Ceiling Durkheim

You can, however, use a cheat to get more money, with which you can buy more items (and spell/skill training).

Quote: You'll probably have time to play through all of the second trilogy, maybe even twice if you're good at it. The ETA is 2 years, from what I was told*. Did you mean 2 months? Or were you meaning to talk about Avernum: Crystal Souls? Because it is extremely unlikely that it will take two years for AEftP to come out for Windows.

If you go to the Synergizer item list (accessible through strategy central) and Command/Control-F (i.e. find command) "runed athame" it will list all of them. Here's the ones listed on there: -SW of Avadon floor 2 (Redbeard's floor). -SE of Avadon dungeon (secure cells area). -SW of Oghrym'Tor south ring lower level. -N of Moritz'Kri's tower, lower level. -N of Beraza pits, Zhossa Mindtaker's lair. -SE of Bandit roads, Incantor Manon's area. I think that's all of them.

It's considered one of the best item bonuses in the game, hands down, for reasons that should be pretty clear.

@Slarty: So you would favor increasing blademaster to max at high levels, for it's higher (+3%) damage bonus?

@Randomizer: that doesn't really answer my question, which was more about comparing the benefits of percentage bonuses against bonuses of flat levels of damage at various points in the game. Also, battle discipline availability ceases to be an issue once you hit 20 weapon skill points, which is far fewer than a player can put into the skill in question. I think everyone involved in the debate can agree that putting 20 points into melee weapons relatively early is the best course for a melee fighter. Slarty and Jerakeen's debate concerned whether, once you have all the points you need for battle disciplines, it's better to invest another 5-15 points in that skill, or instead put those points into higher tier combat skills like dual wielding, blademaster, etc.

One question that I think is relevant to this argument: how do percentage bonuses compare to additional levels of damage at various points in the game? I'm pretty sure extra damage levels are more important early on (when both weapons and skills provide fewer of them), but how does 1 level of damage compare to 3% damage bonus in the endgame? If there's been discussion of this elsewhere on the forums, I haven't seen it, and it's pretty clearly applicable to debates over melee/pole weapons vs. blademaster/dual wielding, and bows/thrown vs. sharpshooter. Also, I think the melee weapons vs. blademaster/dual wield discussion is to some extent a false dichotomy. There's a definite cap on the number of points one can put into even an 'unlimited' skill like melee weapons (i.e. one point per level, 3 at the beginning), which leaves one with around 25-35 skill points that presumably aren't all going into cave lore/tool use.

@Actaeon: Do I correctly take your "far more recent" to refer to my statement? Because 1984 was published in 1949, and Catch-22 in 1961, which isn't all that far from what I said. If I had to set an arbitrary year as a dividing line for the (present) definition of classic, I'd go for about 1950. I really like Ken Kesey and Umberto Eco (they are probably my two favorite authors), but I think we should have the benefit of a bit more hindsight before we judge them "classics." @Dintiradan: We'll make a supreme court justice of you yet.

@Rowen: Does this relate to the question at hand, or is it a tangent? I don't object in the latter case, I just want to know so I know how to respond. I would say a classic* author has to stand the test of time to some degree. So, yeah, dead or at least very old. The newest authors I'd call classic would be Faulkner, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Kafka, etc. Early-mid twentieth century. If people still read Stephenie Meyer on a regular basis fifty years from now, then I'd be willing to call her work classic. Contemporary success is one measure of a classic, but not the only one, or probably the most important. Very few people read, say, Kafka or Nietzsche during their lifetimes. * "Classical" refers to ancient Greco-Roman culture, works in the Greco-Roman style, or certain types of music. So no, Stephenie Meyer could not be considered a classical author.

@Trenton: There were gazers in the early Exile/Avernum games. Of course, the creature originates as a take on the Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons, so if there's anywhere Jeff "got it"...

@Jerakeen: I don't think this is an open world problem, per se. The problem (somewhat alleviated in 1.01) is that there's not much of any content appropriate for levels in the 6-12 range. If it were just out of the way, poorly marked, or located in counterintuitive areas, that would be a problem with the open world.

Quote: At least kids are fun, and conversations about kids are interesting. The period when everyone I knew was buying their first house was preeeeetty boring. God, to hear you and Alorael talk about it, I just can't wait to be a thirtysomething.

@Lilith: The risk there is that someone would start off the nuclear equivalent of World War I, in which a regional struggle exploded into a war that killed roughly ten million people. Granted, the powers of the modern world are a lot more skittish about using nuclear weapons than the powers of the 1910's were about starting wars, but it's still a hazard, especially with many smaller powers not being terribly stable. Also, it is entirely possible that you were being facetious (it is difficult to tell on The Internet), in which case disregard this.

@Dintiradan: I find this an interesting way to do and think about things, both because it's so common (neither arranged marriages nor many long distance relationships could work without it), and yet largely alien to me. I find romantic/erotic love to be a necessarily physical endeavor, both in the obvious sexual sense, but also in the sense of cuddling, physical closeness, that general comfortable intimacy that couples develop. I can do long distance for a while (though I find it frustrating), but even that has to be predicated on prior in-person physical intimacy. I have friends who are entirely long distance, and I could see saying to such a friend "You seem really cool, would you like to go out sometime if we're in the same area?" but the 'turned into a romantic relationship' step would have to be in person.

@Alorael: He could always retcon the nomenclature in Avernum: Crystal Souls.

@Lilith: As did C.S. Lewis. Given that he and Tolkien were friends in real life, perhaps they could partner up for the tag team match. @Actaeon & Alorael: What about Plato? He was a wrestler before he philosophized. One of the major historians of the time (Diogenes Laertius) claims that his original name was "Aristocles," and he was nicknames Plato ("broad") because of the breadth of his shoulders.

Quote: Remember that there are level limits on how fast you can invest in Improved Strength: much as you might want to, you can't pump your first five traits into it. This argument presupposes that there's no other worthwhile target for trait investment. I'd rather have extra health/endurance and wait a level or two to take the obviously superior trait (i.e. improved strength).

Also, submitted for your approval, China Mieville, author of Perdido Street Station, The Scar, King Rat, etc.: http://couldtheybeatupchinamieville.wordpress.com/ Spoiler alert: generally, they cannot.

As long as we're on the subject of early-mid 20th Americans and Englishmen, I think George Orwell deserves a mention. He was both a police officer in Burma, and a soldier in the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. During the former tenure, he shot an elephant, about which he wrote an essay entitled "Shooting An Elephant." Rather than emphasizing his machismo (which, let's face it, is just the sort of thing Hemingway or Jack London would have done), he used it as a vehicle for criticism of both himself and the British regime, emphasizing the message "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys."

We're also not sure if Sunzi actually existed. I'm not sure if that matters for this contest.

@Harehunter: Agreed. I think there are a few extreme cases in which regime change from outside is necessary, but the majority of US interventions in the middle east have done more harm than good. This is not to say that we should remain entirely isolated, but we've been far too cavalier about taking military action.

@Harehunter: I think the motivation for radical Islamists* is both political and religious. I also think the two motivations are very hard to distinguish in cases like these, in which groups are quick to exercise their religion politically, and believe that religious values and laws are the only legitimate way to practice politics. To elaborate, regarding American interventions and anti-American sentiment: I think actions by the US, and NATO affiliates in general during the cold war both led to the radicalization of a significant portion of middle eastern Muslims, and pushed middle eastern reformers and revolutionaries toward radical Islam. Iran, once again, is a good example of these principles: the majority of the country's population hated the Shah, but US intervention had emasculated Iranian pro-democracy elements. The only people left with the power and influence to speak out against the Shah's government were the Ayatollahs, and unsurprisingly the more moderate among them were inclined to fear reprisal. Even Khomeini, wildly popular as he had become by the 1970s, had to live in exile for years because of the Shah's secret police. The Shah attacked both secular and Islamist foes of his regime, and essentially made it so that Muslims who wished to practice their religion freely found allies only among the radical elements of said religion. American opposition to Arab Nationalism is another example, particularly of the second principle. Once again, this is more justifiable than American intervention in Iran, because the Arab nationalists were moving in the direction of socialism, and actively allied with the Soviet Union. While not explicitly wrong in my view, we still have to understand that these actions had consequences. By working against the Arab Nationalist movement, and contributing to its overall failure, the US weakened a largely secular movement which then bled off into more religious ones. It's important here to emphasize the difference between Muslim and Islamist: many members of these secular movements were Muslims, but they were not Islamists at the time. When secular movements failed, Islamist parties became their only realistic recourse for exacting political change. *As distinguished from their more moderate compatriots, since groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are actually pretty politically diverse. Thinking that the Quran is the only legitimate basis for government is not so different from thinking that the Bible is the only legitimate basis for government. I disagree with all of the above groups, but it bears noting that only some of them express their opinions with guns and bombs.

@BMA: A fair number of us do. Back when I was a lad, all we had were flat-looking games (this statement is not actually true, but there were a lot more of them then). Then Nethergate came out, and everything changed.

And you get phat lewt from Quothe in Haria-Kel for clearing the unbound out of Gorash-Kel.

Can this become a discussion of Vahnatai creationism? Pretty please with ice cream and Girl Scout cookies and chocolate egg salad chupacabra-wiches on top?