ex post slarto

Alternate possibility: the Sholai are, in fact, relatively benevolent, as they present themselves. You meet Trajkov after he'd used piles of canisters, and at that point he was not clearly not representative of the Sholai culture in general. (And even at that point, he doesn't seem particularly terrible for this game world. He's shown be to quite loyal and open-minded in the ending, despite being power-hungry.) The non-canister Sholai you meet in OG are rather different, both in G1 and then late in the series when they show up again in G5.

Upgrade costs are a fixed proportion of base creation cost, varying only by rounding, so expensive upgrades aren't really specific to improved magic creations. Cryoas and Vlish were both pretty bad in Mutagen - I'm guessing you mean original G2? Vlish were nerfed in OG4, and fire shaping in general was less exciting in OG3-5.

Obligatory comment that this is not a Taker ending. You can get this ending being aligned with any of the sects, or none of them.

honestly "Buuuuuuurn theeeeeem!!!" is more tone and personality than any of Litalia's existing lines in OG3 have

It doesn't, though. Ellhrah canonically makes it to Drypeak. And Rydell appears to have as well, given that he has a grave marker in Ellhrah's tomb. Gnorrel, meanwhile, was "killed when you Shapers came," and these shapers who killed her "take Kazg. Gnorrel. Food. Everything" -- which sounds more like a dedicated cleansing team and less like the PC.

I hope they are nothing like the Shaper trio, which just destroys all continuity and sense of immersion.

Not every PC needs to have an excellent version of every skill you could want. If not having access to magic means being worse at crowd control, great! Not having access to a skill set should actually be meaningful. Otherwise you erode the differences between classes, which I know isn't your goal.

My money still says the Sholai will be a tiny third faction in G3C, like the Trakovites were in G4.

For shapers and agents with access to stuff like Airshock - most of the time, absolutely! For guardians who are avoiding investment in magic, and aren't using magic shaping, what exactly is their alternative? (And given the weapon skill required to use it, this is mainly gonna be a guardian thing anyway.) And for any PC, the fact that it's a radius ability and therefore won't hit friendly targets does give it potential utility in crowded locations.

Just to be really clear, because somehow it's still not: Zora is in your party in zones BEYOND the Secret Tunnel and it's not triggering the hardcoded goodbye pop-up anymore? Even if you leave and re-enter a zone beyond the Secret Tunnel? Yes or no? None of the script files you mentioned control that happening. The first 4 aren't even loaded in subsequent zones, and the text4 file only contains text -- no actual game logic. Her leaving is hardcoded. (Also, are you on Windows or Mac? Asking since we did find another edge case difference between platforms.)

I get how that can be annoying. But you're still canceling at least one of their attacks, which buys your team an extra round to kill other things, reposition, and/or use other support abilities. Does the random chance (not that high) that random movement might take the enemy to a more advantageous position really outweigh that? Or to put it another way: when an enemy creation uses an AoE terror ability on your party and your creations get terrified, isn't that kind of a big deal? I mean, that's potentially reload territory.

Have you actually gone into post-Tunnel zones with her in the party? The Secret Tunnel itself does not count. If not, you haven't encountered the hardcoded removal yet.

For the fourth time in this thread: yes, it is hardcoded, separately from the scripted stuff in the Secret Tunnel.

I'm still confused by the "enemy minions charging into the Guardian or his squad" issue. As Mechalibur noted above, most enemies don't hugely care where they are because they'll just used a ranged attack regardless. And enemies that use melee attacks are guaranteed to charge into your squad if they aren't afflicted with a mental effect. And, no enemy is attacking you at all while it's terrified. So worst case scenario, you have 1 turn where the enemy charges you instead of attacking. I don't understand how this hurts your survivability.

Zora and the Abandoned Thahd are hardcoded to leave the party if you bring them into any zone past the Secret Tunnel. This isn't something that happens in the scripts, so there's no way to disable it.

I think we agree on most points, but I emphatically disagree on a lot of details, and those are driving the evaluation of "advantage" on one side of the other. It does matter, because if there were more or fewer leftover points, those would not be used equally efficiently by both classes, since they would not be going into skills that cost the same for each class. Yes, and Mass Restore is not an inconsequential ability if you're running a full team of creations. And if you go for 5, things tilt heavily away from the Agent. For the PC's personal damage, yes. The PC's personal damage is not the best use of skill points in a creation-team build. Increasing the PC's average actions per turn by roughly +0.02 (after math with haste, gloves, other sources) is not better than working towards an extra level on all creations, with all the things that come with that. This is true, but those points are almost all endgame points. This might be optimal for level 23 with all quests completed, but for the first 75% of the game when your level is lower and you haven't gotten to any of those quests, some extra points in EM are a good deal. It's a trade-off, but so is everything.

A pretty image which needs to be debunked. The only way you got this was by requiring a Spellcraft of 8, which isn't a threshold for anything and is not a sensible investment if you're focused on the creations. There are also multiple sources of Spellcraft from quests (Sharon), charms (+3!), and equipment (gloves of spell mastery, obvious pick). You've also left the Agent with zero points in Healing Craft, which is a pretty massive omission if you're trying to support creations. You didn't just sacrifice Mass Restore, you even sacrificed Group Heal. How the heck is that worth a point or two of Spellcraft? You've also left Leadership at 5 for some reason, which is an odd choice. 6 would be the typical endgame level (giving you 10 with both Leadership items), or maybe 4 if you're sacrificing the Leadership 10 goodies. 5 doesn't make much sense. EDIT: Also, why the heck does the Shaper have a point in Melee Weapons? What requires melee skill of 2 (there's a canister) that a Shaper really cares about to the tune of 4 skill points? In other words: this is very clearly not a natural or strategic setup, it's one you've manufactured to try and support this position. This is true, BUT (1) that only covers ~2 levels, since you run out of favorable creation stat augments quickly, and (2) that would require pumping Essence Mastery a lot more than you have. (And that does still cost the Agent more -- 1 extra skill point per 2 points in Essence Mastery, due to starting 1 lower, even after you've trained the Agent once to make up for it.)

But that's just not a thing. Maybe you want the classes to be more distinct than they are -- which is understandable. I wouldn't mind that either. But that's not what Geneforge was ever about. Avadon is the only Spiderweb series that's ever embraced having different abilities for different characters. Exile/Avernum and Nethergate didn't even have classes at all, and they are still great games. It might be helpful to think of shaper/guardian/agent less as "classes" and more as "perks" or "paths" or "emphases." And they do function for those. Debuffs are the same. Both buffs and debuffs only give you duration increases for added skill. Those are percentile increases, so they aren't typically that huge.

Here's a cheat to help you. Type shift-D and in the box that appears enter "sdf 38 15 2" and hit return. You can then go to Shandoka and tell the Emissary you captured the Bound One's essence.

Is viable not the standard most players use for investing in magic, in the same way as for shaping? I don't understand what's supposed to make that different. But if you evaluate the game balance based on a standard of "pass/fail" for X, but "full letter grades" for Y? Of course that's going to favor the class that is better with Y. That's not a game balance issue with the game, that's an experimental design issue with your evaluation procedure. This magic vs shaping balance has existed for 3 years, btw -- it was identical in Mutagen.

Hold those horses. That's not really true. There are some ways in which the Agent is numerically superior, and other ways in which she is not; but there are some frankly silly comparisons being made here. Shaping skills are the main thing a creation-centric build wants to pump. An Agent who goes seriously for a shaping build will spend more extra points in shaping skills than they save in spells. But even in the text above, look at the false equivalency: "viable shaping skills" versus "much better spell scaling." This is pretty silly, considering that extra levels on creations have a more than linear impact on their effectiveness, whereas support spells have zero meaningful scaling to begin with. Yes, you could scale damage spells more effectively, but if you're fielding an entire team of creations, any extra points going towards your personal DPS are going to be a weaker contribution than boosting creation DPS. If you want to run a creation-centric team, Shapers are the best class. Full stop. You could do it with an Agent and it wouldn't be crazy, but the Agent won't be better. Also, the game has been out over a month, and it had many months of beta testing. It's been analyzed upwards and downwards. Everything isn't perfectly balanced, of course not. But one forum post is not a reason to jump to extreme conclusions like this.

There are a decent number of quests (and a lot of conversations) that can be resolved in more than one way. If you resolve them one way... you generally can't resolve them the other way. You can always save and reload to see multiple resolutions, but generally you just have to pick one to move forward with, regardless of whether Leadership (or anything else) is a requirement.

The Purifying Blade is really strong, and it is available extremely early. However, its strength lies entirely in its bonus quantity of damage dice being high (it reaches up to +27). You also get a base of 2 dice plus 1 die per XP level. The attack uses d5s. Reaper Batons get a base of +14 damage dice. Same base dice. And the attack uses d6s. So if we compare possible damage (before other bonuses): Very early - level 7, 1 canister: Blade = 18 x 3 + 2 = 56 Very early - level 7, 1 canister: Baton = 23 x 3.5 + 8= 88 Rushing canisters - level 11, 10 canisters: Blade = 40 x 3 + 2 = 122 Rushing canisters - level 11, 10 canisters: Baton = 27 x 3.5 + 8 = 102 Higher level - level 20, 10 canisters: Blade = 49 x 3 + 2 = 149 Higher level - level 20, 10 canisters: Baton = 36 x 3.5 + 8 = 134 The Purifying Blade does more damage for most of the game, but by endgame this probably isn't enough to justify a lost early attack due to having to close to melee. If Reapers were plentiful, melee might look bad. This does, however, point to Randomizer's observation about the missile issue being not having enough ammo. Every other missile weapon uses d4s (or worse), at which point you're doing roughly 2/3 the damage of the Purifying Blade. However -- there are certainly enough reaper batons and thorns to use as much as needed on all the bosses and minibosses. You'll often be happier with the AoE from spray anyway. So as long as the Vampiric Lance is enough for generic mobs, there's no real missile issue... possibly an annoyance, but against generic mobs with shorter fights, losing an attack due to needing to close to melee is also kinda worse.

Bug found (mod bug, not base game bug) - Purifying Blade was still gaining 2 levels at a time (like in the base game) instead of 1. Fixed in Overrun v1.02 (out shortly after base game v1.02 is out).