MadScientist

Yesterday I found the beta version of Shipwrecked on Jewel's site and started playing it with a level 1 party since it was labeled as a level 1 scenario but was quickly annihilated by some unicorns. Does anyone know for what level range it was intended? Should I bother at all with this scenario? Is it playable?

MS

Unlike the stat bonus provided by Divinely Touched, the Dex bonus from being a Nephil counts toward the base Tool Use (Dex/2). Both Divinely Touched and Nephil boni are not counted as requirements for the special skills.

First of all, I really appreciate your work!

You might be interested in some tests I did quite some time ago about some skills, especially Quick Strike and Magical Efficiency (Clicky)

MS

Some new results:

To buy n levels of a skill that has a base cost b one has to invest

n*b+(n*n-2*n+n mod 2)/4

skill points, where (n mod 2) is 0 if n is even and 1 if it is odd. For example 6 ranks of melee weapons cost 6*3+(6*6-2*6+6 mod 2)/4=18+24/4=24 skill points, 17 ranks of mage spells cost 5*17+(17*17-2*17+17 mod 2)/4=85+256/4=149 skill points.

The base cost of the special skills are:

Quick Strike 3

Parry 3

Blademaster 5

Anatomy 4

Gymnastics 4

Pathfinder 1

Magery 4

Resistance 5

Magical Efficiency 4

Lethal Blow 4

Riposte 5

Sharpshooter 4

It is also possible to calculate the number of skill points that have to be invested to have access to the special skills:

Quick Strike 60

Parry 54

Blademaster 84

Anatomy 58

Pathfinder 48

Magery 78 / 72 (depending if mage or priest is at 6)

Resistance 116

Magical Efficiency 166 / 160 (as above)

Lethal Blow 214

Riposte 226

Sharpshooter 50

The Mad Scientist

I did some tests to find out the effect of certain skills on your character and I thought, I'd share my findings:

The hit points of a character are given by 7+[(4+L)*E/2], where L is the level of the character, E his endurance, and [x] denotes the largest integer less or equal x, i.e. rounding down. Only base and bought skill levels do affect the hit points.

The carry capacity of a character is given by max{50+40*S, 450}, where S is the strength of the character, including all external boni (items, divinely touched,..). The trait "Strong Back" increases the carry capacity by a factor of 4/3 so the maximum cc of a character with that trait is 600 (which makes strong back one of the best traits, imho)

To deduce the percentage that quick strike grants +2 AP, I went into combat mode and counted the number of turns the character got 6 AP over 100 turns.

Quick Strike level / number of turns with 6 AP

1 / 1

2 / 8

3 / 6

10 / 23

40 / 81

50 / 100 (and the ratio stayed at 100% many many turns more)

All the data nicely supports my claim that each level of quick strike gives a chance of 2% to get +2 AP.

I tried the same for magical efficiency. I casted Divine Host (normal casting cost 30) a number of times and noted the effective casting cost.

effective cost / number of occurences

ME 1

----

30 / 13

29 / 15

28 / 5

27 / 1

26 / 1

ME 2

----

30 / 4

29 / 10

28 / 9

27 / 7

26 / 2

25 / 2

24 / 1

ME 4

----

30 / 1

29 / 1

28 / 9

27 / 10

26 / 5

25 / 6

24 / 3

23 /2

ME 10

-----

30 / 0

29 / 0

28 / 0

27 / 2

26 / 4

25 / 2

24 / 3

23 / 5

22 / 7

21 / 6

20 / 8

19 / 1

18 / 1

17 / 1

While there is a definite trend in the data, I was unable to extract the formula due to the bad statistic (some kind of binomial distribution looks promising).

If you think that it would be interesting to know the formula (unless it is already known in which case I apologize for having bothered you with lots of numbers), it would be very nice if you could do some tests yourself and post the results to improve the statistic.

The Mad Scientist

Has anyone tried to load up one character with items that grant "-xx% chance to be hit"? Is it possible to bring the chance to hit for the enemies down to 5% consistently? I imagine a tank with high defense, gymnastics, and resistance. Would this work in high-level scenarios?

The Mad Scientist

What about giving the party a "Quest Tome", an item they can activate at any time and that tells them about the current quest states in some detail?

The Mad Scientist