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Tor wasn't even the official greeter. Somebody else had that job. He wasn't the official information-provider either; that was somebody else. All he did was hand out knives and food to anyone who stepped into his office. His later exploits: separating from his wife, remarrying and buying a farm, then selling it to the farmhands and abandoning his second wife. He was also a supply officer and a mechanic. Where's the heroism? I suppose Tor does have the name recognition factor, but does anyone excluding his various wives and co-workers mention him? No.

If we add as a requirement some level of fame -- that is, that at least one person in Avernum with no personal relationship to them talks about them -- you can't really have a national hero nobody's heard of -- the list gets shorter. Micah, Erika, Patrick, Rone, and Solberg can all stay, as can the Empire War Heroes. Besides them we have lists of famous non-humans and non-Avernites, who don't fit the bill (Bon-Ihrno and Prazac come to mind); talked-about Avernites who haven't done anything terribly heroic (Starrus, Houghton, Linda); and non-famous Avernites who mostly haven't done anything heroic either, like Tor or Kelner.

It really has nothing to do with engine calculation time for NPCs, it has to do with animation time. In Avernum 4-5 there is no walking animation, so steps happen with the smallest possible delay. In Geneforge, the delay is however long it takes to display the animation. This is actually character-dependent and can be modified in the game data files. Most people seem to agree that the walking speed in Geneforge is fine for when you are exploring, the problem is needing to cross territory you've already been through. That becomes horribly tedious. G3 was the worst offender with its mandatory boats and special entrance levels like Dhonal's Keep, but it can be annoying just walking to the middle of a town to get to a shop you visit often. Click... wait. It's sandwich time, something no RPG should have.

You got it. Missile weapons work just like melee weapons except you use Dex instead of Str, and the appropriate weapon skill of course. There is no cap. So you are very right that the die size is more important than weapon "strength." In Avernum 4 this even led to the odd situation where the stick was sometimes the strongest melee weapon.

Search a little harder. There is a hidden entrance.

The earlier Avernum games were mainly designed for easy keyboard movement. Geneforge and the later Avernum games are obviously designed just for mouse movement. Not-crappy mouse movement is a relatively new concept in top-down CRPGs, so older gamers are often very accustomed to keyboard movement, while newer gamers might not be exposed to it.

Erika is the most obvious candidate. The others would be Micah and the rest of the Five. As far as PCs go, the E/A 2 PCs might count .

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.