A4: Party Useful Skills?

[Eigenvalue]

Hi, sorry if the answers to some of these questions have already appeared in the forum, so please reference me to the right topic

if needed.

 

First of all, what do you think is better: the main fighter with the sword or the main fighter with the spear? I believe that some enemies take more damage from the sword, while some enemies take more damage from the spear, but still... Of course, using spears means no shields, so less protection and less additional bonuses coming from shields...

 

My second question, I did not have an archer in my party when I played the game first time, how much damage can an archer really do? That is, does it even remotely compare to a mage with, say, the kill spell? A similar question is for throwing weapons. How much should my main fighters invest in bows to make significant damage in the long-range combat. I mean, if my fighter can do, say, 20 bow damage, while a mage can do 100, there does not seem to be any point training bow skills.

 

This definitely appeared, is there any point training tools skills?

Nature lore? Arcane lore? I.e. is the benefit coming from finding rare items worth more than the points spent on developing nature lore skills?

 

If I play the game the second time, I want to make the strongest possible party of 4, throwing out all the unnecessary. One fighter does not seem to be enough, is it possible to make the second fighter half mage? Or there was something that mages and priests cannot wear some armor to cast some spells? What was that? I think that for most damage I would like to have two mages, but then priest spells are also great. So maybe:

a pure fighter + fighter/priest + 2 mages, or

a pure fighter + fighter/mage + mage + priest, or

2 fighters + mage + mage/priest,

where say by mage/priest I mean a character developing both mage and priest skills. What do you think?

Edited February 17, 2015 by nikki.
edited title to include game

[*i]

Swords and spears depends on personal taste. Spears let you do the most damage, but you get less defense from not being able to use a shield. This may mean your fighter will need to be healed more often, so you should have a decent healer if your fighter has spears.

 

Bows are actually pretty good. Plan on investing in dexterity and sharpshooter. Although they don't do as much damage as swords/spears, they are pretty useful throughout the game. You probably should give your archer some other skills too.

 

Tool use, arcane lore, and nature lore are very good skills in this game. Tool use should probably be coupled with a mage because it adds to your unlock door skill; tool use of 15 is needed to disarm the more difficult traps. Nature lore can be spread out, but it does allow you to get some pretty good items including the best bow in the game. Arcane lore, spread out about 15 among the party and you will be able to get just about every spell you need.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Eigenvalue:
First of all, what do you think is better: the main fighter with the sword or the main fighter with the spear? I believe that some enemies take more damage from the sword, while some enemies take more damage from the spear, but still... Of course, using spears means no shields, so less protection and less additional bonuses coming from shields...

The lack of defence is less of an issue once you have Parry or Gymnastics -- a high level of one of these renders you almost immune to melee attacks. (Some people swear by Gymnastics, since it helps you dodge missile and magical attacks as well, but I found that Parry was usually good enough for my purposes.) Also, the best halberd in the game raises your physical and elemental resistances by a significant amount. And there are some very good pole weapons available early in the game. On the other hand, there are some excellent shields available late in the game, which increase your offensive abilities as well as protecting you. I gave my only fighter swords throughout the game and did fine with that, but man, I do kinda wish I'd had a character capable of wielding the Jade Halberd...

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My second question, I did not have an archer in my party when I played the game first time, how much damage can an archer really do? That is, does it even remotely compare to a mage with, say, the kill spell?

Mage spells will always have the highest potential to do damage. But some enemies are immune to all or almost all kinds of elemental attack, and other enemies parry melee attacks, or riposte or do other nasty things if you try to hit them in melee. So mages and fighters aren't always very useful for doing damage. Missile attacks do physical damage and are rarely parried, so sometimes an archer is actually your best offensive choice.

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A similar question is for throwing weapons.

Count on throwing weapons to do about 50% more damage than bows throughout the game. Unfortunately, I found that even this very substantial increase in damage wasn't worth the pain of dragging around throwable items. Plus, there are a few bows that have nice side benefits other than direct damage. (Well, and there's one near the end that does better damage than any thrown weapon anyway.)

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How much should my main fighters invest in bows to make significant damage in the long-range combat. I mean, if my fighter can do, say, 20 bow damage, while a mage can do 100, there does not seem to be any point training bow skills.

I didn't bother training bow skills for my fighter -- fighters have enough trouble finding skill points for everything they need to do as it is. Having one or two characters with high Bows skill in your party is definitely worthwhile, though. Obviously, if you want your characters to do any archery, make them Nephilim -- those bonuses to missile skills are very significant, and increase as you gain levels.

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Or there was something that mages and priests cannot wear some armor to cast some spells? What was that?

Some items give a penalty to your hit rate. (These are described as "bulky items" in the item information window, and the penalty is shown). If a mage doesn't have the Natural Mage trait, he can only have up to a 5% penalty -- with a penalty of 10% or more, he can't cast mage spells. If he DOES have Natural Mage, he's allowed up to a 20% penalty -- but with a penalty of 25% or more, he still can't cast mage spells. This applies only to mages, not priests -- priests can wear all the armour they like, as long as you're sure you won't need them to cast any mage spells.

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I think that for most damage I would like to have two mages, but then priest spells are also great. So maybe:
a pure fighter + fighter/priest + 2 mages, or
a pure fighter + fighter/mage + mage + priest, or
2 fighters + mage + mage/priest,
where say by mage/priest I mean a character developing both mage and priest skills. What do you think?

There's no party that will deal out the maximum possible damage to everything, because different monsters have different vulnerabilities. The best advice is to make sure that your party is balanced.

Personally, I felt that one fighter was too few early in the game (say, before Parry or Gymnastics), but quite enough late in the game. I suspect the best solution to this is to have only one fighter, but try to get him Parry or Gymnastics as soon as possible.

[Slawbug]

Some clarifications on Thuryl's post. First of all, Gymnastics does exactly the same thing as Dexterity (except it doesn't boost missile attacks as well). Defense and Luck also add to this dodge stat, as do the Enduring Shield/Armor spells. At Normal difficulty, you pretty much have to pump all of these stats to become "almost immune" to physical attacks.

 

Parry protects against melee attacks at 5% plus 5% per point of Parry up to 10 points. After that it's 5% every 2 points, and after 20 it's 5% every 3 points. So this is good protection, but you won't get the kind of 99% immunity that a good dodge stat will provide, not even late game. Also, Parry provides very poor protection against missile attacks (this includes bows and thrown weapons as well as most magic attacks). Neither Parry nor dodging protects against area of effect spells.

[Lilith]

The thing about Parry is that apart from having a chance to block attacks completely, it also reduces the damage you take when you do get hit. With 10 Parry, my fighter was consistently taking only 1 or 2 damage from nearly all melee attacks, despite frequently having less armour than my mage (who was taking considerably more damage).

[Slawbug]

Hmm. Parry didn't reduce damage consistently when I tested... perhaps I should try some more.

 

Does it also reduce missile damage?

 

And more relevantly, does it reduce magic damage? If it does, then perhaps we really have been underrating it...

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Slartucker:
Hmm. Parry didn't reduce damage consistently when I tested... perhaps I should try some more.

Well, my fighter was taking negligible damage from melee attacks for some reason, anyway. Parry seems the most sensible explanation. I also noticed that enemies with high Parry tended to take much less damage from melee attacks (although they still took normal or close to normal damage from missiles).

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Does it also reduce missile damage?

And more relevantly, does it reduce magic damage?

No; it only seems to reduce melee damage, unfortunately. It's still pretty useful for what it does. And on Torment, I'm not sure if you're ever going to be able to rely on dodging everything with Dexterity, Defence and Gymnastics, so Parry may be the safer option. (Mind you, this remains to be seen; I haven't tried making a committed dodger on Torment.)

[Slawbug]

Dodging is definitely harder on Torment, since the enemies are higher level. At the moment, my singleton is still at 1% when I switch to Torment; I doubt that will be true at the end of the game, though.

 

However, with a party of four, you could definitely accomplish it for one or two characters. You just have a front-liner pump all the dodge stats, while a dedicated priest pumps his magic stats. Shield the front-liner and voila.

[Alorael at Large]

Because Parry isn't dependent on enemies, it should theoretically improve as difficulty goes up. I never seemed to get greater chances to parry from increasing Parry, though, and I don't know why. With high Gymnastics it didn't really matter.

 

—Alorael, who disagrees somewhat with doing consistently higher damage with thrown weapons. This is true in the beginning and to maybe a little bit past halfway through the game, but then bows and thrown are about the same for a while before bows pull ahead. Also, you can (and should) give bows even to characters with no Dexterity or training with bows. They'll still hit and do a fair amount of damage reasonably often.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Arcane Methodological Square:
—Alorael, who disagrees somewhat with doing consistently higher damage with thrown weapons. This is true in the beginning and to maybe a little bit past halfway through the game, but then bows and thrown are about the same for a while before bows pull ahead.

Having used both an archer and a thrower throughout the entire game, I really can't support this claim. I just ran through the final battle again as a test -- my archer with the Ebony Bow generally did 15-25 damage to Rentar, while my thrower with Fine Razordisks did 20-30. My archer had 6 Dex, 18 Bows and 13 Sharpshooter, while my thrower had 6 Dex, 15 Thrown and 10 Sharpshooter -- in other words, my thrower managed to do consistently higher damage despite significantly lower skills. I'd say that's pretty convincing.

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Also, you can (and should) give bows even to characters with no Dexterity or training with bows. They'll still hit and do a fair amount of damage reasonably often.

True enough. My mage got the Shockwave Bow once I found it so that he'd have something to do when he wanted to conserve spell points, and eventually I even gave him a few points in Bows so that he could finally hit the broad side of a barn.

And of course, if you have nothing better to do with it, Eliavri's Bow is worth putting on a fighter just for the +2 Quick Action.

[Slawbug]

The scripts agree with Thuryl. Until you get the special bows, even a Javelin has a bigger multiplier than a Longbow. You will certainly see a difference with Razordisks, as they have a 1-5 multiplier, compared to 1-2 or 1-3 for all bows save the Heartstriker.

 

Alo, some queer parry test results coming in a new thread.

[Alorael at Large]

Well, yes. I managed to overlook razordisks entirely because they're just so wonderful when exchanged for beautiful cash.

 

I could claim this was a masterful plan, but mainly I'm just prejudiced against throwing from previous Avernums and the joys of not having to count ammunition for bows in A4.

 

—Alorael, who would feel some remorse if he could recall a single interesting thrown weapon. Even if they're powerful, they're not much fun.

[Grain of Salt]

Just to throw this in, Parry blocks EVERYTHING for me. To the point of unrealisticality (sp?). I have about 4 points in it and I can block acid breath. Not consistently, but still...

[Slawbug]

Unless you're playing Geneforge 2, 4 points of Parry is rarely going to block acid breath. Are you sure something else isn't happening?

[Contra]

Mmmmm...Geneforge 2.

Mmm..Guardian..Parry.

 

Drool.

[Istara]

Both priests and mages are so useful in Avernum. High level priest healing spells are just vital as is Repel Spirit - but in this game you really need Dispel Barrier, a high level mage spell, as well (not to mention all the great offensive stuff).

 

I recommend getting one of each, and giving your priest a level of mage spells, so they can cheaply cast Bolt of Fire (2 energy, as opposite to Smite, which is 8). Alternatively you could have the priest do some archery for you, but it makes more sense to me that they have Bolt of Fire at least.