Varil

Hm, I was thinking about this some more, and it occurred to me : what about completely disallowing magical crafting(those mages who ARE doing crafting are either selling directly to Avernum's military, or are doing so in a general "help Avernum" way, such as making those magic mushrooms), and instead use magic items as a way to point players where you want them to go? Miniadventures, even. So if Fighter A says "I'd like to try and find an Amulet of Health", have the players roll some gather information, maybe roleplay asking around town, and then have someone mention "I heard a soldier up in Mortrax's lair had one. Not much fighting up there, he might be willing to sell it if you're willing to make the trip." It'd be a good way to direct the players to different areas without having to lead them by the nose, in case they don't want to follow the quest-rails Avernum's plot lays out. Of course, you could make this more fantastic as they look for more and more powerful loot. "An ioun stone? I heard a fellow who went west past Fort Remote had one, but hasn't been heard from since...". "A powerful suit of armor? A guy who was banished to the abyss had some, but I heard he escaped before he got there...". "A Blessed Book? I think Erika had one, but she's far, far away..." "A mighty weapon? Reminds of the story of Demonslayer..."

Isn't part of the Avernum lore that they simply don't have the materials or expertise to craft magical items? That's why shops almost never sell magic items(special items, yes, but most don't have that sparkle that indicates magic). Maybe adjust this a little, and just say they lack any magical capabilities above, say +3ish items? Or maybe a strict cost limit would be better. The Mage's Tower or Castle might be able to make magic items up to 10000-15000 gp in cost, for instance, but past that they lack the tools/materials/skills needed. Someone like Erika might be capable of more, but getting one of those high-end mages to stop and craft for you is probably going to be an expense all to itself. Maybe instead of different stats for different materials, instead assign durability ratings which change in use, and lower stats as the durability is reduced? Only in drastic situations, though, so you're not making tic marks every round of combat. Something like stone might have a durability of around 5, while steel might have as high as 20. For weapons, they might lose a point of durability every time the wielder rolls a "1", but armor might lose a point of durability any time the enemy makes a critical hit(or maybe even threatens a critical). Reduce stats every 20% or so(so stone loses stats every time something goes wrong, but steel requires a sequence of problems to start going down). Damaged equipment should lose a lot of its value, and making repairs should require time in a proper forge or workshop. So players are either forced to sell damaged equipment on the cheap, or pay for workshop time so they can repair it themselves(probably not worth it except for exceptional items). And if players are also forced to repair their gear(maybe 10% of the purchase cost per 20% of damage? So a broken weapon can be repaired at half cost, but a dinged one is relatively cheap). Of course, enemy gear should come pre-damaged(to save time, you might want to just set enemy gear to a certain pre-damaged level then ignore it in battle, so you don't have to track two-dozen pieces of gear for wear and tear mid-combat). Consider changing some magical enchantments to simple physical improvements to the weapons. +1 damage? That's not magic, just good forge work! Keen? It's just really sharp! "Magic" weapons without magic. Of course, they should be expensive. A little moreso than they might be as enchantments, since they won't count as enchantments. But if you strictly limit what sort of enchanting players can do, you might consider making such weapons a bit cheaper instead, as a way to soften the blow of a low-magic environment. You might consider banning certain high-magic classes. Wizards, sorcerers, clerics, favored souls, archivists and basically every variation on the psion class(if they were on the table in the first place) will pretty all single-handedly murder the impact of a low magic environment, with spells like Magic Vestment and other handy replacements for magical gear. I'm not saying "no magic", but consider using the more specialized casters(Dread Necromancer, Beguiler, Warmage, and Healer are all far more niche than most D&D casters, but cover various specializations you might expect of spell casters) instead, as their more narrow focus leaves less room for players to usurp your expectations of the setting. At the very least, you might want to carefully comb spell lists for long-range teleportation magic and flight, since travel is one of the things that seems like it should never be trivialized in Avernum.

Why 61, though? That's a weird number to stop at.

If haste always leaves you with 3 AP when cast, couldn't you theoretically use it to move 2 spaces per cast? 8 AP->move 7 spaces->cast haste(3 AP)->move 2 spaces->cast haste(3 AP)->repeat? I haven't actually tried it(your remix is somewhere on my 'todo' list), so I'm not sure if this actually works, but it sounds like it might.

That. But. ...

My only real complaint with 4 brooches as opposed to 5 is Click to reveal.. that you don't appear to get the medal if you don't go in with all 5. *shakes fist*

You...probably want all five, to avoid spoilers here.

I don't mind the linearity TOO much. It's a different game from Avernum, with different pacing, but I do wish the game was less...cutsceney? In A:EftP, you never lost control of your characters, the enemies always played by the same rules as you, and if you challenged someone to a fight there was always some chance of winning. In comparison, more than once so far Avadon has jerked control away from me to move my characters into position so an NPC could talk to me. This is a little annoying, but what REALLY gets me are enemies who get an inexplicable free pass in getting away. The worst example thus far is Neray, who "nimbly escapes", even though the exit is behind you. Not does she get to ignore the usual combat mechanics of "can't move freely beside other characters", but she gets a 100% evade out of the deal? Come on, if you really want an NPC to get away that badly design the situation so she escapes before the player gets a chance to attack, don't just blatantly cheat. That just disrupts gameplay and annoys the player. I don't really hate the more linear character design. It's not my preferred way of doing things, but it seems to work here. I do agree that it'd be nice if specialization was rewarded a little less, or for the player to be given more skill points so they can afford to branch out. This was sort of a problem in A:EftP too, and really a lot of games in general. It's better to make a million-damage fireball than to be able to make a half-million damage fireball and a half-million damage icestorm.