Aoslare

Except that you don't. We neglected to mention Quick Action in the above comparison, which is obviously essential to melee. My comparison was meant to be conservative, as I said; a more generous investment in melee skills would obviously favor the Servile more. But even with that minimal investment, if you want both melee and magic skills, the Servile was better by the numbers.

You are right that I don't feel the need to use the most discounted category as much as possible. I feel the need to use the best category as much as possible. And you are right that magic deserves more attention than melee for almost any character, including the Servile build we are discussing.

That does NOT automatically mean you're better off getting the magic discount. If you could take the Servile's starting stats with the Infiltrator's skill costs, there's no question that would be even better. But the Servile's starting stats (combined with the melee discount) end up making more of a difference in terms of skill points than the Infiltrator's magic discount.

You DO NOT start out with more and better magic ability. Well, the Infiltrator gets one point in Spellcraft, and one in Mental Magic, so it's minutely better. But getting up to 5 points in a category costs about 7 for a Servile vs about 4 for an Infiltrator. That's hardly prohibitive for a Servile. You start with 15 skill points and will be at level 4 or 5 before you even have the chance to buy any spells that need skill boosting. The spells in Illya don't require very high magic stats either, so you're likely to hit level 15 or 20 before you *require* higher magic stats. The Servile might well boost ahead of time, anyway.

This is all true. However, there's no reason a Servile can't do this practically as well as an Infiltrator.

Actually, the last part isn't true. Missile weapons almost exclusively use the exact same attack abilities as spells do. Icy Spray isn't going to work if an Icy Crystal doesn't, and so on.


This is patently false.

First of all, a Servile doesn't need to pump melee abilities at all early on. You can, but you don't need to.

Second, it will cost a Servile about 10 and 14 respectively to get 6 Leadership and 8 Mechanics. You can get that by level 3. That leaves you with about 30 skill points to use on magic skills, just within Illya Province!

The lag in magic skill does not really increase. It is fairly constant. Although the Servile has to pay an extra point every buy, the buys get more expensive for both classes. So the Servile will pretty much always be 2 points behind in any magic skill given the same investment. For Spellcraft it is about 1 point behind since it starts out more expensive for both, but the Infiltrator also gets the bonus point of Spellcraft.

I believe you 100%. I also believe that you did not use skill points to the same ends for these two characters.

No, I have acknowledged this point from the beginning! Of COURSE magic is more powerful and more important! But that does not automatically make the magic discount the most critical thing. This is why you DO have to do the numbers out.

Therefore, I think Thuryl's idea is a good one. Post your stats. Let's have a duel with statistics. ~_~

I had the same experience.

 

Be glad you didn't get to the Eastern Gallery. Imagine a 3x5 (or so) set of map squares with mostly interconnected basements, with chitrachs everywhere.

 

Actually, don't. It's painful even to imagine it.

Chitrachs were not always this annoying. Sure, they were always hack n slash fests, but I remember them as being sort of interesting when they first appeared in E2. Back then, of course, they did things other than just attack.

 

The real problem is having about 30 map sections (counting the basements) filled with Chitrachs. That was utterly ridiculous.

What the heck? Have you listened to anything I've said?

We can be more precise than saying getting three categories to 9 is significant. It's a difference of 22 skill points.

In my comparison, I suggested FAR less than getting to 9 in melee, missile, and parry. I actually suggested getting to 4 in strength, 7 in melee, 0 in missile, and 0 in parry.

You keep assering "cheap magic ability" even though the difference is not that huge. And you are again asserting the essence is a "big payoff" without responding to what I said about the extra essence earlier.

Making unexplained assertions while refusing to address what the other person says is not debating, it's trolling.

Synergy, you respond to everything I say by making the same assertions. So, let's make this simple.

 

If you never ever want to use melee (and don't care about your HP), obviously the Infiltrator is better.

 

If you never ever want to use magic (and don't care about your essence), obviously the Servile is better. Obviously, this is also extremely foolish.

 

If you want to use melee and magic, the two classes will both function fine. The Servile will do this in fewer skill points, however.

 

...

 

If you are going to keep asserting this "speed of gaining magic" advantage you claim the Infiltrator has, please address my point from the last post. It doesn't exist.

I am guessing those are the Drakon, War Trall, and Gazer canisters in Khima-Uss.

Synergy, I am not saying your experience is invalid. But just as the numbers are no good detached from the game, the reverse is true; you need to look at how your experience intersects with the class advantages and disadvantages.

 

Nobody is questioning that magic is more important than melee. But as Penumbral Thahd pointed out, and as you acknowledged in your suggestion of 9s across the board in magic, the important thing is just getting to the point that you can cast the spells.

 

Infiltrators DO NOT get magic earlier than Serviles. They start with the same skill in BM/MM/BM, the Servile just has to pay 1 more skill point per level. So there is WAY more than enough time for the Servile to accrue the required skill before the spells become available.

 

Blessing magic IS NOT more powerful with a higher skill level. It just lasts a little longer. (If this were not the case, then Blessing Magic and Spellcraft would be by far the most valuable skills and Infiltrators might well be the best class. It's not the case.)

 

You are saying that magic is better, therefore the Infiltrator is better. The problem is that the Infiltrator really isn't any better at magic.

You can get +6 to Fire Shaping and +4 to Battle and Magic Shaping from items. Lifecrafters start with 2 in Fire Shaping, so it's worthwhile to buy 2 levels at any rate.

 

EDIT: And unless Randomizer's list is incomplete, there are no Fire, Battle, or Magic Shaping canisters.

Yes, you will rarely miss. That's irrelevant; you will rarely miss with ANY PC attack that you invest in. (Anyway, spells miss less often; they have higher base to-hit rates and all your investment goes into skills that boost the to-hit rate, whereas Quick Action does not boost to-hit.)

By "reliable" I am not talking about hitting every turn, I am talking about reliably doing your best damage. Quick Action of 8-10 means you will get a double strike approximately 40-50% of the time. That's not reliable at all! You absolutely need those double strikes if you want your damage (in any given turn) to meet the damage you can get out of battle magic. In a prolonged fight i.e. vs Matala, it matters how many you get overall but not on any given turn, so 50% vs 70% is not a huge difference. If you are fighting a bunch of Wingbolts, being able to take out one per turn might mean the difference between life and death. A 50/50 chance to double strike is just not gonna cut it.

How does an Infiltrator have "earlier" magic strength, but a Servile doesn't have the same thing for combat skills? That was a completely gratuitous adjective.

Looking at effective skill differences, compared to a Servile, an Infiltrator will have about:

-4 Melee skill (str + melee weapons)
-4 Quick Action
-5 Parry
-1/4 HP

+2 Battle Magic
+2 Mental Magic
+2 Blessing Magic
+2 Spellcraft
+1/6 Essence

However, these differences are eroded for skills you only need to build up to a certain low point. If you aren't using Battle Magic to attack, then ALL the magic skills fall into that category, and Spellcraft isn't worth buying with skill points.

You need to explain this, because it sounds like bunk. You're right about melee damage, but the same thing certainly applies to battle magic damage, and a few extra points in blessing or mental magic are mostly useless, beyond what you need in order to get the most useful spells.

This makes NO SENSE.

You are saying that the Infiltrator's magic bonus lets it buy melee skills. But doesn't the Servile's melee bonus let it buy magic skills the same way? In terms of raw skill point cost, the bonus a Servile gets to combat is slightly bigger than the bonus an Infiltrator gets to magic. If you want both classes to get combat and magic skills, the Infiltrator is just not going to come out ahead. That's the balance of the numbers.

Okay, let's try this out.
Pumping the three magic stats up to 9 each will cost

16 + 20 + 16 = 52 for an Infiltrator
23 + 28 + 23 = 74 for a Servile

That's a difference of 22 skill points. Now let's look at melee stats. We'll consider an extremely minimal investment in melee stats -- enough to get each class to equal strength, a few cheap points in melee weapons -- getting it to 7, which is 4 buys for either class -- and enough to get Quick Action to 10. I still think that's a lamentably low QA, but you said it was enough, so we'll use that number.

Str + Melee + QA
00 + 06 + 16 = 22 for a Servile
08 + 10 + 34 = 52 for an Infiltrator

That's a difference of 30. The magic numbers ignored Spellcraft, in which the Infiltrator gets an effective +2, and the combat numbers ignored Parry, in which the Servile gets an effective +5.

There are also the HP and Essence differences. I don't think either of those is game-breaking, but a Servile has 10 HP for every 8 of the Infiltrator, while the Infiltrator has 7 Essence for every 6 of the Servile. The essence really won't make any difference at all unless you are making a bunch of creations -- and if you are doing that, neither battle magic nor melee weapons are going to make a huge difference to you. The HP bonus is similarly useful, but not critical, given the availability of Augmentation, Essence Armor, etc.

Also, the Servile gets an extra point in Mechanics (likely worth 5 or 6 skill points).

*facepalm*

Then why the heck are you debating how the numbers add up???

If you want to say "I enjoyed playing as an Infiltrator more. It felt more powerful to me," nobody's going to argue with you. But that's not what you've been saying.

Yeah, that is true.

 

I don't think it's totally worthless. If you're a lifecrafter who has already pumped Int up hugely, it might be worth it to spend 6 skill points to get your Drayks and Kyshakks an extra 2 levels each.

Edited.

 

I'd like to second Khoth's comment. This is a useful way to find stuff.

I just updated the tables, because I realized I accidentally made a major goof in the first version -- I did out Artila and Roamers as acid damage, even though they do magic damage.

 

The result is that Magic Shaping no longer looks like a viable path whatsoever. You don't have any answer to Wingbolts, which means you are probably forced to make Drayks, and at that point, you might as well have done Fire Shaping.

I think the number of tools needed is based on the proportional difference between object strength and mechanics skill. Trying to open a weak door with mechanics 1 vs mechanics 2 will often have a difference of multiple living tools.

Helping Moseh requires 10 Leadership, not 8. I suggested 8 natural leadership with the +2 from items. You could skip that, but there are plenty of 10 leadership requirements after Moseh. If you care so little for the XP bonuses I'd say just skip leadership entirely, don't even bother getting to a natural 6.

I agree the Infiltrator is overlooked, and not a bad class. But I take issue with the above statement. It takes significant investment in melee skills, and especially in Quick Action, if you want to have a reliable melee attack. Battle Magic is the same way. However, the importance with other spells mainly lies in getting high enough skill to cast the spells. Blessing spells increase in duration with skill but not in power, for the most part.

I'll say it agian. For the same investment in magic skills, an Infiltrator only gets 2 more per magic skill plus 2 more in Spellcraft compared to a Servile. The Servile gets larger bonuses to melee stats. The Servile gets 1/3 more HP, while the Infiltrator gets only 1/6 more Essence.

Good question.

It has, in fact, been removed from the game.

I am talking about quarantines specifically, not just any kind of barrier or boundary. E/A 2 thus did not have any quarantines. I'm willing to give a pass to E/A 1 ("exiling", the Abyss) as well.

But E/A 3 had a quarantined continent and a quarantined province, A4 had quarantined regions, G1 had a Barred island, G3 had a quarantined island chain. G4 has a quarantined province, though that isn't so bad because you are expected to violate the quarantine. VoDT revolved around a large Forbidden area. ASR had a quarantined area (though not at the beginning).

I realize that it's easier to make these kinds of games with artifical restrictions on where the player can go, but enough with the quarantines already. I don't want to have to make any comparisons to Lufia II.

The problem with A4 in this regard is just how movement was restricted. In A1 and A2, you had the same area to explore but you had (for the most part) unrestricted freedom to explore as you wished. There were any number of ways to get from Northeastern Exile to the Great Cave. But in A4, every possible route but one has been totally shut down, so it feels much less open and free. That's fine with the more linear plot, but for people who were used to the old Avernum I think it felt stifling.

Although G4 is handled similarly, the barriers feel much less arbitrary. First of all, it really does take a lot of effort to get through an entire region in G4; it doesn't feel like you are flying through the map and then stopping because of some random mayor. Also, the war and the tasks you are tasked with make the stopping points fit with the plot well, as opposed to A4, where justification seems more tenuous.

In G1, melee damage does 1-8. Period. I just rechecked the scripts.

 

In G4, The Oozing Blade does physical damage. Period. You can look in the scripts. Its ability is just a copy of the Broadsword ability with acid splash. You are right about the acid damage in G3, but that has been changed. Rotghroth damage also changed from acid+splash to physical+splash (and even the comments in the script file changed to reflecet this).

 

(Rotghroths do have 50% resistance to physical damage, which is unusually high, AND 3 points in Parry, but those reductions will affect all weapons.)

 

Next!

Section of Avernum? That's pretty much all of Avernum proper. This is well-established.

They don't. Fort Monastery is new, and Fort Ganrick was described even in E2 as a temporary construction built solely to hold off the goblins and nephils north of Draco. Grindstone is odd only because such villages usually get a special node with a dialog box rather than an actual town.

I would, however, still like to know what the heck happened to Fort Saffron during the Empire War.

Things I do not want to see:

- Quarantines

- Rentar-Ihrno

- A new humanoid race or culture with a religious ritual that involves touching the surface of three pools of water

- Clawbugs

- Pylons

First off, magic is overpowered. Magic is frequently overpowered in CRPGs and I think there have been a few overpowered bits in most of Jeff's games.

 

I also think I know why that is. Geneforge 1 was an exception to this rule. There were 12 spells, compared to 30-60 in other Spiderweb games. Creations were way more powerful. G2 toned down creations a little and added more spells which were wayyyy more powerful, and did not balance magic to compensate. Nobody noticed because the brokenness of Parry was far more obvious.

 

In G1, weapons did 1-8 while spells did 1-5, 1-6, 1-7... weapons had Quick Action AND Anatomy. And there were fewer enemy resistances all around, certainly including armor. This was very balanced, because melee opened you up to opponent's melee attacks under that AP system, plus it was less tactically flexible.

 

Now weapons do 1-4 or 1-5 while spells and creation breath range from 1-3 to 1-10. (Yes, SoT, nothing beats 1-5.)

 

The acid and ice blades and so on are definitely good, but I want to correct an error people keep replicating. They do NOT do special damage. They do physical damage. They cause status effects, but they only do physical damage directly.

 

Also, Quick Action has a problem. It's inconsistent. Even at very high levels there's a chance you'll not get the second strike. That's fine as far as damage output over time goes if you're attacking, say, Matala. But if you're just trying to knock down some wingbolts, it makes your task much harder since you have to allow for a range of damage. (I actually like that, but only if it's applied to everything; the problem is that spells do extremely consistent damage, while QA does not.) At moderate levels of QA, it's a coin-flip. Assuming it's the same as A4, which it looks like, 10 QA is a 50% chance of a second strike and 20 QA is a 75% chance.

I believe you need 2 points in Fire Shaping.

Apple Vlish come equipped with Bluefang, the latest in telepathic networking, and a motion sensor with an optional levitation attachment.

Cupertino, 2 December -- Apple unveiled the newest in their line of color-coordinated computers, the Vlish, today.

 

"Steve Jobs saw the success of the Nintendo Wii, and was furious that we had been scooped on a new marketing gimmick unrelated to technology, having a weird product name. So he created the Vlish," an anonymous employee said.

 

The Vlish comes in three colors -- tentacle burgundy, terror olive drab, and submission puce.

Their melee attacks should be almost exactly the same, except for the poison inflicted by the wingbolt. That is another bonus, it's true.

 

The damage gap also sounds huger than expected. Do you have more training in Magic Shaping than Fire Shaping?

 

EDIT: Vlish, I'm confused. Wingbolts actually have slightly more physical resistance ("armor") than kyshakks, 40% vs 30%. But neither creation has any resistance whatsoever to ice, fire, acid, or poison. None. Have you actually tested this or is it just an impression?