Mea Tulpa

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.

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.