Thaluikhain

Oh, a pen and paper RPG has much more in the way of possibilities than a computer game, IMHO

I'd also say that while balancing things would be hard, it seems it always is one of the harder things to get right.

I remember reading that you get teleported away from the fight a few times and have to struggle back, she doesn't turn up. But that was ages ago and I never did it myself.

Though, the accepted story is that you get it, based on what later stuff say is history.

Actually, just struck me...IIRC, literally none of the monsters of NPCs use crossbows. You can buy them, but seemingly if you do you are the only 6 people in the continent that will.

What, like a fan made new game? Um...almost certainly, that would fall apart long before it got finished, and if by some terrible miracle it got done, it'd almost certainly be a massive disappointment because it'd be compared with the real ones, and there would be much pretending it didn't happen, lest childhoods be ruined.

Now, if people could get together and make a game of the quality of even a poor BoE scenario, then I'd be much impressed and take the idea seriously, but even from their to carrying on one of the franchises is quite an ambitious step. Even something simple, like a webcomic of any quality would much surprise me.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was able to access Death Arrows from the stone circles from the start of the game but from what I remember Kill is a lot more damaging even though you can only hit a single target. Currently Death Arrows is doing a measly 10-20 damage each target.

Yeah, Death Arrows is a spell I might sometimes use. Kill is a spell I'd very often use. For that matter, that monsters often use as well.

I seem to remember the assassin's knife, at least, being an item you can buy in magic shops.

In my experience, missile weapons are marginally useful if there's nothing else you can do...if you are in a narrow tunnel when only the fighter in front can hit, and people are queued up behind, for example. I'd not put many points in their at all unless I'd given up on playing fairly and was using the editor (towards the endgame, or when fighting golems, usually). But throwing the odd rock, or dart of returning...may as well...

u.s. president james monroe was not in fact jeff vogel's ex-wife

You're sure? I mean, it'd make the name cameo thread a lot more interesting.

I also don't see Jeff trying almost-anagram names of characters from somewhat obscure books with no relation. When he does pull in those sorts of names he's usually pretty unconcerned with hiding them and usually groups them to make the reference clearer.

Well if he was to do something like that, wouldn't they likely be way to obscure for people to notice anyway?

(In which case, yeah, not much point looking for them, anything arguably may or may not be a cameo)

It seems a bit weird that they could adapt cows to the caves but not chicken.

Wasn't everything they had sent down from the Empire? Perhaps they had cows to spare but not chickens near the teleporter at that time.

Thanks, appreciate the thoughtful answer. What do you think they use in place of chicken eggs? Lizards, at least on Earth, don't lay eggs frequently enough to serve as that kind of staple food, and I have no idea whether you can bake with their eggs anyway.

Did the Vahnatai domesticate lizards? In that case, they might have selected for ones that produced more eggs.

For that to work, wouldn't they have to keep bringing out new versions the first 3 to improve the visuals, but annoy the purists and...oh, yeah. Huh.

That's quite an interesting topic, along the idea of "what do the avernites stuff their pillows with", but with practical applications.

However, the Avenrum caves are very alien, not really support the sort of plant life we have here, so might not work.

Oh, I always though skill potions were like blessings or something (though I don't tend to use potions much) given that you can only buy Knowledge Brew from one source (that I know of) and finding the recipe is an artifact quest.

Haste and Bless are made obsolete by Major Blessing, one of the few truly overpowered abilities (in any game). It's cheap (8 SP), gotten early (all you need is a boat from New Cotra), and highly effective (it's Major Haste, Major Blessing, AND a poison effect all in one). Its only problems are it's a level 7 spell (but even with the default party, it only takes a couple of levels to get level 7 spells) and it needs Mage Lore to get (not sure how much, but it's not much

True...though do you get the same benefit for speed for Major Blessing as Major Haste?

Also, why did the Vahnatai have a swampy passage only accessible via boat with Major Blessing there?

I never had a problem with leveling. In fact, despite my mages (atleast it seems like) kill most everything, it's my dual-wielding fighter that's my highest level. This last playthrough (although at these levels, the line between fighter, thief, and caster gets REALLY blurry- all of them have 150 SP and level 7 priest spells, with Divine Thud- the "classes" are what they were in the beginning of the game),

Hmmm...what do you use your thief/archer/fighter for? I mean, archery seems rather useless, and picking locks is definitely useless. Disarm traps is useful, sure, but that seems about it.

...

Oh, I usually have a slith with a pole weapon as my first character, it's useful when walking around, say, the sewers of Shayder. Come across a roach, go into combat mode, 2 steps forward, hit it and end combat, If the thing is still alive, do it again. Sure, it's a bit of a dodgy exploit, but stops the sewers from being as tedious, don't have to properly fight the way through.

Random item point in Storm Port? Can you buy knowledge brew from there? I only knew of that island in the lake of Upper Exile.

Or making it yourself, but that requires 20 alchemy points, it'd take a lot of potion just to get that back.

Haste and Bless and Slow spells seem a lot more effective than fireballs, but often I'm feeling lazy and want the combat over, so I get my spellcasters to use fireball or firestorm instead.

Also, having a secondary spellcaster haste the primary one to allow more fireballs is sometimes useful, but I run out of spell points quickly. It also ends with the spellcaster going up ranks faster than anyone else, doesn't allow others to level up.

With large numbers of weak enemies, casting conflagration or something in front of my fighters is useful to wear them down.

Is that the ring that the sailor's mother told you about? Bring it back to her for a reward.

Don't remember the message at all.

I still say E3/BoE was when the series peaked, but I have to admit I've not played all the games. I really liked the interface and graphics of that one, it was simple and easy to use, which to me is much better than being technically good or 3Dish or whatever.

Also had way more weird spells...was a minigame in of itself to cast the identify monster spell on everything in the game...there are one or two monsters that are unique but don't appear to be (a cave giant chief, IIRC, the other chiefs are hill giant chiefs and there's also a particular big ogre), so you have to get them before you kill them. Detect Life had possibilities, but nobody seemed to do anything much with it.

I had never really thought much about the disconnect between the two Empires we're told about.

It just struck me, didn't we only hear about how bad the Empire was from the Exile PoV? Of course the people the Empire banished are going to not think too highly of it. Possibly there was some bias and exaggeration involved.

Nephil's Gambit comes to mind. IMHO, the worldbuilding in that rivaled the official Exile games, though on a smaller scale.

Which does bring up the question of how old is vahanati society?

If they enter periods of hibernation every few hundred years for a few hundred years they could date back millennia fairly easy with their long lifespan.

Also how often do they hibernate?

Also, do they all hibernate at once or do different nations hibernate at different times? What triggers the hibernation, is it natural or a climatic thing or something?

And...do they not have any sentient enemies existing to take advantage of them hibernating?

I had never really thought much about the disconnect between the two Empires we're told about. I always just chocked it up to Prazac being nice and Hawthorne I-III not as much, but there's still a disconnect. How did the Anama have so much influence over (slightly) more than an entire province, to the point where Ahonar was more important than the governor? That doesn't mesh very well with the line of thought that the Empire was just going around persecuting everyone.

Well, if the Anama is considered part of the Empire, it's one faction dominating another within, rather than without. Maybe Ahonar came from a politically important family or something, or the Anama were considered useful in conquering Valorim. In E3 they seemed to be part of the state, rather than in conflict with it.

The Anama are another part of the Avernum world that really sets it apart, aside from the caves. I don't feel like I've seen any sort of equivalent in other games, aside from Jeff's Trakovites in Geneforge.

Warhammer 40k has a big thing about the Church stamping out use of magic, because magic is inherently really dangerous at the best of times, runs risk of demons turning up and destroying the world. Warhammer had that until the demons showed up and destroyed the world.

fwiw i recall the game being pointedly unclear on why the two Silvars share the same name; it's entirely possible they're both named after a third, older Silvar elsewhere

IIRC, it goes "Coincidentally Silvar is one of the larger towns in Exile. Who knows, maybe it was founded by someone from here?" or somesuch.

Valorim != the Empire. It's part of the Empire, but it's the wild frontier, remember; more recently settled, and much less ensconced in tradition and regulation. The game explicitly suggests the people there may be less prejudiced against Exiles than in much of the Empire. I see no reason that might not also be true for other prejudices.

Ah, yes, I'd overlooked that. Though I believe that a fair few of the important people in Valorim weren't from there, they were assigned there. Can't say for sure, though.

That doesn't mean everywhere speaks the same language, the same dialect, or has the same background otherwise. Political divisions like empires can change accents over time (often by forcing language changes), but they aren't the primary source of accents by any means.

Sure, but presumably people from all over the Empire would have ended up in Avernum, and there is only one person described as seeming foreign. There's also only one human language in use, it seems...excepting maybe stuff you need Arcane Lore to read.

If you're starting with the assumption that humans, groups of humans, or even worse -- societies of humans -- act rationally, well, that may be a flawed assumption.

I meant that while people often are prejudiced against multiple groups of people, there's plenty of people prejudiced against some groups, and not others.

Part of my objection is in the vast gap between the Empire as described in A1-2 and in A3. We hear about this autocratic, repressive regime that has banished people for trivial offenses, committed routine genocide, and has no tolerance of political disagreement. There's an implication especially in A1 that magic is heavily controlled and accessible to only a few, and that any deviation is grounds for getting exiled or executed.

 

And then we see Valorim, and it's just not that. There are spells for sale all over the place, the local leadership is mostly mayors dealing with their problems and whose relationship to the larger Empire seems to consist mostly of bemoaning the fact that no aid has been coming. Sure, Valorim is the wild frontier. Sure, there's a quarantine of sorts. Sure, Prazac is not like her predecessors. It's definitely not what i expected. And the very, very minimal attention paid to the fact that your party is clearly Avernite, including possibly nephilim who are victims of mass hatred and sliths who are essentially unknown, right after a bloody losing war, makes no sense.

Ah, yes, that's true. In E3, though it wasn't obvious to everyone that you were Avernites (just suspiciously pale), and there was the odd Nephil in Empire towns, which seemed odd (though one gets murdered). There was even an ogre that collected money for a ferry.

—Alorael, who can't even buy Valorim as a frontier. It may be the most recently settled and/or conquered continent, but it's densely settled througout with large cities and small towns. There are no obviously new settlements. The roads are all in place. Silvar, at least, is a pretty small and unimpressive town that's been there long enough for one of Avernum's main settlements to be named after it. It's no frontier at all.

That's a point, yeah.