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Actually, we are pretty unsure how Riposte and Parry interact. Thuryl and I attempted to test this a year or two ago and got pretty inconclusive results. Riposte damage I believe is an approximate percent of the original attack's power and has nothing to do with Riposte skill.

However, in addition to the time and energy spent, you lose profit from those dozen extra beta testers, most of whom would probably have bought the game otherwise. Once you reach a certain mass of testers, adding a dozen probably won't increase the chance of catching anything new by a significant amount. And if most testers quit before they finish, giving up $300 (or whatever) to get one or two extra committed testers doesn't seem like such a hot deal.

Not just the past five games -- the past several centuries. The Empire has been methodically hunting down and slaying magical creatures and demihumans of all varieties for a long, long time.

In Exile 1 and 2, the conversation options keywords are almost always the most interesting and substantial words to appear in each dialogue passage. Typically each dialogue passage will contain either zero, 1, or 2 such keywords. You don't have to enter every noun, just the interesting ones. Also -- unlike Avernum -- there are exceedingly few scraps of dialogue that you actually have to hear to advance the game (Exile 1 has less than ten that I can think of). It's nice to hear everything, but important clues are generally made pretty easy to find. If you end up missing some random townsperson's comments on glowing fungi or how much they hate kitties, it really doesn't matter.

By "disgusting" I meant "disgustingly good"

Actually, Bohen appears in both X2 and X3, and is a she. In X2, Bohen is a warrior guarding Abra, while in X3 Bohen is an Ihrno who works with him. How she became an Ihrno is a bit of a continuity problem, because Abra states that they have been doing missions for their people together "for some years" and even makes an offhand reference to the mission they are on in X2.

Dual-wielding is disgusting in every single Exile game. The difference is that without the Ambidextrous trait, you can't really employ it without pretty high stats.

Paragraphs are your friend.

It definitely isn't the same format as the Blades of Exile format. The data is stored completely differently.

Actually, the BoA data format seems to be almost the same as the one used in the entire Geneforge series, which predates BoA by a few years. So, there goes that value-add.

You can move with the keyboard in Exile 1.

Yeah, I meant weight. E3 also introduced clickable dialogue keywords, though I still preferred the older style dialogue boxes.

Exile 2 FTW. Other engine changes I can remember between E2 and E3: expanded (and improved) PC advantages and disadvantages, more inventory slots (24 instead of 16), encumbrance exists, acid exists, a few spell changes. The nice thing about Exile 3, that overcomes the surface setting (about which I agree with Alorael), was its vibrant color. It both looked fun, and was fun to play. Avernum 3 lacked that entirely.

No, he's not. Bon-Ihrno is the one who appears in Formello. Bohen (who has various titles applied to him in different games) is a different vahnatai.

Bzzzt! See Geneforges 2, 3, 4, and 5.

There's also Pythras from VODT.

The general idea is correct but the example is wrong. For breath attacks, five levels will *not* have the same impact on damage. For a Fyora, you might see an increase of 4-6 damage on average while, for a Drakon, you might see an increase of 10-15 damage on average. 5 damage may still mean more to a Fyora than 12 does to a Drakon, but the rates of actual damage increase are not identical, because they use different damage dice.

There is an answer, it just isn't magic. The bonus you get from shaping skill is consistent for any investment in that skill, and it is flat. It does not vary with creation types. This means that 20 points invested will give you a +20 level bonus (including +10 to all stats and a hefty bonus to HP and energy). This is a gigantic bonus for a lower level creation with a base level of 10. For a war trall with a base level of 32, it is less noticable. Note however that the "less noticable" bonus is still good enough to outshine many other uses of the PC's skill points, if you are a shaping-heavy class. Once you have enough magic skill to cast the spells you need, and enough basic skills like Strength and Endurance to keep the PC alive when under fire, you get a better increase in offense from shaping skills than from anything else. The only other skill that can potentially be as useful when pumped is Mental Magic.

Given how many times I've heard about the hacked-mailing-list incident, I wonder if SW has a learned aversion to automated systems.

To register, you have to buy the game from Spiderweb Software. You send them the code in the game, and they then send you the registration code which will unlock the full game.

Is that really the only reason? I had assumed it was because the ratio of potential skill sets to potential characters with Exile ended up being a lot lower than originally intended.

I looked at it once, and decided that because the reputation requirements were DRASTICALLY lower than G4's (like, 30+ points lower for the highest requirements!) it wasn't really worth the time. I'm glad somebody's done it though, kudos to jls for that.

In any event, I wonder if this isn't a case of "any publicity is good publicity".

Actually, DV and I were in almost total agreement for G3, and I think for G4 as well. My big G4 arguments were with Synergy. *shudders*

If I read that article, it would probably make me more likely to download the game. I know what I like in games, and I know that it's a relatively unpopular niche. Geneforge is not for everybody. It isn't anything like Diablo 2 -- but for people who play RPGs casually or not at all, the resemblance is probably uncanny.