A:EftP - Speculation about the Combat Skill Tree

[Randomizer]

Using the symbols used in previous Avernum games and Avadon, I'm guessing what the combat skill tree is (screenshot) :

 

Lowest level versions, so there may be extra skills at higher level as in Avadon.

 

Tier 1 (left to right):

Melee weapon or Sword

Pole weapon

Bows

Thrown weapons - razor disk

 

Tier 2 (left to right):

Triumphant roar - gives nearby allies haste and war chant (from Avadon)

-- needs both melee and pole weapons

Blade sweep - attacks nearby foes (from Avadon)

-- needs both melee and pole weapons

 

Tier 2.5 (left to right):

??? some sort of improved to hit with ranged weapons

-- needs both bows and thrown weapons

Shadowwalker focus ?? - haste and spines in Avadon

-- needs both bows and thrown weapons

 

Tier 3 (left to right):

Bladeshield or some temporary invulnerability

-- needs Triumphant roar

???

-- needs Blade sweep

 

Top Tier (left to right):

Shattering blow ?? - stun and knock back target (Avadon shadowwalker)

-- needs Bladeshield

Two weapons or dual wielding

-- needs unknown from tier 3

Terror

-- needs unknown from tier 3 and improved to hit from tier 2.5

Challenge - makes nearby enemies attack you and gives some regeneation

-- needs both tier 2.5

[Slawbug]

Hah. The bottom row may be obvious due to their placement, but most of the symbols could mean anything. If you follow those icons through the 14 Spiderweb games that have used icons for spells and abilities, you will find that the same icon is used to represent numerous different abilities in different games. Likewise, the same spell is represented by numerous different icons, in different games.

[Enraged Slith]

I'm hoping that Jeff will replace the restrictive Avadon system with a more synergistic one, a la Diablo 2. I hate the idea of needing to increase every base combat skill just to put one extra point in Angry Skull.

[Firecage]

I kinda hope for the original avernum one, but with some of the avadon one in it.

[Alorael at Large]

And, for that matter, those icons could be placeholders.

 

—Alorael, who likes to imagine that the skull abilities calls down the annoyance of the Xian Skull upon your foes. It's quite irksome.

[Spidweb]

The icons are real. The skill tree is MUCH more relaxed than for Avadon. You can increase a skill up to the higher of the skills below it, not the lower.

 

The skills match very closely with the skills in Avernum 6. For example, the top row combat skills are Riposte, Dual Wielding, Lethal Blow, Sniper.

 

I will blog in much more detail about the skill system soon.

 

- Jeff Vogel

[Randomizer]

Revised with more Avenite skills. One of these might be Anatomy:

 

Tier 1 (left to right):

Melee weapon or Sword

Pole weapon

Bows

Thrown weapons - razor disk

 

Tier 2 (left to right):

Blademaster

-- needs both melee and pole weapons

Parry

-- needs both melee and pole weapons

 

Tier 2.5 (left to right):

Sharpshooter

-- needs both bows and thrown weapons

Quick strike

-- needs both bows and thrown weapons

 

Tier 3 (left to right):

Resistance

-- needs Blademaster

Quick action

-- needs Parry

 

Top Tier (left to right):

Lethal blow -

-- needs Resistance

Dual wielding

-- needs Blademaster

Riposte

-- needs Quick action and Sharpshooter

Sniper

-- needs Sharpshooter and Quick strike

[Alorael at Large]

Fun result: this means things like Resistance (if it exists), Riposte, and Magical Efficiency will be much easier to unlock as a matter of course. As a corollary, the lack of a huge wasted cost means they're much more likely to be cost-effective, viable choices if you're not going to build your entire character around the one skill.

 

—Alorael, who will now just go ahead and say he wants cool secondary abilities at three and six points in a skill. Without it, the skill system would be much like Exile's, but more so: equal costs for all skills and no change in skill cost. With it, you get many times more abilities for your skills. He's not sure he'd predict that, though; Riposte (and Resistance?) would logically go under Parry, Blademaster and Lethal Blow might be paired, and so on. Instead, maybe battle disciplines or something similar might unlock from higher levels of skills. Or just increasing returns.

[Slawbug]

A more balanced version of Exile's! One where you can't have everything, and there is no Tower of Magi bug and no Silverlocke.

 

Also, I just noticed that the skill trees look like tunnels. I have to say, that's a VERY nice touch.

[Death Knight]

Can someone explain this a bit to me. Will the skill trees be like avernum 5 and 6 where you unlock the disciplines by getting your melee or ranged skill up- Or will it be like Avadon where i have to unlock things to get to other things and all that garbage? Im hoping that it wont, cause the skill tree in avadon was one of the major reasons i couldnt stand. Im hoping jeff stays as close to a5 and a6 as he can.

[Enraged Slith]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Can someone explain this a bit to me. Will the skill trees be like avernum 5 and 6 where you unlock the disciplines by getting your melee or ranged skill up- Or will it be like Avadon where i have to unlock things to get to other things and all that garbage? Im hoping that it wont, cause the skill tree in avadon was one of the major reasons i couldnt stand. Im hoping jeff stays as close to a5 and a6 as he can.

As of right now, the only thing we know is that you can only invest in the higher skills as much as you've invested in one of your base skills. It looks like it's going to be a hybrid of the two systems.

I also don't really understand your grief with Avadon, because "unlocking" abilities worked very similarly in the Avernum series.

[Randomizer]

From what Jeff has said, you need a minimum of 1 level in all the prerequiste skills to unlock the higher skills above. Unlike Avadon you don't need all the prerequiste skills to be the same level as the higher skill that you want, but only one of those skills. So only one of the ones below in a column needs to be maximized as you go to the top to maximize it.

[Death Knight]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

From what Jeff has said, you need a minimum of 1 level in all the prerequiste skills to unlock the higher skills above. Unlike Avadon you don't need all the prerequiste skills to be the same level as the higher skill that you want, but only one of those skills. So only one of the ones below in a column needs to be maximized as you go to the top to maximize it.

That is exactly what i needed to hear. I found that avadon's making you have all levels the same, was a big pain and it caused me to screw up my characters in avadon and eventually i quit the game. Im glad that avernum has it more d2 style. I wasnt worried that this was with skills, I am more concerned with battle disciplines. Which is what i am guessing you are talking about.

[*i]

Death Knight, you know that you can retrain your characters (without using cheat codes) in Avadon?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

You can increase a skill up to the higher of the skills below it, not the lower.

That...sounds pretty ideal. I thought the Avadon skill system had both advantages and disadvantages relative to the Avernum/Geneforge systems, but this one sounds like the best of both worlds.

[Death Knight]

Originally Posted By: *i

Death Knight, you know that you can retrain your characters (without using cheat codes) in Avadon?

I know you can. I just usually like to get it right the first time. My concern was just the complicated sense of avadons skill system. The attributes were done like avernum which was good. The skill system could have been better though in my opinion. Me actually having to purchase previous skills so i can purchase new skills is not fun and make the game confusing and extremely aggravating. On top of that, there is almost no choice with where to place your specialization points because the middle wins hands down all the time. Theres no reason to choose the others as was said to me by others. Those 2 things really turned me away and i am just hoping that jeff doesnt follow that for avernum's remakes. Thats all.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

Quote:

You can increase a skill up to the higher of the skills below it, not the lower.

That...sounds pretty ideal. I thought the Avadon skill system had both advantages and disadvantages relative to the Avernum/Geneforge systems, but this one sounds like the best of both worlds.

My one concern is that it could make the middle columns even more important than they already were, but based on the screenshot it looks like steps are being taken to avoid that, too.

[Randomizer]

It looks like you pretty much need 1 level of almost everything and then maximize melee and a missile weapon at the bottom. I'm guessing Jeff is going to have a limit on each skill like in Avadon to discourage some excesses.

[Kennedy]

So if the skills are capped then You'll only need to get your priest or mage skill up to 8 to be able to learn and cast all the spells? That should be nicer than the old way where you needed to get the skills up to 18 or something.

[Kyronea]

If that is the case, Kennedy, then it would actually be a return to the old Exile manner of handling spells, where you only needed a maximum of seven to be able to cast all mage spells, and a maximum of seven for the same in priest spells.

 

Though the skills were expensive. Six skill points for mage, five for priest, meaning a grand total of forty-two and thirty-five skill points invested in each for maximum casting.

 

And unlike in Avernum you don't get any spell points for this beyond an initial three points per skill level in mage and priest at character creation. (Emphasis on at character creation, because if you add the skill later on you don't get any free spell points.)

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Kyronea

And unlike in Avernum you don't get any spell points for this beyond an initial three points per skill level in mage and priest at character creation. (Emphasis on at character creation, because if you add the skill later on you don't get any free spell points.)

Which meant it was actually a good idea to front-load as much spellcasting capability into your PCs as possible right from level 1, despite the manual specifically telling you not to do this since high-level spells weren't available until later on.

[Randomizer]

Avernum 1 allowed you to get up to Lightning Spray as a mage starting character, but that was stopped by Avernum 2.

 

It depends upon whether having a higher level in casting mage and priest spells increases damage. Although even if it doesn't, you could still make a run for the Tower of the Magi to buy the next group of spells.

[Kyronea]

Although affording those spells was fairly difficult for a new party. Gathering together the necessary gold was not easy. Particularly with the max limit of 9000 gold, affording all you wanted to buy required multiple trips back and forth from dungeons to get loot then back to shops. I hope that's something this remake dispenses with, or at least sets the maxmimum at something much higher, like 60,000 or something.

[Earth]

30k was limit at A4-6 (not totally sure) so doubt it goes to 60k.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

It looks like you pretty much need 1 level of almost everything and then maximize melee and a missile weapon at the bottom. I'm guessing Jeff is going to have a limit on each skill like in Avadon to discourage some excesses.

If you're capped by the lower of the prerequisites, you only need points in one of melee or pole and bows or throwing.

—Alorael, who now notes that there are two tabs of skills, so probably around 28 skills. If the level cap is 40, that's 83 skill points. If the cap per skill is 8, that's ten skills maxed out. That seems reasonable. And, unless magical skills proliferate quite a lot, it means your mages might all be dabblers in other things by the end of the game.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Alorael-Bok

And, unless magical skills proliferate quite a lot, it means your mages might all be dabblers in other things by the end of the game.

Funnily enough (but appropriately), that dynamic harks all the way back to Exile 1. Beyond a certain point as a spellcaster, there just wasn't anything you could meaningfully sink more skill points into (especially since the spell point cap was only 99 and knowledge brews were readily available later on), so you wound up investing in some melee skills by default just to help clean up a little faster in easy fights, fights where you were out of spell points but didn't want to burn energy potions, and fights where your magic wouldn't do you much good.

[Roentgenium]

I think we should start speculating on the Magic/Misc category. We should be able to figure out which "tier" some of the skills are in, at least.

 

The obvious ones are Mage Spells and Priest Spells - almost surely Tier 1. I can't think of any others - I'll add more, if i can.

[Slawbug]

It's also possible that spells will be split up into more than two circles, as in Geneforge and Nethergate. This seems reasonable and would also allow for much greater diversity of magic-users.

 

Now that I think about it, Nethergate's system was pretty much a non-graphical Avadon style skill tree. You could put up to 8 points in each druidism circle, no more; you couldn't have more in Beast than you had in War, no more in Craft than you had in Health, and no more in Spirit than in the lesser of Beast and Craft.

[*i]

Thus far, Jeff seems to have retained a "Mage" and "Priest" category from the screenshots. Perhaps beneath that are sub-levels where certain skills enhance certain spells. If not something like that, then, yes, we're back to Exile I where you quickly run out of spellcaster things to invest.

[Slawbug]

Unless I'm missing something, the only screenshots we've seen have had physical combat skills. No magic skill screenshots. Right?

[Earth]

yea it looks like party in screenshots doesn't have caster, there's fighter, archer, thief (maybe) and 2nd fighter.

[*i]

At the bottom of every screenshot (except the map one) is the "task bar", and two of the buttons look to be the traditional mage and priest spell icons. Unless these are placeholders, it's likely the mage/priest dichotomy is preserved. We have yet to learn about the details of how spells are given out, whether it be Avernum/Geneforge purchasing or Avadon skill purchasing style.

[Randomizer]

The second skill tree is marked magic/misc. so it's likely that it consists of mage and priest skills at the bottom with arcane lore, spellcraft and magical efficiency above them as higher tier skills. That would leave tool use, luck, and nature lore as misc. skills.

 

The last skill tree is traits and Jeff said every other level you get skill points towards them.

[Roentgenium]

Okay, is there anything else we can speculate on? Oh, and I'd like to point out a mistake in the current list of combat skills - if you actually read it from left to right, riposte would come first, and lethal blow would come third, not the other way around. Oh, and why is it saying "needs unknown from tier 3 and improved to hit from tier 2.5", when the skills in question have their actual names - quick action and sharpshooter, respectively - said in the same post? Sorry if I'm missing something; I just don't get how it make sense.

[Randomizer]

I forgot to update some things when I copied my original post.

[Rogue Walker]

From the bottom up:

 

Column 1) Melee Weapons - Hardiness - Parry - Riposte

 

Column 2) Pole Weapons - Blademaster - Quick Action - Dual Wielding

 

Column 3)Bows - Sharpshooter - Lethal Blow

 

Column 4)Thrown Missiles - Quick Strike - Sniper

 

This makes the most sense to me from a progression standpoint. I think there will be an interesting dynamic between training higher tier skills for their stronger innate effects, and the lower skills for more battle disciplines and spells.

 

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

From what Jeff has said, you need a minimum of 1 level in all the prerequiste skills to unlock the higher skills above. Unlike Avadon you don't need all the prerequiste skills to be the same level as the higher skill that you want, but only one of those skills. So only one of the ones below in a column needs to be maximized as you go to the top to maximize it.

I don't think he said that having all requisite skills trained at least once was required (though it is possible), just that the higher requisite skill is how high you can train the higher skill. Its possible that you will only need Melee or Pole weapons to train a higher skill. I'm guessing that Mage and Priest spells are going to be tied up similarly with Spellcraft and Magical Efficiency. It would seem a bit strange to be forced to get both Mage and Priest spells to get the higher tier magical abilities. Though it does seem that Lethal Blow is unusually easy to get through the ranged weapon route. (Might be a good thing...).

 

I'm curious how the lores and tool use will fit in.

 

I'm more curious about traits, which I feel needed to be revamped the most from the earlier games.

[Slawbug]

I still think it's unlikely that there will only be 2 spell-type abilities. Unless the number of spells is being drastically reduced (and it doesn't sound like it) or you are expected to still put 15-18 points into one skill (which would be very boring), it would make more sense to have more than 2 spell circles. Or what is it going to be -- 1 point in mage spells qualifies you to use the first 3 spells, 2 points, the next 3, 3 points, the next 2? That doesn't make sense.

 

It's not like much was ever made of the whole priest spells/mage spells distinction in-game, anyway.

[Kyronea]

There was the Cult of the Anama in E3/A3. And priest spells were always described as being about shouting prayers and such while mage spells required hand movement and other delicate movement that kept them from being cast while wearing armor unless you have a trait that lets you do that.

 

But other than that there wasn't anything, no.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: *i

At the bottom of every screenshot (except the map one) is the "task bar", and two of the buttons look to be the traditional mage and priest spell icons. Unless these are placeholders, it's likely the mage/priest dichotomy is preserved. We have yet to learn about the details of how spells are given out, whether it be Avernum/Geneforge purchasing or Avadon skill purchasing style.

I'm sure Jeff said somewhere (in this thread?) that spells would be bought from trainers.

Spell circles would work though. You've got your buffs/shrouds. You've got a good few elemental damage types (firebolt/fireblast, icebolt/ice lances). You've got debilitating effects (slow, bind foe, forecage). There's the Arcane spells, which would make sense being in their own slot. A summoning circle, perhaps? And that's just from the mage's side.

[Slawbug]

Hmm -- the Anama is a good point. Given their presence as a mechanic in two games, it seems likely that the mage/priest distinction will continue to exist. However, there's nothing stopping Jeff from dividing each set of spells in two, for example.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

in exile there was a bit of overlap, fireball and divine fire for example

[Randomizer]

I think Slarty might be right in that the higher level spells would require a higher tier of mage or priest skills. That way you would be limited to low level spells at the start and have to chose between improving your low level spell effects or going to be able to cast higher level spells before you reach a trainer to learn them.

[Rogue Walker]

I sort of doubt it. For the past 11 Avernum/Exile games the only skills you trained for spells were Mage and Priest Spells.

 

I see no reason that it will be any different now.

[Kyronea]

But that's just it. This is the perfect time to redo the system, if he's going to. After all, it IS the first game in the series. A remake of a remake is the best time to introduce a new system.

[Enraged Slith]

He did it in Avernum. Completely flubbed it up too, as far as I'm concerned. Exile's spell list is unbeatable.

[Kyronea]

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith

He did it in Avernum. Completely flubbed it up too, as far as I'm concerned. Exile's spell list is unbeatable.

I'm...not so sure about that. I mean, sure it IS massive...but often those same effects were duplicated in the Avernum spell system as well. Even if it had far fewer actual spells, it still had almost all the same range of effects.

At the same time it had its own flaws, in that certain effects couldn't be duplicated after you raised spells to level three(such as webbing a foe) and that certain effects/spells just weren't in existence anymore, like magical fields, Mindduels, and so on.

So there are pros and cons to both spell systems. I did however still like Exile's system better though--one of the many reasons I chose to play Exile 3 rather than Avernum 3 in my latest playthrough.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Rogue Walker

I sort of doubt it. For the past 11 Avernum/Exile games the only skills you trained for spells were Mage and Priest Spells.

I see no reason that it will be any different now.

The basic Exile spell mechanics were developed in 1994. The basic Avernum ones, in 2000. Those haven't really changed in the past 11 years. But since then, Jeff has developed other game systems, Geneforge and Avadon, with drastically different mechanics. We've already seen evidence that the 2011 Avadon skill tree mechanics are overwriting the old 2000 Nethergate/Avernum skill point mechanics, even though they were preserved as late as Avernum 6 (2009). So it's quite plausible this will change.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Kyronea

often those same effects were duplicated in the Avernum spell system as well. Even if it had far fewer actual spells, it still had almost all the same range of effects.

This is absolutely, positively, not true.

Well, it may actually be true or close to true about Exile 1, which had a much shorter spell list. But it is not at all true about Exile 2 and 3.

[Kyronea]

It isn't? I'm not sure how it wouldn't be true.

 

I mean, let's take a look at Haste for example. Haste level one is like Minor Haste. It doesn't last long. Haste level two is the regular Haste spell. Still one target, but much longer lasting. Haste level three is the Major Haste spell, which hastes the whole party.

 

You can go on and do this for most of the spells, but I won't. My point is that once you got certain spells in Exile, you stuck to casting only those. Major Blessing. Kill. Firestorm. Sometimes Fireball. Revive All. And so on.

 

The effects of these crucial spells are all duplicated in Avernum, from things like Divine Warrior(like Avatar, only castable on other people) to Death Arrows(aka Arcane Blow level three) and so on and so forth. Yes, there are many effects missing, which I went on to talk about in my previous post.

 

The important stuff wasn't however.

 

Again, not saying it's better necessarily, but it's not as if it's as bereft as it might seem at first. It's more like...it's like the cliff notes, so to speak. It lacks the depth but has all the important details.

[Slawbug]

Just as long as we're clear on the fact that Exile had a much wider range of spell effects than Avernum did.