How bad is the xp penalty as SK?

[ivcho]

Hi all,

First post and before I go into my question I have to say this project 1999 thing is truly amazing. I have some of my best life memories from my late teens playing classic EQ and now I'm basically reliving them and it's incredible.

Ok, so my question is this. I used to back in the day mostly play a Dark Elf Shadow Knight and was completely ignorant that an XP penalty actually existed, so I suppose I never really noticed anything wrong. Now that I know it exists I'm reluctant to make the same character again as I fear the penalty would be awful.

How bad is it truly for those of you that have played hybrids or penalized races? Is this penalty in place to essentially offset the benefits a certain race or class provides and therefore ultimately you end up leveling at the same rate and don't really notice? Or is it truly a grueling process to level up a hybrid or a penalized race?

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