Slawbug

Unfortunately, no. In Torment, enemies hit for a lot of damage. Until you have heavy armor, good Parry skill, and spell buffs like Augmentation and Essence Armor, it's pretty hard to survive more than one hit. So any time there are multiple enemies attacking me -- which, for an Agent with no creations who can't pump Mental Magic enough to use Daze effectively, is going to be all the time -- there is a decent chance that I will randomly get hit twice in a row and die without being able to do anything about it. That's way too much save-and-reload for my taste. This is compounded by the fact that the limited supply of good missile ammo means that most things will survive (and attack me) for multiple turns. The other thing is that I'm not even at visible 1% against all the enemies I meet. This may get better over time, like when I find the +3 luck boots... but it already costs a boatload to increase the relevant skills. I get about 3 or 4% increase in dodge capability per level up, and it's dropping. I'm at visible 40% against Brutal Thahds, for example, and they kill me in one hit. That's just not good enough.

Chibi, I'm sure your contributions would be welcome. You aren't presumptuous about your conclusions and you don't start fights. A lot of people do Perhaps a better phrase than "any strategy will work in Normal" is "any strategy CAN work in Normal." A useful distinction can be made between strategy, and tactics. Tactics cover some details of gameplay that apply regardless of strategy, like positioning your characters well in battle, deciding what enemies to attack with which characters, what wepaon to use, what spell to cast, and so on. There is a lot of room for play style differences even within a given strategy, or a given build. About dying on Normal: well, what kind of situations are you in that cause you to die? What do you do differently that causes you to not die? Asking yourself questions like that is the best way to learn. The game is frequently harder at the beginning. (This is characteristic of Jeff's games, because he packs them full of optional quests and goodies, but wants players who ignore most of them to be able to finish the game.)

Yeah, I've noticed that too. The thing that threw me is that the numbers seem to be accurate in A4. I guess the engines aren't quite as similar as they seem, after all.

Well, I used cheat codes to run the same test with an extra 4 points of Dexterity, and I got hit 5 times out of 100, which doesn't make any sense. I used cheat codes to add another 2 points of Dex and I again got hit 5 times out of 100. I don't know what exactly is going on, but I have to conclude that dodging is too unreliable to be a worthwhile defense.

I tested physical attacks only. Missiles can actually reach 0% hit rate onscreen, and the few times I've seen that happen this game (against weak Artilla) I never once saw a hit. Ice Bolt doesn't get any kind of special bonus to hit. It has a base hit chance of 80%, compared to 70% for Searer, 60% for Firebolt and for melee attacks. However, those numbers are all taken into account when the game displays hit rates -- I'm sure of that. Edit for clarity: the point is, the number displayed onscreen takes into account both attack bonus and dodge bonus. It goes down if you increase Dexterity, and it goes up if you face an enemy with a better attack.

GAH! I just tried testing it empirically, to be sure. My dodging Agent was hit 11 out of 100 times by Icy Crawlers, despite the engine claiming their hit rate was 1%. This is consistent with what I've observed in general. Unless anyone knows why this happens, and it has to do with something specific (e.g., Essence Shield) and not just a general limitation on dodge effectiveness in melee, I think we can officially lay the dodging Agent to rest. Sigh.

The Thahd description does say they have a "sad tendency" to get confused...

That's not good engine abuse, though. I mean talk about a waste of 11 essence. Engine abuse would be playing monkey in the middle with two ranged attacks. Fyora A shoots Rhotghroth, it goes to Fyora A. Fyora B 6 squares away shoots it, it goes to Fyora B. Repeat.

I seem to recall DeVlish posting that the AI generally attacks the last thing that attacked it. So as long as the Thahds move after you do, then yes.

"MagmaDrakoon" makes me think of the good old Magic Batboon:

I'm not convinced. Missiles and Dex are as expensive for a Guardian (2, 4) as Magic and Spellcraft are for a Shaper. You don't have to specialize at all among battle/mental/blessing items, it's true, and you get better weapons skills; but your creations are also weaker. Also, I don't think Dex and Missiles increase the effects of pods, spores, and rods. I could be wrong, but I haven't noticed it, anyway. I think I am actually coming around to SoT's disposable creations model. At least that way you get flexibility. ...you know, what with the three of us rambling on like this, and our differing opinions as to what strategies are the best ones, it occurs to me that we mirror in some ways the Shaper/Guardian/Agent trichotomy...

"ipothetical" makes him sound British. Which is very amusing.

Reapers do physical damage, just like regular batons. I guess it's just that their multiplier is so high (1-12) that they do respectable damage even against a 40% resistant enemy. Neh. I guess things will improve once Venom Thorns become less of a rarity.

Shaping was hideously powerful in G1, about twice as powerful as in subsequent games, while magic was much weaker, both in terms of damage output and in terms of what spells actually existed. Magic wasn't king in G1.

This build is starting to disappoint me. For one thing, attacks that the engine claims have a 1% chance of hitting me are definitely hitting me more than 1 in 100 times. They almost always miss, but they hit often enough that I can't assume they will miss. If that continues to be the case, it pretty much destroys the entire premise of the build, and I'm gonna have to abandon it. More importantly, I figured out the problem with missiles, and the reason that Icy Crystals are amazing while batons are not: javelins and batons all do physical damage. I never paid much attention to physical resists (i.e., armor) on enemies before, because it's common and usually low. But it really is VERY common, and when you don't have Quick Action to double up your damage, it becomes quite noticeable. Specifically, I became irate when I noticed that Firebolt was doing more damage than Javelins were, despite having Dex+MiW of 13 and Battle+Spellcraft of 3, and despite Javelins having a higher multiplier than Firebolt. But look at the list of things with physical resistance: 15% Servile 20% Roamer 25% Spawner, Turret 30% Servile, Thahd, Vlish, Specter, Glaahk, Spinecore 40% Clawbug, Fighter, Battle Alpha, Drayk, Drakon 50% Servant Mind, Golem, Rotghroth 60% Pylon Basically, everything not named Fyora or Artila has built in armor. Sure, there are things that resist fire or ice or energy; but (especially for energy) there are less. A spell-slinging Agent can just change to a different spell. A Shaper can either employ multiple creation types, can switch to physical instead of breath attacks, or can use items and spells as supplements. A character who relies on melee or missile weapons doesn't have those options so much. Icy Crystals are wonderful, as are wands, but there aren't enough to use them as regular attacks. THIS is why melee got so much worse in G3, too! -- the dice dropped to 4 AND the resists got ramped up, including physical resists. GRRRRR!

Ghez/Max: Are you the same person?

*facepalm*

I smell a warning. If someone gets canned in the Geneforge Series forum, would their title become "CANISTERED"?

Ah, the competition for lack of a life on Sunday mornings I agree with pretty much your whole edit. I think it would be very nice, and very in-flavor, to give the guardian some kind of leadership capability that enhances the power of his creatures in a way different from the shaper's essence pumping. The problem is that this is inordinately hard to do when you insist, as Jeff does, that every character can potentially use every ability, spell, etc. Perhaps Parry could become a kind of Bodyguard ability that gives a defensive bonus to creations 1 or 2 square away from the Guardian, in addition to the bonus the PC gets. That would explain the Guardian's name, and it would foster a playing style extremely different from both the Shaper and the Agent. The funny thing is that shaping skills have already been toned down. Back in G1, freshly made creations received a bonus of +1 to their core stats PER LEVEL, rather than half a point per level as they currently do. If you pushed Fire Shaping high you could easily make a Drayk that started out with 30 in each stat. That was ludicrous. I think the best way to fix this effect, now, is to re-balance the creations. In G1, Vlish had missile attacks that were slightly weaker than average, and melee attacks that were a complete joke. 15 essence was a reasonable cost. But because their abilities have never been weakened like the regular ones have been, they now fight as well as clawbugs and shoot as well as anything. With more reasonable pricing at, say, 45 essence, I wouldn't be able to abuse them so much. Or with crappier attacks. Artilla are also pretty strong. Eyebeasts are broken, but that's clearly on purpose. Those are the only ones that really need fixing. Well, Clawbugs and Battle Alphas desperately need to be made stronger, too. What I would really like to see is that the creations become less generic. Give the artila a penalty to Endurance, instead of just giving it a low HP bonus; that way it has significantly less HP even at high levels, rather than 15 below a Vlish at any level. Give the Battle Alpha a bonus to Endurance. Make the Glaahk's attack roll smaller dice than the Battle Alpha's, as it did in G1. And so on.

Level of creations doesn't affect how much XP you get, or how much XP they get. XP is determined entirely by your PC's level and the number of allies you have, approximately as follows: Code: # PC Creations0 50 --1 46 362 43 343 40 324 37 295 34 276 31 247 28 22 So even with seven creations, you get more than half the experience of a solo agent. However, once you account for the level-adjustment to all received XP, and the annoyingly high percentage of the time that singletons get 1 XP for killing things or completing quests, the seven-creation shaper never really loses out on more than 3 levels or so. The creations get 75% the level ups that the PC does. I made level 22 Vlish when I was at, I think, level 10, so they will keep up just fine. Terror Vlish, btw, don't apply Terror either. Not anymore. But investing to 10 in Magic Shaping only costs 34 skill points for a Shaper. There's plenty left over to put into Mental + Spellcraft, or Dex + Missiles, as you see fit. I'm not fond of breaking AI scripting, but I am investing heavily in Mental Magic for Daze, so maybe I'll try Terror out. The special effect of Vlish is not stunning, but slowing, and I don't think it's possible to resist slowing in Geneforge. The thing is, there are actually relatively few differences among non-fourth tier creations aside from attack method and base level. If you get Vlish up to high levels, they compare just fine with Drayks and Glaahks; they just have a different special ability. And because they are so cheap, you can actually afford to improve their stats, even with seven of them. A level 36 Vlish, unimproved and with no equipment bonuses, will have about 350 HP. With Group Heal to support them, I don't expect any casualties. I thought about making a Glaahk or two when I got to Dhonal's Keep, but by that point, my Glaahk would be lower level than my Vlish, with a comparable melee attack; basically I'd trade a slowing missile and a poison melee for just a stunning melee, plus I'd lose essence and they would be harder to essence-pump. If it isn't apparent, I think that Vlish have become overpowered in G3 -- not broken by any means, just a ridiculously good value. The flexibility their cheapness affords a Shaper makes this, imho, one of the most powerful builds the game has to offer.

Torment Builds Shaper - Cheap Shaper - Missile/Creations Guardian - Missile/Creations ( More ) Guardian - Missile ( Endgame ) Guardian - Melee ( More ) Agent - Melee/Daze Agent - Battle Magic ( More ) Agent - Dodge/Missile Agent - as Shaper Guardian - as Shaper (plus walkthrough) Technical data not in FAQ Creation Stats Item Enhancements ( Update ) Artifacts Items in the Game Parry vs. Endurance for a Guardian Other Editor Information Pacifism Ending Guide Basic Tactics for the Geneforge Series There's a lot of good discussion spread out around this forum, and I got tired of looking things up. I figure somebody else might appreciate having these links around, too. Et voici!

I never said a flexible strategy was doomed, just that it was less desirable than picking one end or the other. A dedicated Shaper should not have any problem with bosses and a properly supported Agent should not have any problem with swarms. Picking creations wisely, and using Daze wisely, hardly count as abusing the game engine. The thing is that well-supported creations do not have significantly lower chances to hit than comparable PCs. At the moment, Vlish-Thsss is about a third of the way through Dhonal's. He has a team of seven Vlish, who -- simply by putting 10 points in Magic Shaping and creating the Vlish as soon as he could -- are now at level 29. That gives them a base Strength of 14, increased to 19 from equipment effects (Claymore, belt, etc). Their missile attack has a base attack bonus of +3, and a base hit chance of 70%. Altogether, that gives them a hit chance of 180% before applying enemy dodge. A Guardian with 10 Strength and 10 Melee Weapons and the Claymore will have a hit chance of 210% before dodge. Bobby's pimped out Guardian, for comparison, has a base hit chance of 271% before dodge. Add another 8 Strength from a conservative 15 levels gained, 3 Strength from the Shroud, and 4 very reasonably priced points from essence, and the Vlish are up to a 255% hit chance before dodge. These are not big differences. Heck, throw in the 20% bonus from War Blessing, and even the 180% Vlish have a 99% hit rate against anything with less than 21 Dex. At 30 Dex, they are down to 50%, but I'd rather have seven 50% attacks than one 80% attack. The Bound One isn't going to be a problem. Quote: Perhaps the key to guarding the three classes' separate patches of turf would be to change how steeply their skill point costs rise with level, instead of just (or even, just instead of) their initial costs. That would keep Guardians ahead in combat for damn sure, no? Yes, and this is an important point. The classes were balanced for G1, when skill point costs were static and not increasing. The change was insignificant for most skills, but not for Quick Action and Anatomy/Parry, which went from being insanely cheap for Guardians to being just average. This was a real advantage down the drain.

Those classes don't really add anything. In my mind, adding breadth without adding meaningful content is bad. The defining element of a class is really the skills that it has trouble accessing; this just xeroxes the others. So a Champion is basically just a Melee Agent, a Constructor is just a crappy version of a Shaper, and an Infiltrator is actually a very nice version of a Shaper -- if you just push one type of creation, you get a lot more skill point wise out of cheap magic skills than cheap shaping skills. Anyway, we already know there's gonna be an option to play as a servile (hallelujah). So I wouldn't count on anything this bland.

About Torment. Torment is much harder than Normal. This has affects strategy a lot. Generally, there are a wide variety of strategies that work in Normal. In Torment, only the most efficient strategies are going to be successful. People who don't play Torment can definitely have good things to say. Usually, though, it's somebody saying "I gave my guardian stats x y and z and it worked great I don't know what you are talking about." Just don't say that. You can do fine in Normal with any mildly intelligent strategy. So, successes in Normal have very little bearing on discussions of what strategies work best... because everything works in Normal. SoT: And I, too, sympathize with the desire to acknowledge ambiguity rather than accepting convenient polarizations. But in this case I don't buy it > Against boss monsters, you need at least one strong offense to be in the game at all, and this means an Agent or Guardian, or some third or fourth tier creations. I don't buy this. ALL damage reduction in Geneforge is handled on a percentage basis, every last bit of it; so unless your team is so weak that they are missing a lot, several lower tier creations are going to do just as much damage as one strong one -- often, more. > But the intermediate route, of having one hard-hitter plus three or four decent back-up creations, is a flexible strategy that mixes offensive and defensive modes, and lets you cope with everything the game throws at you without having to resort to dubious tricks. I guess you can run a disposable creations model, running solo by default and recruiting helpers when they seem helpful. The problem is that you're worse off with the creations, as you can't offer them proper support from spells; and you're worse off without them as well, since your skills are so spread out. There are few areas that are really tough solo or really tough with creations, but when push comes to shove, you have to be stronger than the enemy. Anyway, full on offensive and defensive teams don't all resort to dubious tricks

Hmm. Now that's an interesting idea. One Shaper, one creation. Get a creation up to the mid 20's in level (easy), pump Dex to the max, wear some Dex boosting items, should be easy to get it to 30 Dex. I assume the stats are still capped at 30 for creations as well as PCs, though haven't had occasion to test this since G1... hmm, if they are still capped, this would actually work best with a Thahd Shade, after all. So you get 150% from Dex, 20% from Nimbleness, and then your PC can focus on pumping Blessing Magic and Spellcraft for a big Essence Armor boost. Hmm. Not bad. Unfortunately, if your Thahd does get hit, your Shaper is too far way to heal it. Either that, or your Shaper is right there and thus the point of an unstrikable Thahd is defeated, anyway. Neat idea though.