f13.net

So I've been sidekicked all of once, and have a few friends that will be playing after Launch (one half-hour session of showing them the game, and not having to apologize for its shortcomings as I've so often had to on others).

I see the "you fight at your higher-level friend's level", but don't know exactly what that entails. Is there an SB-like XP cap on what the sidekick gets? Do they get the higher-level Enhancements, or do they get level-appropriate ones? I understand their Powers are used as if they were the higher-level, but how does this extend to other things, like natural defenses?

Oh, and just messing around, I picked up Fire Blaster Rain of Fire at lunch. Is that fun! Even cool how they rendered it. If I were to hook up with a Controller, with their fancy AoE Roots, Rain of Fire and Fire Blast would pretty much pWn. Unless we missed. Then it'd get fun :)

Have been sidekicked probably five times now and at least this is my experience.  Your chance to hit, your hp, and damage scale up to equal what you would be at the level your sidekicked too.  You get experience at the same level as you now con to the mobs your fighting for the level you really are at, not the side kicked level.  Thus if killing a blue thug would net you 20xp at level 7, killing the same blue con ultra thug at 14th will net you the same 20xp.  What makes this very positive though is that normally grouping at 7th with your 15th level friend would net you Zero xp for any kills gained.  Sidekicking allows you to gain that xp.

Oh, rain of fire is the cool.

What Fargull said.

Once sidekicked your exp will be just what you were getting unsidekicked but using your sidekick level con.  So you get the same exp for an even, one level above, etc. that you would have gotten before.  Split up amongst the group of course.

It seems to be setup so that if a bunch of oddly leveled people group up all having JUST leveled with no exp debt then they will all level with the same amount of kills.  this slants the exp toward the higher level abit as they need more exp to get the same percentage gain to the next level.

I never got too worked up about it as I have been in a lot of varied groups and everyone has always progressed quickly.

Ah ok cool. So it's not exactly formalized power-leveling as much as it doesn't penalize for a wide range of levels.

I'm not really all that concerned by it either, but it'll be nice to finally say to a buddy "why yes, we can group, and it won't be just about me standing back healing/CCing while you grind to catch up".

The other fun things for the sidekicked person is they can see how their abilities look at higher levels. It is not powerleveling though and usually if you are close enough that you can survive and contribute without sidekicking it is best to nto be side kicked as you will get more xp. But when I am with the folks who I hung out with to test the 34 level characters one had a level 2 buddy and we had him tanking level 36 mobs which scared the heck out of him but it worked fine.

He leveled as fast as he would have leveled in a group of his peers so it basically makes for a fun and exciting change of pace and allows friends to group.


Kaid

You CAN powerlevel a newbie if you're of a ridiculous enough level.

For instance, I took my lv 12 controller into the sewers with a lv2 (unsked) and he hit lv 3 in moments.  Since I get no xp for the lv 4 and 5 mobs, he gets like all of it.

Yeah, it's tedious and boring for the person doing the killing (but not really, cause kicking ass on a group of Vahz that would have pwned me 10 levels previously is righteous revenge and whatnot), but it's effective.

That newb was me. I've tried near every archetype and combination so far. By the 5th or 6th time getting to level 8 I got sick of wasting 5 hours. Level 8 can be gotten in 90 minutes if you have a good level 10-15 with you and go all the way through the sewers.

Good points.

On that PLing thing though: it feels like mob XP is split between all who contributed to its demise, but that the reward for killing it (Enhancements, Inspirations, counter-to-mission, Influence) goes to the person who did the most damage. Is that right?

Secondarily, Slack, it sounds like you doing the killing was giving the newb XP anyway. Is group XP just evenly split then, regardless of who damaged what?

And this is just academic, since once ingame, XP is the last thing I'm worried about.

No.  The drops are random, otherwise support characters would never get anything.

I have zoned into mission maps after a death and instantly gotten enchancements from things my party just killed on an entirely different level.

That only works for some levels. At higher levels in a group of 34's level 20s in the group got zero xp for most things we fought unless we side kicked them.  If you are not grouped you can get xp equal to the damage you do to the mob which you can use for a limited form of powerleveling but at higher levels that tactic is a really good way of watching newbies get ground to dust due to the way agro works.

Kaid

According to this thread on the beta boards (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=117116&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1) that is no longer the case.