Quiconque

IMO, the first is the best -- the story is fresher, and the game mechanics are more balanced than in the later installments. But the second one definitely has its strong points as well, including some of the more interesting characters.

That is not how the percent per level modifier works. If you read through the (admittedly very long) discussion above, you'll see an explanation of where that value of 5 percent comes in. Blessing Focus does not just add another die, either. Again, if you read the discussion above, this is explained.

Is this going to be one of those games where if you complete the optional content, there is a... special image of the happy couple?

Not at all. My point was that being able to afford such a purchase is probably a lot rarer than wanting to support Jeff's games is.

I think there are far more than five fans who are that dedicated. Rather, there are at least five fans so overflowing with money...

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2018/05/we-did-our-first-kickstarter-and-it.html Things I noticed: "a simpler top-down graphics style... makes it clear what creatures are in what spaces, which is necessary for a game like this on small screens like the iPhone." Aha, the big motivator behind the viewpoint switch becomes clear. This makes a lot of sense. "I love my country. But this doesn't keep me from thinking about my homeland and the power it holds, and what that means." There is a remarkable amount of restraint here, and attempting to appeal to everyone and alienate no one, from the former (?) leader of the Scorched Earth Party "You will be dealing with other nations, poor but proud, weaker than Haven but just as brave and determined. Each has its own history, beliefs, grudges and resentments. I want them to feel real, both sympathetic and infuriating, and then force you to deal with them." I was reminded here of something Jeff wrote in a blog post 2 years ago, when he announced the release of Avadon 3: "When I was designing Avadon, I was very ambitious. Lynaeus, the continent on which the series takes place, has 5 friendly nations and six hostile nations, each of which has its own politics, history, and so on. I wanted to make a whole world... In the end, however, I was just one designer... There are so many factions, wings of government, conflicts, controversies ... Too much for me to keep track of, too much to fully develop. I wrote so much lore I could never find a place to fit into the game. There were so many locations I just wasn't able to give enough time to... My eyes were bigger than my stomach on this one." It will be interesting to see how this is handled. "The game system will be skill-based. There won't be character classes. You can pick your skills from four different trees, hopefully allowing for a wide variety of different builds and strategies." I can't tell -- is this just a reworking of the Avernum Remake skill system, or is it like taking four skill trees from Avadon and making them available to everyone? (I have my own opinions about whether or not classless systems increase the variety of builds and strategies -- my answer is "almost never" -- but I also remember Jeff's heartfelt support for classless systems in the help text of Exile I, so, OK, nostalgia pass.)

I hope so. The Kickstarter says almost nothing about art except that it's expensive, and that stretch goals will pay for iPhone art and an extra realm's art.

I was excited when I heard about the perspective change, and still am. But I too was surprised by the art here. Maybe it's not final? Something about it just sorts of brings me to "RPG Maker built-in artwork". I have a reaction to the premise too but I will hold off on that till I read the upcoming blog post All of that said, it is LOVELY to see that the funding goal has been reached already. The goal was met literally within a day...

Lv Int PS SC B.Focus Average length 20 9 2 0 5 4.813 20 9 3 0 5 (again?) 5.150 20 33 2 0 5 5.075 20 33 2 0 5 (again?) 5.163 20 55 2 0 5 5.038 20 9 10 10 5 6.088 20 9 10 10 5 (again?) 5.900 20 33 10 10 5 6.063 20 33 21 10 5 (5 Luck) 5.838 20 9 21 0 5 5.188 OK, I put your results into table form above, because that was a lot of text to get through... A few observations. 1) For some reason, you did not do any tests without 5 levels of Blessing Focus. The "+% to blessings/curses" effect, just as seen in Blessing Focus, affects duration in a way that stat boosts do not -- and adds a lot of variance. It seems like you'd get much clearer results from testing this *without* any Blessing Focus. 2) 20 trials is probably not precise enough for these distinctions -- as you can see, the difference between your 1st and 2nd sets of trials for your initial setup had average durations about a third of a round apart. This is greater than the difference between results you saw from several setups that were not the same -- suggesting that there is a lot of potential variation in this data. 3) Only two of your setups did not raise Priest Spells and Spellcraft in tandem, and one of those was contiminated by the random inclusion of Luck, which was never tested in isolation. 4) Given that one effect at work here is almost certainly percentile in nature, it would be worth also investigating this with a much shorter or much longer buff. The relative impact of different factors could easily be different. 5) It does indeed look like Spellcraft is the only thing having a meaningful impact here -- where there are already 5 levels of Blessing Focus, and there is a reasonably long-lasting buff at bat.

Yup, this is as expected! Where damage spells have two inputs to spell strength -- the number of dice (which comes from stats, level, etc.) and the damage multiplier (which comes from "+X% to magic damage" effects) -- buffs and debuffs also have two parallel inputs to duration. As you observed, for buffs and debuffs, the effect of the first input is rolled for only once when the spell is cast; it affects all targets' durations equally. The second input is rolled for separately for each target. So, indeed, you only get that individual variance when you have a "+X% to blessings/curses" effect on the caster (and maybe Spellcraft does this also, I can't remember), which is why I knew to mention that when I saw your first data set. I don't know the exact mechanics but I would hypothesize they are something like this. 1. The game rolls a base duration when the spell is cast. The minimum duration is set for each spell/ability. The maximum duration = minimum + 1 + 0.05 for each "die" of ability strength. (The 0.05 is also set for each spell/ability, so there are some it is just 0 for). (IIRC, if you edit the defs files to create a PC with 0 in all relevant stats who can still cast the spell, you can see a narrower bit of variation.) 2. The base duration is either rounded or truncated. This is why often the highest result you get when you test is fairly rare, but the others are more evenly distributed. 3. Each character gets a chance to modify the duration. I think this happens separately for each character because for damaging attacks, this step is used both to apply the attacker's multiplier, and the defender's resistance. Basically, the "+X% to blessings/curses" is applied here, but there is some variance in how much of the multiplier is actually used; I think this happens with damaging attacks, too, but for those, a difference of a point or two is so small we don't usually notice. So 5 rounds with a +20% modifier might turn into 5.4, 5.8, 6.1, etc. 4. The duration is again either rounded or truncated. Again, just a guess. As you can see, the resulting difference is not a huge deal for most spells, but it can matter for some, especially when the base duration is very short. Finally, a procedural note for your testing. Did you wait for existing buffs to wear off, before casting the spell again? I can't remember, but I don't think new buff durations that are shorter than existing buff durations will overwrite the existing buff durations. This could mess with the data (though in which direction I'm not sure).

You're definitely right that the duration of blessing spells doesn't change much; that's why I mention it only in contexts where the blessings is legitimately critical, like Haste level 3. (Note though that 12 data points are definitely not enough to collect useful data on anything with this much variance; also that any % bonus to blessings/curses effects your characters have will affect this, just in case you had any of those sitting around on items or traits.) Also, I appreciate that the character's names were changed to protect the innocent, hehe Re damage multipliers, basically, the game calculates a single multiplier when you attack. It starts at 100%, and any bonuses or penalties to melee damage, missile damage, or spell damage (as appropriate) are added and subtracted to that 100%. This means all modifiers are summed together, whether they come from magic items, skills, traits, racial bonuses, buffs, debuffs, cloak spells, the inherent DW penalty, etc. (There are two exceptions: extra critical hit damage is calculated separately -- that's why Lethal Blow doesn't suck -- and I believe some action-specific bonuses, like show up on some higher level spells, are calculated separately.) Hopefully that was more helpful than what I said above. Oh, and good point about cold resistance being the best resist for nephils.

Cool, this is useful! A few notes: Buffs -- Some of the buffs you listed as working "perfectly" with low Intelligence may be a bit misleading, as the short term spells all receive a chance of a duration increase with Intelligence (and Mage Spells and level and all the stuff that boosts damage spell dice). Mostly this doesn't matter, but for some key effects with short default durations (read: Haste level 3) it actually does make a meaningful difference. Healing Spells -- Are you sure they receive a bonus from Intelligence, specifically? I don't think I checked that in A3 specifically, and it's possible that has changed, but in past games they have often received bonuses from Priest Spells and level, but not from Int. Parry -- I assume you know that the Parry check is completely separate from the regular evasion check. You might want to clear that up as you keep talking about both as "to evade" which could easily be misunderstood. Sniper -- You probably knew I was going to say this, but your description omits two key limitations: that it will only activate once per turn, and that a single activation of either Sniper or Haste prevents the other one from activating that turn, too. I know we disagree on how useful Sniper is, but this is just inaccurate. Races and traits -- The way you phrase the math here is misleading. For example, you write "If they do that, they’ll always be 10% stronger than humans with pole weapons no matter what other traits humans get". What you actually mean is that they'll always have +10 to their percentile damage modifier, compared to a human with pole weapons. That is not the same thing as always being 10% stronger, given how easy it is for said damage modifier to surpass 150% or even 200%, if you use the appropriately themed Cloak spell. A slith with a 210% will only deal 5% more damage than a human with a 200% multiplier. Also, your comparisons here really confuse me. For example, you start out by saying "Note that humans can spend their eight extra traits to buy five points of endurance and three skills that increase weapon damage by 3%" and then say "A slith pole user can use their 16 skill points to buy 5 points of endurance, the three traits that collectively give 9% more damage...". Basically, you compare humans who have bought 8 traits with sliths who have bought 16. This is bananas. Dual wielding -- Again, it's not a 35% damage penalty, it's a -35 penalty to the percentile damage multiplier. Which might mean -35% at the start of the game, but the effective impact shrinks as your multiplier increases. (Not that I'm advocating melee in A3, mind you :P) Finally, (mod hat on) I've shortened your post title because it is way too long for the board software to display gracefully in some places. For posterity, the original title was "I made a torment guide for Avernum 3: Ruined World, for players who want to lose as few parties as possible. I don't work for Spiderweb Software. These are just my opinions. This is intended for players who want to reload as seldom as possible." Please feel free to insert this somewhere in your post and/or to edit the shorter title to something you like better than what I put. Thanks!

I have not forgotten this. I'm halfway through the current set. May be a few days before I get caught up though.

Holy wow. I can't believe this bug still exists. 12 years now?

DC did not acquire Fawcett. Rather they sued them and ruined them; then, years later, licensed the rights to "Shazam" (Fawcett's trademarkless Captain Marvel) and associated characters; then, eventually, they purchased those characters outright. However, nobody cares about Shazam one way or the other, so it's hard to see how that ruined DC.

I don't think you can blame history; it wasn't an accident that things ended up this way. Marvel was designed from the 60's up to be a shared universe, but it wasn't because there weren't any golden age characters other than Namor and Cap (and the original Human Torch and Vision, etc.) -- those were just the only two they pulled forward. Whereas DC pulled a lot more forward, and their trappings too, like the fake cities that made it clear they were not part of our world. Two very different strategic approaches.

Yeah, I think that is mostly true today. But it wasn't always. Some of it is inevitable, as the role of "corporate" expands everywhere. And some of it I blame DC for. I mean, just look at the table of contents of this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_(DC_Comics) In fairness to DC, Marvel had alternate earths too, and Marvel probably did more nutty things with alternate timelines (#thanksxmen). But it was DC that became obsessed with constantly rebooting all of its characters, and using these pan-universe crossover events to do so. This forced them into every nook and cranny of every title. It took Marvel longer to go down that road. That said, Marvel's top heroes were much more likely to (a) be in a group, and (b) be strongly identified with that group rather than as their own title character. The sprawling X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four properties simply had more tendrils than Justice League ever did.

Also you've been a bit inconsistent about what does and doesn't count as an "event", so I may make a few additions as well as deletions (Kree-Skrull War, anybody?)

No no please share your rant. I assure you that I will be happy to agree, and equally happy to disagree. I just enjoy intelligent rants. (EDIT: Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Rants?)

Colonialism as an explicit theme in games like Archipelago Colonialism as an implicit theme in games like Puerto Rico Colonialism being omitted entirely in games like Settlers of Catan I'm not entirely sure what to do with these as I think the differences here are not very significant; I will however rate Colonialism's relevance in board games: As the degree of its relevance far outstrips the nuance with which it is ever approached or ignored. Lodges: Sorry, I just don't care about these at all really Your favorite fiction book: A very hard pick, but on the basis of it being a common enough choice that I won't feel the need to redact its identity, I'll go with _Fahrenheit 451_. Your favorite nonfiction author: Basically already represented in the redacted book, and would also be redacted, so there you go. Your favorite and least favorite chemical elements: Aluminium: "I own a tin foil suit, and I'm aluminum... it's extremely reflective, flashy and found in tacky products everywhere. It insulates itself from the external world using a layer of oxygen. And it tends to cause pointless linguistic flamewars." Ruthenium: I suppose Ruthenium, because I *think* it was the first to start the annoying trend of naming elements after their place of synthesis, even if said place was irrelevant to the element itself. David Bowie: There are some high highs and some low lows (and, of course, one very high Low), but in Bowie's case, it's very hard for the highs not to win out. The sheer quantity of output, and the consistent pace of it, for so many decades; the modulation and remodulation of so many styles. Your favorite Buffy episode: "The Gift" still makes me cry, and is an easy answer -- but there are so many runners-up. Your least favorite video game boss: Hmm.... great question! And choices: do I go with a painfully hard boss, or a painfully annoying/problematic boss? After considering many worthy contenders (Lashiec, Baramos, etc.) I think I'm going to go with Garuda from the NES version of FF3, for a cluster of reasons: - He's an incredibly difficult boss, far outclassing what came before - He is most easily defeated with a single "just do this!" strategy, but that strategy is RNG-reliant, still requires grinding, and is easily handicapped by a probably unintended elemental resistance interaction - His fight is immediately preceded by a long (especially for an NES game) scene you are forced to watch, which makes NO sense and involves both the PCs and NPCs doing obviously stupid things - The transformation into Garuda makes no sense - Garuda's sprite was lifted directly from a published resource which gives historical mythological information about Garuda, which seems to have been badly misunderstood by the designers - At the time you fight him, you have recently been locked into a small area of the world map, losing access to all of your old shops (and grinding options) right at a time when they might be needed Your favorite of Slarty's PDNs: Also a very tricky question. The first one that comes to mind is "Opaque Obake" but then there's also "Displacer Iguana" and I still sort of love "TUXEDO MASH EDGAR SLAAAASH" -- and there are probably others I am forgetting that might take the cake, but, hoom, hmm, I'll go with the first one for now. Your favorite flower: Let's go with Callistemon, which should please Callie at least. Dogs Square One Television Alphabets Fahrenheit 451 A nonfiction book (identity redacted) Subtle, tasteful symbolism Chrono Trigger Cyberpunk Bilbo Baggins Waving Hands Titus Andronicus Hamlet Lord of the Rings "Zombie" (Cranberries song) Pet Sounds "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" Spirited Away "The Gift" (Buffy episode) Cait Sith Exile II: Crystal Souls Nethergate Billie Holiday "Nephil's Gambit" Kierkegaard Gilgamesh Slartibartfast The Tarot Deck Madeline Kahn Hades Storm (X-Men) Hugs The deck of many things Seinfeld Egizia Coffee Public libraries Thai food Croissants "Opaque Obake" Les Misérables (novel) Text search functions David Bowie Bossa nova Disco Jiji (character) Mice Upton Sinclair History File compression Sliced bread Bagels Subways (transit) Sailor Moon (first anime) Marie Curie Medusa P-zombies Ducks Deontology Aluminium Willow Rosenberg Prossis-Bok Working out Russian literature Simon & Garfunkel Nina Simone Sea slugs Samuel Clemens Ninjas Circular saws Jiji (in Nikki's lap) Inanna Ziggurats Reality TV AD&D 2nd Edition Maggie Simpson Callistemon (flower) Shamhat Ghosts Frankenstein (novel) Tiki drinks Snakebird Ice cream Vancian magic Utnapishtim Juvenalian satire 70's cars Georg Cantor Shanti AD&D 1st Edition w/ UA —Alorael C++ Good grammar Macbeth Cor Blok's Tolkien art Bacon Falafel Fall Black Panther Party Henry Wallace OK Computer Catharism Cookie Monster Minotaur (Knossos) Zombies (necromantic) Romeo and Juliet The Northern Lights The Mary Tyler Moore Show Speedy Gonzales screenshot Saunas Vinyl records Trumpets Chainsaws Linux Sans serif fonts The aesthetic qualities of the Greek alphabet The Queen is Dead Schuyler Colfax Gargoyles Roguelikes Chess Geneforge 1 Lady Gaga Video games Super Mario series Lawsuits Wine A Midsummer Night's Dream Robert Heinlein Heracles Jeff Vogel Ravens Smartphones Whiskey Hydra (Lernaean) Heathers Xanth series Isaac Asimov The Evil Overlord List Arthur C. Clarke Match Game Liches Exile III: Ruined World The Cranberries (band) Bartenders Forum lurkers Black Panther (character) Sock puppets The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog Flamingos Cluny the Scourge The Chronicles of Narnia "Mr. Green Genes" Muppet Babies Paul Simon Penguins TLC Rhinos Civilization (human phenomenon) Beer Frodo Baggins Mexican food Bob Dylan Richard Garfield Ontology Chimera (Lycian) Science museums Achilles Ella Fitzgerald Pelicans BitTorrent Nevermind Tom Waits 70's prog Sliths Rats Avernum II: Crystal Souls Slarty Ranks Everything Ranking lists "...Gottfried Reads Fifty Shades..." Heavy-handed symbolism Princess Peach Elephants Donuts Cats Trombones The Muppets The Eiffel Tower Solidarność screenshot Civ II Helen of Troy Zorro Revolutions Casablanca Avadon series Goldfish (snack) Gilbert Gottfried Football (American) Nephils Star Wars original trilogy James Garfield Jury nullification Avernum 4 Batman Cinnamon rolls Hubble space telescope History museums Pegasus 2001: A Space Odyssey The Beatles Aretha Franklin Homestar Runner They Might Be Giants Sherlock Holmes Tennis Posting games Inspector Peanut Subinfeudation Solitaire Werewolves The Big Lebowski Nelson Rockefeller Goldfish (fish) Art museums King Arthur The aesthetic qualities of the Hebrew alphabet Zeus Windows 3.1 Summer Carmen McRae Richard Cheese Bark spider Spiders Mummies Dolphins Metahumor Nixon's foreign policy Sparkling water Grant Wood Paprika Spam (meat) Cabaret (film) Harry Potter series Peanuts The White Rabbit Standard playing cards Norman Rockwell The electoral college Nick Cave MMORPGs Table saws Horatian satire "This is a Trent Reznor Song" Google Odysseus Xian Skull (item) Spam (e-mails) Running Dead trees Puggsy Checkers Facebook Runtz Pineapple pizza The LP rendition of Slarty's voice Gilmore Girls Hockey Wheel of Time series George Clooney Film noir Abugidas Ruthenium Vitamin C supplements Twelfth Night Blazing Saddles Louis Armstrong Discarded chewing gum Art Garfunkel The Trojan Horse 70's movies New York City Abjads "Lackadaisical" The March Hare Dick van Dyke's accent as Bert "Mr. Tambourine Man" The Matrix GIFTs (Spiderweb) Godwin's Law Poseidon The aesthetic qualities of hierogylphics Russian Bimetallism Beowulf (character) Angry Birds Alf screenshot Colonialism's relevance in board games Jackalopes Pyramids with eyes on them Centaurs Moderate rain all day Korean food Microsoft Phantom stair step (bottom) Word Rescue Elvis Presley Minecraft Galactic Core Bumper stickers Novelty mugs Apple Ferris wheels Mechanical pencils Vultures John Wayne Amazon The post that asks me to rank itself Virtue ethics Roller skates Greek yogurt KISS (principle) Agamemnon Salty liquorice Westerns Friends Getting a triple word score in Scrabble Phantom stair step (top) Turkey/cat video Dieselpunk Life of Brian AOL ELIZA Zombies (infectious) 80's fashion KISS Hipgnosis Expensive wristwatches Salt lamps Cologne My Little Pony Whaling Rudyard Kipling The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom The War on Drugs (band) Queen (band) Fifty Shades of Grey Jane Austen books The Byzantine Empire The Let's Play series Stubbing your big toe Basketball Baseball "Acceptable in the 80's" (song) Halloween Garuda (FF3) Bertrand Russell Cats (musical) Stubbing your little toe Pirates Elfpunk Ennui Charles Dickens "Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" (song) Hercule Poirot The Easter Bunny Ferrets Soccer Robin Hood (character) Star Wars prequel trilogy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas the Tank Engine Freefall (webcomic) "2500 things Mr. Welch..." Fedoras Johnny Cash Deconstructivism The Microsoft Office Assistant Steampunk Cyclops (X-Men) Kitten/rat box Athena John Calhoun (politician) Mr. Toad of Toad Hall The Xavier Files BGG Top 10 Ethical intuitionism Sock puppets (fake accounts) Birthdays The Barber Paradox Turnips Anchovy pizza Wasps U2 Wings (band) Fictional names that use a lot of apostrophes Twilight Saga Deconstructionism Final Fantasy VIII "Stuff from the 90's!" (song) The Olympics The Big Bang Theory (TV show) Consequentialism The Crusades King Leopold Handlebar mustaches (i.e., thin and spindly ends)

It's still working. Sounds like you have a problem with your internet connection at home.

Keep in mind this thread is about AEFTP. While A2 and A3 are very similar, they are not identical when it comes to benchmarks for levelling. Also, Minion, your damage formulae are incomplete. You have left out both the 1 "free" attack die, and the extra attack dice equal to [level / 2]. Additionally, you have neglected to check for other percentile damage boosts, which are all summed together. It is not hard to reach +50% for example, at which point that +3% for Blademaster only increases your total damage by an effective +2%.

Good questions, and good answers! Woo.

That's probably mostly true, but I'm not sure anyone has the data sets to work with. Basic demographic characteristics would not be hard to cull, for sure. As far as actual personal identification goes, I'm not sure the data sets you'd need to do that actually exist. This is a possibility that I thought about way back when I started this thread, and I'm OK with it (b/c of the lack of significance of anything I've done on these forums). However, I would ask that we not discuss the prospects of doing it (nor do we actually do it) in this thread -- it's still a little bit creepy, and that will get me to end this project faster than anything else will.

Also, I meant to comment on this... with what's been asked about thus far, I suspect this would be a nearly impossible task.