Men are from Slars

I never finished my singleton game, but I'm fairly sure that "roughly twice the level" is true at the very beginning, but then it starts to decay. Otherwise we would expect reports of level 60 singletons, right? I don't remember hearing of any above 40 or so, though I could be getting my games mixed up.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: Before G4 Agents were actually the easiest to play, and now this is just my tradition. This isn't really true, though. In G1, it was easy to get overpowered creations as a Shaper by pumping shaping skill. In G2, Parry was broken, making Guardians the easiest. And in G3, although Agents were very good, they weren't quite as good (nor as easy to play) as a team of Vlish. In G4 on the other hand, Agents (Infiltrators) are one of several outstanding classes, but there is no class that categorically outdoes them as in G1-3.

There has been some debate about the exact mechanisms at work here. The short, practical answer is that a party full of standard humans will only have a handful of levels (= a handful of thousand XP) beyond a party full of divinely touched demihumans at the end of the game. For most of the game the highly advantaged party will be 1-3 levels behind.

Divinely Touched gives you 20% extra armor for the entire game. It provides bonuses to Blademaster, Sharpshooter, and Magery that begin at +1, and get an additional +1 at every level that is a multiple of 4. This means that at level 32, you get a bonus of PLUS NINE to all three skills. This means that in the second half of the game, you get a higher damage/effectiveness bonus from DT than you do from Natural Mage, Pure Spirit, etc. The experience penalty, while it looks large on paper, will never have you more than 1-3 levels behind, in practice. Since your level itself doesn't affect anything that I know of (other than HP and SP formulas), this means you are trading 5-15 skill points for skills that could cost, at higher levels, over a hundred skill points to buy. And the benefits of Blademaster that Thuryl mentions cannot be overestimated. I sometimes feel like, for munchkin Torment parties, there is no reason to have any character that is not both Divinely Touched *and* an Elite Warrior.

Not having mage spells loses you a few minor bonuses -- some Dispel Barrier items plus the prismatic shield effect -- but that isn't the big loss, and neither is damage output (which isn't really diminished at all). Not being able to cast Haste is where you lose out! As discussed elsewhere, hasting is the single most powerful ability in the game, by a gross margin. Potions and scrolls are too few to haste you in random battles and have a frustratingly short effect, when it comes to boss fights. You can mitigate the lack of haste somewhat by racing to get 20 points in battle skill and piling up fatigue removal, but you are weaker without that spell, hands down.

Eschalon does an exceptionally nice job of handling light and darkness, shadows, relevant combat effects, and skills that take advantage of them. It's one of the game's fine points. And it makes for a really interesting way to play... for about 15 minutes, maybe a half hour. Then the mechanics become boring and predictable, easy to capitalize on or to ignore. Eschalon does it well, but there just might be pieces of the game system out there that are more worthy of developer time than light.

No, he'll release 6 first, as well as Geneforge 5. And I wouldn't be toooo surprised if a new series rears its head before the remakes start happening again.

Actually, Quick Action is much weaker than it was in previous games. Without a hysterical skill point investment it's difficult to get it very far above a 25% activation rate, and that won't happen until later in the game anyway. Here's the math, to make things clearer. With a long bow, each point to Bows/Sharpshooter/Dex adds an average of 2 damage (1d3). Against enemies with some armor (very common) it adds maybe 1.5 damage on average. With a halberd and 10 points in Quick Action, each point to Poles/Blademaster/Str adds an average of 3.13 damage per turn (1d4 x 1.25). Against armored enemies it's about 2.35 damage. With the flaming sword and 10 points in Quick Action, each point to Melee/Blademaster/Str adds an average of 2.5 damage per turn (1d3 x 1.25) against anything not resistant to fire (which is most things). For comparison, pumping magic stats adds an average of 2 damage per point to Bolt of Fire, and 3 damage per point to Divine Fire and Fireblast. The other thing to note about the melee attacks is that, with the new AP system, it's easy to lose out on Hasted attacks if you have to move first. When fighting enemies that have high HP and don't move around much, or who swarm your melee fighter, you'll get the full average given above. But when fighting enemies who move around a lot, or weaker enemies who are spread out, you'll occasionally miss out on an entire melee attack. Usually this is not a huge deal -- you can always switch to your backup bow attack when it happens -- but it does make archery more efficient in some of the minor (random-style) battles when you're exploring, and it's exceedingly annoying against a couple of bosses (the guy in the lower right corner of the nephil test comes to mind).

I think Salmon prefers the term 'poly'

I've encountered it on three different machines now (G3, G4, and Intel Mac) in, I think, all the games I mentioned. It never really irritated me enough to complain about it, though. Sorry for the seven years delayed notice :]

Are those characters wearing any equipment that reduces the skills in question? I'm pretty sure that's how other Spidweb games have handled equipment penalties -- I remember that with some of the stronger charms in Geneforge 3.

Archery is not useful for damage output. It is useful for flexibility and consistency. It has the advantage of spells that you don't have to use AP moving or get in close, and the advantage of melee that you have infinite uses. The trade-off is that it is less damaging than comparably invested-in melee or magical attacks. Given the bonuses you get from the Nephil race (towards battle disciplines, and gymnastics) and Divinely Touched (towards all damage, and armor) the result is that archery makes a great secondary attack for every character, but does not reward heavy investment well.

I wonder if this is related to the Geneforge engine bug (also present in A4/5, I think) where if you happen to be scrolling the view as combat begins or the enemy turn begins, the view will keep scrolling at that speed + in that direction until all the enemies are done acting.

That and to-hit rate, which is relevant on Torment but not Normal.

I think that'd be a nice touch.

I think it's possible to get 27 AP and hence 4 attacks if you use Adrenaline Rush, though there's little if any reason to ever do so.

I don't remember the exact term, but since it is the same for almost all weapons within a class, it tends to be set once for the first such weapon and then imported. i.e., the first shortsword, broadsword, spear, and halberd listed probably all set it, and most of the rest don't.

Has this actually been tested and confirmed to work, yet?

This is intentional; those way-over-powered items are there just to be used in the test. There is a very obscure exploit that can be used to get them out, but it's complicated. They should really have a note attached to them in the item list.

Cool! The G1/2 style storyline sounds particularly neat. Does that mean the game will also feature the somewhat open-ended exploration of G1/2? The "missing" 6th class has the potential to be the strongest class of them all, the Agent Plus.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Quote: Originally written by avvv: Being able to act even if some spell effect hasn't finished yet. Even if it takes 0,005 seconds for the spell effect to fade, it's still much when you gotta buff many characters or fight against many lancing fungi. This was introduced to correct a bug in Geneforge 4, where casting too many spells in quick succession could cause some of them to have no effect. It's kind of an ugly workaround, I agree. I have to wonder if this is necessary in Avernum -- it seems like the spells not happening would be a consequence of the real-time factor in Geneforge, and I would expect it to be easily avoidable in Avernum.

Hold on... I want to treasure this moment. It's so rare. Somebody is requesting a feature that was in (and was actually functional in) Realmz!

Because neither the mechanics nor the setting of Geneforge lend themselves well to a scenario-based engine, and because Blades of Avernum took a huge amount of effort on Spiderweb's part without leading to a commensurate return. More practically, Spidweb has stated very clearly that there will be no Blades of Geneforge. (And no Geneforge MMORPG either, while we're at it.) I am increasingly tempted to put this in the forum header. Advance warning, because threads about BoG usually go bad: please don't spam the topic with whining, complaining, and/or insults.

In fact Divinely Touched is so good that it boosts EACH type of attack damage more than any other trait boosts any individual variety -- and it provides 20% protection from physical damage on top of that. If you want a powergaming build -- an optimal build -- there is almost no reasonable argument to be made for any character not having DT. The one possible exception would be Elite Warrior + Natural Mage, to get an armored and armorable mage with all spells and all disciplines without blowing lots of skill potions.

Actually, I'm surprised it's taken... what, seven years? for the first such pun.