RaustBlackDragon

Yeah, I have a final fantasy I party arrangement going; I have a fighter who's pretty much pure strength, a thief who uses bows, has cave lore and tool use, and goes for pretty much pure dexterity. Then I have a white mage who goes pretty much pure INT and focuses on priest spells, and a black mage who focuses on pretty much pure INT and mage spells. I'm thinking that once I get my fighter and thief to level 15 in weapon skills, I might change track a little bit and start teaching them priest and mage spells respectively, just like the knight and ninja in the original. Their stat allocations wouldn't change, they'd just start learning some magic, mainly buffs and healing, stuff that doesn't require an intelligence investment. Is this a good idea, or should I steer clear of magic for them?

where do you buy training for weapon skills?

Alright. So I'm aiming to get my two spellcasters to get triplecast right away, and by my math if I go one melee and one something else every level, I can get it unlocked in 7 levels. Should I do that, or just put in one point in melee every level?

What? Hardiness counts for combat disciplines?

So what's the general minimum investment of points into weapon skills that is required? Or is it doable without using ANY level-up skill points?

I just read the combat disciplines and I noticed that adrenaline rush adds 20 action points. If I'm correct, that would mean that it would give you time for three actions. Of course, they'd all have to be standard attacks or some strategic item spamming, unless... unless... Unless you were a mage. Fatigue has no penalty for spellcasting. Meaning you'd have access to TRIPLECAST. So what if you did that? What if you took a total of 15 weapon skill points solely to get access to adrenaline rush, and otherwise went with a pure mage build? Am I missing something here? That sounds amazing to me.

So, I've been playing the game through for the first time, on torment difficulty, and I have to say, I probably would have been driven mad from confusion if I hadn't decided to visit the tower of magi. You have to deal with a lot of undead, and every single AOE spell you have is useless against the undead until you get to the tower of magi and get the lightning spray spell. That one spell makes dealing with the undead so much easier. Although I have to ask: Why is it that call storm does cold damage instead of energy? It's doubly weird considering 1: The animation clearly indicates it's an electric attack and 2: It's a priest spell that is useless against the undead. Anyway, Just thought I'd post this in case anybody else was going nuts at being unable to handle the undead and not yet strong enough to go elsewhere. It is ENTIRELY manageable to reach the tower of magi at any level, and the magic they provide is extremely useful.

Aww shucks guys, thanks for the warm reception So somebody said that Jeff has already expressed awareness of, and disinterest in, this suggestion? I'd love to see anything he's written on the subject.

Thanks for the welcome HoS! I saw the post for your balancing mod, I think I'll give it a shot once I've completed the vanilla game once . I have some history of modding myself, I might just try my hand at it for a spiderweb game someday So Jeff has heard this before and has not expressed interest in it? Did he state his reasons somewhere I can read them? I'm really curious to see what his thoughts on the matter are.

Well it was intended as a suggestion for a future project, not necessarily avernum, so I thought it would belong here. Sorry if I was mistaken.

Hey, I'm a relatively recent fan of your games, and I just finished a post about how much I'm LOVING Avernum: Escape From The Pit. However, I do have one small issue with the game that I would love to see rectified in your future products: the stat system is a bit too restricting. It's a strange paradox of games that the more control the player has over their characters' stat gains, the less freedom they actually have. When you can assign every point yourself, the stat system has to be done quite carefully to make sure that this doesn't simply give the player 101 different ways to make a horrible character. The strategy guides for your games really illustrate this. Because of how the battle formulas work, having a secondary weapon is pretty much always impractical, as it means you'll have two attacks that do half damage rather than one attack that does full damage. In short, the increased versatility in no way comes close to offsetting the loss of overall damage. One solution to this I can see is to reduce the overall impact that your stat score has on your characteristics, particularly damage output. For example, maybe magic damage could mainly scale with the character's raw level, and somebody with a maxed intelligence stat would do only twice as much damage as somebody with a base intelligence stat using the same spell. Of course, perks, abilities, and access to superior spells would likely set them further apart, but a "red mage" build would have wider versatility, and the reduced impact of stats could make this a reasonable trade-off. I personally think that this change would make your next project a vast improvement over your previous work, and considering how amazing your previous work has been, that would really be something. I suggest this mainly because It makes me sad to see the rigid "don't make these builds or you will lose" sentiment in games with such huge and expansive character build options. Thanks for your time, and best of luck on your next projects, whatever they may be!

Hey, just thought I'd pop in to say that this game is absolutely amazing! I have a few small "gripes" that I might post as suggestions later, but seriously, thank you for making a "tactical rpg" that's both open-ended AND fast-paced! I love the party dynamic in RPGs, and I think it's a shame that most RPGs either go the action route where you can only control one party member, or go the full-on tactical RPG route, which is often slow-paced, grindy, and overcomplicated. I haven't gotten too far in the game (I'm playing on torment from the get-go, since the lack of ability to grind really demands interesting plans of attack), but what I've seen so far is amazing, and hilarious! Seriously, who wrote the dialogue for the cave full of same-named creatures? I was bursting out laughing with every single line, I felt compelled to share each and every one of them with my friends! Thanks again for making such an amazing game, and good luck on your next projects!