Drakefyre

See Morgan, I did tell you that there was a parentheses problem.

It's not an array out of bounds error, at least in the cases he describes, since it does work fine, except a reload crashes BoA.

You can see my article on challenging combat for more suggestions.

You can see my article on challenging combat for more suggestions.

One of the things that I don't like about higher level scenarios is that the combat tends to get repetitive and boring. Fighting an invulnerable dragon with tons of HP that's nearly melee-immune is not my idea of a good time.

I also know what language it is, and I also cheated.

You could always change all of the items to "not property" while invisible.

Read the post.

Respond at the form at the appropriate time.

Just use a PNG, if you can.

That's another thing I was thinking about - I wanted to do something more BoA-specific, but I didn't know what to write about. Khoth suggested messages, which I might write about next.

That's why I haven't put one out for a while - I've been busy and, while I could have whipped something up, I didn't want it to be complete crap and an article just for the sake of being an article.

But tomorrow, I think it should be finished and well.

Just do what I did and use an invisible monster.

You can buy BoE now for $30 and get $10 off of BoA.

You can always have NPCs that follow the party but aren't actually part of it, like we did in BoE.

1) Write out the plot, what happens, plan, etc.

2) Make the custom monsters, terrain, items, etc. that you need. Also write/find appropriate creature scripts, terrain scripts, etc.

3) Outdoors

4) Towns and their dialogue together - Town 0 and Town 0's dialogue, Town 1 and Town 1's dialogue, etc. Remember that you can (and should) always go back to add more dialogue.

5) Dungeons. You can do these interspersed with the towns too.

Yes - it's probably easiest to do it with a call in the START_STATE to see if they have all of them equipped and then do stuff/set a flag if they do. Remember to also reset the flag if they take it off.

You may also want to add it to the readme file for clarity.

When you're creating a custom item, you can just copy this into the file and change the values you want, instead of typing it all up again.

Article - A General Item Overview

When you first get ahold of the editor, a little jolt goes through your brain. Now it's you with the power, and you can make your own scenario for people to play. And with that scenario, you can include super-powerful weapons to combat the super-powerful monsters, and all in a low-level scenario.

But that's not what scenario design is about. What happens when the party leaves that scenario at level eight with weapons that would make a level 50 party drool? This article has two parts - balance/avoiding Monty Haul, and creating cool items. And while the first is not nearly as fun as the second, it's much more important.

What is Monty Haul? A Monty Haul scenario is one where the party is given the opportunity to acquire items that would be unbalancing if placed in another scenario of the same level. It's okay to make powerful items to give to the party, but there's a difference between powerful and unbalancing. In a low-level scenario, an iron greatsword is a powerful and awesome weapon, but it's not unbalancing.

Editing that same iron greatsword to give it 10 defense, resistance to all elements, and +2 AP, while keeping it at the same base damage, crosses the line from powerful to unbalancing. Even though the two swords will do the same amount of damage, one will wreck all of the combat in another scenario. If the combat in your scenario requires a sword of this sort, then maybe it should be toned down (or the sword should be taken away at the end of the scenario).

Of course, it's still possible to create cool items that are balanced for the scenario's level and the combat within it. The first thing to do when creating combat items is to assess the level of the scenario and the difficulty of the combat. Most likely, you'll want the combat to still be difficult and challenging, and the weapons and armor should not give the party an unfair advantage.

When creating a weapon, it's important to take several things into account. Should it be one-handed or two-handed? The most powerful items should be two-handed, since it's good to create a dilemma for the player regarding whether or not s/he should take the powerful greatsword or a smaller weapon and a shield. If you create a good shield, it makes the choice even tougher.

Another thing to take into consideration with all items is weight. The party has a maximum carrying capacity of 350 stones, and making better items heavy, you're creating another dilemma for the player. They have to make space to fit this new item. Still, weight should be realistic - swords shouldn't be over 60, armor shouldn't be over 100, etc.

Something else that Blades of Avernum lets us do is assign any skill to use for weapon strength. The default is melee weapon, but setting it to Mage Spells or Nature Lore could make for some interesting weapons for mages or rogues. Since any skill can be used, weapons can cater to more people than just fighters.

A very effective way to make an average weapon into a powerful artifact in your scenario alone, but that is not really special in another scenario, is to give the main boss a weakness that the weapon exploits. You can do this with a custom item state in the scenario script, or you can do the easier (and less interesting) thing and make the evil baddie either undead, demon, reptile, or Vahnatai, and use abilities that do extra damage to those species.

Alternatively, you could make an armor that blocks the main attack of monsters in the scenario but has a disadvantage that makes you vulnerable to the big boss but not his henchmen. The possibilities are endless.

In general, combining advantages and disadvantages to make an item level-appropriate will be enough to keep the party guessing, unless they come into your scenario with overpowered weapons. In that case, there's a lot that we can do as designers, including completely redesigning the item set to make it weaker (which is a lot more interesting than stronger) after we strip a party of all of its items.

Forcing a party to go through a scenario with only the weakest items provides a challenge and may be appropriate, based on the premise of the scenario (ie a shipwreck or something similar). It's in that case that making items weak can still make them appear strong, compared to the item that they got two towns ago that seemed strong then. As a player, I've always liked the added challenge that brought to a scenario.

If you don't want to be too mean, you can always return the party's items at the end of a scenario, but it's certainly not necessary.

Items offer a lot of possibilities, especially now that they can call states in the scenario script. Explore them.

You could make it a cutscene.

Also, you should have a text bubble above his head that says 'Zzz' or something.

Custom Item Template:

//Note: all fields are filled in with their default valuesbegindefineitem (number);	clear;	it_name = "";	it_full_name = "";	it_variety = 0;	it_damage_per_level = 0;	it_bonus = 0;	it_weapon_skill_used = 4;	it_protection = 0;	it_charges = 0;	it_encumbrance = 0;	it_ability_1 = -1;	it_ability_str_1 = 0;	it_ability_2 = -1;	it_ability_str_2 = 0;	it_ability_3 = -1;	it_ability_str_3 = 0;	it_ability_4 = -1;	it_ability_str_4 = 0;	it_special_class = 0;	it_value = 0;	it_weight = 0;	it_identified = 0;	it_magic = 0;	it_cursed = 0;	it_once_per_day = 0;	it_junk_item = 0;	it_floor_which_sheet = 0;	it_floor_which_icon = 0;	it_icon_adjust = 0;	it_inventory_icon = 0;	it_missile_anim_type = 0;

That's what the goal is. The goal is to provide an underlying structure of history that can be used by everyone.

The founding of the Empire occurs about 500 to 600 years before the extinction of most nonhumans. Valorim started being settled about 215 years before A3, and it was completely settled in about 790.

You can boom away from the designer, but you can never take the designer away from the boom. Or something like that.

That's why I've avoided using calls to characters 0-3. There are enough group calls that accomplish what I want, and for the times there's not, I can use random_party_member()