How do I arrange my party formation in Avernum 6

[Dogar]

The way it is now, my weak ass mage is in the front of the party, which means he always gets his ass stomped when battle starts. Can anyone tell me how I can get my badass Slith Polearm guy up to the front row?

 

 

Decent game by the way. Ugly, but nice.

[Jerakeen]

In the training screen, to the right of the character portrait, just above the line, you will see the words "Change Party Order". Click on "Up" or "Down" to move that character in the roster. That will change the marching order too.

[Harehunter]

I have usually shunned playing with a slith character because they are notorious for their sluggishness.

 

Check your encumbrance on your slith. He needs more Strength skill in order to wear heavy armor. Also you need to train him in more levels of Quick Action. This will give him the extra action points he needs to keep up with the rest of your party.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

I have usually shunned playing with a slith character because they are notorious for their sluggishness.

Check your encumbrance on your slith. He needs more Strength skill in order to wear heavy armor. Also you need to train him in more levels of Quick Action. This will give him the extra action points he needs to keep up with the rest of your party.

Huh? Where are you getting this? I have never seen any modification to encumbrance or initiative based on race. (Nephils get bonus Gymnastics which in turn gives them bonus initiative, but that's only indirectly based on race, and that's the only indirect effect I know of).

[Alorael at Large]

Well, since fighters are likely to be nephils or sliths, sliths are likely to be the slowpokes. But no, they're not slower than humans.

 

—Alorael, whose only explanation for that is if you're taking the extra skill points from extra levels for humans and putting them into the skills that make you go earlier in combat.

[Slawbug]

They also aren't slower in the ways that were stated: they do not have higher encumbrance requirements, and they CERTAINLY do not hemorrhage action points.

[Harehunter]

My apologies, dear sirs. I only speak from what experience I have had. I know that technically there is no reason to expect sliths to be slower, but many times I have experienced the same problem as Dogar has had.

 

I especially notice this phenomenon when exploring or running in combat mode while hasted. My mage will frequently get an extra AP, and my slith would get one less AP. I would have to stop moving the other PCs before all their AP was used up in order for the slith to catch up.

 

With regard to the encumbrance question, I am not entirely certain that it applies. I only noticed that increasing the Strength and Defense attributes, along with Quick Action helped in these cases.

 

On the other hand, Nephils will often get extra action points, plus initiative. By that I mean my nephil would be the second character behind my human fighter, but when I go into combat mode, the nephil would be the first to move, instead of my lead fighter. To overcome this I found that training my lead fighter with extra Quick Action solved this problem. CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES is correct in that Gymnastics also has a great effect in Initiative. I mention Quick Action as an alternative because early in the game, training in Gymnastics is not possible.

 

Of course I may have misunderstood Dogar's question. and it was simply a matter of changing the battle order. It would not occur to me to create a party with my mage as the first character in the marching order.

 

A tip of the cap to Aloreal for his reasoning that it may be a matter of gaining experience and skill points more quickly with the other characters. That reasoning is sound.

 

One other neat phenomenon I have noticed in some of the Exile/Avernum games I have played is that quite often my priest character was always targeted first by archers and mages, regardless of his position in the marching order. This makes good sense from an AI perspective, but was highly annoying to me. To break the algorithm, I would have my lead fighter cast a Wound or Smite on the offending enemy. Thus he became marked as a priest and would draw much of the fire away from my real priest.

[Erebus the Black]

The only thing I can think of (regarding this) is that in exile the pre-made slith warrior always came with the sluggish penalty, but that was just Jeff's way of compensating for the xp penalty of taking a slith.

Who knows, maybe he embedded the sluggishness of the sliths in later games into the code, logically a slith (being cold blooded) should incur a temporary action penalty when hit with a cold attack and a small action bonus when hit with a heat attack.

And as we all know, monsters attacking with icy touch do slow you down in addition to the damage.

[Randomizer]

Sluggishness isn't embed into Sliths.

 

The most likely problem is over encumbrance and that can be checked on the inventory screen to see if the weight exceeds the carrying capacity.

 

The other is a trait.

[Harehunter]

I believe you may be right in that the trait began in the earlier Exile series. That tainted my attitude toward them.

That and the high experience penalty. I kept finding myself in need of one PC with a high Tool Use skill in order to get past some pesky traps and dig up some stubborn caches. In order to get this, I kept with either a human or nephil which have a lower penalty so I could add Nimble Fingers to them.

I don't like having a large difference in experience penalties as it makes it more difficult to keep all my PCs at near the same experience level. I find it frustrating to have a party of three level 30 and one fighter left at level 25, e.g. I always had to watch out for and protect the weaker character when I really needed him to be strong.

[Dogar]

Thanks for the info all!

[Xazo-Tak]

Originally Posted By: Dogar

The way it is now, my weak ass mage is in the front of the party, which means he always gets his ass stomped when battle starts. Can anyone tell me how I can get my badass Slith Polearm guy up to the front row?


Decent game by the way. Ugly, but nice.

You used the word "ass" the same number of times as you have ever posted on here. 3, Lol.
Btw, you do realise you posted in the wrong section? Because Avernum 6 is a second trilogy game, this is the first trilogy section.