Multiclass penalty and ECL comparison

Whether to take a Multiclass penalty or ECL
Let's imagine a Wood elf takes 1 level of Fighter and 1 level of Sorcerer for her first two levels, then puts the rest of her levels into fighter and prestige classes like Red dragon disciple. After her 4th level, she is a Fighter 3/Bard 1 and she will begin to take a 20% experience penalty. If instead of pursuing Red Dragon Disciple she adds 1 level of Rogue, the penalty increases to 40%. Adding another base class, say paladin, increases the penalty to 60%. Only up to 4 classes may be taken in NWN2, so this is the end of the line for the masochist (unless he further combines this mess with a heavy ECL race). However, most of us want to minimize the forces that slow our character's level growth. How to do this?

One very important question, then, is whether an ECL race, whose favored class will prevent the experience penalty, is better than a Non-ECL race that will take an experience penalty. At what point does one become better than the other? The following tables are meant to assist in answering this question.

Multiclass XP Penalty Table
* 253,000 is the maximum possible experience points that a character may have in NWN2 without the Mask of the Betrayer expansion, even though level cannot advance beyond 20 in this campaign. Characters with severe penalties cannot reach even level 20 until they start Mask of the Betrayer.

** 528,000 is the maximum possible experience points that a character may have in NWN2 with the Mask of the Betrayer expansion installed. This means characters with severe penalties can never reach the highest levels even with infinite enemies to fight.

Notes:
 * Starting the exp penalty in later levels rather than immediately obviously reduces the overall penalty at high levels. Players should keep this in mind when choosing when to take levels in the classes that will start the penalty. Taking a level in bard at level 15 (to qualify for Red Dragon Disciple, for example) results in a much lower penalty than taking it at or before level 4.

ECL Progression Table
Compare the above table of Multiclass XP Penalties to the ECL adjustments below. This table was adapted from the ones in Character progression.

* This is the maximum possible experience points that a character may have in NWN2 without the Mask of the Betrayer expansion. Even non-ECL characters may obtain this amount of experience points. However, the level cap of 20 still remains in place.

** This is the maximum possible experience points that a character may have in NWN2 with the Mask of the Betrayer expansion installed. Even non-ECL characters may obtain this amount of experience points. However, the level cap of 30 still remains in place.