Party members left "on the bench" the garden.

[Mandrake42]

Do they gain XP or stay as they were when you left them there? Does the character you have in reserve gain XP.

[Shylaar]

As far as the start of chapter 4, they don't get any exp. But since the game has pretty heavy exp scaling it's little trouble to catch them up.

[Saga Saga]

Only the active party gains XP.

Luckily it's not hard to level up those underused, underleveled characters when the time comes to use them.

[Mandrake42]

Yeah I remember from previous games that you could take those characters who were maybe 10 levels below the average and so long as you kept them alive, gain a mess of XP every fight. I tend to rotate my roster just to see the conversations people have anyway. Was just curious. Thanks!

[hurricanemix100]

I thought in the other games they'd catch everyone up at the end of each chapter? Or maybe that was cold steel they did that? Or I'm just totally misremembering.

[Iridium]

Cold Steel II did that. FC and CS1 also technically did it, but only when characters were forcibly removed from your party (because the game pretty much wouldn't function otherwise.) I don't think SC did it though.

[LL]

Is it important to have all party members leveled up for end game or is it fine to only level up the 4 or so characters you can have in your party?

[Mandrake42]

It's easy to keep them levelelled. The amount of XP you get for a monster depends on its toughness compared to your level. So if someone falls behind, take them along with a tough group to a good area and the newbie character will level up every single battle pretty much. Very useful as the game often requires different characters for plot beats, so it's easy to grind those who fall behind up to scratch.

[Turtle]

Originally posted by LL:

Is it important to have all party members leveled up for end game or is it fine to only level up the 4 or so characters you can have in your party?

I'd spend at least a *little* time leveling everyone. When the game makes you use them, most of the enemies are disproportionately weak compared to their level/xp, so catching up at that point will be pretty easy.

[LL]

Would the game ever force you to use a certain character in the endgame apart from Kevin or Ries?

[Mandrake42]

I haven't gotten that far so I can't comment, but it isn't beyond the Trails series to make you include certain characters. As has been pointed out though, if someone is way below level, the amount of XP they get for a battle scales. So while your tough characters might be getting 200xp for a battle, the under powered one may could get thousands of xp, sometimes levelling them multiple times just for one battle. The system works well.

Edit: It's also a good system as the opposite is true, if a character is way too tough for a certain area they will get only one XP. One tactic when levelling a character that has fallen behind is to take a few high levels to an area where they are only getting one XP but the low level character is getting hundreds of XP. The tough characters will mop the floor with the monsters and the low level character will level in no time from the XP they are being showered in.

[Saga Saga]

Originally posted by LL:

Would the game ever force you to use a certain character in the endgame apart from Kevin or Ries?

Without going into too many spoilers.

You'll be "forced" to use everyone. That includes Josette.

[Mandrake42]

Originally posted by Saga Saga:

Originally posted by LL:

Would the game ever force you to use a certain character in the endgame apart from Kevin or Ries?

Without going into too many spoilers.

You'll be "forced" to use everyone. That includes Josette.

You mean Jossie....or Jo ;)

[Hat8]

Originally posted by Saga Saga:

Originally posted by LL:

Would the game ever force you to use a certain character in the endgame apart from Kevin or Ries?

Without going into too many spoilers.

You'll be "forced" to use everyone. That includes Josette.

Lots of 9999 experience rewards...

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by LL:

Is it important to have all party members leveled up for end game or is it fine to only level up the 4 or so characters you can have in your party?

There are spots in the game where it'll make you use multiple parties. But you don't need to worry about leveling them up, because you can get to 135 pretty easily in the last dungeon.

Originally posted by Saga Saga:

You'll be "forced" to use everyone. That includes Josette.

I set her up as a support caster/healer. She's pretty useless offensively. Not enough STR or ATS. If you need an earth waller/zodiac caster, she's as good as anyone else. Decent candidate for the time quartz (cast speed 3).