madrigan

Originally Posted By: Metagenetic linkage I don't think gear carried ever affects miss chance, just AP. In any case, it shouldn't have any effect below the losing AP cutoff. —Alorael, who suspects you've got a uniquely defective party member. Has he maybe been hitting the bottle a little hard? Enjoying some skribbane between adventures? Eating mushrooms that weren't the same as the usual Avernite diet? "Wait a minute -- this isn't catnip!!!" In every party I end up with one character who seems to lag behind the others. I keep dumping skill point enhancers on them until they catch up.

Hello all, thanks. He is carrying a lot of gear. Does that reduce the chance to hit even when the character is not over their weight limit? He has Fast On Feet and Strong Will. So I don't think it's that. Maybe he's so quick and stubborn that he's ahead of himself and won't get out of his own way!

Why would my melee guy miss so much? He's a nephil, 6 strength, 3 dexterity, 7 melee weapons. I have a slith with a spear, similar pole weapons skill but lower strength and dexterity, never misses. Once the nephil missed literally four or five times in a row, it must have looked pretty funny inside the game world. I haven't skipped ahead, so they're fighting level-appropriate enemies. I'm up to the Fort Duvno area now and he keeps missing a lot as I increase his strength and melee weapons. It an up-to-date version of the game, I re-downloaded it like two weeks ago. Am I missing something? Is he a spy for Rentar?

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Well, there's a fair chance for anything to be influenced at least a bit by anything that came before it. Which way an influence goes, however, can be very hard to pin down. I'd be quite surprised if we had any really ancient Zoroastrian manuscripts. A quick look online turns up claims that the oldest ones available are several centuries after Christianity had spread all over the Roman empire. Maybe that's wrong, but I'd be surprised, because there aren't so many really ancient documents of any kind. In other words, it seems quite possible that what really happened is that late Zoroastrianism imported some stuff from Christianity and Judaism. It's a tough call, given the scanty evidence for anything way back then. True, it could have gone in either direction, although I've never heard it that way. My personal opinion is that it's to be expected that similar ideas would appear in multiple religions simply because they are all invented by human brains, all of which are wired similarly, and in human societies, all of which have similar needs for social cohesion, ways of thinking about nature, etc.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity What is this evidence? I'm curious. From what I remember reading about Zoroastrianism, it is dualistic, with one good and one evil power locked in eternal conflict. (Or rather it was, since I believe the religion survives now only in the small and shrinking Pharsee community in India.) Monotheism is a hard concept to pin down, because monotheistic religions aren't all monotheistic in the same way. Christianity is not strictly monotheistic in the same way that Judaism and Islam are, because of the Trinity. In Zoroastrianism, there is an evil power, but it is a creation of the one supreme god, presumably in the same way that Satan is a creation of God in Judaism and Christianity. In Zoroastrianism there is a concept of beings who are emanations -- "sparks" -- from the supreme god, which is found in altered form in Judaism, especially in Kabbalistic practice. There are also similar scriptural narratives in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, with a savior, a virgin birth, and a final judgment. The adherents of a religion might maintain that their religion is revealed by a divine power, but to my way of thinking all religions are influenced by earlier religions. Sikhism, for example, is a synthesis of Islam (monotheism) and Hinduism (rebirth), with distinct features that originated with the founder of the religion (gender equality).

Originally Posted By: CATGUTpuAG There are really only a handful of religions that have big-G God, and all of them trace their descent back to Judaism. Hinduism is monotheistic, sometimes and sort of, but it's really not the same. I'm unfamiliar with Sikhism, but I get the sense that it stands somewhere between Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions on the issue. This omnipotent God is in the distinct minority. Even if you count each pantheon as one, there are still far more polytheistic setups out there than monotheistic ones. —Alorael, who should also point out that these polytheistic religions are not the only ones in which God can die. There's a fairly major religion you're probably quite familiar with in which God dies. There's some evidence that Judaism, and therefore all Abrahamic religions, trace their ancestry back to Zoroastrianism. But that's not certain. Sikhism is strictly monotheistic.

Doesn't he go from New Harston to Solberg's Tower? He's walking around in the middle of the first level looking inconspicuous.

How about a 1966 Batman movie type plot? Hawthorne, Garzahd, Grah-Hoth, Dorikas and Rentar are back from the dead -- and they've teamed up to destroy Avernum! You? No, it can't be you! You're dead! I saw the body! Holy Legion of Doom!

Originally Posted By: Earth2025 Only time tells what next plot will be but I hope A6 isn't bigger than A5's since A5's Avernum was big place to explore (trip around Avernum nearly). I hope the game is even bigger. The one thing I missed in A5 was the opportunity to revisit the older areas of Avernum. I kept thinking that eventually the characters would have to go to the Castle, Formello, and so on. I loved A5 but I was disappointed that those areas were not included.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Only if you let Tholmen live or go back and kill Solberg (which isn't as hard as it should be). I've tried fighting Solberg of couple of times as an experiment, and he seemed pretty tough. But, more importantly, how easy is it to get out of his tower once you've killed him? That seems like it would be fairly difficult -- getting past Cheeseball II and the sentinel guards, then past Tiacoura and whatever assorted other residents come after you, and then clearing enough space to get out of combat mode and use the pylon. Or, does the tower not turn hostile when you kill Solberg?

Well, how do you know that the range of fungi attacks hasn't increased while spellcasters' range stayed the same? Sorry. I have no idea, actually.

Originally Posted By: Earth2025 True that but if money burns in pockets then those can be bought at higher price elsewhere but then again spellcasters aren't that effective in battles so tough decision. In what way are spellcasters not effective in battles?

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.