Jump to content

The Almighty Doer of Stuff

Member
  • Posts

    4,903
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by The Almighty Doer of Stuff

  1. Just a note: As I've been crawling through the game text to fix errors and improve helpfulness, I found that, if you actually read the Dumbfound spell description, it tells you plainly that it causes curse symptoms and doesn't mention Dumbfounded status at all.

  2. Further reading indicates that a buckler, by definition, must be held in a fist grip. A targe may be strapped to the forearm, however. It's larger than a buckler, typically large enough to cover the elbow and knuckles. Smaller than that provides dangerously inadequate coverage to be used as a shield, and larger than that is unwieldy and encumbering for such a purpose and must be held in the hand.

  3. Oh, so it is. I don't remember where I heard that. Maybe I didn't hear it at all, or misheard it. But I just looked it up; it was often used as a bashing weapon, being small and held in the fist. The weilder would use it as a small shield, or to strengthen a punch. Either way, as a regular shield in BoE, it seems like it could be better utilized.

  4. The mage spell, Scry Monster. It'd put the monster type in a sort of bestiary, and also provide up-to-date HP, SP, and Morale for the specific character you're scrying. It uses up 6 AP though, and you usually start with 4. And you have to recast it every time you want up to date stats. Same deal back then about no minimum AP at least. I usually try to fill the Monsters bestiary menu as much as possible.

  5. Oh yeah, I forgot about the forum header. Thanks for considering it anyway. I'll try to keep working as fast as I can.

     

    EDIT: One good thing about working too slowly is I can go back over my help summary dialog rewrites and improve their style after sleeping  on it a few times...

  6. For those wondering about why I'm not updating credits and such, I have been working on converting my crude notes to proper changelogs. It's just taking a long time. I presume this thread won't be pinned to the top of the forum until the requested changes are made to the website, though, and I guess that's OK. I'm working as fast as I can, which turns out to be not remotely as fast as I predicted...

  7. Exiles have no legal standing in the Empire and many surfacer worlders are afraid of them - especially if they're traveling with Slithzerikai and Nephilim. That acolyte may not be evil. He may simply be defending himself and his shop against intruders who he believes might murder him. Killing him is still murder, even if he attacked first. He's a citizen of the Empire and you're not. For all you know, he's a traumatized veteran of the Exile-Empire War.

  8. Basically, any time there's a dice roll for % chance, whether in combat, during an Affect PC node (to raise a PC's stats or whatever), making a mob drop a particular item when killed, etc., it's capped at 95%, even if you tell the scenario editor to make it 100%. You can't guarantee a boss will drop a key artifact, or have an NPC train a particular stat. The party might fork over their money and not get the skill increase they paid for, and there's no way for the scenario designer to tell when that happens.

  9. There's plenty of reason to change it. If you want to guarantee something, you can't. That's not good.

     

    I guess the thing to figure out is whether any scenarios actually DID rely on 100% being actually 95%, and I would think the bug would almost certainly be far more often accidental than intentional. I guess for potential compatibilty's sake it should be left as-is though. Analyzing every scenario, or even every major scenario, would be problematic and difficult.

  10. It's also worth considering that some people play no-mage parties, either by preference or as a challenge. Lockpicking and Poison skills are valuable in such parties. It may be that they're not meant to be superior to spells. IIRC Jeff suggested in documentation somewhere that nothing essential should be placed behind a magically locked door.

     

    And here's a couple I DMed to Motardo, hoping he can fix them:


     

    Quote

     

    1. Make 100% actually 100%. I don't think this would be detrimental to any scenario, as any designer who actually wanted a 95% chance would have entered 95%. I don't know if this is actually possible but I figured I'd ask.

     

    2. Make Conceal Item Ability actually conceal item abilities. Anyone who actually didn't want their item ability concealed would not have checked the conceal ability LED.

     

     

  11. You  can assign a Protection value to any equipable item. See the Shield Mace for an example. In legacy BLADBASE.EXE its item type Shield and not a weapon, but that was Jeff's mistake, not the way it's meant to be. And I see nothing physiologically wrong with weilding a shield and a buckler on one arm. It's wierd but it's possible. Also worth noting is there are two Shield item types. You can have a character wield two shields and no weapons that way, but you have to have a specifically-offhand shield and a regular shield to do so.

     

    Also, a scenario doesn't have to pile on numerous powerful weapons early on in the game like the Exile Trilogy and most scenarios typically do. That's a design flaw that the engine allows a designer to correct, especially in an epic-sized scenario.

  12. How do you convince a good, upstanding, moral person to willingly commit an atrocity?

     

    Spoiler

    Make any alternative even more atrocious, bearing in mind mortal non-omniscience.

     

    Many conflicts, real and fictional, can be better understood this way. I wonder if anyone has thought about Geneforge through this lens. Much of this discussion is leading me to wonder how the participants would consider this statement. It seems to be leading indirectly but clearly into this territory.

  13. Quote

    Even bashing the door works.

     

    (Oh...you could stick an anti-magic field on a doorway to stop Unlock spells, and keep refreshing it each turn.  Maybe turn if off once the door is opened?  Bit of mucking around, but doable.  EDIT:  Would that stop piercing crystals?)

     There is a terrain type in BoE for a terrain to be unlockable but not bashable. I'm pretty sure item spells are treated as magic just as much as SP spells regarding antimagic clouds, but I'd have to test it. But that's a good idea, if it'd work. I'll test it...

     

    ...Ugh. Antimagic clouds don't block the Unlock spell. Also, there's no special node to place antimagic clouds. If you want antimagic clouds on exactly one tile, you need to place a mob either on or next to that tile which radiates antimagic clouds, and use nodes to clear the cloud from undesired tiles. Interestingly though, even if a terrain is type Clear, you still can't enter it if it's locked. Good to know. Also of note is that from bottom to top, where "top" means "most visible layer", graphics go Terrain, Decor (blood, bones, etc.), Items, Fields, Mobs, and PCs. I don't know which Fields take precedent over which others though. But you can hide an antimagic cloud by putting a full-tile mob on top of it.

     

    The only statistic you can check for in legacy BoE, also, is Mage Lore. It's annoying. Celtic Minstrel fixed that in OBoE but it doesn't do me any good.

     

    Quote

    The way melee weapons work.  If you want to use double handed weapons, you want to use pole weapons.  Double handed edged or bashing are just not worth it  If you want to use single handed weapons, you want to use edged.  If you use single handed edged weapons, you want broadswords (or waveblades if you can get them).  Dual wielding is also the way to go.  That is, dual wielding broadswords (or waveblades if you can get them).

     

    Some exceptions to this, might be a good idea to have one (and only one) PC with bashing weapons because you'll find some decent ones you might want to use when you don't have enough good edged weapons for everyone, and before you get the best stuff you'll use what you have.  When you get magic stuff you might want to use a weaker weapon with an ability rather than the most damaging one.  But generally there's one obvious right way to arm PCs, and a lot of weapons are just junk you don't want to use.

    This is an item balance issue, not an engine balance issue. Hypothetically, edged weapons are the most common. Bashing weapons are common and cheap to buy. Polearms are rare and expensive but very powerful. For a given scenario, the designer can adjust distribution, cost, handedness, and stats to make weapons more balanced. Few if any scenarios adhere to Jeff's prescribed scheme or readjust item stats, but they could. I plan to, if I ever design the epic I've dreamed of for twenty years.

     

    Quote

    Also, armour.  Now, I sorta like how armour works, in that a small amount stops a PC from using mage spells, and a large amount will also cost them action points.  So it might not be obvious how much armour you should have.

     

    However, and I might be wrong about this, there doesn't seem to be much point having a shield, unless you've already maxed everything else and want more.  As I type this, I realise that I don't know if the amount of encumbrance compared to the amount of protection is the same for shields as other armour.  If not, if you get more protection with less encumbrance, might be worth sacrificing the use of a hand.  Otherwise, you'd increase your other armour and go double handed or dual wield.

    This is also a scenario balance issue. Jeff's item designs aren't ideal, but a careful redesign could improve it significantly. One thing I want to do is make bucklers Tools instead of Shields. The point of a buckler is you strap it to your arm, allowing you to block without taking up your hand. But shields often have high encumbrance and not enough protection to make them worth it. This could be addressed within a scenario.

     

    Quote

    And there's a few weird spells that seem useless.  Does anyone use Scare, for example?  Detect Life seems cool, and I sometimes consider if you could make a scenario (or at least a part of one) where you are hiding from the monster and you can see it coming to the doorway on your map or something, but as it is I don't use it.

    Few spells are useless, but many are very niche. Part of the fun of Exile is having all sorts of weird spells to experiment with, where few other games have so many and so varied spells.

  14. Archery and Thrown Missiles aren't the only more or less useless skills, if significantly rebalancing the game is your goal. Disarm Traps, Lockpicking, and Poison are basically useless too. Disarm Traps and Lockpicking are easily replaced with Dexterity, and Envenom is a level 2 mage spell so there's not really any excuse not to have access to it.

  15. Many scenarios are balanced with infinite Bless stacking in mind. Capping acid stacking on PCs would be useful though. No scenarios AFAIK utllize dissolving the party. If they want to do that they just use Kill Party nodes. I think webs do slow NPCs, but not Insect type NPCs.

     

    Also, check this out: http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/blyceum/DForum/index.html

    It has a few articles on broken stuff in BoE.

     

    EDIT: Also, for OpenBoE and BladesOfExile.Com, Celtic Minstrel and I respectively try to emphasize legacy scenario compatibility. For any changes in OpenBoE that affect how legacy scenarios play, CM includes a legacy switch that turns off the changes in legacy scenarios. For my project, I'm making only changes that do not alter how legacy scenario designers expected their scenarios to play; as in, in BladesOfExile.com, gameplay is not exactly the same, but no existing legacy scenario features hinge on the original behavior (based on either my own experience or what other players and designers have said/conspicuously not said, in my memory. Motardo is taking notes on any changes he makes, so the changes can be very easily reversed if I'm wrong.)

     

    EDIT 2: Come to think of it, I'm not sure about the acid. Someone could very well have used it as part of a battle's strategy. Until shown otherwise, I won't touch that in BladesOfExile.Com.

  16. Altering missile range is impossible in legacy BoE but if Celtic Minstrel hasn't implemented it in OpenBoE, I bet he will.

     

    Also, some bows are made for close quarters. Small recurve bows were used by some peoples, such as the Mongols, to quickly send an arrow straight through a foe and out the other side. The Mongols in particular would do so on horseback.

  17. Weight is listed in "stone" in Exile, not pounds. Considering that, a single arrow weighs 14 pounds. On the other hand, you can carry up to 250 stone, or 3500 pounds. I don't think the weights are supposed to be literal. But the reason I said it'd be better to make most missiles weightless is because a stack of 100 arrows weighing 100 stone can make using bows too loot-carrying-prohibitive to make missile weapons worth the investment.

×
×
  • Create New...