How does the Fighter damage experience bonus work for low-HP enemies?

Question

In AD&D 2nd edition, fighters gain experience bonuses from damage they've done. Experience=(Damage/8)*10. Compared to rogues or mages that gain exp from spells, it's a lot less.

My question is: Suppose an enemy has 1 hit die, and he had 1 health point left, and a fighter does a critical hit of 17 damage. Does he gain experience from the 17 damage, or for the 1 point of health the enemy had left?

UPDATE: Verified with my DM, this is a modification from the rule from the DM Handbook mentioned on the answer given: "The fighter gets 10 * 1 (level of orcs) * 3 (number of orcs) XP on top, although he didn't even act before it all was over" What its doing, is making the assumption of enemies having a hit die of 8 (which is why its doing the calculation of dividing by 8). And then it does the multiply by 10 as the rule specifies.

So it seems its a modification of an existing rule, so the answer is that there is no answer. So I guess its up to DM's call.

Thank you for the answer and the help.

Answer 1

I have looked into both the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Masters Guide and I have not found the numbers you provided.

The player handbook says different characters get single XP rewards by class and lists examples, for example a fighter gets extra XP for defeating enemies. No formulas are given. The Dungeon Masters guide lists as an optional rule a table where fighters get 10 XP per Level of defeated enemies. This does not mean he has to defeat them single-handedly, there is an extra category for that. The fighter (may, if you apply the optional rule) get 10 XP/Level of anything the group defeats.

For example, a fighter, a wizard and a bard of first level meet three orcs. The wizard casts a sleep spell which puts two to sleep. The bard kills the last one with a bow. They loot 10 gold.

• All get 15 * 3 (number of orcs) XP for the orcs.
• The fighter gets 10 * 1 (level of orcs) * 3 (number of orcs) XP on top, although he didn't even act before it all was over
• The wizard gets 50 * 1 (rank of sleep spell) XP on top.
• The bard gets 5 * 1 (level of orcs) * 3 (number of orcs) XP on top.
• And the bard gets 2 * 10 (looted gold) XP on top.

They get different XP values, but they have different level values as well. Becoming second level will take the fighter, bard and wizard different amount of XP.

This is a lot of bookkeeping. In our group, we dropped that rules and the one with the highest level requirements leveled once at the end of the adventure and all others got the XP that he required (and therefore probably leveled twice). But your milleage may vary.