Brocktree

I know this is a really old thread, but I think it's important to add that later investigations found that Geneforge 1-4 have a bug where items that should provide a bonus to creation strength actually don't. This tilts the argument in favour of the puresteel blade.

No they don't. Also, I've already pointed out that you can't draw a comparison between a resistance force in wartime vs. a government in peacetime. Even when the Shaper Government had centuries of peace and prosperity, they *still* felt the need to commit genocide and enslave entire species.

They've never had a chance to establish a civilisation in peacetime, so you can't know that. They might be quite nice when people aren't trying to wipe them off the face of the earth.

I'm not denying that sinking points into intelligence is a wise move. I'd probably sink most (at least 80%) into intelligence, and the remaining into a selected Shaping skill.

Since when are resistance fighters under the thumb of a genocidal regime obliged to play fair?

Increasing a Shaping skill increases the damage output of up to 8 creations at once. How is that not a good investment?

The problem is that the aggregate damage output is just too low - probably half what I was getting from my Fire creations (Drayk's rock). Even though the Gazer is a supremely durable tank, it isn't always possible to get the enemy to focus on it. Any scenario with spawning enemies is also problematic.

This isn't really a surprise. Toting around 4 creations is going to give you a lower damage output that having 8 creations, for obvious reasons. In fact, now that I think about it, it is self-defeating to invest heavily in shaping skills, and then only focus your efforts on one or two powerful creations. Shaping represents the best form of damage output due to high leverage.

For example, increasing battle magic or melee weapons by 1 level will increase damage output for *one* character. However, increasing creation strength by one point can potentially increase the damage of *eight* characters. Seems obvious, but this explains why melee and battle magic heavy builds have always paled in comparison to shaping heavy builds. And no, I don't care what anyone says, a creation heavy Shaper steamrolls a Guardian with high parry in GF2 any day.

This also makes the Projection Belt one of the most overpowered items in the Geneforge series. +4 to creation strength is *ridiculous*. Assuming you have 6 war tralls with a multiplier of 10 (average damage of 5.5), that equates to an a damage increase of *132* per round. If you have 6 shocks tralls, that doubles to 264. Not only that, each creation gains 4 to endurance (just a perk, since tralls are already tanks) and dexterity. Even better, this bonus is applied to all 3 types of creations, so if you need a charged thahd for magic immunity, or a wingbolt to take out unbound, they also gain the damage bonus.

Brocktree, I appreciate hearing your thoughts, as I basically plagiarized your idea on this. I think that for War Trolls, what would be most relevant is the point at which you could get +6 to shaping skills from equipment.

After working through it, I can say my idea would fail simply because you wouldn't have enough essence to create a war trall if you held off leveling until you obtained the skill.

Glaahks are indeed unimpressive, but in this specific approach they have a role. So far as I can tell, a creations dodge chance is exclusively tied to their dexterity, which is determined by their level. Ur-Glaahks have a base level of 30, and are by far the cheapest creation with such a high base level. That in turn makes it easy to pump their dexterity by 8 for a manageable cost, giving an excellent evade tank. I think with a slightly more balanced skill point allocation (say 4 less shaping, 5-6 more intelligence) a couple of Ur-Glaahks would make excellent tanks right down through end-game.

Yes, Ur-Glaahks have a relatively low essence to base level ratio.

Yeah, I used the exitzone cheat regularly for convenience. But when you put it like that, perhaps I should have just used the heal/recharge cheat.

Just thought I'd resurrect this thread, because I'm incredibly proud of myself. Not only did I recently beat Avernum 6 on Torment difficulty, I dropped Melanchion like a bag of dirt.

My party consisted of two mages and two priests, so they were outside the range of his aura attack. My clerics did by far the most damage with smite (approximately 170 damage per pop after casting war blessing and cloak of the Arcane). My two mages were able to do about 100 damage with acid spray.

You need to hit Melanchion hard, so that you take him down quickly, but not for the reasons you might think. Melanchion by himself is a pushover, but his dracionian summons will destroy you in a few rounds. There is no effective defense against their terrify spells, and once your PCs are running all over the place, you lose group cohesion and run right into Melanchion's aura of flames attack.

Fortunately I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I abused the hell out of curing elixirs, which allowed me to use adrenaline rush to strip away 6000 hitpoints in one round. The dracionian summons actually wiped out three of my PCs, but I managed to navigate my remaining cleric to a stairway, duck down, and resurrect. I repeated this process twice, and whittled Melanchion down to 2000 hp. For the final push, I juiced everyone up on invulnerability potions, charmed Goro and some nearby soldiers, and unleashed everything I had left. Melanchion might be tough, but he's not invulnerable.

Honestly, I can't see myself beating Melanchion if I had one or two melee characters in my party. A party composition of 2 mage/2 priest (or even 3 priests/1 mage) is best. Priests are easily the best build in Avernum 6, with mages coming a close second. Archers are a distant third, and melee warriors are useless.

Yeah. Knowledge brews will do diddly squat if you decide to go toe to toe with Melanchion. In that case, you're better off stockpiling curing elixirs and invulnerability potions.

Powerwise, you're better off raiding Melanchion's treasury and *not* fighting him. However, if you want a better ending, Melanchion has got to go down.

The only thing that might work is to avoid leveling as much as possible until you get to the Storm Plains, and then purchase two levels of War Trall ASAP. It would be difficult to get to the point, but you can skip most of the difficult battles with adequate leadership/mechanics. Then you could retroactively clear up the previous two provinces and gain a hefty number of level ups for the trall/s (not sure if you'd have enough essence for more than one trall). That seems like a lot of pain for what will probably be a moderate benefit, at best.

I don't really like Ur-Glaahks. They are hideously overpriced, have a stun attack that rarely works, have virtually no physical resistance, and no ranged attack. Still, I can't argue with success.

okay i am not saying all mentally ill people are would-be mass-murderers. that would be silly and absurd. however, as said above, if at any point you are considering going on a murdering rampage, you are not functioning in a correct fashion mentally.

 

I mean i am by no means an expert on the subject so i will defer the vocabulary nitpicking to those who are, but my point stands. And as I don't really have anything to say besides that, I am going to depart the topic.

Yep. In these extreme cases, do we really need a horde of psychiatrists to tell us that the individual was mentally disturbed? I don't need a horde of doctors to tell me my arm is broken, if the bone is poking out through the skin.

 

BOWS

10 Dex, 20 Bows, 27 Sharpshooter (yeah... forcing it!)

Heartstriker Bow

Average Output: 133

I've been playing through Avernum 6 in Torment mode with a 2 cleric + 2 mage party, and I can say that I have 19 in sharpshooter, 13 in bows, and 3 in dexterity with *no* skill point investment for one character. With a blessed long bow, I'm hitting for 85 hit points a pop, with cloak of bolts I can push that to 120. Steel javelins under cloak of bolts hit for as much as Smite does under an Arcane Cloak (150).

If the shooter had received some treatment for his mental health issues, then he likely wouldn't have wanted to kill people in the first place.

Heavens'ta Betsy. It always turns into something worth watching once you throw in a loon or two. Keep it up, BT, for the sake of good entertainment.

LOL! So personal attacks are OK, but expressing a socially inappropriate opinion is not. Screw it. I'm not contributing to this forum any more.

If that is an official request from the moderating team, I'm fine with that. It's not my forum, after all. I simply wished to post my position, not engage in endless back and forth with people spoiling for a fight.

Do note, however, that I'm not the only one who has the ability to walk away.

You may be unimpressed, but the risk of dying by gunshot has fallen 50% (source: http://abcnews.go.co...55#.UNazDKX7pNw). That's a lot of lives saved.

Where's the raw data? Who collected it? Who analyzed it? Is abcnews a reliable, unbiased source of secondary information? Have violent crimes decreased? Have fatalities due to violent crimes decreased? Have crimes against property decreased? If you can't answer these questions, then I think it's a little premature to laud the results of Australia's gun buyback.

Furthermore, it's important to remember that correlation does not imply causation. Even if there was a decrease in gun related violence after the buyback, that in no way is proof that the gun buyback caused a reduction in gun related crime.

But let me just add: Even if you could conclusively demonstrate that banning firearms resulted in a decrease in violent crime, I *still* would not support it.

Forgive me if I believe that we're better than that. We in America can reform our laws to make ourselves safer. We passed an assault weapons ban before, and our country didn't collapse. We can do it again.

'We'? You're speaking for all Americans now? From where I'm standing, it seems that many Americans are not interested in further firearm restrictions, and I don't understand why they should be forced to conform to the standards of others.

I'm glad that you've taken to openly making light of the murder of "a few" children, because it casts your position in clearer relief.

Yep. Let me be crystal clear to everyone here. *I don't care about the children* That might save you some time when you make a futile attempt to guilt me.

Yes, any child's chance of getting shot is relatively low. However, about one child or teen is shot and killed per typical day, by Slate's count: http://www.slate.com..._shooting.html. That's still too many;

Not to many Americans, it seems. And Huffington Post? Slate.com? Aren't they tabloids?

The fact remains that our gun-related death rate per capita is ridiculously high (source: http://en.wikipedia....ated_death_rate). It's more than double the next highest rate in the developed world (Canada) and many times the rate in Europe. That is in fact a lot of deaths.

Dying is a fact of life. If you are born, then it's guaranteed that you will die at some point. Personally, I'm far more worried about dying slowly of cancer or stroke, rather than being shot. Hell, I'd *rather* be shot than linger in palliative care for months.

We do have laws restricting freedom of speech in cases where it is likely to cause imminent harm to others.

But we don't preemptively silence people because they might say something bad. Likewise, we should not prohibit people from owning firearms simply because they might do something bad with them.

When your entire position boils down to not caring when kids die, there's something wrong with your position.

You're *still* going on about that? Come on dude, now you're just trolling me.

What are you even talking about right now? Are you saying that in a hypothetical situation in which citizens are totally unarmed, the police shouldn't need guns, either? That hardly seems relevant to reality.

I'm simply observing that if we expect citizens to disarm, surely we should expect likewise of law enforcement. What possible need would they have for high-powered firearms against a disarmed populace?

Yes, but when you say it, it's actually nonsense, instead of facts that you call nonsense because you don't like them. These "multitudes" are virtually nonexistent.

False. These multitudes are plentiful .

If you buy a gun for self-defense, it is many, many times more likely to be used to hurt someone in your household than to defend someone in your household.

So now you know me better than I know myself?

False sense of security? Sure, tell that to the parents who lost there kids, I'm sure they will clap for you.

Yet guns have also saved lives, by driving off intruders with violent intent. Tell me, how would your gun control measures have effected the multitudes of men and women who used a firearm to scare off violent criminals? Would you tell them that they should not have had a gun? That they should have remained powerless as their children were victimised and killed? I'm sure they would clap for you.

See, I can pull the 'think of children' nonsense too!

This is true, but in order for it to be logically relevant, you need to point out an important difference. You have not.

I don't feel any compulsion to. I live in Australia, and I've talked to many Americans who fall on both sides of this issue. I'm confident that there are significant differences. Whether you choose to believe me or not doesn't really matter, I just thought that providing you with an Australian's perspective might help you out.

The point was that the gun control measures in Australia gave a real sense of security, not a false one. And real security, while we're at it, which is more important: gun crime in fact plummeted.

Debatable, since gun crime really wasn't a pressing issue prior to the Port Arthur massacre. If anything, Australians already had a very dim view of firearms, Port Arthur was just the nail in the coffin. Good luck trying to get Americans to voluntarily hand all of their firearms in.

Furthermore, violent crime has steadily increased in Australia, in spite of the gun control measures we have implemented. Colour me unimpressed.

Huh? It looks as though you're saying that people in the U.S. who don't like guns should move to a place where there are no guns, but you're also saying that no place in the U.S. should be allowed to ban guns (and therefore be sure that there are no guns).

Nope. If you're going to try and argue with me, at least respond to what I said, rather than what you would like me to say.

I think what you're saying is, "We got guns! If you don't like it, get out!" That could be described (if one were being charitable in one's descriptions) as a position but not an argument.

Correct. I'm not here to argue. I'm here to state a position. If you don't like living near people who own guns, then move away from them. If America's gun culture troubles you, then expatriate. There are many countries in Europe whose culture despise firearms.

Nobody's talking about "feeling a little bit safer." We're talking about kids getting shot at school.

And? How many kids die each year in school shootings? Considering how many kids there are in America, and considering how many guns are in circulation, I'd say that the risk of getting shot is actually quite low. Why are a few dead children suddenly such a pressing issue, that we need to restrict the rights of so many citizens?

If someone's free speech got a lot of people killed, I might start thinking a bit about curtailing that free speech.

And yet we don't preemptively censor all outlets of free speech, simply because someone *might* cause harm with their speech.

So maybe we're talking about asking people to accept modest limits on their constitutional rights in order to save kids' lives, but that's not tyranny. That's basic human decency.

Again with the kids! Honestly, what's with all the caterwauling? Kids die in droves all over the world from easily preventable causes (abuse, neglect, conscription, starvation, accident, disease, etc.), and yet on this one particular issue everyone gets on their high horse. If gun crime is of such a concern to parents, then the answer is simple: Don't have guns in the house. Move away from areas with high gun crime.

It appears that you're saying that ordinary citizens should be allowed to have guns because police and military personnel have guns. This is obviously ridiculous on its face. Should ordinary citizens be allowed to have nuclear weapons? Or biological weapons? Our military (or "government enforcers," as you call them) has those.

Why does a government enforcement agency need to be heavily armed when policing an unarmed populace?

In short, your post fails to make any sort of logical argument or even express much of a coherent thought. On the bright side, though, your post was not nearly as much of a fail as the NRA's press conference yesterday.

Thanks.

Restore the assault weapons ban and institute a gun buyback program. Look at what other countries have done. Australia has effectively halted mass murders.

 

Stop talking about "gun control" and start calling it "mass murder weapon control". Apparently, some of the gun nuts (like my liberal Congressman, John Dingell) need to be reminded that measures to reduce mass murder are more than worth it.

 

If we can spend a fortune on <fill in your least favorite federal program here> then we can afford to buy back guns.

Australia isn't America. Personally, I admire the United States for valuing freedom over a false sense of security. If people in the U.S.A don't like guns, then don't buy them. If they don't like living around people with guns, move to a gun free area. Expecting people to give up a freedom enshrined in their Constitution simply to make you feel a little bit safer is the high of tyranny. Demanding otherwise law-abiding citizens to hand in their firearms when government enforcers are armed to the teeth stinks of hypocrisy.

But doesn't melee have distinct advantages, particularly for a blademaster? The cleave effect of melee weapons is hideously broken (unblockable, undodgable, AND hitting 2 squares away), and many of the blademaster's passive traits actually grant bonuses when he is hit, most notably battle frenzy. Couldn't a blademaster just gear up in the heaviest armour available and rely on raw damage reduction, instead of dodging?

jeff gets really mad if you find uses for those items.

I've found the Rod of Attraction quite useful when used by a regenerating blademaster. Blinking Pants also help when used by a missile character (ie. everyone).

Done some testing, and charm foe's duration and chance to hit *are* affected by intelligence. However, the chance of successfully charming *are not*.

Earthshatter is worth unlocking, but there is no need to get it to level 6, since that merely gives you an ability that does the same damage, but *sometimes* stuns.

Rawal would have seen em anyway, given that he was the one who put the control tool in.

Since I've just finished the game, I'll chip in with my own thoughts.

1. I don't think the companions are particularly well written. They seem to exist more for exposition and to create an ethical dilemma, rather than to function as 3D people. Nevertheless, I think that at least 3 of them have legitimate grievances against Avadon, if you look at it from their POV:

- The Pact has rescinded the Wyldrylms ancestral right to tax travelers on their roads. Many tribes relied on this as their sole source of revenue, and are now living in poverty since the Pact has essentially kicked the rice bowl out of their hands.

- Shima's whole family (tribe?) was murdered by a rival tribe who was favoured by Avadon. It's all well and good to talk about the 'bigger picture', but it's pretty hard not to get personal in such an instance.

- Sevilin's scenario is similar to Shima's. Bandits butchered his comrades. Again, it's all well and good to talk about the bigger picture, until someone kills your loved one and gets off scott free. Being able to evade punishment simply by making yourself useful is not considered justice, even in today's society.

- I couldn't really sympathise with Natalie. Avadon mishandled her, but it was suicide to go off alone after the drake.

2. I agree that the game is way to verbose. My eyes glazed over whenever I had to read the names of certain nations. The situation was made even worse by Shima. Which nation did Shima belong to? Who hated him? Why? The captain in Castle Vebeaux should have had a grievance against him, but didn't? But the people in the other country also wanted to kill Shima? So both nations hated him? And Natalie was from the rival nation, but seemed to get along well with him? Was the captain who was working from the Duke, from the nation the Duke was trying to negotiate a peace treaty with? Huh? I guess it all just boiled down to everyone hating everyone else, for whatever reason.

3. The game is linear, but the story was compelling enough to keep me playing.

4. The battles are poorly designed, but the game mechanics are pretty good.

Redbeard is arguably the worst leader in the game. No, he doesn't do background checks. And even if he discovers treachery, he mind-rapes the culprit and then has them serve his *as his most loyal advisor*. His organisation has created so much ill-will that basically everyone (Hanvar's council, dragons, Farlands, virtually every nation in the Midlands, his own Hands, Eyes and Hearts) hates Avadon.

The despot in Khemeria is basically acting like every other warlord in that region. His biggest mistake is not getting off his ass and hunting down the shadowbeast himself, instead he sits back and LOLs as it kills his own citizens, eventually resulting in Avadon's gaze falling on him. Oops.

Avadon's central theme seems to be that the more you piss people off, the more trouble you're in for down the track.