Ephesos

Quote: Originally written by Chief Spider watching The Simpsons: It's the truth! Somebody had to say it! It's a service to you! Now somebody had better raise my Karma for this... (P.S. Please make a contribution ) This is so, so sad... and you even asked for a Karma raising. You do realize what everyone's going to do now, right? This post is spam, unless you did mean it to be fan fiction.

Quote: Originally written by CPeters: Not a chance in hell of reconstructing all of them. Major towns, (The Castle, Tower of Magi, etc.) are a strong possibility. Primarily dependant on whether others already have, or failing that, I might decide to include it under a second scenario file like I'm (inevitably) going to do with the Vahnatai's lands. Read the thread next time. And why the new name, Grape Slime? Don't we have enough Archmages floating around?

Yep, that should work, as I had to do that once. Jeff was very understanding about it. (transferring files can be downright stupid at times)

Quote: Originally written by chicho: that will change when the tons of A4 opinology get posted here I don't see how you missed this thread in General. After all, it's 15 pages long. Avernum 4

Enough shameless plugs, Thralni. Nana Sarah, welcome to the sanity-sucking place known to us as the boards (the turtle pit is somewhere around here). Please don't just make one post and leave, because that happens way too often. And about the maps, it's more fun to play without them anyway... adds to the story.

Hm... I wonder if there's a way to give back the ability to use Arcane Shield... that'd make for some more challenging monsters. (Okay, I guess I remember monsters casting Arcane Shield from A2 or A3)

Let's see... I think I had something like this back in A3: Zev (human mage) Emerald (human priest) Beryl (nephil rogue/archer) Elerion (human fighter) And then, a party of druids for BoA: Roughscale (slith fighter-priest) Longclaw (nephil rogue-archer-priest) Bronzeleaf (human priest-fighter) Magnolia (human priest) Another BoA party: Karhallarn (human berserking-halberd-wielding-priest) Oryhara (human rogue-archer-mage) Pinebranch (human priest) Zev (human mage-archer) Main BoA party: Elerion (human fighter-priest) Beryl (nephil rogue-archer-mage) Ephesos (human mage) Lisscha (slith priest-fighter) A bit overlap between the parties.

Well, actually they can cast Arcane Shield (I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen). It just doesn't happen that often, because creatures with such high Mage Spells skill tend to waste it on Arcane Blow and Arcane Summon. A simulacrum of a PC? That'd be very strange, particularly since they probably wouldn't get any of the weapons held by the PC. So really, only simulacruming a PC mage or priest would be helpful. I don't see why monsters/NPCs shouldn't be able to cast Repel Spirit... I'd much rather have them unable to cast Arcane Summon. After all, who hasn't run into the fun problem of a vampire who Arcane Summons three vampires, who then Arcane Summon three more vampires...

Actually, the Special creature type solution is more of what I needed, though I might look into the idea of creatures which turn against you if Simulacrumed. Thank you for the help. I suppose I should've looked at that in the docs, really.

I think the best thing for spells and abilities to have is a balance between creativity and utility, if that's even possible. I mean, it has to be interesting, but semi-useful. The problem in Canopy was that most of them were either: -Utility spells which felt like taking the easy way out (i.e: Baldev), and were simple "roast everything" spells. (or) -Really interesting, quirky spells that usually didn't accomplish much, or just weren't usable that often (i.e: Naturshand). A good spell/ability would balance those two concepts, though I'm not certain how.

Well, I'm not sure, but you might want to look in the Tech. Support forum. (perhaps this topic should be moved there)

I imagine it'd be possible, just not very fun. Think about playing Lord Putidus for the length of A3, except everything around you can still cast magic. Not to say that it isn't an interesting concept, it'd just cause migraines.

Is there a way to make a creature immune to a specific spell? For instance, I'm planning on creating a creature immune to Simulacrum (because I think that'd be easier than eliminating Simulacrum from my scenario), and I wasn't sure whether magic resistance would quite achieve this.

Quote: Originally written by Chief Spider watching The Simpsons: The difference between Fireblast and Divine Fire is that Fireblast can kill goblins, but Divine Fire is able to kill goblin fighters. Most of the time. But at least DV only costs 7 SP! What? Goblins? Bolt of Fire can kill goblins. Fireblast and Divine Fire have the tendency to actually melt goblins down to their constituent pixels... they're that powerful. Unless you're talking about another scenario's goblins, like EM or Backwater Calls, that is. And Fireblast is infinitely better than Divine Fire, it's just that priests don't have access to the spell, so Divine Fire is the next best thing. Thralni? That question of yours is vague to the extreme.

I also go with the two fighter, two caster party. Usually one fighter has more assassination and bows skill than the other (who is simply a tank). When possible, I give both of them some basic spells. For the casters, one's focused on mage spells and one specializes in priest spells. The mage gets some ranged skills, and the priest gets some melee skill. It's worked fairly well thus far. EDIT: How many times has this thread been started?

Uh... practically speaking, a level 200 door lock will send the message that it's not supposed to be opened. I believe you've gone a bit far with that. As for your teleportation problem, it looks like it should work, as long as there's a town entrance set up for each of the towns you're teleporting to. Otherwise, the game won't notice that the party's outdoor location has changed. So, if you don't have an entrance specified in the outdoors for the target towns, you might need to use change_outdoor_location(short what_section_x, short what_section_y, short loc_in_sector_x, short loc_in_sector_y). It's a weird call, really. But it kind of works. I hope that made sense, and good luck with your scenario. Don't forget to test it...

I can vouch for the program's usefulness... it's also a great brainstorming tool: Just look at a given creature in all 1024 forms, and see if you don't come up with something.

It will NOT check for special encounters when in cutscene mode. That would probably have made things too complicated, engine-wise.

You definitely have to make them step on it. I've tried the "teleport them onto the square" approach, and it doesn't work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but making a space blocked just keeps the party from being placed there (which effectively counters the "fight, end combat" method of avoiding encounters/traps). Enemies won't walk there, and nothing can be summoned onto that square. Of course, it's completely different if you're using block_entry().

Okay, that idea of Spray Acid makes much more sense. It's just that Jeff didn't code it that way, I guess. Maximilian requires you to get all the chunks of mithril out of Canopy, so it's easy to miss. And it's simply insane. Check the Artifacts Hall if you want to see it without having to replay Canopy. And about resurrection, uh... well, just try not to think about it. (envisions a resurrected Garzahd) Ungh... that's unpleasant.

Wow... you really don't start short discussions, do you? About the overlap, not every party has both a mage and a priest. Some people deem mages unnecessary, and some try to tough it out without priestly healing. And you've missed two important differences between some spells: namely, the type of damage and the amount of damage. (Another topic I've discussed with TM, and wound up ultimately confusing me) For instance, Smite deals less damage and has fewer targets than Ice Lances, and Divine Fire doesn't deal out nearly as much pain as Fireblast. Part of that is because priests don't traditionally follow the path of most damage dealt. It's just not in a priest's character to single-handedly roast everything on the field with 500 damage to each target. That's what mages are for, storywise. Also, the adjustment to Spray Acid that you mentioned would make it a carbon-copy of Move Mountains. Again, that's an issue of which magic type has domain over it, and in Avernum, only priests can crumble rocks. Likewise, only mages can unlock doors and dispel barriers, and priests have sole control over removing forcecages. Potions are simply underused, probably from the heavy reliance most players have on magic (exception: Lord Putidus players). The variety you get is simply there to help meet the situations at hand. Example: you may not need to restore all the SP an Energy Elixir would, so you drink the potion instead. Or, maybe you need to restore some HP at the same time, so you drink a Restoration Brew. Minimizing the appearance of magical and über-items is something that we designers should definitely work on. There have been quite a few super-broken items floating around for a while, which we now have to take into account when we design (I wish there was a call to check for Maximilian). Thus, when you make a scenario of your own (and I personally look forward to seeing one of yours, as you certainly have ideas), you can control that. And if you really want, you can eliminate spells at the start of the scenario, like TM did with Cloud of Blades in Canopy. And about resurrecting people, that's actually a good point. However, resurrections take a toll on the person who casts them, from the SP loss to the need for a Balm of Life (which not everyone can make). And there are some people you just can't resurrect (without level 3 or something like that). Also, mass-resurrections are usually the work of necromancy, and that builds scenarios, sadly enough. Still, it'd be interesting to see a scenario dealing with the spontaneous resurrection of huge numbers of people. (Or has it already been done?)

Usually they won't notice, but yes, occasionally they will remember how to use the doorknob. I find it most effective to close the door, haste everyone, and run like mad.

Yes, and closing doors can also make the room full of enemies behind said door completely forget about you. It's amazing, really.

Yeah, go with the cutscenes. If the text gets way too long, switch bits of it to message boxes. Actual talking dialog would be nearly impossible if it's supposed to be two NPC's talking.