Men are from Slars

That makes sense.

It suddenly occurs to me that if only you threw in a lot of words like "agathism" and "postmodernism" into Geneforge alongside all of that philosophizing about the nature of existence, the games would read a lot like a Terror's Martyr scenario.

*stifled laughter*

Edit: Vlish, this is Geneforge, there is no time-based expiration on the HP buffs. Also, I think that at least one of them gives a set HP bonus (though I may be thinking of A4 here myself) which would, of course, seem like a much bigger bonus to an agent.

I thought I remembered the HP buffs (possibly just one of them) having an effect proportional to the amount of HP you have. Thus, guardians would benefit from it significantly more than agents. However, it may have been proportional to level or endurance but not actual HP value, in which case there is no real guardian bonus.

 

I may be misremembering, though.

I still want to see an Ornkithopter.

This will never happen.

Why do I say that? Jeff has always insisted on making every spell or ability potentially accessible to every character. When he implemented classes in G1 -- a first for him -- he still made sure that every class could use every skill.

(Exception: there were a handful of spells that the Romans couldn't use in Nethergate. However, playing as Romans or as Celts were basically two entirely different scenarios, so I'm not sure I would count this.)

Yes, you're wrong. Your guardian strategy sounds like it will fail miserably unless you are playing on a low difficulty and fighting enemies weaker than you are.

That was me.

 

The thread is Agent vs. Guardian .

I think this problem crops up with magic-heavy strategies in all of Jeff's games, though. Jeff relies heavily on spell point availability to balance the power of magic. Admittedly, the use of essence in addition to spell points for spells in Geneforge is a very nice way to do this. Nonetheless, this means that a mage in any game with a pile of energy potions or essence pods is rarely going to be challenged. This is why swarms at least have a *chance* of stopping an agent: if they're too weak, they may simply have too little spell energy to fire their favorite spell off enough times. Individual enemies can just be picked off one by one, with plenty of time to restore energy.

 

I guess this is kind of symptomatic of modern RPGs, where magic is dispensed Monty Haul style. RPGs where you actually have to conserve your MP, where you get beaten up little by little and have to endure, are a thing of the past. I just expect more from Spidweb.

Unless, of course, Dominate is weakened.

Hostile Effect Resistance doesn't protect against slowing.

They do make a difference. However, if you put a lot of points into strength and the appropriate fighting skills, and use good weapons, it is pretty easy to get your base chance to hit so far above 99% (the max) that you will never notice a difference from those penalties.

That's excellent. Not only does that fit well with any story, and make the game more enjoyable, it also forces hardcore players to deviate from the tried and true formulas (agent pumping battle magic using firebolt, etc) and be more creative, which they will enjoy. I'm very glad to hear this.

Hip hip hooray!

car 54, where are you.

"Geneforge Gaiden"

Out of curiosity, what game did s/he think was doing the spying? And was it anything particular about the game ("Adze-Haakai is really a spycam!")?

Yes, Jeff was pretty clear about that. Also, if armor effect really was random as you suggest, then that means we would expect to see HUGE damage variances when a character wearing lots of armor is hit, much huger than the variances when an unarmored character is hit. And that's not the case at all.

 

Also, about Hardiness: Hardiness does not give 1% armor per point. It gives 2% armor per point, BUT this bonus is not displayed, AND it is subject to the 10-cap many skills have, so 10-11 hardiness gives 20% armor, 12-13 gives 22%, 20-22 gives 30%, 23-25 gives 32%, and so on. That means that your test at 20 Hardiness is really providing 30% damage reduction. So reducing the range max from 11 to 8 makes perfect sense. Reducing the range min from 5 to 1 makes less sense, but because the numbers are so tiny, I really think it's a min value or rounding issue. To clarify this issue, tests with bigger damage values are needed.

 

Also note that Luck displays a 1% armor bonus per point, but Luck does not actually provide any armor at all.

 

Protection reduces all damage by 25%. Steel Skin does as well. They are cumulative. Prismatic Shield reduces elemental damage by 0-50% determined randomly for each attack.

You're right. Err, not sure how I missed that part. Sorry!

 

So, you're right, this is pretty weird. Now I am thinking these results may be affected by some kind of minimum value requirement imposed at some point in the calculation, or by a weird way of dealing with remainders. The data would probably be easier to interpret if it dealt with a much stronger attack (say, ranging up to 50 damage). Obviously, such data is also more of a hassle to collect.

You're making a false assumption here. You cannot directly see the amount of decrease in damage hardiness causes. Why? Damage is rolled randomly EACH TIME an attack hits. So, unless you have more information than you are giving (for example, if the attack had a damage range of 5-10 against 0 hardiness and 1-2 against 20 hardiness, over many trials of each), you can't draw that conclusion.

I've never seen anything to discount the conclusion the damage is random, but armor % reduction is consistent. If you have new data I'd love to see it, though.

There IS a level cap, but it's NOT 55. It's level 60.

 

It is, however, highly unlikely (and possibly impossible) to get your level anywhere near this high without cheating. Singletons have been around level 45 at the end of the game, IIRC.

No. Well, yes; Fast on Feet does give you a 10% bonus to dodge (which does not go up with your level).

 

Fast on Feet is useful if you are really desperate to get to 20 AP. You can get +3 from items, +2 from Quick Strike, to get to 13. With the +1 Fast on Feet gives, you will sometimes have 14 AP, and when hasted that gives you 21.

 

However, there's really no situation when all the effort (particularly the massive number of skill points going into Quick Strike) would be at all worthwhile.

 

If you are simply going for the best advantages, you're better off with others.

Armor (from Hardiness or equipped armor) DOES decrease by a % of the damage. It's just that this % is often small, and pretty much all forms of damage in A4 have a very wide variance for how much damage they can cause before armor reduction is applied.

That's awesome. Wow, that almost makes the game more playable right there.

That's awesome. Wow, that almost makes the game more playable right there.

Magical Efficiency is AWFUL. I did tests on it which are somewhere in this forum, too. Even with a maximum skill level of 30 magical efficiency, the mana saved is relatively low and inconsistently applied.

 

HOWEVER, since priest spell skill is responsible for damage from Divine Retribution AND dodge % from the enduring spells, I'd argue that a ridiculously high one is rather more useful than in mage spell skill.

Magical Efficiency is AWFUL. I did tests on it which are somewhere in this forum, too. Even with a maximum skill level of 30 magical efficiency, the mana saved is relatively low and inconsistently applied.

 

HOWEVER, since priest spell skill is responsible for damage from Divine Retribution AND dodge % from the enduring spells, I'd argue that a ridiculously high one is rather more useful than in mage spell skill.