...

It's also possible to have different kinds of experience (not sure if all of the tales games did it? Tales of Symphonia did) where all the characters got EXP. but only using moves actively in battle gave you acccess to stronger moves.

At least the grind fits in Pokemon though, for the setting, you are meant to be training them. Pokemon also has plenty of opportunities to practice clearing trash, even at higher levels, but I wouldn't regard the fact that a large number of your Pokemon are going to end up underlevelled and then underused, if at all, simply due to not being good enough for their level, or getting outlevelled as a good element of design.

Part of Pokemon is that everyone's experience will be different (if only slightly) and their pokemon individuals.
I might catch the first Pidgey I see and name it Prunelle and keep it with me to the journey all the way to the elite four. Someone else might not catch pidgeys at all, or only for a pokedex etc. Choosing your Pokemon and putting the effort in to make them part of your team is part of the appeal.

I remember playing Pokemon Red as a kid and buying the Magicarp and painstakingly training it to have it evolve into Gyarados around Vermilion City. And it felt like an accomplishment because it wasn't something I had to do, and most people playing the storymode didn't. SO I had this experience of playing the storymode with a Gyarads from an early point that was more unique.

Pokemon and how you build your team is just sort of different from lot of RPGs where you have way less choice for party members, so how comparable those experiences are... You can always grind fairly easily even pokemon with no usable moves, or catch higher leveled pokemon when you arrive to a new location.

Plus having your Pokemon be fighting machines is not the only reason to catch and train them.
Filling up your pokedex is one of the main goals given to you in the game.