Men are from Slars

Really, the drayks shaped drayks. This progression was inevitable.

The other significant variable here is play order. All of Jeff's games are good games, so most people who like this kind of RPG will like whichever game they play first. However, it can be hard to take a "step down"... and what constitutes a step down is different for different people. Avernum-style movement or scale-switching could be a step down for some. Conversely, I think the lack of scale-switching was one of the most maligned things about A4, by older players; they had spent 10 years imagining Exile/Avernum as this huge expansive place, and suddenly it seemed really tiny. Similarly, A4's plot seems shallow and boring to players coming from A2; but for the genre, it's pretty standard, so it isn't going to turn off new players. However, I do think it's possible to identify incontrovertible successes that please some people without displeasing anybody else. The movement in A4/5, for example, pleases the mouse people, while the keyboard people have (mostly) all the options they did in older games.

Also, while I'm sure Solberg did do stuff to help out in the first war against Grah-Hoth, there are three wizards consistently credited with sealing him away -- Erika, Patrick, and Rone. Not Solberg. And in E3, when he could have helped most, by keeping Linda away, he failed to do so.

Actually, it seems pretty easy to implement. You can already give yourself a permanent speed boost just by changing one number in the data files. Presence of hostiles and whether a zone is cleared or not can't be hard to check for, since the game already keeps track of those things. It is admittedly a little more complicated to boost your creations' speeds, but if this was being handled in a hardcoded way, I don't see how it could be too hard.

When I said "no RPG should have that," I was talking about sandwich time, not walking animations. Walking animations are fine and are, in fact, a staple of the vast majority of CRPGs. Console RPGs have had them from the beginning, as have action-RPGs, and they've spread. These days it's only the little niche of Gold Box style games (well, plus roguelikes) that don't have them. Walking animations do not normally create sandwich time. "Sandwich time" refers to time where you may as well get up and make a sandwich, because you know nothing will happen in your game, but you have to spend that time having nothing happen anyway. It's a waste. Walking animations only create sandwich time if the animation is slow compared to the amount of terrain you have to cross. Geneforge has lots of detailed terrain, which mostly becomes uninteresting after the first time you cross it. What Geneforge could really use, IMHO, would be a "run" mode that could only be activated (a) when the zone has been cleared, and ( when no enemies are visible. This prevents it from poisoning any game mechanics, while at the same time getting rid of sandwich time.

Tor wasn't even the official greeter. Somebody else had that job. He wasn't the official information-provider either; that was somebody else. All he did was hand out knives and food to anyone who stepped into his office. His later exploits: separating from his wife, remarrying and buying a farm, then selling it to the farmhands and abandoning his second wife. He was also a supply officer and a mechanic. Where's the heroism? I suppose Tor does have the name recognition factor, but does anyone excluding his various wives and co-workers mention him? No.

If we add as a requirement some level of fame -- that is, that at least one person in Avernum with no personal relationship to them talks about them -- you can't really have a national hero nobody's heard of -- the list gets shorter. Micah, Erika, Patrick, Rone, and Solberg can all stay, as can the Empire War Heroes. Besides them we have lists of famous non-humans and non-Avernites, who don't fit the bill (Bon-Ihrno and Prazac come to mind); talked-about Avernites who haven't done anything terribly heroic (Starrus, Houghton, Linda); and non-famous Avernites who mostly haven't done anything heroic either, like Tor or Kelner.

It really has nothing to do with engine calculation time for NPCs, it has to do with animation time. In Avernum 4-5 there is no walking animation, so steps happen with the smallest possible delay. In Geneforge, the delay is however long it takes to display the animation. This is actually character-dependent and can be modified in the game data files. Most people seem to agree that the walking speed in Geneforge is fine for when you are exploring, the problem is needing to cross territory you've already been through. That becomes horribly tedious. G3 was the worst offender with its mandatory boats and special entrance levels like Dhonal's Keep, but it can be annoying just walking to the middle of a town to get to a shop you visit often. Click... wait. It's sandwich time, something no RPG should have.

You got it. Missile weapons work just like melee weapons except you use Dex instead of Str, and the appropriate weapon skill of course. There is no cap. So you are very right that the die size is more important than weapon "strength." In Avernum 4 this even led to the odd situation where the stick was sometimes the strongest melee weapon.

Search a little harder. There is a hidden entrance.

The earlier Avernum games were mainly designed for easy keyboard movement. Geneforge and the later Avernum games are obviously designed just for mouse movement. Not-crappy mouse movement is a relatively new concept in top-down CRPGs, so older gamers are often very accustomed to keyboard movement, while newer gamers might not be exposed to it.

Erika is the most obvious candidate. The others would be Micah and the rest of the Five. As far as PCs go, the E/A 2 PCs might count .

Is Ellhrah rolling his eyes?

*makes universal over-your-head gesture*

Longer than "Rhapsody in Blue"?

Yes, having creations in Geneforge is like having advantages in Avernum 4 and 5: you'll never be more than a small handful of levels behind even at the end of the game. So if you want to keep seven vlish (or whatever) around the whole game, it's an easy call to make. The real perfectionist problem is if you plan on upgrading to new creations, or if you just use disposable creations; as unlike Avernum, you don't just lose skill points, you also lose a small amount of precious maximum essence. But if that really bugs you, you can always iwanttobestronger a few levels to make up for the XP leeching.

Unfortunately, Battle Creations suck universally. There is never any point at which there is any reason whatsoever to use or invest in battle creations.

That's because Iffy listens to people and tries to learn from them. *casts pointed glance at Jeran*

Full stat comparisons for keeping a creation all game can be found here: http://minmax.ermarian.net/g4/g4cre.html Fyoras and Thahds become useless characters almost immediately due to their puny attacks. Artilas will have a useful ranged attack for a while but they are so very fragile.

Oh snap. ... I -didn't- remember it. Jewels may have sympathy for me being busy, but personally, this is not my proudest moment. I'll add it to my several-months-overdue-to-do-list...

Hmm... While waiting for your reply I did some minor tests, which gave pretty inconclusive results. (Incidentally, you need 26 Riposte to get a 50% displayed rate as Riposte, unlike Parry, is on the G1 point schedule.) Each test had 20 hits that weren't dodged. Test 1: 17 Parry (50%), 0 Riposte 10 hits 10 parries 0 ripostes Test 2: 17 Parry (50%), 26 Riposte (50%) 4 hits 7 parries 9 ripostes Test 3: 8 Parry (24%), 26 Riposte (50%) 11 hits 3 parries 6 ripostes It seems somewhat unlikely that Riposte is just checked first; in that case, a 50% Riposte rate would have produced just 15/40 ripostes in the last two tests. Similarly, if Parry is checked first, why are its numbers so well-behaved without Riposte present, but consistently a bit low (7/20 and for 50% and 3/20 for 25%) when Riposte is used? My best guess is that there is one roll to block made using, say, the Parry % plus half the Riposte %. If successful, a simple proportional roll is made to choose between parry and riposte; if both are at 50%, it's a 50/50, if Parry is twice riposte, it's a 2/1. This sounds weird, but it does fit the data. If anyone has anecdotal data that gives a different picture, feel free to throw it in.

Hey Thuryl, I've been wondering for a while how the math works on Riposte activation, as I've never bothered with it. Suppose you have 17 Parry and 17 Riposte. Does Riposte activate 50% of the time that Parry activates, for an effective rate of 25% Parry, 25% Parry + Riposte, 50% get hit? Or is it a separate roll?

Most skills do not max out. Skills that add to some kind of attack (Spellcraft, Magery, Strength, etc.) never max out. However, they DO get diminishing returns. When you have 5 Spellcraft, adding a 6th point increases your damage noticeably. When you have 25, adding a 26th point increases it by only a small fraction of the damage you're already doing. Quick Action does not max out, not below 20 anyway, but it was also totally nerfed compared to past games. A Quick Action score of 10 gets only about a 25%-30% double strike rate, and beyond 10 it improves very slowly. The walkthrough, while accurate about most details of the game, makes a lot of dubious statements about ability scores and character mechanics that have no grounding in reality. That 8 Dexterity comment is one of them. On lower difficulty levels a high Dex can help you dodge lots of attacks, and on higher difficulty levels investing anything at all in Dex is a waste.

The dazes are level-dependent (enemy level that is), and enemy level is different on different difficulty settings. On Torment, you have to work a lot harder to daze everything.

The "formula" is simple: each piece of armor (or armor effect) has its average reduction multiplied rather than added together. For example, wearing one piece of 20% armor will on average have you take 80% damage. Wearing two pieces of 20% armor will on average have you take 80% x 80% = 64% damage. There is a 90% cap on total armor rating (= taking just 10% damage); this includes all equipment worn, natural armor from Divinely Touched (20%) or Thick Skin (12%? I forget), as well as Hardiness (which basically acts as a single piece of armor providing 2% protection per point; so with 10 Hardiness, it's one 20% piece). There are several effects that reduce physical damage, but don't affect your armor rating; so with them it's possible to take less than 10% damage on average. IIRC, Protection takes off a flat 20% (or 25%? I forget). Parry can take off a large chunk depending on your skill level and also does not count towards the 90% max. What does this mean in practice? 1) As Thuryl said, one strong piece is armor is better than several small ones. Those 1% poor leather helmets are really never going to make any difference. 2) The more armor you have, the less difference additional armor makes, though it never becomes worthless to invest in. 3) Parry and Protection are really good.