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Let's Play Blades of Avernum!


Chessrook44

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You said you weren't sure why the last barbarian in the Barbarian Fort lost so much health all at once, but that's the power of Lethal Blow; Fawkes hit for 1231 damage that turn.

 

The Shield of Testament, as you've undoubtedly figured out by now, is for a specific purpose later in the game. Oh well.

 

Huh. I thought I had it set that you couldn't learn a spell from a caster unless you had seen the spell once. Something to fix for a later update, I suppose.

 

You're so dramatically over-leveled at this point that, together with the bug exploits, the game balance is all out of whack. Alas.

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15 hours ago, Kelandon said:

You're so dramatically over-leveled at this point that, together with the bug exploits, the game balance is all out of whack. Alas.

Not that that's a bad thing in my opinion, considering earlier frustrations.  :p

 

I have to admit, kinda like this gameplay mechanic a bit... especially since it doesn't stick after leaving the area and coming back.

 

https://youtu.be/sk00F2BSIF0

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Something funny has happened to Pithoss's graphic in one of the more recent versions. Apparently I re-ordered the custom objects script, which put Pithoss out of order, which screwed up his graphic. Easily fixed -- when we get to the end, I'll upload the final version cleaning up a bunch of this stuff.

 

LOL at not asking about the vahnatai and the crystal pillars! It has EVERYTHING to do with it! Oh well.

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18 hours ago, Kelandon said:

LOL at not asking about the vahnatai and the crystal pillars! It has EVERYTHING to do with it! Oh well.

Surprisingly, there was nothing that indicated it did, and at no point in our conversations with the Goddess or our interactions with the other Vahnatai remains did it suggest that the two were ever connected.  I admit though, I did check what the answer offscreen was if you ask about it, and it honestly felt so tangental.  You have the Goddess of the Vahnatai here, answering questions about why she disappeared, who she is, the deal with the Prophet.... and you can ask about the Vahnatai, something completely unrelated to the expedition, seemingly unrelated to the Goddess, and unrelated to Slith history outside of LONG before the Kalthanad?  I just didn't see why it had to be asked, and expected if I did people would look at me oddly and wonder why I was asking.

 

Down we go, moving on to the next and final camp in this journey.  We're close to the end, but we have one more mission left to do.

 

https://youtu.be/ucEiA7oznsU

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1 hour ago, Chessrook44 said:

and you can ask about the Vahnatai, something completely unrelated to the expedition, seemingly unrelated to the Goddess, and unrelated to Slith history outside of LONG before the Kalthanad?  I just didn't see why it had to be asked, and expected if I did people would look at me oddly and wonder why I was

Seriously?

 

So long before the Empire of Kalthas that only Danren-Bok (the crystal soul in the the lava lizard cave) can remember? The Danren-Bok, whose last memories before the sleeping began knew only the sliths as servants, created by the Vahnatai? In the lava caves where you found the note about Vylas-Ihrno releasing an ancient evil in the Vahnatai Lab to the East, and warning you about the silver-tongued demon there?


The Vahnatai Lab where that very silver-tongued demon tells you Vylas "discovered" their dark lord, and you where find an ancient scrap of papyrus that reads "Thus I sing of the dark goddess Hathnazriakh and her mortal battles against good vahnatai."

 

Along with a crap-ton of over foreshadowing that you similarly ignored.

 

And you assume, that Hathnazriakh to whom you are speaking would have nothing to do with the mystery of the crystal pillars???

 

What does it matter what Legare or anyone else present thinks of the question. [it]They[/i] aren't the ones who found those clues, you (or your avatars at least) are.

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10 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

Surprisingly, there was nothing that indicated it did, and at no point in our conversations with the Goddess or our interactions with the other Vahnatai remains did it suggest that the two were ever connected.  I admit though, I did check what the answer offscreen was if you ask about it, and it honestly felt so tangental.  You have the Goddess of the Vahnatai here, answering questions about why she disappeared, who she is, the deal with the Prophet.... and you can ask about the Vahnatai, something completely unrelated to the expedition, seemingly unrelated to the Goddess, and unrelated to Slith history outside of LONG before the Kalthanad?  I just didn't see why it had to be asked, and expected if I did people would look at me oddly and wonder why I was asking.

As ChowGuy points out, this is pretty far off-base. There are repeated hints in the Lava Ocean that the Goddess had something to do with the vahnatai:

• There is a note in the lower level of the Lava Lizard Cave, in language older than the Khalthanad, that says, "That you shelter and protect us, we pray, O gods of the afterlife and the beyond realms, and keep us safe from the clutches of Nghathlaghzhanth and Hathnazriakh, who contend for our souls always."

• There is the note in Dalaghant's lab that says, "Thus I sing of the dark goddess Hathnazriakh and her mortal battles against good vahnatai." The narrative adds, "This is by far the oldest form of the ancient slith language you have ever seen. This Hathnazriakh must have been a mortal enemy of the vahnatai and sliths since time immemorial."

• After the Breeding Pit, when you speak to Dalaghant for the last time, if you ask him why he has to kill you, he says, "Because that is what my lady Hathnazriakh would want, and she is queen here. You have crossed me, and for that, my master Nathaganth would want you dead, and you have slain berekhs, creatures dear to my lady." Dalaghant is a holdover from over a thousand years ago, before the Empire of Khalthas. He has nothing to do with sliths; he is a vahnatai-era relic. (And, for that matter, you know that he has something to do with things going wrong for the vahnatai, based on the notes in the Lava Lizard Cave.) And his gods are Hathnazriakh and Nathaganth.

 

And the relevance to the immediate conversation is that the Goddess is explaining her history. She talks about Khalthas, her relationship with Nathaganth, her interactions with Ethass and Legare, the major things she's done over her lifetime — and now you finally have the chance to ask her about the one other mystery that you keep getting told has an answer "elsewhere" (e.g., the first level of the Lava Lizard Cave). She is an immortal goddess; at a minimum, she was around when the vahnatai were around, and she at least could know the answer to this thing that you keep coming across and not being able to figure out.

 

The crystal pillars and the Goddess's past actions and inner motivations are not exactly unrelated to the expedition, either, as I hope is relatively clear from all the hints that keep being dropped. Those things don't get resolved in Exodus, but....

 

EDIT: But more to the point, when there's a major mystery in a game and you have a chance to find out the answer, why would you not? That's just weird.

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You guys have a point, I completely forgot about all that backstory that happened in the Lava Ocean and such.  Still, I feel like a question like that would be better set if you were to be talking to the Goddess one on one, as opposed to when she is in front of an entire expedition who would be more focused on their own goals and religious beliefs.  To anyone outside of us, as you said, there's almost no evidence or proof that she is connected to the Vahnatai or the pillars, so I saw no reason to bring it up.

 

As for "Area Descriptions", Kelandon, I'm assuming you're referring to the minimap, which I try to keep open at all times.  Please correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstanding what you mean by "The Left Side Of the Screen".

 

Yanno, I didn't really expect the Land of the Dead to look quite like this...

 

https://youtu.be/MUuuMSaX3_4

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1 hour ago, Chessrook44 said:

As for "Area Descriptions", Kelandon, I'm assuming you're referring to the minimap, which I try to keep open at all times.  Please correct me if I'm wrong or misunderstanding what you mean by "The Left Side Of the Screen".

No, the area descriptions are the text a little above the automap. For example, in the video you just posted, the initial area description is "Gateway Cave." 

 

In relation to the most recent episode:

 

Yes, I mentioned earlier that Exodus is also littered with references to antiquity (as well as references to the Old Testament).

 

And Machrone is taking care of the baby while Phaedra is gone. Don't worry.

 

And you missed Thakta, the chief supervising the farmers! So much for Destruction L3. Oh well.

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Amusingly enough, I actually started (And finished) Nobody's Heroes yesterday, and figured out what you meant by the description and such.  And yes I was amused.  I'll record The Magic tomorrow.

 

We begin our descent into the BAD parts of the Underworld, and encounter references and combat.

 

https://youtu.be/CdXlNMUei90

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And you missed Thakta, the chief supervising the farmers! So much for Destruction L3. Oh well.


He also never bothered to get Erik... I mean the Librarian, to identify  the robe he got from Possantnoss (although he probably wouldn't have worn it anyway.)

 

So that's L3 spell he's walked past, along with Capture/Recall Soul in Fort Alora :rolleyes:


@Chessrook44:

The Wheel of Fire reference would be to Ixion, while the Slith standing on a lake he cannot drink from would be Tantalus (from which tale the word tantalize is derived.

 

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23 hours ago, Kelandon said:

Whyyyyyyy would you not enter combat mode in the midst of a huge battle? The lag alone is excruciatingly annoying.

"Tactics" is the idea in my head.  When moving like that, everyone can only move or take one action at a time.  When in combat, they can move further or attack more often at once.  In my eyes, moving out of combat can be advantageous to survival sometimes.

 

Onwards we move, into the halls of the Dark Lord of Hell itself.  And yet, this place is better than some places on the mortal plane...

 

https://youtu.be/d9J0DyctClU

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12 minutes ago, Chessrook44 said:

"Tactics" is the idea in my head.  When moving like that, everyone can only move or take one action at a time.  When in combat, they can move further or attack more often at once.  In my eyes, moving out of combat can be advantageous to survival sometimes.

"Tactics" were irrelevant; there were no enemies near you or even attempting to attack you. The only consequence of moving outside of combat mode was that there was substantial lag, which you audibly complained about.

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"Interesting" is one way to describe depending almost entirely on a bug exploit. I think the more common word is "cheap," though.

 

I'm also confused as to what point you thought you were making in that shield rant. I mean, everyone who's ever played any RPG knows that shields provide additional protection from damage and bonuses to your abilities. That still doesn't answer the question as to whether a one-handed weapon plus sword is better than a two-handed weapon, though. To know which is better, you would have to work out the exact tradeoffs involved — how much more damage would I do with the two-handed weapon? Exactly how much protection would I lose, and what bonuses would I be trading? This involves doing some math and then thinking through how encounters typically go. (And yes, under certain conditions, a one-handed weapon plus a shield would be better than a two-handed weapon. Under other conditions, the two-handed weapon would be better.)

 

It's okay to not do the calculations to figure out which is better. If you prefer to play by instinct and intuition, that's great! Have fun! Enjoy! But when you haven't done that, condescendingly lecturing the people who have done the calculations and have worked through all this stuff is... maybe not the best move.

 

Gory details in the spoiler tags.

 

Spoiler

The specific comparison at issue here was a Rapier plus a Royal Shield vs. a Sword of War for Fawkes.

 

Fawkes's stat sheet at the time showed Melee Weapons at 16 and Strength at 13 for a skill of 29. I think Blademaster adds to this total, too, although I've forgotten whether I ever verified that for sure, but assuming it does, his Blademaster of 12 would also add to the skill to bring it to 41. The Rapier itself adds 11 dice and uses 10-sided dice. Put that all together and the Rapier would do 52d10 damage, which comes to an average hit of 286.

 

The Sword of War adds +2 to all stats, meaning that your skill with the Sword of War equipped would be (16 + 2) + (13 + 2) + (12 + 2) = 47. The Sword of War itself adds 14 dice. It also adds 4 levels to melee damage as an item ability. It uses 12-sided dice. All told, that's 65d12 damage, which comes to an average hit of 422.5. That's a 48% increase in damage.

 

So what's the tradeoff? All told, the Rapier and the Royal Shield together give two +1 Action Points, three +30% resistances, +30% less chance to be hit, +1 Sharpshooter, and +3 Lethal Blow. The Sword of War gives +2 to all statistics, so forget about Sharpshooter — the Sword of War increases that more. The loss of +30% resistances may sound meaningful until you realize that +2 to all statistics is +2 Luck and +2 Resistance, each of which adds +10% to all of your resistances (except Luck doesn't add to Mental). So you're dropping from +30% resistance to three things to +20% to everything except Mental and +10% to Mental. Not much difference, really, especially given how high your resistances are by this point. The +30% less chance to be hit also may sound meaningful until you realize that +2 to all statistics is +2 to Dexterity, Defense, Hardiness, Parry, and Riposte — the Defense boost alone gives +10% less chance to be hit. So again, not much difference. And yes, the Sword of War gives one fewer point in Lethal Blow (+2 vs. +3), but that's pretty negligible now that you have Lethal Blow as high as you have it.

 

What about the extra Action Point? Yes, that is something. Each +1 Action Point is actually just a chance of +1 Action Point (which is why it says "(or less)"), so there really will be some turns where Fawkes would get 5 APs instead of 6, or 4 instead of 5. As far as combat goes, though, 5 instead of 6 makes no difference because it takes 4 APs to hit; 5 APs means you get two hits just as much as 6 does. The real difference is at 4 vs. 5. So this will sometimes matter, albeit only sometimes; we'll have to figure out exactly how much we care.

 

And, finally, what about losing an 80% chance of 1-15 + 20 points of protection from damage? (It's a shield, so it has only an 80% chance of protecting.) Well, the average protection per blow is 22.4. That's not nothing, but again, we have to figure out exactly how consequential that actually is.

 

So the analysis comes to this: the Sword of War does nearly 50% more damage and adds +2 to skills we haven't considered yet (such as Assassination) and I guess adds +20% chance to hit (which I've pretty much ignored because you're hitting almost every time now), whereas the Rapier and Royal Shield together give two +1 Action Points instead of one and provide an average of 22.4 protection from damage. (Everything else is about the same.) Now we have to figure out which is better.

 

I'd suggest that you can get Action Points whenever you need them. You have access to both Major Haste and Divine Warrior at this point. Likewise, I'd suggest that 22.4 protection from damage is pretty meaningless. Take, for example, the Mutant Wolves you just faced. Those were doing around 120-ish damage per hit to Fawkes, who has 540 health. It would take 6 blows of 120-ish damage to kill Fawkes (5 to get him to zero and one more to kill him). It would take 5 blows of 140-ish damage to kill Fawkes if he didn't have the 22.4 points of damage protection. That's... not very different. And it turns out that it's hard to set up a situation where those extra 22.4 points of protection make much of a difference to a character that has 540 health. It can be done, but it requires a fairly exotic encounter.

 

So for my money I'd take the 50% more damage. That matters every single turn of every single combat. The other stuff only sometimes matters and only to a small extent. The only thing that gives me any hesitation is the extra action point, but I think you're probably still better off with the greater damage most of the time.

 

But more broadly, the above illustrates the kind of analysis that you would have to do to really know whether you want the one-handed weapon or the two-handed weapon in that situation. You can't just say, "Well, the shield also gives bonuses!" That's true, but the two-handed weapon does a hell of a lot more damage and also gives bonuses. You'd have to compare them to know which was better.

 

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17 hours ago, Kelandon said:

It's okay to not do the calculations to figure out which is better. If you prefer to play by instinct and intuition, that's great! Have fun! Enjoy! But when you haven't done that, condescendingly lecturing the people who have done the calculations and have worked through all this stuff is... maybe not the best move.

  Reveal hidden contents

The specific comparison at issue here was a Rapier plus a Royal Shield vs. a Sword of War for Fawkes.

 

Fawkes's stat sheet at the time showed Melee Weapons at 16 and Strength at 13 for a skill of 29. I think Blademaster adds to this total, too, although I've forgotten whether I ever verified that for sure, but assuming it does, his Blademaster of 12 would also add to the skill to bring it to 41. The Rapier itself adds 11 dice and uses 10-sided dice. Put that all together and the Rapier would do 52d10 damage, which comes to an average hit of 286.

 

The Sword of War adds +2 to all stats, meaning that your skill with the Sword of War equipped would be (16 + 2) + (13 + 2) + (12 + 2) = 47. The Sword of War itself adds 14 dice. It also adds 4 levels to melee damage as an item ability. It uses 12-sided dice. All told, that's 65d12 damage, which comes to an average hit of 422.5. That's a 48% increase in damage.

 

So what's the tradeoff? All told, the Rapier and the Royal Shield together give two +1 Action Points, three +30% resistances, +30% less chance to be hit, +1 Sharpshooter, and +3 Lethal Blow. The Sword of War gives +2 to all statistics, so forget about Sharpshooter — the Sword of War increases that more. The loss of +30% resistances may sound meaningful until you realize that +2 to all statistics is +2 Luck and +2 Resistance, each of which adds +10% to all of your resistances (except Luck doesn't add to Mental). So you're dropping from +30% resistance to three things to +20% to everything except Mental and +10% to Mental. Not much difference, really, especially given how high your resistances are by this point. The +30% less chance to be hit also may sound meaningful until you realize that +2 to all statistics is +2 to Dexterity, Defense, Hardiness, Parry, and Riposte — the Defense boost alone gives +10% less chance to be hit. So again, not much difference. And yes, the Sword of War gives one fewer point in Lethal Blow (+2 vs. +3), but that's pretty negligible now that you have Lethal Blow as high as you have it.

 

What about the extra Action Point? Yes, that is something. Each +1 Action Point is actually just a chance of +1 Action Point (which is why it says "(or less)"), so there really will be some turns where Fawkes would get 5 APs instead of 6, or 4 instead of 5. As far as combat goes, though, 5 instead of 6 makes no difference because it takes 4 APs to hit; 5 APs means you get two hits just as much as 6 does. The real difference is at 4 vs. 5. So this will sometimes matter, albeit only sometimes; we'll have to figure out exactly how much we care.

 

And, finally, what about losing an 80% chance of 1-15 + 20 points of protection from damage? (It's a shield, so it has only an 80% chance of protecting.) Well, the average protection per blow is 22.4. That's not nothing, but again, we have to figure out exactly how consequential that actually is.

 

So the analysis comes to this: the Sword of War does nearly 50% more damage and adds +2 to skills we haven't considered yet (such as Assassination) and I guess adds +20% chance to hit (which I've pretty much ignored because you're hitting almost every time now), whereas the Rapier and Royal Shield together give two +1 Action Points instead of one and provide an average of 22.4 protection from damage. (Everything else is about the same.) Now we have to figure out which is better.

 

I'd suggest that you can get Action Points whenever you need them. You have access to both Major Haste and Divine Warrior at this point. Likewise, I'd suggest that 22.4 protection from damage is pretty meaningless. Take, for example, the Mutant Wolves you just faced. Those were doing around 120-ish damage per hit to Fawkes, who has 540 health. It would take 6 blows of 120-ish damage to kill Fawkes (5 to get him to zero and one more to kill him). It would take 5 blows of 140-ish damage to kill Fawkes if he didn't have the 22.4 points of damage protection. That's... not very different. And it turns out that it's hard to set up a situation where those extra 22.4 points of protection make much of a difference to a character that has 540 health. It can be done, but it requires a fairly exotic encounter.

 

So for my money I'd take the 50% more damage. That matters every single turn of every single combat. The other stuff only sometimes matters and only to a small extent. The only thing that gives me any hesitation is the extra action point, but I think you're probably still better off with the greater damage most of the time.

 

But more broadly, the above illustrates the kind of analysis that you would have to do to really know whether you want the one-handed weapon or the two-handed weapon in that situation. You can't just say, "Well, the shield also gives bonuses!" That's true, but the two-handed weapon does a hell of a lot more damage and also gives bonuses. You'd have to compare them to know which was better.

 

This is true, and I am not the type to go THAT deeply into the numbers and stats.  I'm not a master of builds or finding the most efficient methods of winning through hard number crunching, it's just not that fun for me.  But that said, while true I shouldn't go about it that way, I mainly just felt a bit defensive after people have repeatedly criticized me for not using any two-handed weapons like I am an idiot for it.  So I felt the need to justify myself.

 

So, am I the only one having flashbacks to Avernum 1 here?

 

https://youtu.be/h5WYFPTsWpo

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5 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

This is true, and I am not the type to go THAT deeply into the numbers and stats.

Neither am I, ordinarily. I mean, I laid all that out in detail just to prove a point, but probably the analysis I would do is:

 

Hmm, the damage looks higher for this two-handed weapon — probably higher by a lot, because the dice are greater (d12 vs. d10), the bonus is higher (14 vs. 11), and the two-handed weapon adds to all my weapon skills and adds 4 levels of damage. I lose some resistances, but I gain skills, so I probably get the resistances back again, more or less. I also lose some specific skills, but I gain all skills, and just about in the same quantity, so that's probably a wash also. I lose a little bit of protection, but at this level, a shield doing 1-15 + 20 isn't really helping me much, so I don't really care. And then I lose one of the two +1 APs. Do I care about a large increase in damage more than I care about a second +1 AP? Probably. So I take the two-handed weapon.

 

Could one make a different judgment given the same choices? Sure. But really, it doesn't take much to make decisions that are reasonably well thought out, and the reasons you gave were not well thought out.

 

In relation to the most recent episode, the time limit in the second level of Nathaganth's Castle was not nearly as strict as you made it out to be; you could've gone into the side doors. You just couldn't exit combat mode and wander around for a while, which eats up an incredible number of turns. Also, I'm a little surprised that you made no effort at all to deal with the Archwizard or the paralyzer; it seemed contrary to your usual completionist ways. Oh well.

 

On to the ending!

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And the ending! Glad you enjoyed the story, and I'm looking forward to something rather different with Nobody's Heroes. And some kind of resolution, if not a truly satisfying one, in The Magic.

 

I'm not sure where you got your information from, but I released three other BoA scenarios, not just two. Lord Putidus was also mine. It's not even tangentially connected to the others, unlike The Magic (which is really the fourth scenario in the Slith Homeland series) or Nobody's Heroes (which isn't really in the same series but at least has Machrone, so it's tangentially connected). But I did release it about a month after Bahssikava.

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On 6/1/2017 at 7:42 AM, Kelandon said:

And the ending! Glad you enjoyed the story, and I'm looking forward to something rather different with Nobody's Heroes. And some kind of resolution, if not a truly satisfying one, in The Magic.

 

I'm not sure where you got your information from, but I released three other BoA scenarios, not just two. Lord Putidus was also mine. It's not even tangentially connected to the others, unlike The Magic (which is really the fourth scenario in the Slith Homeland series) or Nobody's Heroes (which isn't really in the same series but at least has Machrone, so it's tangentially connected). But I did release it about a month after Bahssikava.

The answer is because when I put together my list, I didn't include Lord Putidus as part of the group I was going to do right away and it was waaaaay at the bottom with "prefab" so I didn't notice and forgot about it.  My bad!

 

And so we begin the next scenario, Nobody's Heroes!  And right from the start it's got a bit of a... less serious bent.

 

https://youtu.be/IcPJlYhFcvY

 

EDIT: Nobody's Heroes, Part 1

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I'd always pronounced "archmage" like "archbishop" rather than like "archangel" (i.e., ch, not k), and now I Google and see that this is a raging internet debate. I had always taken the former to be the rule and the latter to be the exception, and someone with a lot of time on their hands checked every word with this prefix and seems to agree with me. The case is even more convincing once you separate out borrowings with different roots (whether from the same original Greek word, e.g., archipelago, where the root is archi-, not arch-, although both are from Greek arkhi-, or from a different one, e.g., archaeology, where the root is archae- from Greek arkhai-). But apparently there are people on either side of this one.

 

Huh. The more you know.

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This is a really striking difference to me.  As a kid I think "ch" /k/ must have been one of the last phonograms I picked up, because I still tend to pronounce "ch" /k/ as "ch" /ch/ in some of the first "ch" words I learned.  "Archangel" was one of those (thanks to X-Factor).  I definitely remember confusing other people by talking about "CHArisma" in D&D, but that and other words appear to have self-modified for me in a way that "archangel" has not.  I think internally I'm treating "arch" differently when it presents as a prefix, which indeed the OED seems to think is a more consistent thing.  So /k/ "archmage" feels doubly weird to me.

 

Looking through the list, I note that there are no examples of "arch" /k/ followed immediately by a consonant.  That, obviously, is per the OED and may not reflect speech universally, but I wonder if that is a piece of this.  Chessrook (or anyone else who has the /k/ pronunciation for "archmage"), I'd be curious to hear how you would pronounce made-up words like "archpum", "archbaint" and "archfafe" -- in each case with the /k/ or the /ch/.

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I always pronounced "archmage" the way that Kelandon does (with Zaggyg being the one I was most aware of), but I struggled with "Charisma" a lot.  Fortunately my D&D playing friends had no idea how to pronounce "Charisma" either.  Unfortunately, I missed the transformation of Angel to Archangel, but that meant that I never had to try to pronounce it.

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It's more or less for me been dependent on a mix of how I hear other people say it and which I think sounds better.  Charisma I've always heard with the hard K sound, and the soft Ch sound seems wrong to me.  Archmage rolls off the tongue more easily and sounds better with the hard K.  Archbishop can go either way, though the soft CH sounds better.  But that's all me.

 

Time to begin another new scenario, and I can tell you here and now this one is FASCINATING.

 

https://youtu.be/JAgwaKmv7eY

 

EDIT: The Magic, Part 1

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8 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

It's more or less for me been dependent on a mix of how I hear other people say it and which I think sounds better.  Charisma I've always heard with the hard K sound, and the soft Ch sound seems wrong to me.  Archmage rolls off the tongue more easily and sounds better with the hard K.  Archbishop can go either way, though the soft CH sounds better.  But that's all me.

That's sort of beside the point. Both "charisma" and "archbishop" have been in English long enough that there's a standard (I would say "correct," but Slarty might take issue with that) pronunciation. "Charisma" has a K sound. "Archbishop" has a CH sound. That's pretty clear.

 

"Archmage," on the other hand apparently was made up by fantasy authors a few decades ago. That's new enough, and nonstandard enough, that it's not ordinarily found in dictionaries (and so doesn't have a standard pronunciation listed). It's based on prefixing arch- to words to indicate "principal" or "chief," which apparently dates back almost to the Middle Ages. I tried to find something that said that it's always with a CH sound when used that way — i.e., a nonstandard word invented with this prefix, as opposed to a standard word like "archangel" — but no dictionary that I could find clearly said so. (Rather bizarrely, I did find that it's always with a K sound when it's a suffix — e.g., monarch. Same root.)

 

However, dictionary.com suggests that the arch- with a K sound (e.g., archangel) is a variant of archi- before a vowel, and archi- is always with a K sound (e.g., architect). So I think it's unambiguous that arch- before a consonant is pronounced with a CH, not a K ("archbishop," "archmage"); it would be archi- before a consonant if it were a K sound. Before a vowel is more ambiguous ("archenemy" vs. "archangel"), though I still think that the rule is CH and the exception is K.

 

Also, your tendency to do things as out of order as you possibly can is demonstrating bugs that I've otherwise never seen or heard of. Even The Magic, which was a late scenario of mine and therefore generally better tested than the others, appears to have an SDF set wrong. Things to fix for a later upload, I suppose.

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17 hours ago, Kelandon said:

Also, your tendency to do things as out of order as you possibly can is demonstrating bugs that I've otherwise never seen or heard of. Even The Magic, which was a late scenario of mine and therefore generally better tested than the others, appears to have an SDF set wrong. Things to fix for a later upload, I suppose.

It's more a tendency to do everything that ISN'T the main quest before I actually continue the main quest.  But hey, at least I'm helping.  :p

 

We try out The Magic, and do some fighting, and learn just how powerful it truly is.

 

https://youtu.be/I4-xxVm_o7c

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5 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

It's more a tendency to do everything that ISN'T the main quest before I actually continue the main quest. 

Call it what you want, but when you're told to go somewhere, you go everywhere other than the place you're told to go.

 

Also, it's not that Luck is some superpowered skill that you should always raise. The point that I was making is that a high-level party benefits a lot from some amount of Luck (because of its life-saving chance) and that Luck raises immunities as much as Resistance does (so it's better when it's cheaper).

 

That being said, Luck is almost never bad to have. I did actually boost Luck a good deal at some point during The Magic. But that advice was pretty specific to where you were in Exodus at the time.

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3 hours ago, Kelandon said:

Call it what you want, but when you're told to go somewhere, you go everywhere other than the place you're told to go.

 

Not only is that also the way I play CRPGs, but it's the way that we've all been trained to play CRPGs. If you advance the main quest line, you risk losing access to side quests (for a SW example, think moving from one chapter to the next in Avernum 2). So if you're a completionist who wants to see every aspect of a scenario, you paradoxically have to ignore the advice the scenario is giving you.

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7 minutes ago, Dintiradan said:

Not only is that also the way I play CRPGs, but it's the way that we've all been trained to play CRPGs. If you advance the main quest line, you risk losing access to side quests (for a SW example, think moving from one chapter to the next in Avernum 2). So if you're a completionist who wants to see every aspect of a scenario, you paradoxically have to ignore the advice the scenario is giving you.

I'm aware of the phenomenon generally, but Chessrook44's avoidance behaviors are not limited to advancing the main quest line or even to anything that could plausibly work in the way that you're describing. Also, there are other things that one would have to do that Chessrook44 doesn't do if one wanted to see every aspect of a scenario.

 

Which makes it all sort of weird, really. But, as I've said throughout, play the way you want. I just have to clean up a couple of things.

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13 hours ago, Kelandon said:

I'm aware of the phenomenon generally, but Chessrook44's avoidance behaviors are not limited to advancing the main quest line or even to anything that could plausibly work in the way that you're describing. Also, there are other things that one would have to do that Chessrook44 doesn't do if one wanted to see every aspect of a scenario.

 

Which makes it all sort of weird, really. But, as I've said throughout, play the way you want. I just have to clean up a couple of things.

I admit, now I'm curious of a few examples of what you're talking about here, that is so baffling.

 

The Magic is poisoned, and we have to try to stop it.  But can we?

 

https://youtu.be/Fe8eN6xjar0

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That's weird... the jagged zaps in the Stone Circle are mostly not appearing on your computer. There's no problem with the code... I just place a jagged zap and then run it. And some of them are appearing, and all the sounds are playing — just not all of them appear. How odd.

 

And no, not all four characters are intended to mages as such. They are all capable of using "the magic" (the special ability) but not necessarily magic (Mage Spells). Those are not intended to be the same thing.

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6 hours ago, Kelandon said:

That's weird... the jagged zaps in the Stone Circle are mostly not appearing on your computer. There's no problem with the code... I just place a jagged zap and then run it. And some of them are appearing, and all the sounds are playing — just not all of them appear. How odd.

Actually, THAT is not true.  I DID see all the lightning strikes when I played, but I can see they didn't appear in the video, either on YouTube or the raw copy I have.  Most likely, this was a rendering or recording error on my end... perhaps due to how it was captured.

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4 hours ago, Chessrook44 said:

I DID see all the lightning strikes when I played, but I can see they didn't appear in the video, either on YouTube or the raw copy I have.  Most likely, this was a rendering or recording error on my end... perhaps due to how it was captured.

Well, that's reassuring. I was worried that BoA was going all crazy now.

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