Men are from Slars

Nearly all RPGs treat the PCs differently from other characters when it comes to combat mechanics. This may not be ideal, but it's certainly standard! Complaining about "two different magic systems" is misleading because the magic systems are identical. One rule about summons is different, not anything about magic.

Encyclopedia Terrestia. Aran tells me this is quite doable. The bandwidth isn't an issue and the installation is simple. I think it could be neat, so the question becomes, are there several people interested in contributing to it? My own involvement would probably be organizing, categorizing, editing, and making lists and templates. Are there others who are interested in actually writing articles? If so, this could be a good project.

Excalibur, a wiki article is not the same as a wiki. Wiki is also not short for Wikipedia, in case that was the confusion. The reason an E/A wiki makes sense is that there are numerous world elements (be they people, places, races, laws of nature, or what have you) that do very different things in different games in the series. In the Geneforge series, world elements tend to either be one-shot appearances, or be fairly static. There are a relatively small number of recurring characters, compared to literally hundreds of recurring characters in the Avernums. There are no recurring locations. Individual creations, apparati, and magical effects do not change much over the series. Instead of learning something new about clawbugs in each game, each game tends to say the same things about clawbugs. The result is that, unlike Avernum, there is not a lot of information to cross-reference. For most subjects you can find all the information there is by checking just one part of a game. That said, I wonder how much work it would take Aran to set one up. EDIT: I changed my mind. This sounds neat, even if less useful than EE. Aran, how much work would it take to set one up?

EE draws from Exile as much as Avernum. And, no. EE exists mainly because of Blades scenarios, and secondly because of creative forum activity years ago. Geneforge has neither of these things. While a site covering some of the major players, locations, ideas, etc. in Geneforge might be cool, the world isn't even remotely as expansive as Ermarian is.

You're missing a quote.

Part of the fun of E/A 2, as well, is seeing how people and places have changed in the six years since E/A 1.

I believe the Manna spells didn't appear until Exile II, and even then you don't start out with them. That said, the beginning of E2 has more direction and more supplies than E1.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Haste isn't going anywhere. This is a simple fact. A lot of players like it, and that's the kind of removal that would get Jeff way more hate mail than a fourth appearance of Rentar-Ihrno would. I'm serious about that. Thuryl was spot on about the impact of tactical options. (1) Every usable tactic increases the gulf between the tactically astute player and the beginner. The degree of increase depends on the utility of the tactic, and its difficulty to figure out and/or execute. Haste is very strong, but also easy to figure out. A more dangerous gulf-creator would be the hit-and-run tactic, or the closed-door tactic, employed in Geneforge 1-3. Two other things usable tactics can increase, depending on how they are balanced, are strategy-based fun and grinding/boring. (2) Having a variety of interesting tactical options, none of which are overpowered, increases strategy-based fun. It doesn't remove any challenge from the game, but it makes it more interesting due to the variety of approaches possible. Obviously, the more tactical options you have available, the harder it is to make sure none are overpowered. (3) Having one or two tactical options that are much stronger than all the others increases the grinding/boring factor. Using those options is a no-brainer and there are few situations where you don't want to. This means that the choice to use them is not interesting and any time spent performing those actions may feel boring, especially if the actions take more than a few keystrokes or clicks to complete. Haste is bad because of effect #3. The idea of haste itself is cool, but it's just so strong that it blows everything else out of the water. That said, part of the reason Haste is strong is that other options simply don't exist. The tactical palette in Avernum is slender: you can attack (given the similarities in formulae, melee, missile and magic attacks are just different flavors of one tactic), you can heal, you can increase damage capacity, you can increase defense, and you can summon random creatures. You can use disabling attacks (stun/slow/daze). I think that's everything. Compare this situation to Exile 2-3. Haste was in fact MORE powerful in Exile than in Avernum, because at high levels it allowed three attacks or spells per turn even without speed items equipped. But it was less unbalanced. Why? Because other tactics were stronger, and there were more of them. Melee attacks were processed very differently from magic attacks, and were potentially devastatingly strong. Magic had a plethora of options: besides the ones Avernum has listed above, you could create damaging fields, create antimagic fields, mindduel, mass poison without causing spell damage, use symbiosis, mass charm, mass disease, or you could summon the creature of your choice, utilizing any number of other tactics. Exile excelled at effect #2. There were so many ways to do things. And so Haste was strong, but not always the most important tactic. Often it was less critical than an antimagic field or the right Simulacrum. In the early game, it was usually less powerful than a good Fireball, and in the late game the availability of Major Blessing greatly mitigated effect #3. The engine change in Avernum 4 cleansed the series of half its interesting tactical options. Goodbye to Simulacrums, forcecages, and walls. Goodbye to melee and magic damage being calculated in different ways. Meanwhile the lack of group haste pumped up the boring factor. Haste is a problem, but it's also a symptom.

I vote for an overhaul of the War Trall's stats, because based on past experience, that's the only thing that's likely to happen. We know the creation models take a long time to make, and the model itself is fine -- not awe-some or awe-full, but fine -- so let's keep using it. In order to differentiate it from the other two shaping categories, it really needs to be melee oriented. None of this missile throwing business! Take away its ranged attack, but make its melee attack gigantesque. Don't give it quick action or extra AP or funky special abilities. Just give it an attack so strong that it does more damage than a Gazer or Drakon of comparable level. It ought to, given the disadvantages melee (and the entire battle creation set) have even against equally powered missile attacks.

I think there are two useful perspectives on Haste. One is the gameplay perspective we are already looking at. Another is game balance. The instruction manual says Haste is "extremely useful." This has got to be the understatement of the year. If Haste did nothing but double the damage output of your warriors, it'd still be a great spell. But it also hands you tremendous flexibility by being given two actions per turn indefinitely. You can mix and match spells. You can heal everyone without having to put your offense on hold. Group heals, group cures, and even area of effect spells become much less important than they would otherwise be, since you can spread out whatever you do. The ability to do 2 things in 1 round makes it hard for your opponent to get you in a tough spot by putting you in "check" type situations where you have to heal, kill the summoned monster, etc., a tactic frequently used by bosses in other games. The game balance question I ask for spells is: how high could this spell's SP cost go, without my becoming unwilling to use it? For most spells in A5 this number is close to their actual casting cost. War Blessing, Protection, and some of the heal spells have a higher number, because they're so useful. But Haste? Haste has no high number. It could cost all my wizard's spell points to haste a single character, and while I wouldn't cast it frequently, you can bet I'd still cast it once in most tough fights. More realistically, Haste could cost 15 and I'd still use it frequently. It could cost 50 and I'd still use it repeatedly in boss fights. And this is ignoring the fact that the world is full of haste potions... As SoT comments, the haste effect is so powerful that it drastically alters the balance of the game. It is so powerful that we cast Haste even when it's a grind. Imagine. Imagine a world without haste...

Interesting. I did the following test: four identical characters (Human Soldier defaults, no traits) fought the first four skeletons in the game. Each character received between 144 and 156 experience, inclusive, in every trial. For the first set of trials PC #1 did all the fighting (and defending) and the others stood back. PC #1 got an average of 151 experience (range: 148-156) and the others got an average of 147.6 (range: 144-154). For the second set of trials each PC stood by a crate and did all the fighting (and defending) for one skeleton. For these trials the average experience earned per PC was 149 (range: 144-152). This does seem to suggest that, overall, the fighter (if not the killer) gets a very tiny bonus. In individual cases he may get less XP: this was actually true with comparison to one other PC in 50% of the first set of trials. However, taking all three other PCs into account, the killer got more than a passive PC 66% of the time, the same amount 17% of the time and less 17% of the time. Conclusion: there is some kind of bonus, but it is very tiny, possibly tinier than the random factors, and certainly tinier than the adjustment made for your experience level. Therefore, in the long run, it is practically irrelevant.

Thinking about it again, the real issue is Haste. War Blessing, Protection, and Prismatic Shield take one keypress each under the current system. You can press three keys next to each other for them all using one hand. Hasting the party takes a minimum of eight keypresses that are not next to each other. Steel Skin et al. also take more keypresses, but you don't repeat them for every fight, and for more of the game you won't use them: either because you don't have them, or don't want or need to pay their high SP costs. Also, Haste is by far the strongest of the buffs, so it's the one you're least likely to pass on. Group Haste seems like a very strong ability, and if you couldn't buff BEFORE combat started, it would be extremely strong. But you can; and since it rarely matters if your precombat buffing takes you four turns or seven, Group Haste wouldn't actually be any kind of power boost at all.

I've actually been thinking about the buffing issue a lot lately, partially because I was playing Eschalon. In Eschalon buffs are grotesquely overpowered, and make spellcasters much better at melee than melee-oriented characters. A lot worse even than Exile's buffs. The problem in both games, however, is not the strength of the buffs. The problem is their timing. The majority of turn-based CRPGs use different screens for walkabout and combat mode. When you do that it's easy to have buffs last for one fight. Then even really strong buffs are not a no-brainer, because you have to use up a turn in the fight to cast them. War Blessing, Haste and so on would still be really useful, but they would be more on par with battle disciplines -- something to use a lot -- rather than something to use always, something to cast over and over again, something to grind. Obviously that is not an option for Avernum, and it shouldn't be, as Avernum's seamlessness is implemented pretty darn well. But the need to constantly cast and recast buffs is clearly one of the more annoying, repetitive parts of the game. What to do? One option would be to make most buffs last longer (like Enduring Shield et al.) and also more expensive. This mitigates the repetitive aspect without affecting game balance in any real way.

Hmm. Time for an empirical test, or preferably two (one for A4 and for A5). I don't have any time at the moment, maybe later this week...

Turgid, fleshy.

3) Fatigue removal items don't sum, they are each calculated individually. So wearing two 50% items means you have two 50% chances to remove 1 extra fatigue, for a possible removal of 0, 1, or 2 extra fatigue.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Characters who strike the final blow on a monster get a bonus to experience Are you absolutely sure about this? I know this was the case in Exile, and for all I know in Avernum 1-3, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in A4 or A5. There does appear to be significant random variation in the experience awarded to each party member, but as far as I can tell it is completely random and balances well over time.

Really? In the item list, I saw some +1 AP armor, but besides that just the one bulwark. That's +2 from items. Throw in +2 from Quick Strike, +2 from haste, +2 from battle fury... that's +8. Which isn't enough to get a third attack, unless my math is way off...

I played most of G3 like that, actually, with the Broken Vlish strategy. I intially avoided raising intelligence in order to fill out all seven Vlish as soon as I could. By the time I got seven, manual control simply wasn't necessary. With a mass energize, nothing survived past turn one (except in scripted encounters, and those got slowed so badly they never moved anyway).

In a game that revolves around making creations that you command to kill things, you can hardly do that and claim to be a pacifist. In Exile 2 at least you didn't control summoned monsters, although that would be pretty flimsy justification itself. But also in Exile 2, you were a pacifist travelling with (presumably) non-pacifists, so it was more like Conscientious Objector status. In Geneforge your PC has total control over whether or not you kill anything, so you can't hide behind pacifism and still fight.

Quote: Originally written by The Ratt: But, Slarty, Anarizzyth (sorry about spelling) brings up a point. If you can clear the zone by killing all the shapers then you could go out the other way, and go to the next zone without ever going through the Cairn Gates. But I doubt this since often to clear a zone you need to see the way to another zone. Not just often, but almost always. There are very few exceptions. So let's clarify a few things. 1. You CANNOT progress in the game without passing through the Cairn Gates. 2. Once you pass through the Gates, you can no longer recruit Greenfang. 3. If Greenfang is with you when you pass through the Gates, he leaves.

Heh, I didn't realize there was such a usable web terminal for it -- though in retrospect it seems silly there wouldn't be. Well then, never mind.

You can't take Greenfang past the gates without cheats. Period. I tested this a year ago and don't remember the exact mechanisms, but I'm pretty sure an unrecruited Greenfang disappears either at the time you pass the gates, or shortly before that. And Greenfang will not go through the gates with you.

This is just to fix the active topics list.

I would be very surprised. I just registered a new screen name here: https://reg.my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/registration/initRegistration.psp? lang=en&locale=us&createSn=1&sitedomain=www.aim.com&siteState=http%3A%2F%2F www.aim.com%2Fget_aim%2Fcon gratsd2.adp&seamless=n&mcAuth=%2FBcAG0d2di0AAK85Abrc9Ud2dmkIdoml3ZZvi4wAAA%3D%3D I logged out just as if I didn't have a screen name. It took about 30 seconds, you just fill out one form. Look, I'm the last person who will say AIM is better than IRC. It's not. But AIM you install, run, and it works. IRC takes more setting up. Also, AIM is very common these days, but IRC is not. And when you just want to get a high attendance, that's a problem.