Ceiling Durkheim

Quote: Well, think of it this way: if a hit penalty brings your accuracy down from 50% to 45%, that means you're doing 10% less damage, in exchange for maybe taking 2-4% less damage from some types of attack. From that perspective, equipping gear with hit penalties is not a very good tradeoff! Agreed. This is a bit of an issue for heavier armor. e.g. leather pants, which give 3% armor vs. leather greaves, which give 4% armor, 1% evasion, and -5% to hit. And are also heavier. That's a terrible tradeoff. Absolutely stone-cold shoot yourself in the face with a shotgun until you die awful. I think one of the reasons that the early game is so hard for many people is because previous SW games (and most other RPGs) condition us to put on the heaviest armor that the character can carry, which is pretty much a death sentence in early-mid A1 (especially on harder difficulties). This is a balance issue that should maybe be addressed?

I don't know much about Fallout Tactics. It gets a lot of flak from fans of the series for departures from the plot and themes of the other games, but seeing as I'm not a fan of the series, I'll reserve judgment. Quote: Besides that, you made mention of a game that you said was good, what was it like. Could you do alot in it? Valkyria Chronicles, you mean? It's a PS3-exclusive tactical RPG made by Sega. There are also a couple sequels on the PSP, but I haven't played those and thus have no opinion on them. I find the gameplay pretty fun and strategically deep. It's a mix of turn based and real time: each side gets 'command points,' which can be used to issue orders (which give various bonuses to that side's units, or have other special effects like rescuing an unconscious soldier or calling down mortar fire on an enemy position), or to command troops. Each command point gives a unit a turn, in which they can move around and fire on enemies. Units also provide 'crossfire' at enemies in front of them when it isn't their turn. VC features tanks and a variety of infantry classes, each of which has a different function: scouts have a long movement range and are decent in combat; shock troopers can't move as far and have short-range attacks, but are very strong on offense and defense; lancers are tough and good against tanks, but slow; engineers are fragile but good at healing injured units, refilling ammo, and repairing tanks; and snipers, who are slow and fragile but have strong, very long-range attacks. In addition to class features, each individual character has 'potentials,' which tend to make them better or worse in certain terrain types, against certain unit types, etc. I think the characters could stand to be a bit more distinctive in terms of combat abilities, but they do all have their own voice actors and lines in combat, so they have more 'personality' than say, the generic characters in FF Tactics or Disgaea. There are a lot of options in combat: each character only has a few command options, but movement options make these a lot more dynamic than one would think. Units take more damage and have a lower chance of evading when attacked from behind, so there's an advantage to sneaking up on enemies, planning ambushes, and so on. Cover provides substantial defensive bonuses, but there are weapons like grenades, mortars, and flamethrowers circumvent cover. There are also various special units with additional capabilities, but I'll say no more as they tend to be pretty spoileriffic. It's nothing revolutionary, but it hangs together well, has a lot of strategic complexity, and rewards lateral thinking and experimentation. It ate up a lot of my February. Anyway, there's more info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyria_Chronicles

Quote: since party is on suicide mission doubt there would be many volunteers. Mass Effect 2 would beg to differ on that point.

As I think I've said before on these boards, I consider the Fallout series seriously overrated*. The 'flavor' of the games, their sense of humor, all of that, I really enjoy. The story? Surprisingly threadbare for an RPG. The settings are neat, but the characters are shallow and uninteresting, and not much actually happens. They're short on the big, dramatic set pieces that I enjoy in other RPGs (the siege of Denerim in Dragon Age, assassinating Ghavassa-Oss in A6, the opening of Final Fantasy 7, etc.), and in general come off as staid and lacking in excitement. Granted, one could criticize most of Jeff's games along similar lines, but they have one overwhelming advantage over the Fallout series: combat is actually fun. For one thing, the combat system is hilariously easy to break. I'm just a novice munchkin compared to many on these boards; I have never, for instance, conducted a proper Slartanalysis. Nevertheless, I was able to figure out trait and perk combinations on my first play that trivialized even the endgame dungeons on the highest difficulty. In addition to being easy, combat is also simplistic: one can move, shoot/hit something, and/or heal. That's it. I get that including a bunch of spells/psionics/what have you to mix things up would have gone against the setting, but it's entirely possible to make a fun, tactically complex RPG with ordinary, non-magical soldiers. It's called Valkyria Chronicles, and it includes things like terrain advantages, cover, and a variety of other strategic features that the Fallout series lacks. Mauve deer: Fallout is funny, and has a moderately interesting setting, but that's about all it has going for it. *Note that by "the Fallout series" I really mean 1, 2, and the first few hours of 3. I haven't played Tactics or New Vegas, and I gave up on 3 early on because I hated the engine.

Quote: Insult - The professor looked out at the extremely large graduate quantum mechanics class and said, "It's not too late to change majors. There are many fine opportunities for MBAs." He really wanted a much smaller class. Oh, if we're going for insults to collectives, as opposed to just personal ones, I know my best/worst. From the professor teaching my Reading Pseudo-Dionysius class: "You know, this is essentially a class in western mysticism, but if I had called it that, the whole of the bong loft would've descended on my classroom."

Quote: Melle over battle magic for damage cause: most foes have low or moderate (around 50%) resistance to physical damage, where as lot of foes are highly resistant to magic/fire/ice damage. And Kill cant compare with puresteel sword. Hopefully theres an acid/fire blade ( or will have to fall back on venom batons) There's an acid blade. There's a fire version as well, but I can't remember if it actually does bonus fire damage. In either case, you can use gems to give your weapons extra elemental damage. The fire/cold versions aren't that great, but the acid one does a lot of damage, and is considered a viable weapon mod through the endgame. It's generally acknowledged that the best gems for weapons are the Runed Amethyst (acid damage over time), Ivory Skull (causes curse on hit, debuffing the target's attacks), and Golden Crystal (large amounts of bonus physical damage).

Quote: Level Peak? That stinks. You able to get to level 99 in Exile! Why suddenly stop at 40? It doesn't: some high level monsters still give experience, as do wisdom crystals. The real issue is that after level 30, you only get health/mana/auto-assigned stat points for 4 out of 5 levels, and no skill points or other stat point. Also you don't get any more traits, period.

Quote: Increasing blessing duration isn't bad, mind you, as they start off fairly short. But Spellcraft and the like will also increase blessing duration. On a related mechanical note, do we know whether spellcraft, blessing focus, etc. have any effect on cloaks and wards? In A6 they had actual durations (similarly with long-term buffs like augmentation, steel skin, etc. in A5) which could be extended, but in AEftP they last until the next 'rest.' Do these bonuses increase the damage/resistance boost, or do they not do anything?

Quote: After you sell off the excess, it's more like 2000c, but I agree that you wouldn't do it as long as you have training you still want to buy. Many Spiderweb games seem to give you an excess of cash toward the end, though, and I haven't gotten far enough to see whether it's true here or not. It isn't. Money does become a bit more plentiful in the late game, but there's also drastically more to spend it on than in 'previous' games. Why? Because of the way training works. In previous Avernum games, one can only buy the first two levels of a skill from trainers (not counting trait/race bonuses). In AEftP, one can buy two levels of any skill for any character, whenever you want. Even 10-capped skills (i.e. almost all of them outside the first tier) with 10 points already invested. Also, unlike A4-6, it's actually worthwhile to buy two levels of any spell you plan to use frequently from trainers. Money is theoretically infinite because of unlimited random encounters, but in practice this becomes really tedious really quickly.

Compliment: probably "I don't think I've ever seen you without a book in your hand," from a college friend. There's another one of about the same rank, but it's not work-safe. Insult: I'm not sure, offhand. There were some bad ones about my appearance back when I was in high school (I was definitely out of shape at the time, but most were just straight-up unnecessary). The ones I remember most, though, were probably in a couple paper reviews my freshman year of college: not because the professor was cruel (if anything, he was quite polite), but because they were so accurate. He had a real knack for eviscerating bad papers.

Quote: The game changes in 5, though, so you can't use Enduring Shield, Steel Skin, and Augmentation all at once. You can choose one shield spell and one aura spell. I tend to find the Essence Shield/Armour spells more powerful than the Augmentation spell (since you have to choose betwixt them), and for the aura I would usually go with regeneration. Plus haste got nerfed. It's nice to have some blessing magic for a solo character, but it shines more for shaper-ish characters with lots of creations. It's worth getting enough points for essence blade (6), which makes a pretty huge difference in damage, and probably essence armor (7). Elemental aura is of dubious utility for a single character with good armor, and battle roar isn't that great for a group, let alone a solo character. Also, if you're willing to hold out for mid-late game artifacts, the smoking gauntlets give +3 to blessing, mental, and battle magic, and the firesteel gauntlets (one of their upgrades) give +5. If I were to choose, I'd probably raise blessing magic to 3 or 4 with skill points (possibly buying a point or two from the trainer in Haria-Kel first), then wait on the smoking gauntlets (with ingredients you can get from a difficult optional dungeon in the Mera-Tev, or a standard sidequest in the Storm Plains) for more points. You'll end up with 9 points by the endgame, enough to cast any blessing spell, without dropping many actual skill points on it. You can then invest those skill points in combat skills for direct damage, or mental magic for crowd control. I favor the latter, especially on higher difficulties.

Rotdhizons are fantastic for most of the time you have them, but I find they fall behind near the end. Their lack of any significant fire/ice/energy resistance coupled with the tendency of endgame enemies (gazers, drakons, wingbolts, cryodrayks, etc.) to spam these types of attacks means that they die really quickly in the last few dungeons. I prefer tralls, which have decent defense against everything, especially since their ranged attacks mean that they get to avoid at least some of the area attacks that Ghaldring and the Shaper council members like to throw around.

Quote: I did a melee-based solo servile run a few months ago, actually. It was only on normal, but I only had one real issue (%#^@* health-regenerating clawbug queen in the Sealed Catacombs) and everything else was fairly easy. I don't see how the AP system has hurt solo characters any. I've run a servile through on torment, though that wasn't exclusively solo (I had a kyshakk for the last ~25% of the game), and I used a lot of mental magic. Solo characters don't seem to do all that well in G4, but it's not true that non-shapers get screwed: if you make the right artifacts, anyone can have several points in any shaping skill. This makes lifecrafter skill bonuses/cost reductions kind of redundant, especially in the late game. Shaper classes are better in G5 than G4.

Quote: what if eat 100, would that change anything? As far as I'm aware, it doesn't affect the ending. After eating a few, you become addicted. When addicted, you will occasionally go into withdrawal during combat (usually when least convenient*), which debuffs your attributes substantially. You also lose the opportunity to sell the skribbane you eat, which means a small loss of cash and experience. *I suspect this is more than just Murphy at work. Several people on the forums have speculated that withdrawal hits much more often in encounters of your level or higher.

Quote: they were always [sort of] balanced out by higher leveling costs. If by "sort of" you mean "not in the slightest," then yes. Especially in A5 and 6, where weapon skills were useful even for casters, inasmuch as battle disciplines affected spells. I, for one, would kind of like to see nephils, sliths, and humans actually balanced against one another this time around.

Quote: Personally, I find running back to town all the time hugely annoying and am more than happy to spend a few skill points to make the game more fun. If you're playing on Torment, though, that's probably not a good idea... I generally just cheat. It's not as if using 'imdrained' when one has a clear path to the dungeon exit and back to town makes one's party stronger, or enemies easier. It just cuts down on walking time.

Quote: Escapism. Sometimes it's nice to stop dealing with real world issues for a bit. Yes. The issue is that escapism would feel out of place in Jeff's games. For all that he likes to emphasize the 'fantasy' aspect of his games, they usually tend more toward the grim than the escapist. It would be odd for a setting to be full of realistic problems with xenophobia, racism (and its fantastic equivalents), classism, heterosexism, and the like, yet be all sunshine and puppies on issues of sexism and gender. It's not that such a setting is impossible, but without substantial justification it comes off as selectively escapist in a way I find dissonant and strange.

Quote: Have we though about downgrading the graphics? That could cut costs and stop this gender issue. Just write the games with gender-neutral pronouns and let the player design! It's like Dr. Sheldon Cooper says - the most powerful graphics are our imaginations. I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. If it isn't: to make character graphics non-gendered, Jeff would pretty much have to write ascii games. My impression from his blog and comments elsewhere is that Jeff has no interest in horning in on NetHack's market share. On the subject of strong female characters more generally: I like the way Jeff deals with gender in his works. I wasn't crazy about the class/gender division in Avadon, but aside from that I think he deals with the subject thoughtfully. The objectification is mild and bidirectional. There are many women in positions of power (more than in most sectors of the modern world, let alone the medieval/ancient world), but it isn't just all happy fun gender equality land. Outside of utopian works, the latter tends to involve the least thought on gender, since it ignores the sociological factors that lead to gender inequality, and arguably denigrates the hard work of people in the real world who work/have worked for equal rights. Unlike in the aforementioned type of work, gender (and associated roles, jockeying for position, relative equality and inequality, etc.) is a topic that comes up in Jeff's works, albeit not their main focus.

Quote: Would this make general Redmark Robin or the new Batman? He's Superman from a different continuity. It's a pretty tangled family tree.

Quote: A quick death just says "don't go there yet." The game is also nice enough to nudge a new party North, towards Ft. Duvno and Formello. Agreed. I don't mind dying often in Avernum, so long as I feel like I'm not stuck. Given that the game loads very quickly (unlike more 'modern' RPGs), doesn't penalize you for dying (as do MMOs and Diablo 2), or, heaven forfend, just delete your save outright like various Roguelikes I could mention...dying feels more like a challenge, rather than a kick in the face.

Quote: We're going to be attacked by clowns? Range weapons are pies and melee is joy buzzers doing energy damage. Rentar-Ihrno is the Joker?! Does that make Erika Redmark Batman? I always kind of suspected.

I did it three or four times, and I think it's just a loop. There should be a secret switch in the area with the portal to the 'hounds that takes you to the actual Empire camp.

Quote: Oh great. Alorael just made me a hipster. I had a Banned title before it was cool! Your title is in quotation marks. You were already a hipster. Anyway, I like Alorael's idea. -The artist formerly known as FnordCola.

Quote: A question I've not seen addressed: as I recall from the original Avernum (and, I confess, I've not played that version in years) buffs and debuffs were cumulative. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is now the case with the updated game. Can anyone confirm whether these are cumulative? Thanks. They're not cumulative. Some statuses (like cloaks and wards) increase in power as the spell levels up, but one application remains all one needs. Further castings just refresh duration, and for some spells give an extra chance to cause 'bonus' statuses (battle frenzy on high level haste, spine shield on high level war blessing, etc.).

Quote: Or one worse- "NPC" The level above standard "NPC": "Town Guard."