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Re sliths, note that they have zero armor, so there's no reason to use the Flaming Sword against them anyway. More generally -- obviously broadswords are helpful, but they are surprisingly irrelevant. For both pole and melee, but especially melee, the majority of the skills that increase damage do it by increasing total damage by a percent, not by adding on levels of damage. So switching from short to broadsword will increase a portion of your damage by about 1/3, which means it will increase your total damage by less than that... that means switching your second weapon from short to broadsword will increase your total damage by less than 1/6, maybe by about 1/8 depending on skill levels and the weapon in question. Obviously that's a very nice boost, but it isn't enough to put dual wielding damage below halberd damage.

Thanks for pointing those out. In each case the lower value is the correct one.

Not quite all -- see the skills topic.

3. Four was a retcon. Originally it was six. It was nephilim though, my bad.

I put together a spreadsheet to calculate expected damage output given skill levels and weapon and spell choice. I then levelled up brand new characters to level 30, plugged in their traits and skill points to optimize pole weapons, melee weapons, bows, throws, mage spells and priest spells, and looked at the results. (I did fool around with different skill point placement to maximize damage output.) For weapons, I used about the second- and third-best weapon choices, which are available halfway through the game, much earlier than the very best options. On the one hand, I didn't account for extra points from items or trainers; on the other hand, I also didn't account for points lost to general skills like Endurance or Nature Lore. The damage figures should provide reasonable ballpark comparisons for most of the mid-to-late game. Note however that I did not take into account armor, resistance, or the like. Here are the results: POLE WEAPONS 6 Str, 14 Pole, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 6 Anatomy, 6 LB Blessed Halberd Average Output: 204 MELEE WEAPONS 6 Str, 9 Melee, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 10 DW, 5 Anatomy, 2 LB Blessed Broadsword Single Wielded Output: 127 with Flaming Sword Dual Wielded Output: 251 BOWS 10 Dex, 20 Bows, 27 Sharpshooter (yeah... forcing it!) Heartstriker Bow Average Output: 133 THROWN WEAPONS 10 Dex, 20 Throws, 27 Sharpshooter Fine Razordisks Average Output: 169 MAGE SPELLS 24 Spellcraft, 19 Mage Spells Fireblast: 146 Arcane Blow: 184 PRIEST SPELLS 24 Spellcraft, 20 Priest Spells Smite: 138 Divine Fire: 141 Divine Retribution: 123 DAMAGE OVERVIEW: 251 Melee (Dual Wielding) 204 Halberd 184 Arcane Blow 169 Razordisks 146 Fireblast 141 Divine Fire 138 Smite 133 Heartstriker 127 Melee (Single Wielding) 123 Divine Retribution Conclusions: 1. Dual Wielding really is better than Poles, even for Sliths. Even with the Jade Halberd poles do less than dual-wielded blades. 2. Once skills are developed, melee will do more single target damage than magic to any target that isn't heavily armored, and even then the Flaming Sword evens things out. 3. Missile attacks just aren't worth it. The betters throwing weapons may make a good backup attack for non-magic-users, and sometimes it is nice to have a zero-MP, plinking attack. But even the Heartstriker just does pitiful damage. You might as well invest in priest spells and cast Smite. 4. Magic is great! Area effect spells will do more damage per turn if you need to kill multiple enemies. The main issue is being able to cast them over and over, but Magical Efficiency helps with that quite a bit. On the other hand, AoE spells don't get a uniform boost from battle disciplines, and spellcasters can't load up on Blademaster as easily, for its fatigue reduction.

That's true. Really the problem is that there are all these skills that boost melee damage and few apply to missile damage. Quick Action is the main culprit.

1. The Undead Spiral has not reactivated every Avernum game. It wasn't cleansed in X1, so it only reactivated in A4 and A6. 2. Fort Dranlon is in the middle of the Caves, but it is on the side of the Kingdom. Although its original purpose of defending agianst the Sliths and later the Empire died out, the lands west of Dranlon were never settled or tamed to any degree. Although the undead of the Scree Pits and the Abyss and the giants were not quite as close by as the sliths/Empire, without Dranlon they would have easy access to the Eastern Gallery. Likewise it is a strategic position relative to the Northern Waters, which even in A5 didn't seem to be completely tame. And remember that during A4 the sea monsters were a threat, so holding on to strategic sea positions would seem quite useful. 3. Fort Ganrick was built specifically to deal with a goblin threat (which a party of six novice soldiers handily defeated).

The toning down is unfortunate. Keeping Heartstriker at 1-5 instead of 1-4 would have made it more viable to have one hardcore archer.

Do not insult Mothra.

The obvious reason comes from the history & descent of Jeff's game engines. At some point he began to assign different weights to damage levels from stats and damage levels from the weapon/spell itself. The value of .75 is obtained from empirical tests, all of which adhere to it very strongly.

Yeah, "outdoors" in this discussion really means "walkabout mode both on zoomed out world map and zoomed in zone locations, which do not all have to be adjacent to each other"

Student of Trinity spins the thread, Ephesos measures it, And I--

Oozing Blade may not mention it explicitly, but it does describe its attack differently than a regular sword does. Unfortunately, in A4, there are -no- weapons that are more than their descriptions, looked at this way. The Flaming Sword in A4 is just a regular sword with good power and a slight bonus to-hit. Nope, no "complete set" bonuses either I'm afraid.

Not possible in Geneforge, I'm afraid.

Your rabbit is not particularly masculine.

Originally Posted By: Dantius What was the last game you played that posed any philosophical or ethical questions that it didn't simultaneously answer? Game designers don't usually leave you hanging, which is what makes Jeff special. That's one word for it. I imagine you'd love Chrono Cross then, which is about as morally frustrating as any game I can imagine. For more JRPGs, look at Live-a-Live and Treasure of the Rudras, both on the SNES. That said, let's not overrate the philosophical genius of the Geneforge series. The ethical questions mostly end up boiling down to very broad stroke ideas like "do you have a responsibility to help others" or "how much control is ideal in a society" or "when is violence justified" and occasionally statements like "doesn't it suck how life is miserable for the majority of the population no matter what happens."

Originally Posted By: Dantius Geneforge is a much deeper and more complex game than Avernum. A lot of people want their games to be a mindless diversion, not a philosophical exercise. Not particularly. The plot definitely presents a lot more ethical questions than Avernum's does, and it does so in a more serious way. However, this has essentially nothing to do with the actual "game" part of them. But anyway, other than the issue of ethical quandaries, I fail to see how Geneforge's story is "much deeper" or "more complex" than the story of Avernum. And there is a wide continuum between "mindless diversion" and "philosophical exercise" -- and a large chunk of SW players are somewhere in the middle, perhaps around "thought-provoking diversion."

The only question left is whether to call it AIMband or Aingband!

If your original comment was a joke, it was a lot stupider than I expected from you. That's one backhanded... backpalmed?... compliment for the day.

Really? I'm skeptical. Not an expert on Old Norse, but I typically see Hel, not Hal, as the origin of hell, and I thought 'breed' had a different origin. Care to citate?

Didn't think it was all of them for some reason. Fixed!

For weapons, Base Damage is listed in the weapon descriptions in-game. For spells, it is listed in the spell descriptions in the PDF manual only. The multipliers -- well, here's a list for weapons: 1.5 -- Short swords, regular bows 2.0 -- Broad swords, longbows, spears, a few unique halberds 2.5 -- Slith spears, halberds, javelins, the Heartstriker bow 3.0 -- Razordisks For spells, it is listed in the spell descriptions in the same place. From memory, 1.5 -- Bolt of Fire, Icy Rain 2.0 -- Lightning Spray, Divine Retribution 2.5 -- Smite, Divine Fire, Fireblast 3.0 -- Arcane Blow Edit: Dantius -- you are not using the word "multiplier" to mean the same thing I was above. Since my formula is for averages, "multiplier" just refers to the die size, where for XdY multiplier = (Y+1)/2.

Yeah, I don't get how facebook encourages segregated cliques either. If anything it seems to encourage a certain fluidity of group boundaries. Edit: On reading your link, it looks like clique in the graph theory sense is essentially the same thing, and it seems clear that one of the two meanings of "clique" derives from the other one.

*nod nod*

Those can also be scripted in without too much effort. I just found the location of the cheat box codes inside the Avernum 6 package. All the codes listed are: gsdf %d %d fps editor ouchouchouch leetbuffz owmybrains imdrained backtostart pleaselikeme iwanttobestronger iampoor location