On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Papa Legba wrote:

>
> When the bard leaves I estimate our kill rate is cut is half. (which
> means around 2/3 xp each, removing the group bonus factor).

Unfortunately, that's not the proper comparison to make. The
number of people in your group will make a big difference in
the group's ability. The biggest jump is going from 1 person
to 2 people (double the hp, double the damage output = killing
stuff twice as fast with half the downtime). So when your
bard leaves, the drop in your group's effectiveness is not
just due to lack of a bard, it's also due to lack of a 4th
group member.

You need to replace the bard with someone else (hopefully as
competent a player :) and compare.

> so far the least important char in our group is the wizard. She's a
> great player (remember how I said I never had to cast heals on her?
> Thats a pretty good sign of a good wizard), but I don;t think the group
> really hurts without her. Obviously fights go slower, but I would say
> our xp gain is about the same with or without her. Theres a definite
> drop off when any of the other members leave. I may change my tune at

I would expect that to be the case early on. Early on, the
damage mobs do is really not that great relative to your hp.
You end up killing stuff and having little downtime. Having a
nuker there to shorten your fights does not really affect
things much because your group is already operating at near
top effectiveness. i.e. The ratio of mob survival time to
your survival time is already very low. If the wizard
accounts for half the group's damage, nuking to cut it in half
from 0.1 to 0.05 does not make that big a difference.

Later on, the mobs do a lot more damage so you end up killing
stuff and having lots of downtime. The ratio of mob survival
time to your survival time is rather high, say 0.8. Nuking to
cut it in half from 0.8 to 0.4 makes a big difference.

--
John H. Kim
kim@...