Mea Tulpa

It's not every 100 experience points, skill points are issued individually in much smaller intervals -- something like every 8 experience points IIRC. What's unique about this compared to other SW games is that you do not have a "level" and therefore the amount of credit you get for killing a particular type of enemy does not decrease as the game goes on. In addition, there is no limit to the skill points you can gain.

The Intel chip doesn't prevent ResEdit from working per se. The issue is that ResEdit is a Classic application -- although it was widely used even into this decade, it was last updated in 1994! The Classic environment, of course, won't run under Leopard, and it won't run (natively) without a Motorola chip either. It sounds like you're saying you copied the Character Graphics file to your old computer and ran ResEdit on that computer. I'm going to guess that something weird happened to the file data format when you copied the file over. That sounds more likely than ResEdit not recognizing a legitimate resource fork.

G5 is not the best game for disposable creations, it's true (see: G1 and to a lesser degree, G4). But there are some great short term options in G5, particularly the improved Shock Trall. SoT was raving about them.

I hover corrected. I'm still not sure they're worth the slot over a wingbolt or trall, damage-wise, but they are certainly cheaper in terms of essence.

Yeah, that's really weird. The Character Graphics file does have a resource fork. What version of ResEdit are you using, what version of system software are you running, and are you on an Intel Mac or a PPC?

Vlish aren't bad, but the problem is that they do so little damage compared to later creations that really all they are doing for you is casting wrack. Unless it was going to take you a large number of hits to kill something in the first place, you're better off with another trall or whatever; the handful of enemies that do take 20 hits to kill you can manually wrack.

The previous four games really showed a spectrum of opinion on the part of shapers. Some would never consider creations children, but others would. Alwan, admittedly, did quite an about-face between G3 (very cold to creations) and that line about them being children in the G5 ending sequence. But there are plenty of examples of strict loyalists who nonetheless care deeply about creations in previous games.

Aha, it must be three after all. Does the documentation specifically say the Ivory Skull causes 4 levels of curse? If it says that about the spell or some other item, it's entirely possible each one bestows a different number of levels of curse.

Originally Posted By: Untamed Banana Slug You're forgetting that he was responding to another member's condemnation of Avernum 3's engine. To be fair, the post he was responding to (by Thuryl) also stated preference as if it was fact. That doesn't change the fact that Golgoloth did as well. I would imagine I capped on Golgolath's post because it presented opinion as fact in a more extensive and less obvious way. However, I don't really remember, because you are replying to a post from a month and a half ago, and which has over a page of replies after it in the thread, which has itself been dormant for a month...

Just the fact that average damage coming from *you* was doubled on Torment confirms your hypothesis quite neatly, since obviously the PC's stats don't increase. However, cursing may actually be stronger than three levels. Battle alphas have 40% armor, thus they should be absorbing an average of 40% of the damage dealt. We would not expect an average difference (between cursed and not-cursed) to be so close to 7.5, we'd expect it to be close to 60% of 7.5. This is what I was alluding to with my suggestion to watch out for interference from armor and other such variables. Try with a fyora -- they don't have any armor.

Correction: energy is determined by intelligence, level, and class.

Look at the average damage change over (far too many) enemy attacks in Torment with and without a curse (or bless) effect. Of course, you'll want to eliminate other variables such as armor. Anyway, I'm skeptical that the -4 for curse is equally significant on Torment. My guess is that Torment adds dice and therefore the -4 is less significant.

I hoard expendable items too, and never use them. I hate expendable items. The ideal RPG I will never make won't have any. You said that Torment doubles die size. Are you sure it doesn't just double the number of dice? I was under the impression that most of the differences in Torment were caused by drastic changes to enemy level and, therefore, enemy str/dex/int/end. However, I may be conflating with Avernum and/or just wrong.

That's possible, but more likely it is a difference between G5 and previous games. I *know* the acid enhancement does not cause acid drip in G3, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't in G4 either. It is HIGHLY IRRITATING that there are so many little game mechanics changes like this in between every single game in SW series. It is so hard to keep track of this crap.

Are they actually called null bugs? A4 had a Nullsomething Chitrach, but it was not called a null bug (obviously).

They look quite different from Chitrachs in Exile, and they don't exist in A4-5. Are they chitrach palette swaps in A2-3? Weird.

Null bugs are not chitrachs.

Bows and spells deal with them a lot better than melee attacks since they don't trigger parry and riposte. Plus, it takes loads of spells to kill a chitrach on higher difficulties, not one spell as with Gatlingers. I'm sorry, the comparison is ridiculous. You are playing FF4A, btw, not FF4; it's definitely lesser than the original, so don't implicate the original game in that grinding crap. I agree with you that grinding sucks, but that's an implication of the vast majority of the CRPG genre, not just the FF series. Actually, if you think about it, FF4 probably involves less grinding than any other game in the series. Anyway, if you're gonna pick on an enemy pick on the friggin Cuars that abuse Blaster. They're much more annoying.

There was an armor enhancement that increased your chance to-hit. So a weapon enhancement increasing chance to-dodge is not out of the question.

A4 indeed. 227 Chitrachs!!!!! Feo: What in the world was tedious about FF4? Comparing Gatlingers to Chitrachs is spurious. Gatlingers appear only in a handful of random fight setups in a handful of areas. You can always run from said random fights and it's usually very easy to do. And you are not directed to explore an extensive cave system containing 227 Gatlingers, most of which it is hard to avoid fighting. Furthermore, there are lots of ways to 1-shot Gatlingers: most spells will do it, Yang with the right claw, and the Stone spell will take out a group in one hit for 15 MP. Chitrachs are hardy and obnoxious. There is really no comparison.

Does Tiny Orb of Mist affect something else, like chance to hit or to dodge? Also, how can you be sure it doesn't affect move order in a relatively small way? Either way, you have mostly answered one of the questions I asked in my first post here, 4 years ago, and which was never answered. Well, that post was about G3, but close enough. Thanks!

Based on the history given in G1, I would assume that the semi-intelligent creations came first (the results of the few survivors of tens of thousands of essence-bombardments), and more precisely shaped creations like living tools, machinery, batons, and modified crops came later.

Apologies to Godwin, but here's my usual reminder that Jews were not the only ones killed in the Holocaust (though obviously the ones killed in the greatest numbers; I'm not arguing with them being mentioned foremost).

What Nioca said. It's especially bad because it's real time. This was the worst in the early games when it affected an entire zone, so it wasn't even possible to park your creations at the entrance and go in solo.

Making fractions of scenarios is really not the same thing as finishing a complete scenario.