Slariton

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!")?

Yes, Jeff was pretty clear about that. Also, if armor effect really was random as you suggest, then that means we would expect to see HUGE damage variances when a character wearing lots of armor is hit, much huger than the variances when an unarmored character is hit. And that's not the case at all.

 

Also, about Hardiness: Hardiness does not give 1% armor per point. It gives 2% armor per point, BUT this bonus is not displayed, AND it is subject to the 10-cap many skills have, so 10-11 hardiness gives 20% armor, 12-13 gives 22%, 20-22 gives 30%, 23-25 gives 32%, and so on. That means that your test at 20 Hardiness is really providing 30% damage reduction. So reducing the range max from 11 to 8 makes perfect sense. Reducing the range min from 5 to 1 makes less sense, but because the numbers are so tiny, I really think it's a min value or rounding issue. To clarify this issue, tests with bigger damage values are needed.

 

Also note that Luck displays a 1% armor bonus per point, but Luck does not actually provide any armor at all.

 

Protection reduces all damage by 25%. Steel Skin does as well. They are cumulative. Prismatic Shield reduces elemental damage by 0-50% determined randomly for each attack.

You're right. Err, not sure how I missed that part. Sorry!

 

So, you're right, this is pretty weird. Now I am thinking these results may be affected by some kind of minimum value requirement imposed at some point in the calculation, or by a weird way of dealing with remainders. The data would probably be easier to interpret if it dealt with a much stronger attack (say, ranging up to 50 damage). Obviously, such data is also more of a hassle to collect.

You're making a false assumption here. You cannot directly see the amount of decrease in damage hardiness causes. Why? Damage is rolled randomly EACH TIME an attack hits. So, unless you have more information than you are giving (for example, if the attack had a damage range of 5-10 against 0 hardiness and 1-2 against 20 hardiness, over many trials of each), you can't draw that conclusion.

I've never seen anything to discount the conclusion the damage is random, but armor % reduction is consistent. If you have new data I'd love to see it, though.

There IS a level cap, but it's NOT 55. It's level 60.

 

It is, however, highly unlikely (and possibly impossible) to get your level anywhere near this high without cheating. Singletons have been around level 45 at the end of the game, IIRC.