Slawbug

Every point of gymnastics (unless you buy a whole bunch manually, which is expensive and not worth it anyway) gives you a 5% bonus to dodge. EVERYTHING. That's nothing to laugh at all.

 

The pole bonus is nice, but nephils get an equivalent bonus to bows and throws. Bows are good for everyone in A4, melee fighters included. They have no drawbacks and drastically increase your tactical options.

 

On the other hand, on higher difficulty levels, enemies have so much HP it will take numerous attacks to kill them whether or not you have a few extra points of weapon skill. At that point the key to taking down your enemies actually becomes minimizing the damage they do to you. Dodging ability is critical, especially for someone who will be in the front lines. Having unlimited, good range attacks is also important.

 

Finally, don't be so quick to judge Quick Action as providing a huge advantage to melee/poles over bows. 2 bonus points to AP -- easy to come by once you hit the second half of the game -- mean that an archer gets two shots to the enemy of his choice EVERY round. A pole fighter with 10 AP will frequently either not get two attacks because he has to move, or will get two attacks against an enemy he cares less about killing, because it's the one that's next to him.

 

If you just want the "best" from a pure gameplay perspective, there is no reason to play humans or sliths in A4. Open and shut case.

Except, of course, that the pants are guaranteed to reduce every hit by 1 damage, whereas changing blades just increases one end of your damage range by 1, for an average damage increase of half a point. Pants are better than wave blades!

There really needs to be some kind of equivalent to the...

 

Hold on, this deserves its own topic.

 

EDIT: Be enlightened.

But canisters don't actually give you access to more essence. They basically rewrite part of your biology. Ditto with the geneforge. They use essence to achieve these effects, but the effects are not the same thing as the essence; the effects are not a direct use of that essence, they are the something that can be done as a result of what the essence does.

 

Regardless, shaping ability obviously doesn't depend on canister or geneforge use.

The games have definitely never said essence was injected into shapers. Isn't the basic idea that all living things have essence in them, and that shapers learn to harness their own essence in a specialized way, presumably growing better at it as they gain in skill?

Well, Infernal used to have "666" in her name

In Exile, though, it's rather significant, since the minimum armor damage stacks. It's a whole lot better to wear six pieces of armor that protect from 1-1 damage, than one piece that protects from 1-10.

 

Also, don't forget that in E1 and E2, nobody wore pants.

Yeah, but their resistance doesn't come from the fact that they are leaders. (Perhaps it is not an accident that serviles with resistance to shaper charm tend to be smart and strong and are likely leaders, but that's a different question.)

 

As for being bizarrely smart and strong and being able to learn things and increase in skill at a truly incomprehensible rate -- well, that seems to be a given, regardless of race.

DV, that's simply not the way the shaper forcefulness ("leadership") has worked in previous Geneforges. Yes, it works wonders on meek, obeissant serviles. But it works nearly as well on meek, obeissant non-shaper humans. I don't remember it being very effective on even the random serviles in Kazg. And servile leaders among the Awakened and the Takers in 1 and 2 aren't one whit more vulnerable to it than shapers are. Neither can be at all commanded, both get mildly better but usually inconsequential new dialog options with high leadership skill.

Quoted for intelligence. This is a really good solution. It allows strength to still matter, while getting rid of the annoying "I need to make four trips to loot the giant fort" syndrome.

One of Jeff's goals, with most of the positive changes in A4, was to reduce waste of time and annoyance factor. In some ways, this succeeded. Changing encumbrance to focus on equipment worn would be a great way to keep on doing that.

That makes sense.

It suddenly occurs to me that if only you threw in a lot of words like "agathism" and "postmodernism" into Geneforge alongside all of that philosophizing about the nature of existence, the games would read a lot like a Terror's Martyr scenario.

*stifled laughter*

Edit: Vlish, this is Geneforge, there is no time-based expiration on the HP buffs. Also, I think that at least one of them gives a set HP bonus (though I may be thinking of A4 here myself) which would, of course, seem like a much bigger bonus to an agent.

I thought I remembered the HP buffs (possibly just one of them) having an effect proportional to the amount of HP you have. Thus, guardians would benefit from it significantly more than agents. However, it may have been proportional to level or endurance but not actual HP value, in which case there is no real guardian bonus.

 

I may be misremembering, though.

I still want to see an Ornkithopter.

This will never happen.

Why do I say that? Jeff has always insisted on making every spell or ability potentially accessible to every character. When he implemented classes in G1 -- a first for him -- he still made sure that every class could use every skill.

(Exception: there were a handful of spells that the Romans couldn't use in Nethergate. However, playing as Romans or as Celts were basically two entirely different scenarios, so I'm not sure I would count this.)

Yes, you're wrong. Your guardian strategy sounds like it will fail miserably unless you are playing on a low difficulty and fighting enemies weaker than you are.

That was me.

 

The thread is Agent vs. Guardian .

I think this problem crops up with magic-heavy strategies in all of Jeff's games, though. Jeff relies heavily on spell point availability to balance the power of magic. Admittedly, the use of essence in addition to spell points for spells in Geneforge is a very nice way to do this. Nonetheless, this means that a mage in any game with a pile of energy potions or essence pods is rarely going to be challenged. This is why swarms at least have a *chance* of stopping an agent: if they're too weak, they may simply have too little spell energy to fire their favorite spell off enough times. Individual enemies can just be picked off one by one, with plenty of time to restore energy.

 

I guess this is kind of symptomatic of modern RPGs, where magic is dispensed Monty Haul style. RPGs where you actually have to conserve your MP, where you get beaten up little by little and have to endure, are a thing of the past. I just expect more from Spidweb.

Unless, of course, Dominate is weakened.

Hostile Effect Resistance doesn't protect against slowing.

They do make a difference. However, if you put a lot of points into strength and the appropriate fighting skills, and use good weapons, it is pretty easy to get your base chance to hit so far above 99% (the max) that you will never notice a difference from those penalties.

That's excellent. Not only does that fit well with any story, and make the game more enjoyable, it also forces hardcore players to deviate from the tried and true formulas (agent pumping battle magic using firebolt, etc) and be more creative, which they will enjoy. I'm very glad to hear this.

Hip hip hooray!

car 54, where are you.

"Geneforge Gaiden"

Out of curiosity, what game did s/he think was doing the spying? And was it anything particular about the game ("Adze-Haakai is really a spycam!")?