Giant Frog

My party build probably went South at some point because I disregard Endurance. The adventures were forced to use tons of Invulnerability potions and scrolls of Return Life in the fight against Sulfras. Philip - the party leader and King Micah's favorite. He's got 39 attribute points in Strength before items and 20 skill points in Melee Weapons - he could theoretically deal up to 360 points of damage on a really good roll with Demonslayer but I've never seen it happen except against very low-level critters. His favorite weapon is a Flaming Sword. He likes Almarian wine. He's serious and never holds anything back against his foes. Elayne - the foil to Philip's seriousness and the defacto tank of the party. She's got 41 points in Dexterity before items and 20 skill points in Bows. She likes to mix things up with Thrown Weapons from time to time - it works satisfactorily well thanks to her high Dexterity. She's very self-confident and loves shiny and valuable things - even more so than her fellow adventurers. Many a Dragon has lost its life to her greed. Somehow, she has managed to resist the temptations of the Royal Treasury thus far. Silas - the squishy wizard who wears heavy armor as an exercise in futility. Speaking of futility, he hoards all of the alchemical ingredients the party runs into and carries an extensive range of alchemical apparatuses in his person. Sometimes when no one's looking he smokes a mix of herbs in his Pipe. Many a tuft of Greymold has thus gone to waste. He's got 28 points in Intelligence and 19 in Strength before items. He has spent a considerable sum of money in weapons training in order to exploit the Adrenaline Rush and Battle Frenzy disciplines. His favorite spell is Lightning Spray. He doesn't drink and insists that smoking is a healthier habit. Cordelia - the healer and elected cook. She collects hoards the painfully scarce units of Cake and Bags of Sugar found in the underworld. She's got 21 points in Strength and Intelligence before items but rarely engages in melee combat - when she does, she wields a rare Waveblade found in long forgotten crypts. Like Silas, she undertook expensive training in order to access Battle Disciplines. She's not very pious at all but somehow manages to cast Priest Spells at a high level. Lip service has the ears of the gods, it seems. Gazers and Eyebeasts are their most despised enemies.

Slarty's Avernum Remix. He sums up the modifications as follows. I really like it. I think it successfully builds on top of AEftP's strongest points... And it's always nice to have a reason to use Bows, Thrown and Pole Weapons.

I think AEftP may be my new favorite title in the series. I've spent about twenty hours playing it last week alone and I loved pretty much every single minute of it (though I find Slarty's mod indispensable). The last Avernum title to capture my attention like that was A4, years ago. The new engine is spoiling me... And of course, I'm also happy about the return of Phil Foglio's illustrations.

I hope he will. Romance can be really cool if it's done right. However, the way I see it, full fledged romance options are merely the icing in the cake that is characterization. Before we can have them, we need the cake itself, or the romance will feel too artificial and tacky for the setting. Truthfully, characters in the Geneforge series are definitely more engaging than Avernum characters in general and they definitely show clearer signs of growth and development thorough the series (for example Greta, Alwan and Litalia) but I think there's still a long way to go. Characters need to react in more significant ways to the player's decisions in quest outcomes and the dialogue tree; this not only makes them more believable by themselves but it also empowers the player with a feeling of agency. This would require some extensive rewriting and expansion of player-NPC interactions. It would be a lot more practical to add a new creation type. For example, Giant Frogs.