Omlette

Join the Anama, go upstairs in the Anama temple (on the north side), and bingo.

-E-

The way you're intended to do it is by grabbing the dagger and leaving the temple through a secret passage. If you do that you get a message telling you the quickfire is dying down, and when you come back to the entrance the quickfire has gone, and the portculli are open again. Presumably the game assumes that that's what you've done.

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Fortunately you don't actually drop things when Enfeebled, so you can generally just wait for it to go away. The main time you notice it is when you try to pick something up while still affected and are told that you're already holding 127/50 pounds.

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Um, it should be assumed that offical Shaper policy is dictated by the needs of the plot, to be honest.

Although there's nothing unfeasible about a new Council taking advantage of the chaos to simply elect themselves rather than going through proper channels. What JV would say if you asked him is anyone's guess, though, if he's even thought about it to that depth.

-E-

How about saying that for every incorrect role Dionicio must hold 20 (or another number) coins or items to that value?

That would also mean that having killed the DLs personally would make the other condition easier, which seems fair; it means that staying underground and relying on others to kill the DLs for you makes it harder to win, which is as it should be.

The NA's role seems a little too hard to play now; I presume he's meant to get money by offering to sell things for people, but that's so complicated most people won't bother, and then he's only really going to be able to use his assassain once per game at best, as far as I can see.

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I was thinking just in terms of 'loose' inventory items - unequipped ones in other words. And if it prioritised the reshuffle with the minimum number of moves?

-E-

Just out of interest, have you talked to Jeff yet? I'm not sure how close the game is to production, but some of these might take a while to implement and if you come to him too late, he won't be able to do them even if he likes them.

With regard to the shuffling thing, something that would be nice maybe is a button to redistribute the inventories (in the minimum number of moves) in order to un-encumber all characters, when that's possible.

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Pretty sure it's irrelevant. Maybe try coming back later and sanctifying it?

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Also, wasn't that true before?

Plus by about 2 days in the Fae's loot should be sufficient to manage a fairly decent defense...

The other thing which will make this new Fae different is that they only really want to target people who are holding nice items or lots of money: if people are honest about having nothing of value, the Fae will probably leave them alone (provided they believe it...)

As regards Vahkohs, any Anama member with Stealth skill or better and carrying the Holy Symbol can still lone-wolf him. And that's not actually all that hard to arrange, even without a wide-spread panic.

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Complex, but it could work: as he is now, Vahkohs really does require everyone else alive to gang up on him, which I guess is the point. It'll be interesting to see what happens next time he appears.

One last query: the rules as stated seem to indicate that Vahkohs isn't told the roles of spirits he's collected. Is that right?

-E-

More than that, it still requires either eliminating Vahkohs' entire stock of spirits (unlikely given that any mistakes give him an extra one) or getting the Holy Symbol. If Vahkohs gets the Holy Symbol, he pretty much can't be killed without a great deal of luck.

Could you at least change it so either

a) If you attack Vahkohs and the spirit doesn't kill you, you get a swing at him as well. (This makes sense thematically, at least)

Vahkohs only gets to absorb spirits from players he's killed. I see why you don't want this, but otherwise he gets a massive advantage from just going undercover for a day and hardly saying anything.

Also, when Vahkohs sends a spirit to attack someone, is that a random spirit, or would he say for example 'Attack Excalibur with *i's spirit'?

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Yeah, whatsit.

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Yeah, it's through a secret passage off the walkway at the very south end, in a tiny little room on its own. You need fairly high whatsit to read it though.

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Hero: He's now very similar to Vahkohs: he has to achieve a large number of kills (more than he has time for, thus relying on infighting to win), he doesn't ever really want to let on his true identity, and he's frighteningly powerful. I don't think the differences are enough to justify a second all-out-death character, and imagine if Vahkos and the Hero appeared in the same game...

Thaumaturge: I like the idea of this guy, he raises the possibility of having a fourth faction made up of all the mages who aren't Gladwell. The only problem is that all the mages at the moment work as support characters, but he has the potential to make things very interesting.

Avenger: I agree with Alorael that being given a new goal on day 4 is quite harsh, especially considering that by that stage everyone knows who everyone is: any faction which has killing left to do will take you out too just to avoid trouble.

Trickster sounds more and more interesting the more I think about him. However from your description it's not entirely clear how he's supposed to work: does he have to make his redirect request before the action is submitted, or just before it's processed? Or can he redirect an action which has already been processed, within a specific time limit?

Holy Symbol for Trickster could either add one to the number of players who can win, or reveal all actions which have been submitted but not processed (but that would rely on the Trickster being online at the time of revealing, or it's a bit of a waste...)

Gremlin King: Again, looks fun, and encourages more double agent style of play which has to be a good thing.

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Yeah, I'd suggest playing the game. Much more fun that way.

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As regards the Avenger and Trickster: both seem fairly balanced. As regards the game as a whole both of them will find it hard to find allies and make creating alliances more difficult: is that a good thing? Do we want more solitary roles?

Hero: The victory condition is too powerful, and also largely out of his control; it relies too heavily on the three factions hurting each other quite a lot. How would this be for a victory condition:

Two of the three factions (Anama, Darkside, Gladwell) eliminated; all members of the third faction must win. You must PM the moderator before the end of the second day to inform them which faction you have chosen to win; you may change your choice, but doing so will count as an action.

Thaumaturge: Again this is a powerful character with a hard victory condition. Seems good, maybe a bit too powerful; the only minor issue is that some games will have many more mages than others, and thus the difficulty of the role would vary quite a lot. Maybe change it to 'at least half of the mages in the game (rounding up) win'?

-E-

wz. As: We knew that keeping you alive would mean killing Andraste, Rowen and Sleeping Dragon. Sleeping Dragon was our initial contact in your alliance, Andraste as Shanker had far more to offer us than you did, and Rowen would never hurt anyone (apart from w-dueck, who we wanted to hurt). We'd already promised SD that we'd get her a victory even if it meant killing you, and then I started the whole play-acting thing to pull you in to our alliance. For me killing you was a matter of loyalties: you had no business killing SD, so you were no longer a trustworthy ally and needed to go.

Thuryl: ha ha ha.

As regards the DLs, I was 99% sure of Excalibur's identity just from his first post to me:

I think the DLs need a bit of luck to all be online at the same time to even talk to each other, but beyond that it seems fairly easy to get in contact. The problem is doing a convincing job of pretending to be someone else when you have no means of proving it.

One thing which had a large effect on the game was the two substitutions: in particular I think Xelgion's late arrival made things difficult for the Anama, and Nikki's late arrival meant I managed to convince 5 or 6 people that I was the Necromancer which might not otherwise have been possible. I know there's no way to avoid that, but it certainly makes life much harder for certain players, especially when the game moves as fast as this one did.

-E-

Valorim is supposed to be the smallest of four continents. Various people have taken it upon themselves to provide maps of the other three; Aizo is the one where the Empire originates, but I'm not sure that name comes from within the games.

-E-

The reality is that if you're strong enough to kill the head Khazi (I forget his name...) then you're strong enough to get through any of the other fights in that area.

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A Thought:

If the equipped items box were included, it might be better as a popup; for a first-time player it could make the inventory area look quite scary, and you certainly don't need it every time you open your inventory. That would also be nice because it would free up space in the inventory window; it does look a little cramped compared to to previous system.

What you did with the order of the areas is quite clever, though: now I stop to think about it that's certainly the order of how frequently I use them.

-E-

Plus, if you're only halfway through the demo restarting is probably worth it - now you know what to do it won't take long at all to get back where you were.

-E-

I think Exile has the convention that the best odds you can have is 19/20...one of our local friendly scenario designers can probably verify that.

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I'm pretty sure the penalty is only to the to-hit chance - which, as you've noticed, can be drowned out with enough dexterity/edged weapons points.

And yeah, you really don't want to annoy Sulfras - although if you've managed to reach her, you're getting pretty powerful.

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I like the idea of once-per game abilities very much; they give an interesting dilemma (is this really the very best time to use this ability?).

Quick rules query: is it possible to have the Adventurer and the Spy in the same game?

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Well, if everyone were on AIM then it would be back to a level playing field, and would all be fine. For those that aren't: is there any particular reason? It's just more convenient than PMs.

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