A-EftP - Avernum Remix

[Slawbug]

As mentioned in this topic, I'm working on a sort of AEFTP Remix. This would work similarly to the editors for Geneforge games that have been posted, but instead of providing editor capability, this would twiddle in minor ways with some of the game mechanics, for purposes of balance, variety, and/or fun. I've now started this project in earnest. Here are the changes I've made so far:

 

WEAPON BALANCE

- Swords: kept at 1d4 (Effective Multipler: 2.5 w/shield, or 4.0 DW) but removed cleaving from broadswords

- Spears: kept at 1d4, with a 50% change of dealing double damage (3.75)

- Halberds: moved to 1d5, upped 1d3 cleave chance to 50% (4.0)

- Longbows: kept at 1d3, with a 50% change of dealing 2.5x damage (3.5)

- Javelins: kept at 1d4, chance of 1.5x damage, knockback, and/or hindering movement (3.125)

- Razordisks: 1d4, 50% 1d4 cleave chance (3.75)

- Javelins and razordisks are now chargeless weapons like bows, and they are found alone instead of in groups of 6.

 

I decided that DW was not overpowered, rather other weapons were too weak. The goal here was to make all weapons unique, with abilities that fit the nature of the weapon. There should now be excellent reasons to have party members who use all 4 weapon types, and interesting reasons to switch between spears and halberds, or javelins and razordisks.

 

- Shields now provide more defense, mainly in the form of Parry percentages. They are also much heavier and have to-hit penalties. This makes shields a viable option for a single-wielder, and also provides a greater reward to an archer or wizard who invests in strength.

- Numerous tweaks to individual weapons and special weapon attack forms. The Venomous Blade now uses poison and not acid, the Jade Halberd and Heartstriker are better, and the other unique weapons are most effective and interesting, too.

 

BATTLE DISCIPLINES

 

- Minor improvements to Shield Breaker, Leg Sweep, and Blade Sweep

- Battle Frenzy, Bladeshield, and Focus Spirit now leave you with 8 AP instead of ending your turn

- Adrenaline Rush now weakens your defenses for a few turns when you use it

 

SPELLS

- Minor improvements to Bolt of Fire, Spray Acid, and level 3 summons

- Mild damage reductions: Lightning Spray, Arcane Blow, Fireblast

- Icy Rain becomes Cone of Cold with new abilities

- Howl of Terror becomes Heartshock with new abilities

- Haste no longer gives a chance of Battle Frenzy at level 3. Instead, it allows the caster to take another action instantly (resetting AP to 8).

 

- Minor improvements to Heal and level 3 summons

- Minor reductions to Minor Heal and Mass Healing

- Several changes orient offensive spells more towards controlling the battlefield and less towards direct damage: Smite becomes Holy Scourge, Divine Fire becomes Flamestrike, Call the Storm and Divine Retribution modified

 

The goal here was to differentiate priests and mages more clearly, and also tone down the AoE attacks slightly. Mages are now entirely instead of mostly restricted to cone attacks, but have better ability to deal damage than priests. Priests get a wider variety of utility spells in return, though they do still have AoE damage spells.

 

ALSO

- One major secret improvement

 

Anyone have comments on the changes so far or suggestions for what else to twiddle with?

 

- I have a pet peeve against consumable items, but I can't come up with a good solution to their dilemma, so I'm just going to leave them as is.

[Kinsume]

If it was possible to make a limit on how many consumable items can be used by a single character in a battle, that would fix them.

 

What is the secret improvement? I know that defeats the purpose I think it would be better if everything was known upfront concerning the changes.

 

Are you able to change skills? Perhaps make Quick Action a more worthwhile investment option so people can actually go up to dual wielding in builds?

 

Are you going to touch that top left skill for the fighter tree? Riposte I think it is, that is quite useless currently. Perhaps change it to make it to give tank benefits rather than damage considering it is upgraded based on the tank skills.

 

The damage buffs and crit changes (as I'll call them) seem like nice additions with the only issue I forsee is them being pretty high chances. Perhaps 25% would be more suitable. Dual wielding does alot of damage, which is why it can be used on Torment for a dps class. Everything lower then Torment and they completely rip through everything. With 50% crit chance on bows and polearms I think they will actually do even more dps than dual wielding, which is just a bit broken since dual wielding is indeed overpowered.

 

Considering it this way, with full buffs higher level it is possible to get an archer using 8 turns in a single round, odds are 4 of her shots will crit. That is a bit ridiculous in terms of damage lol.

 

Off the top of my head that is all I can think of.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

The damage buffs and crit changes (as I'll call them) seem like nice additions with the only issue I forsee is them being pretty high chances. Perhaps 25% would be more suitable. Dual wielding does alot of damage, which is why it can be used on Torment for a dps class. Everything lower then Torment and they completely rip through everything. With 50% crit chance on bows and polearms I think they will actually do even more dps than dual wielding, which is just a bit broken since dual wielding is indeed overpowered.

He's already done the numbers on average damage per attack, and dual-wielding still provides the best single-target damage output. That's what all those numbers in parentheses are about. I was going to complain that polearms are still slightly weaker than dual-wielding overall, but on reflection the accuracy difference should make up for it.

[Triumph]

Could you clarify what your objection to consumbles is?

[Kinsume]

They are overpowered, you can basically use like 10 of them in a single turn when fully buffed at high level right?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Kinsume: I think the issue with weakening dual wielding instead of strengthening the other weapon types/styles is that it would make casters the dominant character type. The forum consensus is that casters and dual wielders in the original game are pretty close to equal; weaken dual wielding, and there's very little reason to play a fighter at all if you're going for build optimization.

 

@Slarty: That seems very well balanced overall. The one thing that puzzles me is changing icy rain to a cone spell; can you tell me a bit more about your rationale for that?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

@Slarty: That seems very well balanced overall. The one thing that puzzles me is changing icy rain to a cone spell; can you tell me a bit more about your rationale for that?

The idea seems to be to make mages even more positioning-dependent than they already are: they can't just lay down a zone of pain in exactly the right place from across the battlefield, they have to be standing in the right position.

[Randomizer]

High level mages can use blink to optimize the start of a cone attack.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

Are you able to change skills?

No. Not at all. Believe me, I'd love to.

Quote:

Considering it this way, with full buffs higher level it is possible to get an archer using 8 turns in a single round, odds are 4 of her shots will crit. That is a bit ridiculous in terms of damage lol.

How do you expect any character to get 8 actions in a single round? Since you only get a single AP discount even with both Haste and Sniper in effect, you would need a total of 1+5+9+9+9+9+9+9 = 62 action points to do that. Even with Adrenaline Rush, battle frenzy status and skribbane you won't get there.

Regardless, a dual-wielder will still do more damage on average in 8 attacks than a bow user will.

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture

@Kinsume: I think the issue with weakening dual wielding instead of strengthening the other weapon types/styles is that it would make casters the dominant character type. The forum consensus is that casters and dual wielders in the original game are pretty close to equal; weaken dual wielding, and there's very little reason to play a fighter at all if you're going for build optimization.

Who thinks that? The forum consensus (at least among us analysis types) is that in the original game, dual-wielders are by far the best physical attackers, but AoE spells are so powerful (especially spammed with Adrenaline Rush) that they even blow dual-wielders out of the water. People consistently recommend 2-4 mages and 0-2 fighters. Randomizer even went so far as to say there's only one fight in the game that you want melee for at all.

Actually, I think AoE spells will still be the most powerful even after my adjustments. That's why I lowered their damage output and reduced targeting options.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

High level mages can use blink to optimize the start of a cone attack.

A more than acceptable trade-off, as Blink uses up an action.

[Kinsume]

@House Gymnastics can give more AP as well for an archer on top of the stuff you mentioned.

 

Edit : 8 may have been a bit too high, it was late when I posted Regardless my point is still the same. However if the math has already been done out then nothing to worry about. My only concern is what weapons did you do the math with, high level ones or low level ones?

[AaronC]

I like all the changes.

 

Not much else to say besides ask when it should be available to us peons.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

My only concern is what weapons did you do the math with, high level ones or low level ones?

It shouldn't matter much: all weapons of the same type have the same damage multiplier.

[Kinsume]

Right but their base damage changes based on several things doesn't it? Like Str, Weapon skills, ect.

[Slawbug]

Damage is rolled using dice. The die size is dependent on the weapon. The number of dice depends on level, str/dex, basic weapon skill level, and the level of the weapon itself.

 

The only one of those variables that is different for different weapon TYPES, is the multiplier. (Weapon levels are comparable across types.)

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

Right but their base damage changes based on several things doesn't it? Like Str, Weapon skills, ect.

Yeah, but the relative effect of those depends on the multiplier, not on the base damage of the weapon itself.

[Kinsume]

I see.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

@Slarty: I don't think I was clear on what I meant here. I didn't mean that dual wielding was as good at dealing damage as offensive magic, but rather that the builds overall are both useful and highly viable. Dual wielders can't match casters for raw damage or versatility, but they're substantially stronger when it comes to defense and tanking: they get better access to armor (especially in the early game and relative to magi), more and better defensive skills, and have to jump through far fewer hoops to get adrenaline rush and bladeshield.

 

In either case, even if dual wielding were woefully underpowered overall, that would only reinforce the thrust of my argument: increasing the strength of other weapon styles to balance them with DW makes much more sense because weakening DW would just make weapons in general seriously underpowered. I don't get the impression we disagree on that, though.

[Slawbug]

Actually, in the original game, dual wielders *aren't* substantially better at tanking. Spellcasters can easily access Hardiness and Parry, and most equipment is not heavy. A tanking oriented dual wielder will be a less effective warrior; likewise a tanking oriented mage will be a less effective mage. But both are possible and their ability to tank is very similar.

 

And yup, that's why I am strengthening other weapons and not weakening swords. I'd like to strengthen SW swords, but there's no real way to do that aside from tweaking shields.

 

I am making A TON of edits to items. Oh man. A ton. Previously useless equipment is going to become an interesting option. The basic item types are not changing (much), but the unique ones are undergoing radical shifts in some cases.

[Kinsume]

What exactly are you capable of altering, just items in general?

[Necris Omega]

Sounds very interesting - having just plowed through the game, I wouldn't mind seeing some revamping.

 

Some thoughts based off all of three days (one Normal playthrough) of experience

 

Weapons

I like that you're upping the other weapons - my spearman always lagged behind my dual wielding swordsman.

 

Likewise, bows and throwing weapons were never thrilling.

 

Never picked up a shield or a braodsword for any real length of time - can't provide much insight on either idea.

 

No solid input on any of the special weapons - I didn't run into many of them and I've no real complaints.

 

Perhaps, however, the effect of Demonslayer could be strengthened? I've always found it to be very... lackluster even when thrown against its target of choice.

 

Battle Disciplines

I stuck to the simpler of ones, and can't say much here. Bladesweep could use a good buffing, though, I suppose.

 

Spells

Spay Acid was terribly weak for it's level - glad to hear you're changing it.

Changing Icy Rain, however... saddling the mage with ALL cone spells...? The current incarnation is annoying enough as it is.

I never used Howl of Terror because I've long since become adverse to such spells in Spiderweb games because they never seem to work ever. EVER.

Nerfing Haste... Jeff's nerfed that ability over the years enough as it is.

When every third enemy can Battle Frenzy en masse at will, something needs to be in place to keep things even.

 

I never used Heal. Minor Heal and Mass Heal, sure, but Heal... never. So I can see why Minor Heal should be taken down a few pegs.

You'll have to elaborate what you mean when you say, "modifying", "Holy Scourge", and "Flamestrike".

One thing I would suggest would be to make Ward of Thoughts... DO something. Even at level 3 this spell was so absolutely worthless I would get frustrated and resort to cheating.

 

I can see the goals in differentiating the two magic classes, and turning down the AoE a bit, but there are too many cone attacks in the game as it is, and all that accomplishes is choking an already stagnant arsenal of spells.

 

Consumables

Unfortunately, I don't know what to say here either. Early on in the game they can be very overpowered, but by midlevel I found most damage and effect wands and scrolls to be about as effective as name calling and fist shaking. Nerf them any further and they lose all value - buff them too much and it's too much. I can't see any sort of happy middle ground here.

 

Buffing/curing items are another issue, but I see no way to fix them one way or another without extensive revamps of the item use system itself.

[Zummi]

You're sort of making the "J.E. Sawyer mod for FNV" for A:EftP? Neat-o.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega

Perhaps, however, the effect of Demonslayer could be strengthened? I've always found it to be very... lackluster even when thrown against its target of choice.

Doing nearly twice as much damage to demons isn't strong enough? Really? The defensive bonuses are pretty solid as well.

[Necris Omega]

Considering I was used to a weapon where the full budget is based off offense rather than split between a half hearted, type limited offensive buff and a hardly noticeable defense enhancement, no, it wasn't. The damage range was higher, but nothing I would call spectacular or close to the "legendary" status and means of acquisition Demonslayer suggests.

 

When dual wielding, as any damage focused swordsman can be expected to do, the difference is even less significant. In the end, I just don't see Demonslayer as the kind of legendary, game changing, ultimate weapon it's made out to be.

 

Sorry, but from my experience with it I agree with the final A6 assessment - Demonslayer is more hype than anything.

[Slawbug]

I believe Demonslayer is better in AEFTP than it has been in ANY previous Exile or Avernum game.

 

If you are fighting demons, it is the most damaging weapon you can use, BAR NONE. What more do you want?

[esquivalient.abacot]

Hi

Since you can't alter skills, and with Quick Action probably being the most troubled skill (making DW and Lethal Blow not viable) you could make the QA fatigue removal effect much more useful by making a radical reduction to the fatigue cost of some Battle Disciplines.

That would require the power of those Battle Disciplines to be reduced, but on the other hand, fighters could use more and a greater variety of those special moves in a battle which could add more tactical depth and fun factor.

Many different Battle Disciplines could have the same, low fatigue cost.

You could reduce/remove the fatigue removal effect from some equipment to make investing in this skill worthwile.

The possibility of pretty much maxing both DW and Lethal Blow would enable an interesting assassin/barbarian-ish melee build that is much more offense oriented then it is defense oriented - which doesn't work now i think (because you're better off just pumping your basic melee skill and ignoring the offensive tier 2 & 3 skills).

As of now you can either have a heavy-tanking melee-healer or a balanced defense/offense melee character which totals 2 viable melee builds and is maybe a little limiting and boring.

[Lilith]

Seems to me that reducing the fatigue cost of disciplines doesn't really make fatigue reduction more useful, since it benefits characters without fatigue reduction bonuses just as much as characters with them.

[esquivalient.abacot]

*i think* that the BD's could be tweaked so that high QA gets you around 50% more BD use in combat.

That could possibly be further tweaked so that this specific BD spamming feature is an important distinction between a quite powerful damaging and cursing offense and a moderately powerful offense.

But maybe that's not possible.

[Kreador]

I think I recall somebody saying that the fatigue reduction was not a straight reduction in the time to recover from fatigue, but a percent chance to recover an extra fatigue point each round. Is that correct? In other words, 20% fatigue reduction would not mean that something that gave you 5 fatigue now only gave you 4, but that you could recover from that 5 fatigue in 3, 4, or 5 turns, depending on the "rolls" in each turn.

[Slawbug]

Hmm. That's a very interesting idea. Welcome to the forums, Esquivalient Abacot, and thanks for posting this!

 

10 QA means you'll recover fatigue at an average of 1.5 per turn instead of 1 per turn. With properly set up fatigue amounts, this means you can use almost 1.5 times as many disciplines. OK, so far so good.

 

2 fatigue, average turns at 10 QA: 1.5

3 fatigue, average turns at 10 QA: 2.25

4 fatigue, average turns at 10 QA: 2.875

5 fatigue, average turns at 10 QA: 3.5625

 

And it degrades further after that... plus the longer the fatigue is, the greater the chance to battle ends (or dies down significantly) before QA makes itself useful. So in practice, most of the disciplines would need to be 2 or 3 fatigue.

 

I'd need to retool ALL the battle disciplines to make this viable. Not just change fatigue, but actually make the disciplines into interesting and useful tools for battle. Additionally, I'd need to eliminate any disciplines that are especially powerful, because powerful disciplines with higher fatigue cost makes QA pointless again, while powerful disciplines with lower fatigue cost makes the disciplines probably too powerful, period.

 

One thing that ties my hands in this regard is that a number of the battle disciplines are used, frequently, by minor enemies. Reducing the fatigue time means enemies will use them more often, and changing them entirely (to create this useful "tool chest" of barbarian attacks) means some minor enemies will have attacks that are both out of character and perhaps unexpectedly powerful (and frequent).

 

Hmm... Any disciplines that deal damage are currently useless for dual-wielders, since they will always ignore the second strike (and second weapon) that dual-wielders rely on. I can't change that. However, now that I've made the other weapon attacks more powerful... those disciplines will ALSO ignore the chances of extra damage, and cleaving, that those weapons have. So I can just make the base damage a LOT higher, and it will be useful for everyone. Hmm. The problem there is that if I make the base damage that much higher, minor enemies who use them will suddenly be dealing huge amounts of damage every few turns.

 

I'll need to think about it some more, but this sounds like it MAY be a great idea.

[esquivalient.abacot]

EDIT: woops, didn't see your post, gotta read it now

thanks for the welcome:)

 

(this was the reply to kreador:)

that's correct.

so if cost of most BD's was 2 or 3 points, having a 50% chance from QA + 10-25% from equipment to recover a point would be a pretty rad boon, right?

[Kinsume]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

10 QA means you'll recover fatigue at an average of 1.5 per turn instead of 1 per turn.

You should be scaling based on level 12 Quick Action not 10.

[Slawbug]

10 QA is a convenient number for the math. Some characters will have higher QA (from trainers and items - higher than 12 even!) and some will have lower.

[esquivalient.abacot]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Hmm... Any disciplines that deal damage are currently useless for dual-wielders, since they will always ignore the second strike (and second weapon) that dual-wielders rely on. I can't change that. However, now that I've made the other weapon attacks more powerful...

no time for lengthy response
wow you've thought this through very well so fast
the underlined part struck me most making me think that any attempt at this is probably worth postponing until we get some response from the developer whether this is going to get changed sometime in the future. because it's a bit absurd.

[Kinsume]

Fair enough.

[Slawbug]

I wouldn't be surprised if that changes in the sequel. Major changes like that are pretty much out of the question for this release, which has already had two long beta testing periods, and has been out on its first platform for 6 months now.

 

It seems pretty clear that the sorry state of the battle disciplines was the result of trying to fit A6 disciplines, which were specially coded and not regular abilities, into a combat engine derived from Avadon's code. The old battle disciplines were able to "attach" to succeeding actions in ways that seem not to exist in AEFTP. (Well-Aimed Blow could be used on archery attacks, or even on spells, for example; it was an action-boost, not an action in itself.)

[Randomizer]

Jeff seemed to want to remove the usefulness of most battle disciplines from spell casters. You could no longer get damage bonuses to spell attacks.

 

So battle disciplines are now split between melee, range, and miscellaneous buffs and curse removals.

[Kinsume]

As they should be, frankly I don't think casters should have access to them period. They have Mage/Priest spells, battle disciplines are supposed to be the version of Fighter/Archer's spells.

[Slawbug]

I really doubt that was Jeff's intention -- as it is, the weapon-based disciplines aren't useful to anyone, while the best discipline (Adrenaline Rush) shines most on a spellcaster. I really think this was just the result of the change in code base.

 

As far as "supposed to be" goes, you're simply wrong. Battle disciplines were introduced in A5, and Jeff specifically said he wanted spellcasters to be able to use them, to create other skill investment possibilities.

[Kinsume]

I meant it as more of a rhetorical "should be" rather than a factual one. Not saying it was meant to not be used on them, but that it shouldn't be.

[Slawbug]

EUREKA!

 

Here's what I can do:

 

Give battle disciplines different effects depending on how much Quick Action you have.

 

This solves the problem of Quick Action being useless, AND it solves the problem of enemies having access to disciplines that are too strong.

 

HOORJ!

[Kinsume]

I thought you couldn't change the skills?

[Slawbug]

I can't change what the skills themselves do. I can change, in a very limited way, how attack abilities respond to how much of a certain skill you have.

[Kinsume]

So what do you have in mind concerning that?

[Slawbug]

Well, phooey: I've run into another balance problem with disciplines.

 

For some reason I remembered the disciplines as removing the 2nd dual wielding strike. That isn't it at all; the disciplines simply replace the 1st strike. In A6, when the disciplines modified attacks, that just meant the 2nd strike would be weak, while single-wielders got the full benefit of the bonus.

 

Here's the problem in AEFTP: they replace the 1st strike for single weapon attackers, too. So no matter how strong or weak the attack is, we get:

 

Single Weapon User:

Battle Discipline Attack

 

Dual Wielder:

Battle Discipline Attack + half a regular attack

 

I'm not quite sure how to deal with this problem. It's hardcoded into the melee attack routine so I can't avoid it.

 

One option would be to reduce the damage of all swords (by about 20%). This would give regular DW multipliers of 1.6 + 1.6 = 3.2. That's now weaker than polearms, but in exchange, DW swords would get better results from battle disciplines. If you can use one every 2-3 rounds, the gulf is really just 1.6 for the regular attacks, which is exactly what that extra post-discipline swing contributes. This would leave SW sword + shield even weaker than currently, at 2.0 a pop, but also benefitting more from battle disciplines.

 

What do you guys think?

[Kinsume]

Do what you gotta do, without the nerf to swords it won't work and the change is needed so, oh well. With the slew of new builds to try I doubt people will mind losing out on Dual Wielding too much, considering everyone probably has played one already. Also this edit you're making is still entirely voluntary, so its not like people are forced to use it.

[esquivalient.abacot]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

I wouldn't be surprised if that changes in the sequel. Major changes like that are pretty much out of the question for this release, which has already had two long beta testing periods, and has been out on its first platform for 6 months now.

Yeah, I was thinking along those exact lines. I have some feeling that fewer things will change in the future games than they did in the past (with jeff focusing more on both the writing, content and technical aspects of avadon, trying out new things there etc.) so pointing out those critical bits to the developer might be the only way to get them fixed in a sequel.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

What do you guys think?

the general idea sounds really cool, i think that it would work and that it would make the game much better and that it's worth the effort

characters can't wield 2 broadswords.
so, you could make broadswords much much better than shortswords. this would reduce the difference between SW and DW because DW could now only wield 1superior + 1inferior weapon compared to the current situation where the both weapons can be more than satisfactory as a primary weapon dwarfing the sword-and-shield in damage.
this wouldn't affect DW but it would make SW stronger.

also, you could add a bit of offense to magical shields such as a significant riposte boost (probably bad) or umm.. dunno, maybe +4 blademaster?

[Slawbug]

Weight is what makes the difference in wieldability. I could make the short swords worse, but that doesn't really solve the problem, it only makes dual-wielding less interesting.

 

I think I am just going to reduce sword damage. This *doesn't* make dual-wielding worse than in the original version, since battle disciplines will be better and more accessible: and dual-wielding is best-positioned for that since QA is on the way to both DW and LB.

 

The main thing I have done for single-wielding swords is to convert shields from offering armor, to offering parry. But SW will also get a significant boost from battle disciplines.

[Ceregon]

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I fail to understand how nerfing sword damage and taking armor rating off of shields is a good thing for "sword and board" tanks.

 

I know this redesign is totally voluntary, but it seems that it so tightly focused on dual wielders that it totally removes the ability to play a sword and shield tank effectively.

[Kinsume]

Isn't offering parry going to be a bit imbalanced? Players can already get 36% dodge as it is, on top of that they get the two traits that increase parry even more putting them just shy of 50%. I can understand what you're going for with trying to make shields actually block damage via parry rather than just helping absorb more, but its going to be too broken. Shields account for about 20% of the tank's armor if not more, while losing that on casual - hard isn't an issue, when you're playing torment and are already down -30% armor from the difficulty it plays a huge role.