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Slarti

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Everything posted by Slarti

  1. "+X Levels of damage" basically gives you the same damage bonus you would get from +X Melee Weapons, +X Missile Weapons, and +X Battle Magic, but not the to-hit bonus you would get for those +X's. As for the armor formula: there is no formula. As I have been saying repeatedly, it's just layered multiplication! If you wear one piece of 40% armor, you take 60% damage. If you wear one piece of 20% armor, you take 80% damage. If you wear both, you take 80% of 60% damage, which is 48% damage. The stat screen however will display 60% armor, which is totally and completely bogus.
  2. Was that spell basically the equivalent of Avatar? I'm trying to remember.
  3. As Thuryl mentioned, there is no 10-cap on magic. Actually, I don't think there is a 10-cap left on anything except shaping skill, and Jeff mentioned that that 10-cap was unintentional. I have no idea how Damage Shield works. I do wish I did. I imagine it either affects the numbers by subtraction (raw, like Vampiric Touch) or has a small effect on all damage separate from regular resistance-based reduction. Okay, here's a sample armor calculation. I am making up the equipment numbers, it doesn't seem worthwhile to look up real ones. Say we are wearing: 34% armor 12% shield 6% gauntlets 6% hat 5% ring 4% boots 2% belt This adds up to a total of 69%, which will display on the status screen. The actual damage taken is 66% x 88% and so on, which comes out to about 46%. Protective spells seem to reduce damage by about half (again this is based more on my memory of A4), so with buffs, damage taken will be about 23% of max. Now let's pretend we have much lighter armor: 12% armor 8% shield 3% gauntlets 3% hat 0% ring non-armorous 3% boots 2% belt (...they don't have hats in geneforge, huh. Well, that's why this is a demo ) This adds up to a displayed total of 31%, less than half the armor of the above equipment. The actual damage taken is about 72%, so with buffs you end up taking 36%. That's an extra 50% damage. Not insignificant, however 1) If the heavier equipment requires multiple points of Strength, multiple points of Endurance will get you WAY more ability to take blows 2) more importantly, you get an extra 1/2 damage against physical attacks, but take a negligible amount extra from magic, fire, ice, etc., and nothing extra from poison, acid, or mental attacks. So you can endure thahds and drayks better, but are not much hardier against cryodrayks or wingbolts. --- In other news... I have been thinking about your whole approach and I am starting to think you may be right that the Infiltrator is as good as the Servile. However, the Infiltrator makes a worse Servile. The problem is that due to your rather zealous promotion of her and my ordinal orientation, we've been looking at two classes doing the same build rather than doing two different builds with different strengths. Essentially, the Servile IS better with the numbers, but spells can trump numbers, just like creations can. Incidentally, is there anyone here who doubts that the missing sixth class, the Magic strong Combat weak one, would undoubtedly be the best class by a mile unless its essence score was unexpectedly nerfed?
  4. You're right, I think, that we have fundamentally different approaches to this, even with the same build. I would never think about "indulging" so impulsively with a commodity as precious as skill points. No doubt my optimizing seems equally compulsive to you. I do question however the use of wearing such heavy equipment. You just don't get a very good return out of it, if you have to pump strength in order to wear it. Because all the defensive multipliers stack by multiplication, the actual damage reduction is not tremendous; since Endurance gives such good returns now (for an Infiltrator, it's twice what it used to be for an Agent IIRC) that seems a much better defensive investment. If there were no good light armor, that would be one thing, but there is great light armor that gives you bonuses in other areas.
  5. Maybe Glaahks are the true "turgid, fleshy sex drones of Almaria"...
  6. Quote: Originally written by Synergy67: I will be adding no more Strength or Endurance for the rest of the game. I could have done without either if I really felt it was critical to pump the Intelligence, but the build is so successful anyway, I can indulge a little. Your last build ended up with 18 strength at the end. Totally unnecessary! You had +10 from items, and you don't need nearly that much to wear the best stuff, so I'm just curious why you're willing to sink so many skill points there. Endurance, too. 12 or 14 of those points were just getting you up to the Str and HP that a Servile starts with -- more than enough to make up the difference in magic skill costs. There is also the question of why you are pumping Dex at all. Given your investment in magic, missile weapons aren't going to be too critical, and at any rate I'd expect you to get more mileage out of an extra point in Battle Magic. Your Int is perhaps higher than I'd expect, too. What exactly are you spending 230 essence on in every zone?
  7. I was quite surprised to hear that you bought Strength and Endurance right away, after our last discussion. Why do you need 6 Strength anyway? I see how much you favor heavy, high armor % armor. But why? Remember that the armor % shown on the status screen is higher than the reduction you will actually get, since the percentages are multiplied together and not added when they are applied. I'd take the Carnelian Gloves any day.
  8. I picture something more like the rare Fat Chocobo version of the Chocobo call spell in Final Fantasy 5, where a giant fat chocobo bounces onto the screen, causing an earthquake, then bounces off. Except of course, instead of a fat chocobo, you have a cave cow.
  9. As I recall, it was several months before there were any good third-party scenarios out for BoE. Riddle of the Spheres was the one early outlier, and it got a lot of acclaim for (essentially) not being sucky. But it took a long time before there were 30 passable scenarios, let alone good ones, on those lists. I could be wrong, but I've always had the impression (based on the flurry of activity) that BoE sold fine from the very beginning.
  10. The thing is that those are two different legitimate strategies. A Lifecrafter is a worse singleton than a Servile, period. A Servile is a worse pack leader than a Lifecrafter, period. A Shock Trooper is a worse singleton than a Servile, period, and a worse pack leader than a Lifecrafter, period. He can be a different sort of pack leader, but it's just a suboptimal version of the same basic strategy.
  11. Didn't BoE have the same registration barrier as BoA? And BoE didn't sell so badly. So I think it's silly to argue that the registration barrier was a serious problem. It didn't help, but I think the oft-mentioned points about the relative complexity and unfriendliness of the editor were the problem.
  12. Actually, there's just one -- Glick -- and that is the only place in the game where being a Servile will affect the gameplay at all. The discount is pretty crappy, too.
  13. Although I greatly appreciate the new encumbrance system, I have to admit that I've taken to not dealing with a full backpack. If I'm full of stuff I'm intending to sell, I just count out 400 gold worth, drop it, and use iampoor. I rarely need to do this, but I hate slogging through areas repeatedly just for a few extra gp.
  14. Yeah, that's not a random drop. Check the scripts.
  15. One question about boats: are we talking Avernum style boats (yay), or Geneforge 3 style boats, which have to be one of the few Spiderweb inventions I completely and totally despise? Quote: Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar: By the way, Rentar was legendary before Erika was even born! Technically, Rentar was only asleep before Erika was born. But seriously, the implication of what the Olgai Council and other Vahnatai say in E/A 2 is that Rentar was not legendary -- she wasn't even the most powerful Vahnatai mage extant.
  16. The issue isn't that the Shock Trooper is unplayable, it's that it has no useful advantages over other classes -- it's entirely suboptimal.
  17. I think Luck still boosts your chance to-hit with any attack by 2%, and your chance to-dodge any attack by 2%, per point of Luck. It may still claim to increase armor and resistances (though in A4 that effect was a phantom benefit).
  18. Well, that math was a nightmare. And all for not too much. The total skill points used were almost the same -- 213 vs 215 Inf vs Serv. However, something must have changed since Synergy did his run (in the beta) as the total skill points used are 213, when he only should have had 205. Yes, we accounted for all the items AND charms AND canisters AND boosts from dialogue (like hte Dillame Luck boost). There are a few other quirks -- his mental magic is lower than it should be given the investment shown by the cost to advance in his JPG. Also, there are some skills that were pumped either abnormally high, or neglected altogether, which could push the balance in either diretion. Strength was at an unnecessary 18 with items, which helps the Infiltrator's case, while Quick Action and Parry were ignored altogether, which helps the Servile's case. And Synergy didn't utilize the trainers much in this game. The Infiltrator had 290 HP and 465 Essence; the Servile would have had about 400 HP and 400 Essence. So... it seems the HP and Essence differences may be more significant than the skill differences after all.
  19. Hmm. It's possible there's a level limit that nobody here has encountered, as 17 is indeed very high to pump those skills What might shed some light is that for shaping skill 1-10, you get +1 level per point of skill. For 11-20, you get +1 level on the even numbers, so you get +11 at 12-13, +12 at 14-15, and so on. 16 and 17 both provide +14 levels. For 21-30, you get +1 every three numbers, so 29-30 get you +18.
  20. Quote: Originally written by Synergy67: I may bother to dig up my buried Infiltrator, but how are you going to quantify the experience of potency and versatility all through the game arc? How do you want to quantify it? If you have backup saves from the middle of the game, use some of those. Or make a new character, iamweak your way to level 20, and add some items from your Synergy List. *shrug* I have provided evidence in the form of math. You have provided rhetoric and anecdote. What you have provided sounds reasonable, but it's up to you to substantiate it. Quote: How do we address my point about investing mostly in geek techs early on to keep up with Leadership and Mechanic requirements for optimal experience gain and non-retreading of otherwise cleared territory? I addressed that point 2 posts above. That's a pretty minor delay at best, for any character. If you disagree, quote me and explain what you disagree with. Quote: You can buy melee/missle/quick action and parry two levels. You can't buy a level of any magic category. But that DOES NOT CHANGE THE NUMBERS AT ALL. All characters can buy those levels, but to reiterate, the effective difference for the same investment in skill points remains relatively constant regardless. (And you can buy Spellcraft, of course.) Quote: There is not equivalent gear to boost your magic abilities on nearly the same scale, and in particular not across the board. You stated before that you thought 9 in each magic category was sufficient. If that's the case, it's not too expensive for Infiltrators OR Serviles and there is no *need* for such gear. Quote: So, how's the servile at an advantage in chapter one, for starters? That's 1/5 of the game right off the bat in which the Infiltrator feels more powerful overall and kicks butt plenty fine in both skills, magical and melee. The servile, meanwhile, lags in magic ability by comparison. I'll give you an experiential answer here since you seem to prefer those. The extra HP and Parry skill the servile gets allows him to take more hits than the Infiltrator. Meanwhile, his magic is somewhat weaker, but he has access to all the same spells. There's not any great battle magic available yet, and even on Torment it doesn't take many points in Mental Magic to make Daze effective in chapter 1. So from my experience, he has no real disadvantages vs the Infiltrator, but is hardier and that offers a lot of flexibility in terms of how you approach combat.
  21. I'm not really sure what could be done, aside from giving it rather large bonuses in some area. The "problem" is not the class so much as the game balance itself. Melee is less versatile than magic and not any stronger. Magic can support creations and melee basically can't. So creations + magic will always be better than creations + melee, unless there are really gross bonuses involved.
  22. I don't remember what the base levels are but the actual maximum levels are higher. You can get +3 or more from Create X skill for everything except Drakons (in G3), and you can get +18 from X Shaping, if you were insane enough to pump it to 29. This is not a very useful point, but there it is
  23. Quote: Originally written by Synergy67: it hardly seems worth the bother for what seems so intuitive and obvious to me. If it doesn't seem worth the bother to prove your point -- particularly when most of that bother falls on somebody else who has to do all the math -- why the heck are you debating this? What's the good in asserting something if you aren't willing to back it up? As Hume said: "Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Quote: 16-24 magic level ups and 7 melee level ups are in consideration for each build, which wants to be powerful in both magic and melee. One build does magic cheaper and one does melee cheaper. Which is more cost-effective overall? Isn't this glaring? What matters more, how many skill points it takes or how many times you have to push the + button? This is glaring propaganda. Incidentally, there are 21-22 magic level ups and 11-15 melee level ups at stake, if we are going by the earlier comparison. Quote: It's also not as simple as final tallies. One has to consider the full arc of the game, how strong, competent, and capable you are at each stage, and also where those points come from. Having more and stronger magic sooner in the arc of the game is not readily quantifiable, but experientially makes a significant difference and I contend is more of an advantage than having stronger melee early. I agree that you should consider the whole arc of the game, but the final tally gives a good representation of that. Again, the advantage any class has over any other class in a given skill stays close to constant for any amount of investment beyond zero. Quote: I don't know about other people, but game strategy which relies on endless swapping of gloves and boots in every battle to be able to cast the appropriate magic at the appropriate moment, well, kind of sucks... That I whole-heartedly agree with. If you're not willing to substantiate your argument with something beyond "this is how it feels to me," I don't know how you expect anyone to believe it.
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