Mea Tulpa

Speaking of highly reactionary: wow. If you expect perfect consistency and balance from every mechanic out there, I recommend you never play another RPG again. Seriously. It strikes me as a little bit odd to say that you like the rest of the game, but because of one not overly significant aspect of a mechanic, it's ruined. If I were a gamemaker, I wouldn't want customers who are going to make a big fuss if everything isn't perfect.

My testing failed to produce any noticeably different results. The protection spell is definitely an undesired unknown variable (that might well have a random aspect to it). I'd be interested in any harder data on shields though.

How does one run a singleton in A5? Particularly in Torment? Dodge-maxing already didn't work in A4 (and Essence Shield/Armor provide much less of a bonus in A5), armor-maxing didn't work in Nethergate and that was with Armor Use, and you can't rely on Daze or sneak attacks like in G3, or Parry like in G2. Not being able to block damage consistently means you need to heal consistently, so you need priest spells. Of course you also need mage spells for haste and slow, unlock and dispel... However, I don't think there's any way you can rely on your limited spell points to dish out damage, not even for bosses. Since dodging is a joke and the enemies will all come to you, and you can't even get a natural 10 AP until practically the end of the game, I suppose you may as well go for pole weapons over archery. This also lets you go for Strength for better armor, and go Slith. The 2 level penalty sucks, but the bonus to poison and acid resistance actually looks pretty darn good. Frankly I wonder if this is even doable at all. Tool Use? Mage Spells? Hah...

Things that affect evasion: 5% / pt Dex 5% / pt Gymnastics 3% / pt Defense 2% / pt Luck The 10-cap applies to all of these! Enduring Shield: 8% + 1% / 2 pts of spell power Enduring Armor: 18% + 1% / 2 pts of spell power Arcane Shield: 20% As far as I can tell, there is no "hidden evasion bonus" from equipping a shield. Somebody said there was; can they back that up? Conclusion: Without the 2% / pt of the old Enduring Armor spell, there is no practical way to have a reasonable dodge rate in Torment, or for that matter, late in the game in Normal.

Except for the Flaming Sword. But yeah, melee is still weak, and pretty hard to justify using.

I stand corrected. It looks like Augmentation always gives 50% of your HP back if you have 2 Endurance and are Human, but doesn't scale with Endurance or the Slith HP "bonus". If I'm right, this means it gives 19 + Level While the regular HP formula is 38 + ( (Level + 1) * (Endurance / 2) ) and the Slith bonus is 4 Actually, I think the second one at least is more complicated, because there is a slight variation in return on endurance. There's a fraction in there somewhere, possibly a 9/8.

One of the nicest new features of A5 is that the resistances displayed in the character skills window are calculated accurately -- for the first time since, well, ever. Taking advantage of this, I've done some exploring in the area of resistances and have discovered the following. Every resistance listed here is applied as if it is a single extra piece of armor; it multiplies with other resistances. So if you wear a 50% armor suit of armor and have Thick Skin, you have 55% armor total. Similarly, having 2 points of Strength provides one 6% stun resistance, not two discrete 3% stun resistances. EQUIPMENT: Armor provides half its value in armor rating to the fire/cold/electric/poison/acid resistances. The last two are new and were not given by armor in past games. When I say "armor" in the below lists however, I only refer to the armor rating and other resistances are not affected at half or any value. Hostile effect resistance provides points to every resistance AND to the armor rating. TRAITS: Strong Will - 50% mental resistance Thick Skin - 10% armor Divinely Touched - 20% armor (!!!) Good Constitution - 4% H.E.R. ...additional poison and acid resistance of about 28% Slith - 20% fire, poison and acid resistance ...and bonus HP. I can't figure out the math - is it really a flat bonus of 4 HP at any level and endurance skill? SPELLS: Enduring Shield - 3% armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists Enduring Armor - 6% armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists SKILLS: Strength - 3%/pt stun resist Endurance - 3%/pt pois/acid resists (a change) Dexterity - nothing (a change) Intelligence - 3%/pt mental resist Arcane Lore - 2%/pt mental resist Hardiness - 2%/pt armor, fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists Resistance - 3%/pt fire/cold/elec/pois/acid resists Luck - 1%/pt H.E.R. One more thing -- there appears to be a hard cap of 90% on every resist stat. I have only tested this a little, so I can't be positive, but that appears to be the case. Conclusions: - Divinely Touched is even more overpowered than we thought. - Sliths are not really more survivable than Nephils. If anything the Nephil dodge bonus from gymnastics is more valuable. - Hardiness is much, much better than we thought. 6 skill points reduce ALL your damage by 8%. 20 reduce it by 16%. - Buying those 3 points of Resistance is definitely worth it.

As Duke Ellington said, "Limitations are wonderful things. Everybody should have them."

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: If I came up with a formula, I would then poke at it and modify it and massage it until it always returned this answer: two. That sounds like a concise encapsulation of your design philosophy.

The logic problem tests such as you can find online aren't real IQ tests, which normally involve a "battery" of different types of tests. Real IQ tests don't test consistently for what we consider intelligence, either, though they do test consistently for certain subsets of it.

Wait, does that mean that a singleton can't complete the fight?

It's a job board quest, and it doesn't show up the first time you look at the board. You need to finish other quests first.

You'll be able to get there later in the game, after a certain event. Until then, you can't get to 'em.

The items he wants are very specific. As I recall, one of them looks almost identical to another item -- maybe a teacup? Check the list against your inventory directly.

Hmm. I think I'll try not taking the geas, and then periodically seeing if I can go back and take it and how it interacts with the cursing, and so on.

So what's the deal with Gladwell? I know the basic structure: geas gives +1 to primary stats, requires obtaining 5 items later which mostly make towns mad at you. I'm wondering: 1) From a munchkin perspective, does it really hurt to have those towns mad? 2) Is it possible to just wait till the late game to take the geas, teleport around to get the items and rewards, then kill Gladwell and remove the geas, all at once? I ask especially because Gladwell's quests all reward flat XP, rather than scaling it for your level, so you could get a massive amount of extra XP by waiting. Plus at that point it probably no longer matters if the towns get mad.

I like Goethe on censorship. The censors wanted to censor his use of the word "farting", as in "the farting witches." (There are farting witches in Faust, really.) So Goethe allowed them to censor it -- he changed it to "the f---ing witches."

Battle Fury, or whatever it is, only increased my damage by about a third when I tested. Of course that still makes it the best skill by a lot.

The inevitable slartanalytical munchkin topic. Before making my Torment party, I decided to look at the numbers objectively, since each PC has more skills they need to account for now, in order to take advantage of battle skills. Generally speaking, the damage increase you get out of investing in battle skills exceeds what you get out of putting the same number of skill points into the appropriate attack-based skill -- even for mages. This opens up PCs to a lot of versatility without any drawbacks, if you plan carefully. I began by doing calculations for about halfway through the game -- I don't want to be miserable for 60 hours of play just to have a mildly easier fight against Dorikas. So I picked about level 20 for my model, and also allowed access to the combat skill trainer at the beginning of chapter 4. However, as I don't want to be miserable, that only applies to buying points towards combat skill; any weapon I use from day one, I train from day one. I also assumed I am dealing with Divinely Touched PCs, but I left Nephil/Slith and the second advantage up for analysis. At level 20, you have access to about 180 skill points per character. I took off 20 skill points per character to account for easy points to First Aid, Arcane Lore, Nature Lore, Luck, and so on. That leaves 160 to play with. I made the following menu of different skill packages that make sense, listed with cost in skill points: (50) Regular Melee: 6 points Melee/Pole + 8 points Quick Action Lets you start with WAB, get Adrenaline around the combat trainer and Battle Fury by the end of the game. Best value out of QA. With a halberd, expect average damage of 65, 78 Slith, 90 Slith EW, before armor (25% is common but not universal) and QA (double hit about 1 in 4 times). (80) Fast Melee: 10 points Melee/Pole + 8 points Quick Action Lets you start with WAB and get Battle Fury around the combat trainer. Battle Fury gives by far the nicest damage boost, so this is pretty cool. Best value out of QA. With a halberd, expect average damage of 75, 88 Slith or EW, 100 Slith EW before armor and QA. (150) Go All out on Melee: Average damage of 95, 108 Slith or EW, 118 Slith EW before armor and QA. (40) Regular Bows: 10 points Bows Lets you start with WAB, get Adrenaline around the combat trainer and Battle Fury by the end of the game. With a longbow, expect average damage of 78 for a Nephil, before armor. (70) Fast Bows: 14 points Bows Lets you start with WAB and get Battle Fury around the combat trainer. With a longbow, expect average damage of 86 for a Nephil before armor. (150) Go All out on Bows: Average damage of 106 for a Nephil before armor. (86) Priest Pack: 10 Priest Spells + 6 Intelligence About what a Pure Spirit PC needs to get all the spells and have some SP to toss around. Expect average damage of about 65 for Smite or Divine Fire. (96) Mage Pack: 10 Mage Spells + 6 Intelligence About what a Natural Mage needs to get all the spells and have some SP to toss around. Expect average damage of about 50 for Bolt of Fire, 74 for Fireblast. (30) Assortment of Spellcraft & Magery Ups average spell damage to about 70 for Bolt of Fire, 95 for Smite or Divine Fire, 104 for Fireblast. (56) Tool Use package: 14 points Tool Use Somebody needs to get this. Obviously, you want at least one mage, at least one priest, at least one physical attacker, and somebody who knows tools. Each attack type has advantages. Spells are the strongest when heavily invested in and can multitarget, but are limited in quantity. Bows are weaker, but don't run out. Melee/pole is similar to bows, but give you inconsistently better damage (from QA) and also restrict your tactical flexibility. Also note that everybody wants at least one physical attack package, since everybody wants battle disciplines. Now let's do the math. Spellcasters obviously want as much extra skill as they can get, since they get a good damage ramp out of it. For physical attackers, it's much less important. Tool Use takes up 56 points, which means it doesn't fit well with magic. So we want one character who just uses bows or poles, with Tool Use. For spellcasters, the cheap bows package is an obvious fit: it gets them battle disciplines, gives them an attack to use when conserving or out of SP, and doesn't require them to get up close and personal. We want at least one priest and at least one mage, so that leaves the fourth character open. Available options are an all-out physical attacker, which isn't much improvement over our Tool User, or another spellcaster. Now let's look at that second skill slot. Most skills can be immediately discarded. Fast on Feet sucks with the new AP system. Sharpshooter only ups bow damage by about 10, before armor. The other options: A mage with NM or a priest without PS has to spend about an extra 40 skill points on their basic package. That knocks out either their extra damage pack, or their bow pack, which sucks. Plus Magical Efficiency is a lot more valuable given the nerfing of First Aid. For a PC who isn't getting all the mage or priest spells though, the value is lower, about 20-30 skill points. The other option is Elite Warrior, conferring several benefits: - Fatigue reduction via Blademaster - Damage reduction via Parry - Encumbrance bonus so you can wear better armor - For melee attackers, a little extra damage (via Blademaster) The defensive bonuses make this especially nice for at least one character to have, so whoever stands in front is that much easier to keep alive. In the end there's a little bit of wiggle room for personal preference, particularly for the combat-centric character. Archery is consistent and predictable; melee combat is slightly stronger in protracted fights, but less flexible. In the end I went with the following setup: Nephil DT EW - Heavy archer, Tool Use Nephil DT PS - Light archer, heavy priest Nephil DT NM - Light archer, heavy mage Nephil DT NM - Light archer, heavy mage/light priest I split the last PC to get extra uses of Unshackle Mind and Mass Healing, while aspiring to preserve the flexible damage types (and cheap shots of Bolt of Fire) of the mage. Also to get a second user of Haste, which has such a low duration now that you really need dedicated mages casting it. I think Unshackle Mind especially is worth the mildly lower damage compared to just having a second mage, but we'll see. The first 3 levels or so were a little tough, with one or two fights I had to reload forever (Dirty Desiree). After that the second level of DT bonuses kicked in, my spellcasters started to have decent SP, and things have been pretty smooth sailing.

My instincts are similar to ADOS's. The three major components of a successful game (or scenario) really boil down to the storytelling, the gameplay (mainly combat) and the technical part. The "technical part" corresponds to scripting and sloppiness and such, and basically asks: are there any seams showing? Do the typos, dysfunctional scripts, strange combat happenings, contradictions, ugly graphics, bad zonification, or so on interfere with my suspension of disbelief? Or was it constructed competently? Aran -- I think it would be very useful to have some binary (or trinary, etc.) categories used to describe each scenario as well -- more or less separate from subjective ratings -- and would make it much easier both to organize the scenarios and to learn about a scenario at a glance. For example: Prefab Party / Any Party Singleton Required / Any Party Epic / Regular Length / Short Linear / Open-Ended Many Riddles / Few Riddles Set in World of Avernum / Medieval / Modern / etc. Combat / No Combat I'm sure there are others that could be added, or perhaps some of these are unnecessary. --t

The part where Jeff has your monitor strobe to give you a stroke was a nice touch, I thought.

I do believe this is the best-formatted of your lists yet, and therefore the easiest to use. And a good thing too, because it's gigantic. Nice work Synergy!

I already commented that Quick Action is weaker. First Aid also appears to be weaker. And Elite Warrior appears to increase your encumbrance limit (by 1 pound per level)? Anything else that's different, in terms of mechanics?

But melee has nothing to do with soaking up damage and tying up monsters! Melee and pole weapons, melee and pole weapon skill, quick action, blademaster, none of those protect you in any way. I guess strength lets you wear heavier armor, but dexterity lets you dodge, so there's little advantage over archery there. Similarly with nephils vs. sliths. (Ha, ha.) Elite Warrior does give you some Parry, but thanks to Blademaster's fatigue bonus, you don't need to be a warrior to pick Elite Warrior.

This is quite true. I went through the defs file earlier and came up with the following list of creature groups with noticeable physical resistance: ogres giants undead sentinels lizards bats wolves slimes vahnatai golems wyrms hounds chitrachs fungi drakes pylons Except for drakes and golems, none of those groups resist fire. This is, alas, yet another argument against melee. If a 1-3 flaming sword beats a 1-4 halberd so often, then so do spells. Fire and ice resistances are less common and magic resistance (acid spray, lightning spray, arcane blow) is very rare.