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Samael101

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Curious Artila

Curious Artila (3/17)

  1. I'm curious about Exile 2 maps as well - I think the Exile 1/3 maps are phenomenal. If they haven't been made, I'm curious as to how one could make them.
  2. Are the patched versions of the Exile games mentioned on http://www.BladesOfExile.com/ still available anywhere? I've used the wayback machine and it mentions graphical fixes. All I could think of off the top of my head was the witch sprite in Exile 1 having the pink line issue.
  3. Its been a bit and I've been revisiting Exile lately and I'm wondering if this was saved anywhere or if any further work got done on it? I'm curious as to what some of the changes were though functioning throwing weapons would be nice.
  4. Is this still available? I'm getting a 403 error from the links.
  5. Exile 3's working on my windows 10! Very excited to finally finish it after all these years and remakes, haha. Is there anyway to boos the size it displays at? I've tried borderless window and dxwnd to try and scale it up but no luck so far
  6. Oh, thank you! And no worries on getting them running; my partner set up a windows 3.1 computer recently and we've been playing through the trilogy's final releases on it. I came in with Exile 3 as a kid - but they remember the original versions and I've been hoping to source them ever since. On topic though, I believe the origins of the restorative crystals, the emerald of Fort Emerald (I think this was confirmed in the latest remake of 2) and possibly the piercing crystals also have vahnatai origin. I know its a longstanding debate as to whether the Avernites invented the glowing mushrooms or the glowing lichen (Erika sure takes credit for a lot of things) but everything beyond the animals and the vahnatai seem external to Avernum itself - the humans, the nephil and even the slith. I am curious about the demons though - did they always call the caves home? I don't remember if we ever get much information on them.
  7. oh man that seems like a really obvious solution, haha. Thank you!
  8. Is there anything I can do about the location tokens on the world map? In North Western Valorim, there's a Fungus Patch that has a symbol that *covers* the day counter, making it impossible to see anything but the units digit. Being in the last portion of the game (and hoping to keep ahead of both destruction of towns and then wait for a certain late game event), the counter remains somewhat important. I can pose a screenshot of what I mean if necessary.
  9. Having recently replayed the original game, I can attest that not only are the above clearly spoken two, there's also the barrier cave and the crypt of drath as inferred I think. On completion of the game, it also outright states that the Vahnatai will be explored in a follow up but I haven't seen the original-original games; when when I was a kid, I saw them in their post-Exile 3 iterations. Out of curiosity, is there anywhere the earlier versions can be found? I'm very curious to see their original forms.
  10. I know the topic's a couple of months old now but this is kind of a major thing I've had with the recent Spiderweb games. They're less colourful and feel less iconic. I have to confess that even if we don't want to go back to the neon greens and bright blue caves of Exile, I'd rather see a world where goblins are distinct green buggers with big orange eyes as opposed to orange-maybe-people. Gremlins might be bright purple but at least I can recognise them. They don't look like every other vaguely humanoid monster. Back in Exile, the simpler sprites were more distinct, the clearly coloured world had its own charm to it. I liked Avernum's engine but I couldn't abide by its aesthetic. Ever since, things have gotten more drab and desaturated, sucking out much of the original charm and life it had. Animation used to be only two frames but you mentally filled in the gaps. The more animated it gets, the less you can do that and the more awkward it seems when a guy with a sword gently prods a monster.
  11. Quote: For spells, I'd say you should go with what the system does well. Exile/Avernum run largely on generic attack, buff, debuff, and healing spells, with a small handful of utility spells. Exile has a few more oddball offerings, but that's the basic idea. For tabletop, you probably want a wider range. For the most part, I was happy to use the roleplaying system I'm using's spells which, for the most part, are the old fashioned D&D spells. The things I'm looking for here are the more unique or interesting spells, the ones that had good utility (Scry Monster), mechanics (Capture Soul), flavour (Quickfire) or were the ones that were of questionable use in Exile (I'd say Stealth but Invisibility is covered by the system I'm using and IS useful. Maybe Spray Fields is more along the lines of Questionale). Quote: In Exile/Avernum, metal is relatively rare, steel quite rare, and magical weapons nearly absent. On the surface, however, there are no such problems. Gear rarity happens because game balance demands more powerful equipment at the end of the game, but the setting has no such requirement. Plate mail is, of course, rarer and more expensive than chainmail, but plenty of people should have it, and the most skilled blacksmiths wherever should be able to make it. I have to confess, I'm something of a fan of slowly scaling up the quality of equipment for the players because, when you finally find something of high quality steel or get Fighter's First Plate Mail, it feels like something of an accomplishment. I do think it's pretty reasonable that Imperial smiths would be unwilling to sell their best stuff to Avernites or at a reasonable rate unless they're sympathisers or if they help out. Which, if they follow the plot, they will... so part of the reward they get for helping out with one of the plagues is getting access to better equipment and at a lower cost. That might work out quite nicely! Quote: Horses aren't rare at all. There aren't many for sale in Exile because of engine restrictions, but they're for sale almost immediately from the beginning of the game. Boats are similarly engine-limited but widely available in Exile/Avernum; they're only present in plot-relevant areas on the surface because water isn't central to the exploration of Valorim, so go ahead and treat boats and ships and horses like you would in any other pseudo-medieval setting: make them moderately pricey and fairly common. I have to confess, I hadn't thought of the mechanical issue. In fact, now that I think about it, I can't remember what horses really did for the party. Decreased rate of food consumption? I don't know why I thought they should be so particularly expensive, either. You can buy a boat for the party for 500 gold and a party worth of horses for 2500 gold. Maybe I blocked that thought from my mind before - I must subconsciously be dreading running mounted combat Even then, it should be still on an even playing field if I allow goblins to use wolves and wargs as mounts and let the Empire have it's horses. Would ogres, troglodytes or giants have mounts? I can't imagine any of them riding an Ursag comfortably. Without the restrictions of the engine, I could probably allow the players a bit more freedom in sailing, mostly for purposes of exploring some of the off-shore island (and if the tick off the Anama, they may need to beat a hasty retreat off on their own). I think I'll allow for horses at a reasonable price and common nature but maybe a little less so in the more heavily sieged or less settled areas. Quote: The rules on mages are that they generally can't wear armor (except in Avernum they often can thanks to the Natural Mage trait) and that they often perform expensive and esoteric research along with spellcasting. Priests seem more focused on being the typical healers and mace-wielding fighters, but there aren't really many rules about them either. There are gods mentioned, but there seem to be many, and they're mostly worshipped by a few and can be basically unheard-of by the rest. (Maybe all religion is mystery cults?) Valorim has the Anama, an anti-magic cult, and the Church of the Divine Lucre, which simply believes that wealth and commerce are good, but there are no explicit gods involved. In the system I use, Mages can 'sort of' cast in armour. The thing is, however, the heavier the armour they wear, the more chance they have of fumbling the spell. In chainmail, they basically have a 1 in 5 chance of not just failing to cast the spell successfully but potentially frying their minds, themselves and/or their allies. They can try to cast, if they want, but it's inadvisable. The clerics thing shouldn't be a problem then, overall. It looks like they can worship just about anything they please and possibly opt into a religion or cult as well. Quote: the stone circles and the Anama bonuses are something that you should just completely overhaul for tabletop balance. Give everyone something and everyone is happy. Why not give fighters bonuses to fighting from demon-fueled circles or to replace the standard magical buffs that fighters rely on. Hm, if they get a skill bonus from the Stone Circle encounter, I might give them either a sudden bonus to a given skill or, if they're slowly being fed power from demons, when ever they roll dice to see how many points they gain in something, they might have a bonus to that or even roll a bigger dice. Hm, I'll take a look at the classes and might see if I can come up with some class-specific bonuses for the circles. I can't imagine Paladins are going to have much fun with these things. Do you think the circles ought to radiate Evil or, at least, a certain wrongness?
  12. Originally Posted By: RCCCL Quickfire will be very hard to implement, I may not be recalling correctly, but I don't think there was anyway to put it out once it was cast(other than leaving the area and coming back), just block it off with barriers. Trying to use it like that will obviously cause lots of problems, if you want a Quickfire type of effect, you'll have to add a duration or limit. In which case, I can put Quickfire in amongst some of the highest powered spells. In the system I'm using, the highest spells (the ones that are typically Save or Die), the caster uses up spell points and has to permanently sacrifice a point of their Power attribute. They can train it back up later but it's still a significant cost. Quote: I don't remember anything about any actual deity/s in Exile/Avernum(It's been a while since I've played the Exile or early Avernum games). However, since you're going to have to make changes regardless, you can add some deities, or you can just base the worship off of concepts, like the Anama or the Church of the Divine Lucre. Maybe that's the trick to it then - people individual believe in household gods and spirits but share common ideals and concepts. I might actually sort of use the Domain system from D&D instead of gods then, in a way - the Cleric believes in Order, War, Luck, whatever it is, they carry the concept. Quote: Some of that seems good, however, if some of your party joins while others refrain, it could create conflict within the party, which, in my experience, can quickly lead to ruin in terms of the game itself and possibly amongst the players themselves. Ah, some intraparty squabble's okay, so long as it doesn't become the main focus. If it does, I'll give the players a timeout or point out that they're on a time situation and can resolve their differences after saving the world, with as much magic and stolen artifacts and enchanted rewards as they want to throw at each other. But only afterwards.
  13. Quote: Try Avernum as a d20 game since this discussion has come up before to see what someone else did. I would but I've played a fair few d20 in my time and I've always been quite fond of d%. From the looks of things, Avernum already seemed to be a percentile game so, maybe if this goes down well with my players, I might try adapting the game as a whole =) Thanks for sharing the information though! =D Quote: Welcome to Spiderweb! Leave your sanity at the door. I've been playing Call of Cthulhu for years. I have no sanity to speak of. Thanks though =) Quote: Unless you have a lot of people, ie; more than 7 or 8, three different race should be plenty, this way, you won't have to try and come up with various bonuses and penalties for other races. On this subject, you might have to tinker a bit to make the three a little more even, experience penalties are going to be hard to track and handle, so if you do away with them, playing a human has no advantages. I like to give people the choice though. Anyway, the system I'm using already accomodates the XP bonus/penalty thing - everyone gets a bonus to learn new skills based on their attributes. Humans get twice the bonus and a bunch of extra skill points to start out with. Quote: Some spells are easily done, others, you'll have to modify them a little if you want to use them, like Scry Monster and Capture Soul\Simulacrum. You could also include some of the more quirky ones, like Wound. I actually think this particular game has Wound down as a ranged damage spell for Clerics. As for Scry Monster, I thought I'd try bending it to the spell-level thing the game has going. The more Magic Points you put in, the higher the spell level. So for every level of Scry you cast, you find out more details about it, like it's current HP, Max HP, etc. Mostly, I've been wondering about how to handle Quickfire in a more traditional game. I mean, does that fire ever go out on it's own? Quote: In this setting, some things should definitely be in short supply. Boats and Horses, definitely, Good quality metal products should be a bit rare as well, including plate mail. I think the best the players might see for a while - at least, until they can find a guy willing to sell them a few horses - is cave lizards or cave cows to pull carts. I think the metal objects will probably be rare, partly because Valorim is something of a recently settled region, isn't it? Part that and the fact that I imagine a lot of shopkeepers aren't going to want to be seen selling their best weapons and armour to a bunch of obvious Avernites. Quote: Mage Priest differences seem to correlate pretty well. Mages can't wear armor, spell type differences seem good. No problems there then. The only trouble I -might- have is that there seems to be very little information on who or what people worship. The system I'm using doesn't have Domains like D&D 3.5 but it does have the favoured weapon kind of rules. Are there any gods to speak of in the setting or is it more or less anything goes? Quote: For monster toughness, unless you want to do some major research, or unless some one on these boards has stats handy(this is readily possible), just use your memory to work out stats, things don't have to be exact. Even with the stats handy, you'll have to do some tweaking. Keep goblins puny, keep Doomguards diabolical. Should be able to manage it. =D Quote: This is a spot where you'll have to take some liberties. Non magic users could possibly find some nice magical gear in the Tower, and no says the Tower of Magi couldn't offer some of the more Mage like Priestly spells. Like some of the summoning or damaging ones. The Stone Circles can offer a stat boost of some kind. That might be the best way to handle it then - I'm sure the Mage and Cleric have some overlap in the spells they can have. The possibility of giving the Stone Circles a Stat Boost is pretty enticing. If not that, I might give them Spell-like abilities. Quote: The Anama can almost be directly be implemented. Though it seems unlikely your players will be tempted to join. More likely that they'll end up in a bit of conflict with them. That said, you might try going that route from the outset. Well, I might alter them a touch. Should the party have a Cleric or Monk, they're more likely to be friendly but Mages are going to get a lot of scorn. Considering that from what I've read, they pushed a Mage Academy out of business and, as such, crippled Bigail's economy (leaving room for Skribbane farming to take up the slack) and I think the players are going to be pretty wary around the Anama. In terms of mechanics, I MIGHT give people who agree to join a bonus to their Power attribute (which, in game terms, increases Spell Points, Luck, Mental Resistance and Fate Points which are used to get rerolls when things go badly). Maybe even entitle them to a couple of decent Cleric spells. If they break their vows, however, or use enchanted items (not blessed items or potions), they lose their membership, the bonuses they got and their status plummets with folks from the Church. Would that seem reasonable? Quote: Well, those are my opinions. And I'm very glad you took the time to share them =D
  14. Unfortunately, Vista refuses to allow it to run. Oh well. I still remember something of the monsters and there are, mercifully, annotated maps that mention what's where and all. I'll have to draft up my own stats then and make things reasonable for the party.
  15. I had that in mind - downloaded the source from http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/blades/opensource.html but darned if I know how to do anything with it - can't find an exe in it and no idea what runs. That I'm on Vista probably doesn't help. Taking a crack at Blades of Avernum but I can't seem to work it out either.
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