madrigan

Most of the main villains in Avernum aren't purely evil. Garzahd and Hawthorne are evil, but Rentar and Dorikas are more complex. I think it would be more interesting to play one of those more complex evils, which would also be more realistic. Most RL people we think of as evil -- dictators, mass murderers, serial killers -- do not think of themselves as evil. Perhaps you could stipulate that you start off as good, and then slowly become evil as you perform evil acts and have to invent more and more complicated rationalizations for those acts.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not a moral act. (My college philosophy prof would be surprised that I still remember Kant.) I think helping Highground is the most evil. The vahnatai have a legitimate gripe, even if they want you to slaughter a town in order to solve their problem. Whereas the Highgrounders are just bastards. I think there is a way to complete all three quests and get all three rewards. You could approach it from the perspective that your characters want to promote the most evil arrangements possible, or you could decide that they are just mass murderers. The mass murderer approach seems much less interesting, and much less functional in game terms. Killing everyone doesn't always get you the best reward.

I've never played Evil, but one of the typical characteristics of Evil is unmoderated selfishness. I think evil characters would still do quests for people, just to get the reward. Maybe evil characters would do the quest, get the reward, and then kill the quest-giver and take all their stuff. Plus in game terms it will be harder to complete the game if you only do the essential quests.

Do the first three games play the same as the most recent? Or is it like Avernum where 4 and 5 are very different from 1 - 3? Is the movement, combat, etc. the same? I realize I could just download the demos, but I worry that I will get a few hours in and say, "Wait. Where the heck is the..."

I'm sure someone will have a better answer than this, but I know that the key is not in any of the pylons. If I recall, there is a door on the guardhouse, all the way to the SE. You have to pick the lock or use Unlock Doors, and then there's a lever in the guardhouse there that raises all the gates.

Originally Posted By: Ociporus If you're doing swell without it, try the game without it. However, you don't get the rewards he gives, and you don't get the same feeling of justification if/when you later cash him in, i.e. slay him. Instead it would purely be an act of aggression, maybe justified as preventing him from similarly entrapping / helping other souls in the future. I've never played with the geas, but it is always satisfying to kill Gladwell. His tower is one of the best areas in the game, with one of the most realistic layouts and lots of good stuff to find/steal. I think that in the context of a world where evil or wrongdoing are usually punished by immediate death, and given that the characters are trained soldiers inclined and expected to solve problems with physical force, killing Gladwell is almost obligatory if you're playing a good or heroic character. I don't think that these sorts of individuals would need much more motivation than seeing what he has done to the people and creatures living in and around his tower. And if they weren't motivated to take him out at that point, they would be after meeting the GIFTS and hearing about their history with Gladwell.

Doesn't the unreality come in because of what abilities you can increase -- that is, all of them? It's not implausible that as you gain experience you can get better at fighting, or casting, or shaping, because those are skills where one could increase their knowledge and gain better intuition. On the other hand, it's a bit odd that your intelligence can increase 100% or more just from... what? Practice? In most games, before the game starts your character has been through some sort of rigorous training. You're in superb condition. Yet as the game goes on, your Endurance or Constitution or whatever it's called goes up, sometimes a lot. I don't know if I buy that. But, few RPGs are meant to be simulations, and those that try to go in that direction, like Millennium's End, can get a little tedious.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Check the Strategy Central topic. That's where the links to the editors are hiding. Dikiyoba isn't sure if either of them work or how good they are, but they exist. I've played with Micro Phage's editor. It worked. It also replaces the drayk graphic with the Shaper Monarch graphic.

Diamond Spray wands I keep. I use them as missile weapons for my melee guys. I also agree about the Control Foe scroll. The Stun wand is no good. I keep Group Heal scrolls and put them on melee guys also, just in case -- you get an extra healer without having to spend any skill points. Shielding and Blessing scrolls I sell. That wand of Sheets of Flame, or whatever it's called, that's pretty good. But the one that just throws the fireball is weak. I keep Group Haste. My thinking is, wands and scrolls are mostly emergency items. If I am down to one character, and I am trying to run away, what am I going to need? Probably healing and speed more than anything else. I don't think I've been in a situation where I thought, "I could survive this if only I had one more Bless spell."

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Gary Gygax had the same reasoning for priest class in that it wasn't allowed to use an edged weapon to fight, but there was nothing wrong with bashing their brains out with a blunt instrument. I think that was just brute force game balancing. The cleric, if I recall correctly, was just 5% behind the fighter in THAC0. I assume Gygax did that just to keep people from using clerics as slightly underpowered fighters who could also cast Flame Strike (this would later be known as the Spellsinger Problem). But you already knew that.

Originally Posted By: Phasze13 What does he mean by losing my freedom? How the heck can I lose my freedom? all he's asking of me are a few quests, no? --can anyone confirm the cheat? I will def do it if the cheat works, if not im not quite sure... If you take the geas, Gladwell doesn't ask you to perform tasks for him. He forces you to perform tasks for him. Not sure about the cheat, but I think it still works.

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen The weird thing about A5 was that when you attacked somebody in a town, the rest of the town would help you kill them. This never happened to me. Does it happen in all towns?

Originally Posted By: Ociporus Being able to poison one's blade used to be a practical thing in the old games. I think it was done by a spell, and also by a skill but I can't remember on that second point. But I seem to remember there being a poisoning skill. I always feel bad using poison. I think it's because Gary Gygax, in 1st Ed. AD&D, was so adamant that the use of poison was restricted to evil characters. It's odd that stabbing, burning, and clubbing people to death, causing their hearts to stop, or taking control of their minds were "good" acts, but poisoning, whoa, that's way out there. I suppose poisoning is considered dishonorable because it does not require you to actually confront the victim, and therefore entails less risk to you. However, Avernum does not appear to be as civilized as Greyhawk, and your character has to confront the enemy in order to poison them, so I use it when necessary.

Originally Posted By: Nikki. And sure, being able to whizz from one-side of the screen to the other with one click, that's cool, true, but I think I could live without it. I actually enjoy walking through some Avernite towns, like Fort Emergence. I don't disagree with this part. Sometimes I like to stroll around, but I can do that with the A4/5 interface. But when I want to just get across the screen, the click and watch method is much better. Moving with the mouse in the older games, in A2 for example, was annoying to me because I had to wait for the little arrow to be pointing where I wanted. I think the mouse was necessary if I wanted to move diagonally though. Anyway, saving one click per action is a lot of clicks per game.

Maybe I'm missing a chromosome, but of all the anti-A4/5 criticisms that I see on this forum, the one I really cannot understand is about the mouse movement. In the new system, you point to where you want to go and the party goes there. If you want to open a door, you click on it. If you want to talk to someone, you click on them. If you want to attack something, you click on it. It's simple and automated. Everything takes fewer steps than it did with the keyboard controls. How could it possibly be better to use the keyboard to move one space at a time, over and over and over, than to just click on one spot? How could it be better to have to go into conversation mode, and then choose the person to talk to, than to just click on the person? Seriously, I just can't bridge this. Graphics, indoors/outdoors, training, the dialogue system, all of this I understand even though I think A4/5 are vastly better than the older games in every one of these facets. But this thing with the mouse and the keyboard, I don't comprehend. It seems impossible for anyone to prefer the old system. Would someone elaborate on how the keyboard movement is better than the mouse, in any way?

Originally Posted By: Yelbis Eceer Nalyd You weren't forced into combat mode, you could just walk past or fight outside of combat mode. This was probably added so that people wouldn't see an enemy while auto-moving(You, know with the mouse) and get the crap beat out of them because they couldn't stop. I did notice that, that I could fight without going into combat mode. I'm not sure if it changed anything about the fights. It's true that it would be nice to be able to sneak past more monsters. It would be another tactical option. But if that's going to be in the game I'd like a stealth skill.

Originally Posted By: Rent-an-Ihrno @Vrek: Most things you bring up have already been discussed countless times, and will most probably never be changed back. However, I've never come up with the idea of simply making combat optional again the way it was in A1-3... why the heck didn't I? Omg, It's so obvious. That really bugged me in A4+5 - or, more fittingly, i MEGALOATHED it. How about that, Jeff? Huh? Huh?? Oh, come on, give us a treat will ya! Yeah, I find the first three games almost unplayable. The graphics are tiny and I can't tell some of the creature types apart. There's no pathfinding. Training is uncessarily difficult. I don't like the inside/outside thing -- I like remaining at the same scale throughout. I don't like worrying about food. If Jeff returned to the old engine I wouldn't buy A6. And this is what I've said every time this has come up, so anyway. The only thing I don't like in the new games is the initiative system in A5, where you can't cast and then move. In what way was combat optional in the earlier games? I don't remember that from my attempts at A1-3.

If you have the quest, and you are on top of that rise with the bones strewn around and water on three sides, then it should appear. You have to fight the slimes for a while first though. There is probably a minimum number of rounds of slimefighting that you have to get through before the monster appears. Maybe it resets if you retreat.

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen You mean that red version of some type of Robin Hood hat that I think I remember from A4? The Farsight Cap.

Originally Posted By: Chroniss Spell line specializations and more spells. I'm talking about stuff like a Fire Mage, or an Ice Mage. As Hobson mentioned, a Summoner Mage. Each specialization limits your use of other magic, but unlocks unique spells specific to your choice. Of course you would need a lot of new spells for this, but it would make spell casters much more unique, instead of just...buy all the best spells and keep upgrading them. Oh yes and no more Geneforge style stuff, at least zoom it out a little its like A5 came from a console or something. OMG, please do not zoom it out. It is fine as it is. On the older Avernums I feel like I need a monocle or something to see what is going on. I would like specialist mages too, but I think it's unlikely that Jeff will make such a big change in this game. On the other hand, perhaps he could adapt the battle discipline system to allow some degree of magical specialization.

Originally Posted By: Ale193 if the Drakons win everyone dies, if the Shapers win, less people will die. therefore, the shapers while not necessarily good, are the ones who should win. I'm late to this thread, and to the game, having only played G4. With that out of the way, I'm surprised by this position, which is taken very often on this forum. I understand the logic, but the Shapers are repressive dictators. They should not win. The Drakons are maniacs. They should not win. Isn't there some possibility that the human/non-drakon part of the Rebellion would win? I hope that the final chapter will include a happy ending among the possibilities. I don't know what the point of an RPG is if you can't get a happy ending.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Dorikas being in charge and crushing Avernum once and for all. That would suck! Personally, I'd like to play Avernites in A6. I would have liked to play Avernites in A5, also, but then it would have been a different game and stuff. Of course I play the Empire soldiers exactly the same way I play Avernite adventurers. It seems to me that in the earlier games, the line between soldiers and adventurers is pretty fine. In A2 and A4, your characters start out as soldiers but act as adventurers. Evnissyen: Totally. I would love a big GIFTS-centered sub-plot. Maybe a GIFTS could join your party! GIFTS PCs! Brrrzzzap!

We could look at it this way: What loose ends are left for Jeff to tie up in this last game? Lost Bahssikava is one. If the game begins with Dorikas as emperor, that's a pretty big loose end right there. What else? The impending famine. The relationship between Avernite and Vahnatai. The future of the Nephilim and their traditional culture. The location of various artifacts, like the Orb of Thralni and Demonslayer. The fate of the GIFTS! And probably a bunch of things I forgot. Also, let's remember that the new game could be set fifty or a hundred years after A5.

I like happy endings. The Vahnatai and the Slith can have a war if they want, as long as all is right with the world when the game ends. I would also like to see the Nephil come to some sort of rest. They're pretty bad off everywhere. Maybe the PCs will discover Lost Mrrrrrr or something, which will be the ancient Nephil homeland.

I don't know how to estimate those chances, but I hope that this last chapter includes all the areas that were in the first five games. Possibly I'd feel differently if I had to design, code, and sell the thing, but I would like to to visit/revisit all those places. I'm hoping for a game even more epic and huge than the previous Avernums. I agree that it would be enjoyable to see that loose end tied up.