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A:EftP - Speculation about the Combat Skill Tree


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Right. Avernum is missing a lot of the cool, sometimes useless, sometimes priceless spells. You can't really make walls at all, except for Cloud of Blades, much less anti-magic fields. Summoning options are vastly reduced. There aren't spells to teleport, there's no sanctuary equivalent, you can't conjure food (not that the system really requires it), and you can't make barriers. You can't even wreck your game with quickfire or shockwave.

 

—Alorael, who thought Jeff was clear on the fact that you have to find third levels of spells like back in A1-3. Adding points to the relevant spell skill can't give you that benefit; there's some distinction between your ability with a spell and your spell skill(s). Different tiers of spells are possible, but he could also see a progression of benefits that are different from the base skills. Higher mage skill might give you longer summon duration, higher summon skill bonuses to summoned creatures' levels, and the level of the spell different creatures. With buffs you have variables of duration, number of targets (single vs. party), and number or type of buff; the same works for debuffs. Magical efficiency could even break down by effect, so you could throw fireballs all day but struggle with healing.

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The skills under the Combat tab appear to be mostly the same as the old ones, so it stands to reason that the Magic/Misc tab will be pretty similar as well. I also just don't see any reason to change them much. The skill system in Avernum 6 was pretty solid, I don't think they'll be tweaking it too much past the different progression system.

 

I think the place where Jeff is going to get really creative is the traits, which I feel weren't nearly as well though out (the races too, though that won't come into play just yet).

 

I love the crazy spells that the Exile series had as much as the next guy, but most of the cool unique ones were either pointless (though I can appreciate the charm of useless, superfluous things in games), redundant, or completely at odds with any sane game design. Some of them especially clash with the set piece style of battles in the newer games, which I personally prefer to the battles against collections of stats that were in the earlier games.

 

But they were pretty awesome and fun. I think they would be cool in a Roguelike or something.

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To be fair, there are a few spells in Exile whose placement is a little too identical to AD&D for coincidence. Fireball as a third-level, scaling, efficient, area of effect mage spell, I'm looking at you. Strength as 1st-level mage spell, Slow as 2nd-level, Haste and Unlock as 3rd-level, these are straight out of AD&D. And in Exile 2, Sticks to Snakes and Sanctuary are names that do not sound like coincidences. But there are other sources too: Shockwave, for example, is a clone of the Tremor spell from Ultima.

 

Most spells, though, don't really smack of anything in particular.

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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 would like more useless (edit:AWESOME!) spells.
No, really. I'm not kidding. That was one of my favorite things about the older games, having those thrown in the mix added a certain spice I have found lacking in recent games. I can't say I wouldn't play this one the second it is released, cause I kinda like where it is going. . . but I will miss the misc. magics. and the flavor they had.


as for the combat system, dual wielding! Sweet!

That is all. (missed that SO MUCH)
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There was always an underlying level of satisfaction with the "ultimate" level of spells in Exile that Avernum Lacks.

 

Arcane Cloak and Arcane Blow precisely aimed and perfectly executed at their maximum potential will never be able to hold a candle to setting quickfire off in someone's shop, closing the door, and listening to the price gouging expletive generator's helpless dying screams...

 

Just be certain there are no windows when you do this.

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What I hated about Avadon skill tree was the seemingly arbitrary nature of it. You need to raise a party buff to increase a stat bonus to increase an attack.

 

Or you need to raise a ranged attack to raise a melee attack.

 

It wasn't really a skill tree in the sense that you started with a base skill, the trunk, and worked your way up branching out in different directions to specialize that base skill.

 

It was more a skill web with seemingly random connection designed to do nothing more than require you to raise low level skills.

 

I would prefer something like the Diablo skill trees if you have to go that way at all.

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Quote:
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.

Lilith, you've read my book! Now my strategy becomes vulnerable. laugh
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The games always had skills, including things like Strength, Parry, Spellcraft, and Nature Lore. There were also spells and battle disciplines.

 

Now there is another division. There are stats, which are Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Endurance. There are skills, which are pretty much all the things that used to be skills and that are chosen in a system like Avadon's and not Avernum's. No word yet on whether they act as passive skills, active skills, or both. Spells and battle disciplines are still separate from both stats and skills.

 

—Alorael, who believes the way that battle disciplines are acquired remains unexplained. You might unlock them by having enough of the right skills, like Avernum. You might choose them as skills in their own right, making them almost identical to Avadon's abilities. They might work in an entirely new way.

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The current plan is one stat point you can assign and one assigned for you, plus two skill points, as in Avadon. You also get one new trait every two levels.

 

—Alorael, who has to wonder if there will be traits like Cursed at Birth that are experience bonuses in exchange for penalties. Being cursed at birth, to take effect only at level 15, seems rather technical for most curses. A simple immediate, temporary penalty to attacks is much simpler, really.

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Originally Posted By: Handsy Rug
The current plan is one stat point you can assign and one assigned for you, plus two skill points, as in Avadon. You also get one new trait every two levels.


I honestly kind of hope Jeff bites the bullet he said he might bite for Avadon 2 and eliminates manual stat allocation entirely. The only gameplay consequence it has is to make hybrid characters less effective.
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@Lilith: Oh, I got you all wrong. I thought you meant it the other way round, which didn't make sense to me. English, what can ye do.

 

However, I don't think the two must necessarily be linked in this kind of causality. That you need one stat for one skill or build really is simplistic I think it would be possible to make stats themselves more interesting by giving them more complex effects - or, differently put, making the different aspects of a skill dependent on different stats. This could give you greater possibilities of customization with fewer spells and be nicely compatible with traits, I image.

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Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S
Hey Randomizer,
Since you're a beta tester, can you press the issue of the random stat increases not always being 1 every 4 levels, and being particularly prone to messing up if you use the retrainer? That was always irritating to me in Avadon.

I think it was a problem with the way Jeff coded the game controlled stat increases. Jeff added it part way through beta testing to eliminate players putting all their points to a single stat, in this case dexterity. He hadn't anticipated how much that could be exploited to avoid damage. He also made cold avoidance go to endurance from also being dexterity.
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Originally Posted By: Green is always in style.
The games always had skills, including things like Strength, Parry, Spellcraft, and Nature Lore. There were also spells and battle disciplines.

Now there is another division. There are stats, which are Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Endurance. There are skills, which are pretty much all the things that used to be skills and that are chosen in a system like Avadon's and not Avernum's. No word yet on whether they act as passive skills, active skills, or both. Spells and battle disciplines are still separate from both stats and skills.

—Alorael, who believes the way that battle disciplines are acquired remains unexplained. You might unlock them by having enough of the right skills, like Avernum. You might choose them as skills in their own right, making them almost identical to Avadon's abilities. They might work in an entirely new way.


Im hoping that jeff keeps them as they are in a5 and 6, with need to unlock but not actual need to put many skill points in each one of them like avadon. That is what was cool about avernum 5 and 6. Adding the avadon battle disciplines is cool though. The reason that i dont want him to do it is because you already have to make your character right with stats, then skills, if he adds battle disciplines into the mix the way avadon does them, thats going to be too much. I think that jeff wont do that though.
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In regards to forcible stat allocation, in Avadon when I used the retrain code at level 30 my stats were fairly evenly divided with a max of 12, a low of 10, and the rest at 11 as I recall. Perhaps though the game should raise whatever stat is the lowest and then let the player choose the other one they want to raise each level? (Then again this could result in the game raising the INT of your fighters every level up)

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Originally Posted By: Kennedy
(Then again this could result in the game raising the INT of your fighters every level up)


That's why I don't care for stats which are (stupidly) auto-allocated. Yeah, it seems Avernum's sliding more and more away from the Hardcore min-max scene, but... even Avadon ended up in that box at the very end. Fighting Redbeard, "optional" boss or no, without a highly optimized party... NOT fun.
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  • 2 weeks later...

THis is Avernum, we don't have huge shurikens in the under world. If Jeff decides to go with the Avernum trees, there's gonna be...

 

------Left side-----

Javelin Skills (Javelin Spray?)

Sword Skills (Devastating Blow?)

Polearm Skills (Halberd Sweep)

 

-------Middle-------

Battle Disciplines

E.g Power Training?

Etc

 

--------Right--------

supportive skills

Heals

Buffs

 

But this wouldn't be too flexible so maybe instead each tree is for a certain weapon type? Left is ranging skills, middle is swords, halberds etc, and right is shields? I think Avernum will still be flexible like I could have a warrior as my Mage.

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It's been a while since I've played Avernum I, but I seem to recall finding some razordisks lying around somewhere while playing through it. At the time I thought is was weird because the Vahnatai hadn't been introduced yet, but eventually assumed it was a kind of foreshadowing.

 

That was quite a while ago though, so I have no idea where it was, unfortunately.

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Originally Posted By: mauvebutterfly
It's been a while since I've played Avernum I, but I seem to recall finding some razordisks lying around somewhere while playing through it. At the time I thought is was weird because the Vahnatai hadn't been introduced yet, but eventually assumed it was a kind of foreshadowing.

That was quite a while ago though, so I have no idea where it was, unfortunately.

Nice way to turn the plot. Actually it works OK because there are a couple of places that also foreshadow the Vahnatai; the Foul Cavern in Slith territory and the Strange Cave in the Sulphur Caverns.
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