Lilith

Nice scripting, although I'm not sure how much use it should see. God parties are a legitimate tool for both debugging and reviewing.

There's no absolute point above which any stat stops being worth increasing, although getting Tool Use or total Nature Lore above 20 or so is pretty pointless in current scenarios, as is increasing Resistance when your resistances are all above 100% already.

It seems to be a complete inability to cast spells above Slow if they're more than a little encumbered. Anyway, I'm almost certain you can't get to 9 AP normally (which you'd need to get 3 attacks/round). You might just be able to do it with AP-boosting equipment and high Quick Action and Gymnastics, but I doubt you could do it consistently.

3 times? I don't think you can get AP *that* high without Divine Aid.

Thrown Missiles? Eww. Well, to each their own. I believe a point in SS is equal to a point in both TM and Archery, so get whichever is cheaper and then build them both equally once the point costs become equal. If you plan to use archery as well as thrown missiles, put more points into Sharpshooter. I don't believe you ever get an AP bonus from dexterity alone. You get Quick Action at 8 dexterity, but unfortunately I think it also requires some training in Melee or Pole Weapons. Get strength and dexterity high enough (I think you need str 8 and dex 10) and you may be eligible for Gymnastics, which also gives AP bonuses; I forget whether Gymnastics also requires a weapon skill.

I assume you don't have anything else running in the background?

It might actually count the "while" as two instructions (essentially, a conditional and a goto), which would make it 32000. I don't know how Jeff is doing it, though, and I'm not a programmer anyway, so I don't know how plausible this is.

Wouldn't that make it 24000, then? 8000 * 3 = 24000.

Well, turning off special effects in the preferences might help, although that'll affect a lot of other things as well.

I'm less general. Bah. I'll change it as soon as I think of something better.

You are the poster child for post-natal abortion.

Races: Humans level up fastest and are the default choice if you don't really want the advantages of the other races. Nephilim aren't really that great, although definitely worth considering if you're making a combined archer/thief character. Slithzerikai get fire resistance and a polearm bonus. Some people make Slith mages but that doesn't really seem worth it to me; consider it if you're making a fighter who's going to use polearms, though. (Don't make your only good fighter use polearms, though; good edged weapons are much more common than good polearms.) Traits: Divinely Touched is good, but comes with one heck of an experience penalty; it's still quite popular, though. Likewise for Elite Warrior, although obviously it's only good for melee fighters. Natural Mage is an absolute must for mages and pretty good for priests too. Fast On Feet is good for anyone who has a skill slot to spare: an occasional extra action point is always nice, although it's most useful for archers and least useful for spellcasters. Of the disadvantages, consider Brittle Bones for anyone who's not likely to get into much melee combat, and Sickness Prone for anyone; the experience bonuses are nice, and there's not really much of a disadvantage. The other advantages and disadvantages aren't really much use.

Email Jeff Vogel at spidweb@spidweb.com and ask. He's usually pretty good about this sort of thing.

Sounds like your download's corrupted. Try again.

Funny how they had the time to destroy an entire floor of the School, but not to press a button, isn't it? You've made your point, but you've also shown that the scenario still has serious plot holes that it doesn't satisfactorily fill. As for the last two messages, it's clear from the context that they relate to two conditions that didn't apply to the mages closing the School: the party not knowing exactly what all the machinery does, and the defenses having failed over time after the School was closed.

I'm not going to go into a discussion of VoDT's plot holes again; there's been more than enough said about that and I don't think there's much chance we'll agree. Quote: Originally written by Vent: That said, if as you suggest, we assume that the scenario is developing a moral, despite it's not the case, then I agree, it would be much better that the pollution should have been technically much more contemporary and the archeological point of view should has been changed in order to get a detailed moral development... if the scenario had choose that way. My problem is that the scenario hasn't those choices, isn't wrong to not make them and then is a wrong example for this article, ASR would have been a much better example for that subject. This is one of our major points of disagreement. I guess my viewpoint is that pollution is inherently a moral issue, and thus by including it Jeff was making a moral issue an integral part of his scenario. And if you make a moral issue an integral part of your scenario, you should explore both sides of it in terms of the values of those responsible for the conflict, in order to give depth to the scenario's plot.

The choice was between good and evil? Did you even notice all the dialogue about the Hill Runners indiscriminately murdering travelling merchants for supplies, and killing the families of Empire collaborators to spread fear? In my opinion, ASR gives you a choice between two very flawed options, and that's precisely why the choice is such a good one. (For the record, I sided with the Empire.) As for Za-Khazi, that didn't really try to touch on moral issues. It's fine to not try; the problem is in trying and failing. Sure, the enemy were Sliths, because warlike bands of Sliths are a convenient enemy that already exists in the Avernum setting, but the scenario would have worked just as well if they were a rival nation of humans. VoDT, on the other hand, would require a major overhaul of its plot to be about anything except pollution. To be honest, though, I think we're mostly criticising VoDT on the grounds that it didn't make sense more than on the grounds that it was preachy. Either way, it's a good cautionary example of something. And morals, if one wishes to put them in, have to make sense within the context of the scenario as well. (Incidentally, though, going through ZKR with a slith in your party leads several people to pontificate about how there are plenty of good sliths around, which, unfortunately, is still a damn sight more moral exploration than VoDT ever bothered to do.)

Well, if you want to talk about fun I could provide a decent synopsis of VoDT's ups and downs in that regard too, but that's not what this topic is about.

There's a difference between insults and epithets. You're being dismissive of us, and the fact that that's insulting has nothing to do with the choice of words you're using.

Realistically, the only way a group project will work is if it's structured in such a way that any number of its participants pulling out for whatever reason won't scuttle the scenario. I'd guess that at least 90% of scenarios that are started are never finished, which means that 90% of the members of a design group can be expected to give up halfway through. In other words, everyone has to be prepared to finish the entire scenario by themselves if necessary.

The moral should make sense within the context of the scenario. If the scenario's plot doesn't make sense, then the moral is inevitably incoherent as well.

Quote: Originally written by Vent: It's not because this scenario is quoted in an article about morale that a coherence problem is a problem with its management of the morale. If I'm reading you correctly, this is exactly the point I disagree with. If a moral doesn't make sense within the logic of the scenario, either the scenario should be altered so that the moral makes sense, or the moral shouldn't be shoehorned in there. Maybe there could be some reason for not pushing the button, but it isn't explained, and to try to contrive an explanation is to give the scenario far too much credit. As for cleaning up the waste delaying the closure of the School, I don't see how it could have. The cleanup itself didn't seem to take long when the party did it, and as previously mentioned, the portal in and out was already there. In any case, the School was given a week to close, which should have been more than enough to go down there and push a button.

Quote: Originally written by TiaraLi: I'm on the pc, so i haven't played any user scenarios for BoA yet, but I have read through the reviews of the two that are there. One of them got some scathing reviews because it was preachy. However, on the tables list it actually says a description something like 'when god declares war on the modern' (i think) so at least people were warned. That is... a sort of warning, but it is not the sort of warning you think it is. (Since you're new, the above sentence probably needs further elaboration. TM, the designer of that particular scenario, is one of the more... unique and prolific scenario designers in the community. He's also a strident Communist and post-modernist.)

Level won't change until the PC actually earns additional experience, but you should only have to edit XP once provided you edit it to the right value the first time you do it.

Nephil's Gambit and Amazonian Saga are examples of good first-effort scenarios, but then again there's no second effort to compare either of them to.