Mea Tulpa

Fair enough, Thuryl... however, I would further argue that removing attrition significantly narrows the interesting game space available. In my and TM's humble opinion.

IMATMHO, easy healing devalues HP and damage and removes thinking from the game. Limited healing is in fact the first pillar of the ideal CRPG that I will never actually make.

I just did a quick test -- nothing conclusive, but there was no meaningful difference in damage taken, either physical blows or scripted AoE fire damage -- between 2 characters with 0 Parry and 2 characters with 40 Parry.

In A5 I'm pretty sure Parry didn't reduce damage at all, ever. I'm also pretty sure that was true of G5, so I would assume the same is true of A6.

Either it's proportional to the original attack damage, or to some other factor -- it definitely does not depend on your own attack strength. I riposted for around 60 to Nichol when my attacks towards him were doing 5-10. Note that Nichol's armor (or was that mine? Well, somebody's) -did- get to reduce damage from the riposte attack. Ugh - flashback to riposting Chitrachs in A4. Run away!

When a monster attacks you, you have three chances to avoid getting hit entirely. 1) EVASION. You base chance to dodge is 50%. It is adjusted as follows: -5% per level of the monster's attack -5% per point of Strength the monster has +5% / pt of Dex +5% / pt of Gymnastics +3% / pt of Defense +2% / pt of Luck However, note that the dreaded 10-cap is back and it applies to all of the defensive skills listed above. That is, up to 10 points in the skill, each point provides a single bonus. Up to 20 points, you need two points to provide a single bonus; above 20, you need three. (Not sure if it goes to needing four, above 30 points.) 2) RIPOSTE. If and only if you do not evade the attack, Riposte is checked. You have a 3% chance to riposte per point of Riposte skill, up to maximum of 50% -- note that the 10-cap applies to Riposte so this is achieved at 26 Riposte. If you Riposte, the full strength of the enemies attack automatically hits the enemy, instead. 3) PARRY. If and only if you do not evade or riposte the attack, Parry is checked. You have a 3% chance to parry per point of Parry skill, up to a maximum of 50% -- no 10-cap applies, so this is reached at 17 Parry. If you Parry, nobody takes any damage, just like a miss. Note: In previous games Parry applied to missile attacks at 2% per point and non-AoE spells at 1% per point; not sure if that is still true. I assume (but don't know) that Riposte does not apply to missiles or spells at all.

How is the job hunt going? Once again you have my total and complete empathy.

Cmd-click.

*facepalm*

Originally Posted By: Thuryl why would i make another account to do things that i already do with my own account To repeat Student of Trinity's pun to end all puns, ooh -- ménage à moi.

I thought the bonus AP items only had a 50-50 chance of giving the bonus AP, though. Or did _that_ change _not_ carry over from G5? I assume it did. And Haste doesn't increase your AP, right? Quick Strike is guaranteed if you get to 20 (or possibly 21) -- QS gives you two independent chances to get a bonus AP point each equal to about 5% per point of QS. So at 10 QS, you have a 25% chance to get 0, a 50% chance to get +1, and a 25% chance to get +2.

It disappeared at the same time a number of other custom titles did, due to some UBB.threads hiccups that still haven't been worked out. Cthulic indigestion.

Cue Thuryl talking about lack of data and statistical significance. It's very easy to think you see a correlation because drops are random and will vary from one game to the next. By all means email Jeff and ask -- this would probably be easy for him to answer. But I am very skeptical that he would suddenly make this change. Alternately, this isn't THAT hard to test; make a new party and use the editor to max out all their Luck stats, as well as a few other stats to simplify the game, zip through a few areas on Easy and see if you get WAY more drops than normal, which is what you'd expect with 160 Luck, right?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SquishyWizard Maybe there's a literary precursor -- I haven't read Zelazny -- but I suspect it originates from D&D's attempt to balance classes.

Healing is in Conjuration in D&D these days? Weird. In AD&D 2nd edition, they assigned priest spells to wizard schools at one point, and all the healing was clearly in Necromancy.

No no no no no no no. Please don't start that rumour again. Unless you have actual data suggesting that Luck influences item drops, it doesn't. It didn't in A4 despite my repeated assertions to the contrary. It didn't in G4, in A5, or in G5. So I very strongly doubt that it suddenly does in A6.

By a percentage. I meant to clarify that. The percentages above hold true with other baseline levels of damage as well.

Viewability. The Misc forum is a subforum. And it isn't a busy one. As such a lot of people don't see it regularly. The fact that it's a subforum is irrelevant if you use the "Active Topics" feature to read posts. But if you just go to individual forums, you are very likely to not see new threads in Misc. So it made sense for Northern Waters with its many threads and its stable group of players, but it makes less sense for an RP that will have one or two threads and appreciates fresh interest.

That extra Blademaster is also important if you want to use battle proficiencies more often. Which you definitely do. Battle Fury is incredibly important for a singleton, I have to imagine.

Aha! Suddenly everything makes more sense. Dogs have strength, bugs agility, cats intelligence, lizards will, birds charisma, and humans talent. Making an inference based on the fact that Dantius and I share a class, then, each of the 9 possible alignments must have 3 classes, each of which is shared by 2 races/attributes. We can further infer based on the lack of overlap that these classes are normally shared among str/agi (dogs/bugs), int/will (cats/lizards), and cha/tal (birds/humans). Interesting.

Also, what happened to 27 classes and 6 races as you originally posted? There are 10 races just among the characters generated, and you just said 36 classes. 27 makes a bit more sense given that there are 54 possible combinations of choices...

Each point of Melee or Poles, and each 2 points of Bows or Throws, whatever the source, gives you 1 point of Battle Discipline skill. Getting to 20 earns you the last battle discipline, Battle Frenzy. It was already one of the strongest game elements in A5, and it is even better in A6 due to the nerfing of Haste and of bonus AP items. Therefore, it makes sense to seek it out ASAP and pay close attention to how you can get it without wasting too many skill points. First let's look at how you can get battle discipline points without spending skill points: ALL PCS: (+9) +3 Melee Training +3 Pole Training +1 Melee Blessing +1 Pole Blessing +1 Bows/Throws Blessing RACES: (+3 to +6) +3 by level 8 +4 by level 16 +5 by level 24 +6 by level 32 That's an easy +12 to +15 free for all PCs. PCs who want to unlock Blademaster will cover another +6 on their own, so they are essentially there -- if you invest in Melee or Poles early, an item or two will get them to 20 as soon as you are able to afford enough trainings and blessings. POINTS AVAILABLE FROM ITEMS: Weapons: +5 (Discipline Blade, +2 to Melee, +3 to Poles -- weak, best on a magic-user) Cloaks: +2 (Archer's Cloak, +2 to Bows/Throws) +2 (Warrior's Cloak, +1 to Melee and Poles -- one is found) +2 (Warrior's Cloak, +1 to Melee and Poles -- craftable late, uses Mandrake) +2 (Warrior's Cloak, +1 to Melee and Poles -- craftable late, uses Mandrake) Rings: +2 (Pearlescent Band, +2 to Poles) +2 (Eagle Eye Band, +2 to Bows/Throws -- late) Gloves: +1.5 (Stained Swamp Gloves, +3 to Throws) Necklaces: +1 (Hero's Necklace, +1 to Melee) +1 (Hero's Necklace, +1 to Melee -- late) Bows: +1.5 (Eliavri's Bow, +3 to Bows -- late) Helmets: +0.5 (Cap of Farsight, +1 to Bows) You can get a few good boosts from items early. In particular, the Discipline Blade can quickly get a dual-wielder there, and can later be passed to a spellcaster. Other spellcasters can get there eventually with an item or two and maybe a few skill points. The next consideration is recovering from fatigue. If you can remove 3 points of fatigue per turn you can be in permanent Battle Frenzy, which is highly desirable. 1 recovers automatically; you have an additional chance to recover 1 equal to 5% per point of Blademaster; and every item you equip that has Fatigue Reduction gives you a separate, one-shot chance to remove an extra point. BLADEMASTER AVAILABLE FROM ITEMS: Weapons: +1 (Singing Rapier -- weak) +1 (Seeking Rapier -- weak, craftable, uses Mandrake) Armor: +1 (Emerald Chestguard -- late) Necklaces: +1 (Hero's Necklace) +1 (Hero's Necklace -- late) Helmets: +1 (Thug's Cap -- late) +1 (Helm of Klin) +1 (Helm of Klin) As you can see, there isn't much Blademaster available, and it isn't trainable either. FATIGUE REDUCTION AVAILABLE FROM ITEMS: Weapons: 30% (Discipline Blade -- weak, best on a magic-user) 10% (Nephil Warblade -- also weak and best on a magic-user) 10% (Nephil Warblade -- also weak and best on a magic-user) Shields: 10% (War Chief's Bulwark -- late) Gloves: 10% (Duelist's Gloves) Greaves: 20% (Warrior's Greaves) Bows: 10% (Farsight Longbow) Helmets: 25% (Warmaster Helm -- late) There are a handful of items with fatigue reduction, most of which appear in the middle of the game. However, they all have pretty low chances to activate, about half (or less) what we were used to in A5. Unfortunately, this means that you can't reach an average of 3 fatigue reduction per turn unless you equip every single one of these items. This does make a high Blademaster somewhat more desirable. Although Divinely Touched alone is enough to get you an average fatigue removal of nearly 1.5 by the end of the game, DT + EW will get you more bonus removal, and you'll get it sooner. For fights that are not short, increasing the amount of time you are hasted Battle Frenzied will significantly increase your damage and flexibility. This is a good argument for EW spellcasters, although there are also good reasons to pursue NM and especially PS.

No. Dexterity and Defense are 100% wastes on Torment. If you must have Parry, exploit the bug and just buy it at the start without wasting points on useless skills. And why the heck buy any points in Bows and Throws?

Divinely Touched + Elite Warrior, hands down -- and you should really use a Nephil instead of a Human, as those extra battle disciplines will really come in handy. EW's Parry will do more for your tanking than whatever armor you give up by not having NM -- and that is likely zero armor. The best armor usually doesn't encumber anyway, with a few minor exceptions, and you can get around that a bit by equipping accuracy up items. Your blades will do more damage than your spells anyway, so the Blademaster is a lot more important than extra mage skill. You don't need to cast every single mage spell anyway.

Interesting. This has awoken several ideas in me.