Talk:Effective character level

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• Where can I find more information about the class-based ECL system?

• All class ECL's are defined in the classes.2da file which can be found in your source folder and with NWNExplorer.
  --Countess Terra 20:55, 12 February 2006 (PST)

• Pedantry: I don't know when or where this idea of ECL races started, but, technically, there is no such thing (or, alternatively, all races are). As stated in the article, ECL is short for Effective Character Level -- not Class Level -- and despite the usage of the word, "level," this is only part of it (1/3rd, to be precise). ECL represents a character's total class levels + racial HD + Level Adjustment, and controls (as in NWN) encounter levels and rewards, but also how much XP is required to advance a level. Level Adjustment (LA) is what sets, say, drow, apart from humans, and it's this that "lags" a character's total class levels. Looking at the .2da, even BioWare seemed to know this, naming the columns EffCRLvlxx (note, however, that in their case, as no LA races or races with racial HD are available as player races, using ECL wouldn't have been decidedly wrong -- just not completely right, either).

Since the idea of ECL races has become widely accepted (and LA completely ignored), I don't know if it'd be worth it to rewrite this article, and, certainly, it's much too late for it to have any real impact on the online community whatsoever. I wouldn't mind if it was "fixed," though. Thoughts? Snoteye 08:46, 15 August 2007 (PDT)