Aoslare

Capping hit chance at 95% (and 5%) is a very old RPG convention that stems from D&D and its 1d20 combat rolls. It has displayed remarkable robustness for a rule that isn't essential, showing up in RPGs all over the place. That may be because it makes sense. You can always get a lucky dodge somehow, can't you?

No.

 

There is a Reputation stat, but more is better (as opposed to having to choose between pleasing different factions). You get more reputation mainly from completing quests and helping people.

AHA!

Okay, now this makes sense. Correct me if I'm wrong Stillness, but basically, you keep track of what you believe separately from what you argue in the debate. That makes sense. It's very reasonable to say "I believe X and Y, but on the strength of evidence I can only argue Y."

The only problem is that you tend to mention your beliefs in the same breath as your argument, which makes it hard for others to distinguish between them.

Putting aside several issues related to how evolution is being evaluated here, I really have to ask: how the heck does intelligent design seem more plausible or likely (as you have been arguing) under these criteria? When have we observed intelligent design of species? (Don't say we've observed humans designing things and that's analagous to ID, because we've also observed speciation analogous to common descent.) Where are the witnesses? How can we reproduce it?

Gah.

Ooh... you know what else this means? It's possible to get the AP bonuses from both the Cryos Spear and Quicksilver Bulwark, which means you can get 1 AP higher than we originally thought.

 

8 base

+4 spear, shield, sandals, armor

+1 Fast on Feet

+2 Quick Strike

--

15 before Haste

22 with Haste

 

Fast on Feet is inconsistent, of course, but you can still get to 14 without FoF. With Haste, that gives you 21 AP per turn. It wasn't possible to break 19.5 without Fast on Feet, before. Now you can get a reliable four hits per turn. Woo.

 

Four a 4 person party, this makes it easier to get the 4th PC to 10 AP per turn using high Quick Strike as well, since there are so many weapons that boost QS.

*blinks*

 

Is this really true? Wow, what a powerful undiscovered exploit. Wow.

The problem is that you haven't been saying "This is conceivable in theory, but I haven't seen a detailed theory as to how it could occur." You've been saying "This is impossible. It just can't happen."

Fresh Exiles.

 

No, seriously. The Darkside Loyalists, assuming they have some real political power, make this plausible as a plot device.

 

The real limiting factors are that we know from other comments of Jeff's that you can still be humans, nephils, or sliths, and you can still use the same unusually varied set of skills. There aren't many occupations that welcome multiple races and have such a varied skill set. Adventurer. Bandit. Uh... Unspecified Services, which is basically the same as the first two. Prisoners? Hostages? Mercenaries?

DIE. But seriously, this isn't even funny.

"How do you measure specified complexity?"

 

I think it would help, Stillness, if you just explained in your own words. You don't need to give lots of details, and it's totally OK if you want to measure it qualitatively rather than quantitatively. But "qualitative" is a quality of measurement, it doesn't actually explain how it is measured. That's what needs explaining.

 

If you mean to define it the way the Supreme Court defined indecency -- "I know it when I see it" (but can't explain how I make that distinction) -- then just come out and say so.

The first replacement topic can't be replied to, Nioca.

The original topic was eaten by the message board software, and the replacement topic appears to have fallen prey to a similar bug. Here's a second try at a replacement topic for the "Regulation" debate.

 

N.B.: Cat pictures will be edited out mercilessly. If you break the thread, justice will be delivered Shaper style, preferably with a Discipline Wand.

Synergy, don't be a -- oh, wait. Never mind.

Andrew Hunter has also been doing art for Spiderweb since the early days of Exile, FWIW.

As Jeff has commented before, there are elements of the Geneforge engine that lend themselves less readily to scenario design than Avernum's.

 

The big one is that it's much less generalizable. BoE and BoA have the potential to fit practically any world you can imagine, and can fit most generic fantasy worlds without significant added effort. Geneforge really only fits the Geneforge world. This would severely limit the number of scenarios likely to emerge from Blades of Geneforge, and would even more severely limit the number of people who would even be interested in using the scenario editor.

 

Also: One of the easiest and most popular ways to customize BoE and BoA scenarios is with custom graphics. Geneforge engine graphics require more frames, and altogether a lot more work to get a set of sprites that actually looks reasonable.

 

The poor showing of BoA is the nail in the coffin, but I wouldn't expect to see BoG even if BoA had seen Avernum 4 level sales.

There will not be Blades of Geneforge. There will never be Blades of Geneforge. There are numerous reasons for this, which involve not only the performance of BoA but also the fact that Jeff has said it doesn't make sense, for numerous tactical reasons related to scenario design. And he's right.

 

There will never be Blades of Geneforge. Do I need to put it in the forum header?

No, war tralls aren't even good as meat shields.

Clearly you should spend more time playing Exile 1 and 2.

 

Also, let's remember that Avernum 5 is being written by Jeff... not Drakefyre.

The brokenness reportedly applies to actually factoring in the strength bonus to damage, not to displaying the strength bonus. All versions display it.

What is this, the Anama Sutra?

I did write a detailed piece on G3, it just never went up as its own site and wasn't linked to much. It also was less interesting because it was so one-sided:

 

Broken Vlish: a too long analysis

In one of those games -- either G2 or G3, I forget -- Glaahks didn't actually cause stunning. They caused slowing instead, just like Vlish. This wasn't easy to tell since all strong attacks tended to cause minor stunning in those games.

Aha, here's your problem. There have been errors in the ingame descriptions of creations and creation stats all the way back to G1 that have never been fixed, with new ones introduced as well.

You don't need a large investment to cast good spells at all, outside of Battle Magic. It is comparably large compared to the investment needed in shaping, though, since that is practically nothing.

I believe the Dragons were always an exception, as were Micah and Erika.