Best second trait for a spellslinger?

[Ghaldring]

I've read through some of the old threads, and it's been mentioned that Elite Warrior may be better than Pure Spirit/Natural Mage for devoted Priests/Mages, respectively.

 

Just to compare:

 

Elite Warrior =

Increase 1 pound of encumbrance per level

Initial +2 parry and blademaster

+1 to parry and blademaster every 8th level

 

Natural mage =

Initial +2 to mage spells

+1 to mage spells every 6 levels.

Initial 1 to mag efficiency

+1 to magic efficiency every 10 levels.

Can cast spells while wearing heavier armour

 

Pure spirit =

Initial 2 to priest spells AND magical efficiency

+1 to mag efficiency and priest every 6 levels

 

--------

 

IMHO, a dedicated spellcaster wants to maximize spell duration, damage and efficacy (ie. the chance to terrify/charm), while minimizing cost. This means that Natural Mage/Pure Spirit would fit the bill nicely. Being able to cast spells while wearing heavier armour is an added bonus.

 

For Elite Warrior. You receive:

 

- A higher encumbrance level. However, this higher encumbrance level is useless if you can't cast spells while wearing heavier armour.

 

- Extra blademaster, which is useful in regards to reducing fatigue. But for a caster, a moderate reduction in fatigue isn't as useful as increased spell damage and reduced spell cost.

 

- Extra parry. Having a chance to completely block a melee or missile attack is nice. However, as your devoted spellcasters shouldn't be in the frontline, they will mainly getting hit by area effect spells, which aren't blocked by parry. And yeah, I know that parry supposedly causes damage reduction, but I've never seen it do so! I pumped parry up to 30, and observed no damage reduction from physical goblin attacks.

 

So essentially, you're sacrificing spell damage, duration, and efficacy, and increasing spell cost, so that you can have reduced fatigue and a 30% chance to block the occasional attack made against your backliners.

 

BTW, I think it's rather surprising that Pure Spirit gives you more magical efficiency than natural mage.

 

 

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

BTW, I think it's rather surprising that Pure Spirit gives you more magical efficiency than natural mage.

It's a balancing factor: Mage Spells skill has a higher base cost than Priest Spells, and Natural Mage allows mage spells to be cast in heavy armour, so Pure Spirit needs some counterbalancing benefit over Natural Mage. (NM is still better, if you have a mage-priest and only want to take one of the two.)

[Randomizer]

It depends upon playing style.

 

Elite warrior's blademaster means that you can use a battle discipline sooner and in some cases before the last one wears off. This is really useful in the last part of the game. Encumberance is important because there are a few heavy breastplates that don't prevent mages from casting spells. Runed Breastplate is one example and it increases magery.

 

Parry damage reduction is from older games, but not getting hit means not having to heal.

 

Natural mage or pure spirit means slightly more damage with spells and is more significant near the beginning. Magical efficiency doesn't really matter as much because there are enough potions to restore spell energy for most players.

 

The major advantage is that if you spellcast with both groups of spells it's easier to get all of them.

[AnarhIztok2511]

Quote: "However, as your devoted spellcasters shouldn't be in the frontline, they will mainly getting hit by area effect spells, which aren't blocked by parry."

 

Well, a lot of times the fighting is such that there are enemies coming from behind or surrounding you. And some go for your casters first.

[Slawbug]

First of all, Parry absolutely does offer damage reduction in addition to blocking attacks. It's about 2% per point on top of what shows up on the character sheet. Note that this does reduce damage from area of effect attacks, as well. 5 or 10 Parry won't make or break anything, but taking both reduction and blocking into account, it's way more significant than the Slith resistance bonus, or than the magical efficiency from Pure Spirit.

 

From the middle of the game on, a high Blademaster level will increase your damage WAY more than an extra 6 points in Mage or Priest spells will. With both DT and EW and an item or two you'll be in the 15-20 range by the end, which will DOUBLE your fatigue reduction almost every time. The fatigue reduction items are nice, but very unreliable; high Blademaster is very reliable. Losing 2 fatigue per turn means that you can have Battle Fury permanently active, for a far higher (and more convenient) bonus than just an extra 6 levels of damage. Throw some of the items in and you can typically combine Battle Fury with other disciplines, resulting in truly gross bonuses to damage output. NM/PS juts can't keep up.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty:

Quote:

First of all, Parry absolutely does offer damage reduction in addition to blocking attacks.

 

It doesn't for me. I pumped it up to 30, and I noticed no significant reduction in damage from Goblin Warriors.

[Slawbug]

I tested it repeatedly, empirically, and it offers very clear damage reduction to both physical and magical damage.

 

If you are wearing lots of armor and the goblin warriors are very weak, so you are already taking very low damage, the output might look different -- Jeff (and other game-makers) often have slightly different math for liminal damage. That's the only thing I can think of.

 

Otherwise, given that empirical evidence has been given for Parry's effectiveness, the fact that you didn't "notice" a "significant" reduction isn't significant. Write down some actual numbers, try the test in multiple circumstances, and then I'll be interested to hear your results.

[EvilEye]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

First of all, Parry absolutely does offer damage reduction in addition to blocking attacks. It's about 2% per point on top of what shows up on the character sheet.

Please stop spreading this rumor.

It isn't true, I've tested it before. With totally naked characters. There was no difference in damage taken ( when hit ) with a no parry and lvl 30 parry.

Maybe its A4 your thinking of.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty:

Quote:

I tested it repeatedly, empirically, and it offers very clear damage reduction to both physical and magical damage.

 

From what I have seen, there is no reduction in physical damage.

 

Quote:

Of you are wearing lots of armor and the goblin warriors are very weak,

 

Neither of which applied when I tested it.

 

Quote:

Write down some actual numbers, try the test in multiple circumstances, and then I'll be interested to hear your results.

 

I'm pretty sure that someone has done that in the past. But when I get home, I'll do just that.

[Slawbug]

I couldn't find my old data, so I went and gathered some new data. The results are interesting and suggest that neither one of us has it exactly right.

 

Test environment: Level 10 character, 81% armor, 0 and 10 Parry respectively, getting beat on by Fierce Scuttlers. 40 trials for each set. "Dmg Took" and "Dmg Blocked" are the averages of the numbers the game gave out for damage taken, and for damage "blocked". "Total" is their sum. The numbers in parentheses are the ranges of data observed.

 

Code:

Parry Dmg Took      Dmg Blocked   Total         % Blocked----  ------------  ------------  ------------  --------------   0   6.9 ( 2-11)  12.2 ( 5-20)  19.1 (13-30)  63.5% (38-85%)  10   7.8 ( 4-13)   8.8 ( 4-15)  16.5 ( 9-23)  53.3% (29-79%)

 

So I took conistently more damage with Parry than without. However, damage taken before armor was consistently lower with Parry, and lower by about the amount predicted by the Parry, uh, believers. Moreover, Parry reduced the amount of damage reported as blocked.

 

After scratching my head, I ran another test to look at hit rates. This was more interesting. The printed hit rate was 22%, by the way. I allowed 100 strikes for each trial:

 

Code:

                 UnparriedParry   Misses   Hits    Parries-----   ------   -----   -------    0       78      22         0 (obviously)   10       87      10         3

 

The trial with Parry, I was hit almost half as often as the first trial, even accounting for the parried hits.

 

So, if this data is accurate, we can see that:

- Parry reduces the number of times you get a damage message

- Parry reduces the average TOTAL damage taken per hit, before blocking

- Parry reduces the average percent of TOTAL damage taken per hit reported as blocked

- Parry *increases* the average ACTUAL damage taken per hit

 

The simplest explanation seems to me to be as follows:

- If damaged from a hit is reduced to zero, it is reported as a miss, not as a hit.

- Parry does reduce damage.

 

At least one thing is very unsatisfactory for this explanation, which is the absence of 1, 2, and 3 actual damage reports, which we would expect plenty of if nearly half the hits were reduced to zero damage.

 

What does anybody else think?

[Feo Takahari]

We already know the effects of stats have, in earlier Spiderweb games, demonstrably differed from computer to computer. Perhaps on some computers the skill malfunctions? Or could this be a difference between the Mac and Windows versions?

 

P.S. Anyone get the feeling Spiderweb really needs enough money to hire more people to deal with this stuff?

[EvilEye]

I just dug up an old post because I remember testing this to my satisfaction the last time you said this.

 

"----------------------------------------------------

Here, I did some testing and I wrote down the numbers this time:

 

VS. pirro the portmaster on Torment mode

 

character 1 - 40 parry

 

damage taken:

 

28

30

26

30

34

26

20

34

26

24

 

average damage = 27.8

 

character 2 - 0 parry

 

damage taken:

 

30

22

32

32

26

24

30

26

28

26

 

average damage = 27.6

 

I chose Pirro because he doesn't use battle disciplines, and torment mode to get the damage up high enough so any differences were noticable.

"-------------------------------------------------------

 

At a level 40 parry there should definitely be a huge difference in damage received vs someone with no parry.

 

Those tests were done with no armor whatsoever.

 

The numbers you posted do not show any huge variance, and you have 81% armor ( according to your post ) so that is not an ideal test IMO.

[EvilEye]

Originally Posted By: feo takahari

We already know the effects of stats have, in earlier Spiderweb games, demonstrably differed from computer to computer. Perhaps on some computers the skill malfunctions? Or could this be a difference between the Mac and Windows versions?

P.S. Anyone get the feeling Spiderweb really needs enough money to hire more people to deal with this stuff?

Who knows. Its always possible. I am on windows xp / vista.

Also I wish Jeff would fix the bug where magical efficiency does not work with some spells.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: feo takahari

We already know the effects of stats have, in earlier Spiderweb games, demonstrably differed from computer to computer. Perhaps on some computers the skill malfunctions? Or could this be a difference between the Mac and Windows versions?

P.S. Anyone get the feeling Spiderweb really needs enough money to hire more people to deal with this stuff?

I am on OS X, so I suppose this is possible. That said, I remain skeptical of this. This was most frequently said about Blades of Exile, and I note that, now that the source code has been released and pored over quite heavily, nobody has found anything suggesting why this would be so. I blame people jumping to false conclusions and refusing to believe they are wrong. (Which is always a danger, and why I insist on running empirical tests.)

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

I am on OS X, so I suppose this is possible. That said, I remain skeptical of this. This was most frequently said about Blades of Exile, and I note that, now that the source code has been released and pored over quite heavily, nobody has found anything suggesting why this would be so. I blame people jumping to false conclusions and refusing to believe they are wrong. (Which is always a danger, and why I insist on running empirical tests.)

The differences in BoE weren't quantitative issues, though. They were qualitative issues, like whether Icy Touch activated 100% of the time on a successful melee attack or only about 50%, or whether Slimes and/or Undead were immune to sleep or not. (It was very easy to tell if the immunity existed in your version: a monster with Sleep Touch hitting a Slime or Undead would produce the message "Sleeps!" but no message stating whether the target resisted the sleep attack or not. With other types of monster, there'd be an "X resists" or "X slept" message.) There's absolutely no doubt that there were real differences.

Yes, one version of the source code was released. Remember, Jeff admitted that his system of organising the source was a complete mess and he had bits and pieces of it scattered on different computers. It's entirely possible that different people's copies of Blades were compiled with subtly different versions of the source code, even when they were ostensibly the same version of the game.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty:

Quote:

After scratching my head, I ran another test to look at hit rates. This was more interesting. The printed hit rate was 22%, by the way. I allowed 100 strikes for each trial:

 

Code: Unparried

Parry Misses Hits Parries

----- ------ ----- -------

0 78 22 0 (obviously)

10 87 10 3

 

 

The trial with Parry, I was hit almost half as often as the first trial, even accounting for the parried hits.

 

You didn't include confidence intervals. Since I've long forgotten how to calculate them myself, I used an online calculator: http://www.dimensionresearch.com/resources/calculators/conf_prop.html

 

Parry 0: 22% +/- 8.12% (13.88 to 30.12)

 

Parry 10: 13% +/- 6.59% (6.41 to 19.59)

 

The confidence intervals overlap, so there is no statistical significance there.

 

That doesn't mean that parry doesn't offer damage protection, it just means that your data doesn't show it.

[Slawbug]

I'm not an expert on statistics, so this is an actual question: how do slightly overlapping confidence intervals demolish statistical significance? That doesn't make much sense to me.

 

It sounds like that would lower our confidence that the data is significant, but not reduce it to zero.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

I'm not an expert on statistics, so this is an actual question: how do slightly overlapping confidence intervals demolish statistical significance? That doesn't make much sense to me.

It sounds like that would lower our confidence that the data is significant, but not reduce it to zero.

That's a bit more than a slight overlap, but seeing if confidence intervals overlap is indeed technically the wrong way to calculate statistical significance. If you wanted to be rigorous about it, you'd have to do something like a two-sample t-test or maybe a chi-square test. Ideally, you'd also want to do power analysis to work out how big a sample size you'd need to find an effect if it existed. (In fact, ideally you'd do that before you did your experiments.)

I can find my old statistics books and take a crack at it later if you want. Just by eyeballing those confidence intervals, though, I can tell you your results are almost certainly not significant at the 0.05 level, which is the normal benchmark for statistical significance. (That is, there's more than a 5% chance that the results you observed could be produced even if Parry had no effect on hit rate.)

[Slawbug]

That makes sense. My point is that, even if we can't have complete confidence in the results, they are still more likely than a stab in the dark to lead us in the right direction. Our goal isn't to obtain statistically significant results, our goal is to come up with a theory of what Parry does and what is going on here that can accurately predict what will happen.

 

In other words, even if those results were completely significant, that wouldn't solve the problem, so the fact that they are not significant at whatever level is beside the point.

 

Thuryl, what do you make of this whole mess? What do you think is actually going on with Parry -- best hypothesis?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

That makes sense. My point is that, even if we can't have complete confidence in the results, they are still more likely than a stab in the dark to lead us in the right direction. Our goal isn't to obtain statistically significant results, our goal is to come up with a theory of what Parry does and what is going on here that can accurately predict what will happen.

You've read Fraley's paper, haven't you? Boooo.

Quote:

In other words, even if those results were completely significant, that wouldn't solve the problem, so the fact that they are not significant at whatever level is beside the point.

Thuryl, what do you make of this whole mess? What do you think is actually going on with Parry -- best hypothesis?

I haven't seen enough evidence to convince me that Parry reduces hit rate, and it seems implausible (although stranger things have happened in Jeff's games). As for damage reduction, Parry had an obvious and dramatic effect on melee damage (but not missile or magical damage) received in A4, but much less of one in A5. This makes me suspicious of your claim that Parry reduces all kinds of damage: I can easily see Jeff reducing the effect of Parry from A4, because it was overpowered in that game, but it seems less likely that he'd change it to give new effects that it didn't have before.

[Slawbug]

Parry *did* have an obvious efect on missile and magical damage in A4. That I'm quite sure of, although the effect on magical damage types was a bit weaker than on physical damage.

 

Jeff also reduced the parry chance from 5% per capped-point to 3% per capped-point between A4 and A5, so it's not implausible that that was the extent of his meddling. Particularly because, as you suggest, I think he's more likely to twiddle a few numbers than add and remove effects entirely.

[Ghaldring]

Whoops, Thuryl is right regarding the confidence intervals I used not being appropriate to determine statistical significance. Standard error bars can determine it, though.

 

But perhaps we're better off just using the Z test for two proportions, since I just found an online Z test calculator!

http://www.dimensionresearch.com/resources/calculators/ztest.html

 

If you enter in Slarty's values, you find that they aren't statistically significant. Note that the test assumes normal distribution, though.

 

Quote:

Our goal isn't to obtain statistically significant results,

 

Your goal is to validate your hypothesis that parry reduces your PC's %chance to be hit. To do that, you can't just generate raw data, you also need to analyze it correctly. The problem is that a sample rarely (if ever) mimicks the population from which the sample was drawn from. The differences we observed in your data could just be due to random variability and chance, which is why we need to account for it via measures statistical significance before you can draw any conclusions.

 

The problem here is that even though the data you obtained didn't demonstrate statistical significance, that doesn't mean that parry doesn't reduce % chance to be hit. Thuryl touched on this by mentioning 'power analysis', which simply means that you didn't have a large enough sample size to detect the effects of parry.

 

But a sample size of 100 is quite large. I think the minimum is 20.

 

And yeah, all this is probably overkill for a computer game. On the other hand, it's nice to put something I learnt during my horrible statistics units to some sort of use. All of that suffering wasn't in vain.

[Slawbug]

My goal is to validate or invalidate the hypothesis -- which is NOT that parry reduces the chance to be hit. The hypothesis is that parry reduces the chance of a damage message occuring, for whatever reason.

[Feo Takahari]

Not sure what it means, but I just got a result that, if it's not a bug, could alter our understanding of how Parry works. I was fighting chitrachs under the Anama lands, and if you recall, they can parry like players can and occasionally riposte. My first character's attempt at Shield Breaker was riposted (6%), which I gather means that the riposte had a six percent chance of occurring. I had my second character use the same technique--and I got a message that I'd been parried (0%). Make of it what you will.

 

And if it helps, the character who got parried was a Level 20 slith with 9 Strength (enhanced by items), 5 Dexterity and 6 Pole Weapons.

[Slawbug]

You know, I think I've seen that too. It probably just means the chitrach was assigned riposte skill but not parry skill -- and suggests that Thuryl's assumption about how riposte applied was correct after all.

[Feo Takahari]

Originally Posted By: Slarty

You know, I think I've seen that too. It probably just means the chitrach was assigned riposte skill but not parry skill -- and suggests that Thuryl's assumption about how riposte applied was correct after all.

Took me forever to find that in the old posts. If anyone cares, Thuryl hypothesized that Riposte is checked first, then Parry if Riposte fails. I don't entirely get how that means you could parry without any points in Parry, unless the chitrach happened to riposte for 0 points of damage, but I'll go along.

[Ghaldring]

You can take zero damage in Avernum 5, Slarty. And the 'no damage' is displayed in the message window. I tested this by pumping up hardiness to 41 and letting goblins hit me on 'Easy'.

[Slawbug]

Darn. Well, thanks for checking Ghaldring.

[Ghaldring]

I honestly don't think that parry reduces damage by a means other than the 'block effect'.

 

Still, the block effect essentially provides you with 30% damage reduction for most attacks.

[Ghaldring]

So based on Slarty's advice, I restarted with an all nephil party. Two nephil warriors which focused on archery, one nephil priest, and one nephil mage. As suggested, they all had divine warrior and elite warrior traits.

 

I've almost finished Tranquility (I haven't got past the prime sentinel yet), and I just have to say. This party performs worse than my previous, non-optimised party.

 

Several things have really been pissing me off.

 

1. Elite Warrior is virtually useless on my casters.

 

- Heavier armour? No difference, because if your caster is hit on torment, they are dead no matter what. Sentinels dust them with one ranged attack.

 

- Blademaster? WORTHLESS, because my casters only just obtained Well Aimed blow, and that's only because I spent precious skill points on bows to begin with*. Hell, even my warriors only have leg sweep, despite almost devoted investment in bows.

 

- Parry? Worthless. My casters are rarely hit to begin with, and when they are, they rarely block.

 

2. I run out of spell points much quicker. By the time I've casted Augmentation/Haste, I have very few points left available for attack spells. This might be because:

 

- Nephils gain levels slower, which translates into fewer SP.

 

- Not having any magical efficiency. Magical efficiency really makes a difference. With about 5 points, your spell casting capacity increases by about 40%. It increases to 80%-100% with 10 points.

 

And before any of you go "Well, why didn't you buy any from Shanker?", I couldn't. I didn't have the cash. A destitute group of adventurers, who would have thunk it?

 

3. Terror seems to be successful less often.

 

The previous game, I beat Lystak by just terrifying him and then whacking him repeatedly with my slith pole user. This game such a strategy didn't work, and I got cleaned up repeatedly. It got so bad that I needed to exploit the crappy AI by taking the elevator down and shooting at Lystakk with impunity. I still feel guilty for exploiting the AI so shamelessly.

 

4. I'm not doing as much damage! I know that Slarty proposed that bows do more average (ie reliable) damage than pole weapons, but no. Pole weapons just own this game, they are the only resource-free way of outputting damage fast enough to survive combat later on.

 

* I mentioned Battle Traits for casters above, and I've come to conclude that such a strategy is inferior to just investing in mage spells/spellcraft/magery.

 

Here's how I see it. Essentially, you want to obtain a Battle Discipline of 20 to unlock Battle Frenzy, the holy grail of battle disciplines. Upon my testing, Battle Frenzy appears to increase ALL damage by 50-60%. That includes all targets inside an area of effect spell (icy rain).

 

So the idea is to select Elite Warrior and Divine Warrior, in order to obtain a Blademaster of 20. Blademaster 20 will reduce 2 fatigue every around, allowing you to remain battle frenzied for all but one round.

 

The problem here is that even with Elite Warrior and Divine Warrior, you will only obtain a Blademaster of 20 at level 48, which you're highly unlikely of reaching by the end game.

 

But let's assume that we somehow do make it to level 48, with 18 mage spells and 10 spellcraft.

 

Your firebolt would be hitting for average damage of (10 + 2*28) = 66

 

Battle Frenzy would boost that by 60% to an average damage of 106.

 

Now let's say we had selected Natural Mage instead of Elite Warrior. At level 48, we would receive +10 to mage spells, for a total of 28 mage spells and 10 spellcraft.

 

Your firebolt would be hitting for an average damage of (10 + 2 * 38) = 86.

 

86 damage is less than 106. A clear case for Elite Warrior and Battle Traits, then? Well, not really.

 

First we have to obtain the Battle Discipline.

 

At Level 48, a nephil will receive (48/8 + 2) 8 points to bows, and 8 points to thrown missiles. That equates to 8 battle skill. You need a further 12 battle skill to obtain Battle Frenzy, which translates into another 24 bow skill, which translates into a one hundred and eighty skill point investment! Let's assume you have found trained/found a few skill points in martial skills, and only need a 160 skill point investment.

 

These 170 skill points could have been invested into 19 points of magery.

 

So you would then have: 28 mage spells, 10 spellcraft, 19 magery.

 

Your firebolt would be hitting for an average damage of (10 + 2 * 57) = 124

 

I tested my hypothesis out with the editor. Interestingly, the damage calculated at higher levels is more than observed in the game, which may be due to diminishing returns? But nevertheless, a Battle Frenzied caster with Elite Warrior does less damage when compared to a caster who selected Natural Mage and invested in Magery instead of bows.

 

But magery/mage spells don't just effect spell damage, they also effect spell duration, hence saving spell points. They also add extra layers of acid damage to acid spray, and increase the likelihood of dazing (I'm not sure about whether your chance of terrifying increases). Battle Disciplines do not do any of these things. Seems like a clear case for humans.

 

Thoughts?

[Lilith]

Battle Disciplines also make characters a lot more versatile, though. When you need to cover a lot of ground in a short time (for example, when running away from enemies or past a volcanic area), there's no substitute for Adrenaline Rush. The requirements are a bit steep, but you can build up to them with help from the combat trainer in Tranquility and equipment like the Discipline Blade. It's not just about outputting more damage.

[Ghaldring]

Thuryl:

Quote:

Battle Disciplines also make characters a lot more versatile, though. When you need to cover a lot of ground in a short time (for example, when running away from enemies or past a volcanic area), there's no substitute for Adrenaline Rush

 

That sounds more like a perk, which pales in comparison to increased spell damage/duration.

 

And it's not an argument to select Elite Warrior as a second trait.

 

I'm starting to think that pure spirit is the best second trait, for both mages and priests.

[Randomizer]

Putting all your skill points into a single combat skill to get all the battle disciplines is the almost the worst way to do it. You can reach all the battle disciplines with a party of 4 by level 24.

 

Nephil or slith starts you at 2 combat skill levels towards battle disciplines with 1 level every 8 thereafter. So at 24th level you have 5 levels.

 

You can buy 9 levels from Dixon in Tranquility. There is one level of pole weapons and 1/2 level for thrown weapons from books in Khora-Vysss and one level of melee weapons from the Vahnatai shade trainer in Kherebass.

 

This gives you 16 and 1/2 levels without expending any skill points. So all your characters need to spend skill points in is 3 levels of either melee and/or pole weapons (which ever is more useful for your playing style) and one level of bow or thrown weapons. There are items like the discipline knife that give 3 levels of combat skills for spell casters.

 

 

Jeff reduced the effectiveness of terror versus boss monsters after we abused it during beta testing.

[Ghaldring]

Randomizer:

Quote:

You can buy 9 levels from Dixon in Tranquility. There is one level of pole weapons and 1/2 level for thrown weapons from books in Khora-Vysss and one level of melee weapons from the Vahnatai shade trainer in Kherebass.

 

How do you afford that?

[Randomizer]

Convert everything you don't use to cash. You have to go back when you reach the Azure Gallery to continue buying combat skills, but there is plenty to use if you don't mind stealing from them.

[Ghaldring]

Even if I take Divine Warrior and Elite Warrior, I'm still not going to have 20 blademaster by Lvl 24, so what's the point of taking EW in the first place?

[Lilith]

Yeah, I think Elite Warrior on spellcasters works better in theory than in practice. There are enough fatigue removal items that it's not really needed.

[Ghaldring]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Convert everything you don't use to cash. You have to go back when you reach the Azure Gallery to continue buying combat skills, but there is plenty to use if you don't mind stealing from them.

I role-play with a 'no-theft' policy. But even then, I don't see how I could accumulate enough cash to not only buy all the necessary spells, but also to train in nature lore/spellcraft/magery/resistance/magical efficacy/pole weapons/melee weapons, as well as pay to craft some of the better items. I'd only be able to do so near the end of the game, and by then, what's the point?

[Randomizer]

Well there's your problem. Your honest and it isn't the best policy for this game.

[Feo Takahari]

For that matter, I'm dishonest, and having reached Highground, I still haven't finished buying priest spells in Harkin's Landing. (Kinda inconvenient--I keep intending to free Anemona.)

[Ghaldring]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Well there's your problem. Your honest and it isn't the best policy for this game.

But even in my previous playthrough where I stole everything that wasn't nailed down, I still didn't have nearly enough cash to train in the skills I wanted to!

This is the big problem with using bows as your primary attack. It takes forever to get the battle disciplines. Or to even get a bow that does die damage that rivals halberds.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

But even in my previous playthrough where I stole everything that wasn't nailed down, I still didn't have nearly enough cash to train in the skills I wanted to!

What are you spending most of your money on? Spells are a huge and mostly unnecessary gold sink: you should never buy a spell that you can find for free, or one that you're not likely to ever want to cast. Likewise, you don't really need to buy the latest and greatest weapons and armour in every town when you can make do with what you find.

[Ghaldring]

I try to buy one point in any spell that I won't be finding for a while. And I will use gold to forge worthwhile items (ie. the Blessed Plate Armour in Exodus).

[Slawbug]

20 Blademaster is the level that grants 100% fatigue reduction, but the curve at which you get it is middle-heavy. I forget the exact results I got, but by the time you get to about 15 Blademaster you'll get the fatigue reduction nearly every round. So you don't need to get to 20 Blademaster. And don't forget that a decent selection of items boost Blademaster by a point or two.

 

Flexibility really is more important than raw damage output, anyway. And the math on bows and poles is not wrong, but unless you do the math poles *will* seem to be doing more damage. It's psychological. Poles will do noticably more damage *when they hit*. You get enough extra chances to hit with bows that in the end the damage difference is negligible. But the little numbers that pop up will still be bigger for poles, of course.

 

Thuryl is right that spells, by and large, are a huge waste of money.

 

Your level 48 calculations are ridiculous, firstly because you won't make it to level 48, and secondly because the vast majority of the game will be spent in the middle levels, between say 16 and 32. And see above about why you don't need 48 levels of EW bonuses.

 

Your "clear case for humans" is bunk. Even if you spurn battle disciplines, which is patently foolish, being human does not boost your other stats, and you end up getting all of 10 more skill points compared to a Nephil over the course of the whole game while missing out on lots of free points in bows/throws/gymnastics.

 

Saving SP, while convenient, is unnecessary, given that you can almost always just go back to town to restore them (or use a cheat-of-convenience-only to do so). For protracted boss fights there are more than enough energy potions to last the game. This was one of the key points of my spurning the spellcaster traits. If you disagree, then obviously the spellcaster traits are for you, but I think it's a pretty solid argument.

 

The calculated damage is probably higher than the actual damage because of resistance, in some form; remember some is indirect. What enemy did you test on?

 

 

...now, all of that said, Parry's damage reduction was part of what made me prefer EW for spellcasters; a small part but it was never an overwhelming preference. So I'm not sure where I really stand on this issue now. But, game files that don't use all the opportunities available aren't really going to sway my opinion either.

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

I try to buy one point in any spell that I won't be finding for a while. And I will use gold to forge worthwhile items (ie. the Blessed Plate Armour in Exodus).

You find better armors/weapons/shields from caves/monsters/rewards etc than you can craft at beginning/middle of game.

To get money you can sell potions, magic staffs, scrolls, stuff you get from enemies etc you don't need. Collect everything which has selling value and sell it, money ain't so common in A5 than it was on A4. If you are really desperate on getting money then take Gladwell's geas and start selling health potions which his female slave gives you everytime you visit there.

[Ghaldring]

Slarty:

 

I'm going to address only one aspect of your post at the moment.

 

Quote:

Flexibility really is more important than raw damage output, anyway.

 

I'm not so sure I agree with that. My battle with Lystakk is a key example. What good is my bow's 'flexibility' if I can't output the raw damage to take down a boss in a timely manner?

 

Quote:

And the math on bows and poles is not wrong, but unless you do the math poles *will* seem to be doing more damage.

 

It's psychological. Poles will do noticably more damage *when they hit*. You get enough extra chances to hit with bows that in the end the damage difference is negligible. But the little numbers that pop up will still be bigger for poles, of course.

 

 

Poles do do more damage in most instances, especially if your PC is 'locked' on a single boss character. I opened up Excel and tried my own calculations (yes, yes, run in terror!)

 

I assumed that your level 20 human (for simplicity) PC, with Elite Warrior and Divine Blood traits, was running around the Azure Gallery.

 

One PC had found the Slith Bloodspear

One PC had found the Ebony Longbow

Since both of these are available in that region.

 

I then invested 130 skill points, optimising for either a polearm character, or an archer character.

 

I then used Excel to calculate the average damage for one hit (not taking Quick Action into account), and the average damage over 10 rounds, assuming hasted PCs (after all, why WOULDN'T you haste your PC's). I didn't bother with Battle Rage, that's getting too complicated. When I calculated the average damage, I adjusted for two things:

 

- Quick action. A quick action of 13 gave me a 26% chance of a second strike. I scratched my head, trying to work out how to incorporate this into the damage calculations. In the end, I simply multiplied my overall damage for that ten rounds by 26%, and then added the result to the overall damage.

 

- Whether you receive both strikes in the first round.

 

I've found that in the first round, you sometimes get to strike twice as a pole user, especially if the boss monster moves first. I approximated this to about 20% of the time. An archer gets to strike twice in the first round about 80% of the time. I adjusted for this by multiplying the first attack by 20% or 80%, respectively.

 

So, for the Ebony Longbow, my average damage per strike was 84.

 

My average damage over 10 combat rounds was 1663.

 

For the Slith Bloodspear, my average damage per strike was 102 (not including quick action.)

 

My average damage over 10 combat rounds was 2459 (taking quick action into account).

 

That's a difference of 48% damage! That's 48% less time the enemy spends kicking your ass.

 

However, I've neglected to incorporate several things into my calculations that may affect average damage output.

 

- In the favour of Pole weapons:

 

= Slith vs. Nephil bonuses. The damage bonus for poles that Sliths receives is slightly more than that Nephil receives for bonus due to the hit die discrepancy between poles and bows. It's minor, though.

 

= You're more likely to equip an item that increase melee damage than ranged damage. Ergo. There are more items that increase strength/anatomy/blademaster/lethal blow/pole weapons, than there are that increase dexterity/sharpshooter/bows.

 

= You find halberds that output decent damage long before the Azure Gallery. However, bows with base damage and hit die that rival halberds don't pop up until late Azure. And forget about Heartstriker, you wouldn't want to waste Eyestalks on it.

 

= There are more 'quest' bonuses and trained points in the game that benefit melee instead of bows.

 

= You're going to obtain battle disciplines quicker to boost your damage.

 

 

- In favour of bows:

 

= You gain extra damage from the extra attacks you receive when smacking around a terrified/retreating enemy.

 

 

Too bad I can't attach the Excel spreadsheet.

[Randomizer]

There is another advantage bows have over pole weapons. When going against a monster with parry, bows face 3% per level of parry versus 5% for melee attacks. So bows are more likely to get through for damage than pole weapons. The sliths in Khora-Vysss are the best example of this challenge.

 

Still I have to agree that dropping a monster quicker is better.

[Lilith]

It's actually 2% vs 3% in Avernum 5, but still an advantage. A5 doesn't have all those stupid riposting chitrachs, though.

[Randomizer]

Just riposting slimes

[Ghaldring]

Randomizer:

Quote:

The sliths in Khora-Vysss are the best example of this challenge.

 

What parry % do they have, do you remember? I sure don't.

 

Quote:

Just riposting slimes

 

What!? I've never seen a slime riposte.