Purely in the Interest of Role Playing.

[Delicious Vlish]

I know how one could justify an all Nephil party. (Though not four Nephils with the Divine Blood trait.)

 

You could be proud honourable Nephils, offered up to serve Avernum, all the while also hunting for a place to start a new clan on your own lands.

 

After all, what better way to scout for a new home than to join the army and be sent to all of the remote places of Avernum? Bound to find a suitable home sooner or later...

 

Ok. Resume being munchkin now.

[Xoid]

Quote:

Originally written by Delicious Vlish:
(Though not four Nephils with the Divine Blood trait.)

That part's easy!

1 horny angel or deity + 1 horny Nephilim = 1 Nephil with divine blood.

Assuming the angel (or deity) and the original nephil were still frisky, the other three divine blood Nephilim are merely the first's younger brothers (or sisters, if there's a feminine enough looking portrait for Nephilim, and you're so inclined).

[Delicious Vlish]

Well the one that wears bright pink...

 

Question. The Divine Blood trait implies that greater beings walk freely through the world.

 

I see plenty of demons to kill.

 

Where are all of the "good" beings?

 

Or would the Divine Blood type be half demons? That would certainly be interesting to think about, Cambions running around Avernum. But those are always male.

[*i]

*Ahem, keep it family oriented now*

[Aoslare]

I was pleased to see that the dialog engine recognized there was a nephil in the party. I don't remember if previous Avernums did that. It's too bad it still can't account for a party with all nephils -- I imagine a number of npcs might react rather differently.

 

It was always funny playing Exile II with a singleton slith party and reading all the comments that didn't apply at all.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Slartucker:
I don't remember if previous Avernums did that.

I don't know if they recognized nephils, but A2 and A3 definitely recognized sliths. BoA has the capacity to figure out everything about the party's composition.

[Alorael at Large]

A3 recognizes nephils in the nephil village in Krizsan Province. I think there's someone who complains about nephilim in A2 if you don't have a nephil in your party. Commander Johnson, maybe?

 

I think the obvious source of four Divinely Touched nephils in quadruplets. Divine parents have lots of offspring!

 

—Alorael, who is willing to let insubstantial heavenly beings conceive four babies at once through immaculate conception. If YHWH can manage one, there's certainly someone who can manage more.

[Delicious Vlish]

I could be totally wrong, but I seem to recall in Exile some place that the Nephar were Nephils that were a demonic crossbreed. But this changed, I think in Avernum.

 

Could be wrong. A lot of things were changed from Exile to Avernum, and not all of them good. Like Sliths for example, being magical creatures with a bonus to their int score.

 

And on the subject of role playing... Purely from a role playing view... I have considered a party with two sliths and two nephils. Since their are of course, two of each kind of graphic.

[Donald Hebb]

A3 gives nephils all sorts of racial slurs- one of the things I liked about it. It also recognizes sliths- remember the Kriszan Province patrol that basically attacks the party if they have a slith in their midst?

[Dikiyoba]

Quote:

Originally posted by Delicious Vlish: And on the subject of role playing... Purely from a role playing view... I have considered a party with two sliths and two nephils. Since their are of course, two of each kind of graphic.

That's how I play A2 and BoA (Don't play A1 and A3, and can't play A4 until the Windows version comes out.) Well, I pretend one of the nephil is a nephar, but still...

Also,

Quote:

Orginally posted by Kelandon: I don't know if they recognized nephils, but A2 and A3 definitely recognized sliths. BoA has the capacity to figure out everything about the party's composition.

Tor, near Fort Draco in A2, reacts to having a nephil in the party. Funny how A Perfect Forest in BoA doesn't react given that my entire party has no humans...

-Dikiyoba (Good luck figuring out what that stands for.)

[Aoslare]

Gordon in Exile I says:

"The Nepharim. It's weird. They're like Nephilim, have Nephilim mothers, but something makes some of them come out bigger, and meaner, and mostly sterile."

 

Awrrm in Exile II says:

"Nepharim not all bad, but these should die. Nepharim like what you humans call mules, bigger than us and sterile. These mules hate us and enslave us."

 

That's it though. I think the implication of demonic or divine origin comes more from the name 'nephilim.' See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim

[Alorael at Large]

What prompted that? We were talking about justifying the Divinely Touched trait for nephil party members and nepharim aren't involved at all.

 

—Alorael, who is sure there are quite a few more places that describe nepharim. It sparked a debate for a while over whether nepharim were like mules in that they were sterile or like mules in that they were halfbreeds. The consensus is the former.

[Kelandon]

Slartucker was replying to Vlish's post. Probably should've quoted it to make it more clear.

[Aoslare]

Total non non sequitur, Alorael.

 

And if there are other places, they aren't in Ex1 or 2. I just did a batch find of the resource fork with all the dialogue.

 

Edit: Personally I'm not a fan of making long threads longer by quoting passages that are already in the thread, one screen up. But -- when in Rome, as they say

[Alorael at Large]

No, it makes sense. I just completely missed Vlish's post. I must've hit page down at the wrong moment. The fact that I talked about nepharim as a crossbreed was purely coincidental.

 

From what I remember of E1, nepharim were still just nephils on genetic steroids.

 

—Alorael, who would guess that the nephar gene is recessive. Nephilim are nn or Nn and nepharim are NN.

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Slartucker:
Personally I'm not a fan of making long threads longer by quoting passages that are already in the thread, one screen up.

I avoid that by quoting individual sentences.

[Aoslare]

Yeah, but this quote tag takes up so much space...

 

I know, I know, I'm a real minimalist Luddite. You should have seen how long it took for me to be willing to switch my monitor resolution up to 800x600.

[Alorael at Large]

I switched to OS X this past August. It was a good thing.

 

—Alorael, who also held onto 640 x 480 long past the expiration date. The 20th century will get him kicking and screaming. The 21st century can stand in line.

[Aoslare]

OS X is a good thing. After the time I refused to upgrade to System 7, I've learned to be receptive to new OS's, if nothing else.

[RAmpaGE]

LOL.

 

I can't even remember when it was that I left 800x600 behind (did I ever used it? First computer was a 1992 Quadra). But, come to think about it, I'll probably be like you guys and stick to 1024x768 for a long while. Me and my good ol' 1998 G3 B&W.

 

Anyway, I just noticed something. This is the first of ALL Spiderweb games (yes, I played all of them too) in which I'm not roleplaying. Probably the ugly side effect of less character models and no graphics for skill descriptions... oh, and the uselessness of thrown weapons.

 

Who can guess what the above adds up to?

 

My super cool ninja party leader throwing razordisks and slicing everyone who dared stand on his badass way! Ah, the good Exile 3 days, when I would go all the way back to Ghikra just to stock up on razordisks...

 

Anyway, seriously, I guess I'm so focused on the mechanics of the game (battle and leveling) that I completely forgot the roleplaying.

 

RAmpaGE.

[Delicious Vlish]

I scream bloody murder when I am forced to work in a resolution smaller than 1600x1200.

 

I survived on an iMac for a long time at 1024x768. It was Hell I tell you... HELL.

 

So cramped. It was like being in prison. I would get clausterphobic attacks if i stared at the screen to long.

[Dikiyoba]

Sorry, Alorael. I'll agree with you that the nephar gene is recessive, since that makes it simple. But recessive genes are lowercase (n, in this case) and dominant genes are capitalized (N). So a nephil would be NN or Nn while a nephar could only be nn.

[Alorael at Large]

That was a very subtle (read: stupid) pun on nepharim being larger than nephilim.

 

—Alorael, who wonders if the nepharim gene carriers get any particular advantage from it.

[Kelandon]

They're probably bigger and stronger. Not by much, but by a little.

[Lattan]

The Nephar carriers become Nephil Warriors instead of plain Nephil.

 

As for resolutions, I like fairly big on-screen fonts, so I like 1024x768 on my PC desktop. I didn't swap out of 800x600 on those until I got a 17" monitor. On Macs, it varies...I got an 832x624 monitor with my 9600 but got used to higher reses on school iMacs and stuff. Plus downing my Powerbook's display to less than 1024x768 just looks nasty.

[Aoslare]

I was loathe to make the change from 640 x 480 because I'd rather have a small space used carefully and well, than a large space used carelessly. On larger screens one of two things happens: either everything gets bigger (icons and fonts in the Finder and now default to almost twice as big as they were originally), or I start squinting. Neither is an improvement. There are a few tasks where having a large screen can be really useful, but usually it doesn't add anything.

 

I use 1024x768 habitually now, but under protest... web pages these days are so cluttered with big useless graphics that it's very difficult to use the web on anything smaller.

 

To bring up a very old analogy, 640x480 is to 1024x768 as Exile is to Realmz. And we all know who the winner is there!

 

— Slartucker, who just before downloading Avernum 4 was involved in a game of Wizardy VI, in order to run which he has to emulate a black-and-white Mac Plus with 512x342 resolution. Now that was hot. Interestingly, the feline race in Wizardry (Felpurrs) was also somewhat overpowered.

[Lover of GIFTS]

Hold on a moment...

 

Doesn't Avernum 4 say that every Nephil has the chance of becoming a Nephar? It's in the description of the first Nephil Chief.

[*i]

That's how I understood it. Nepharim are sort of like a natural mutation of Nephil that happen on a relatively frequent time scale.

[Lattan]

Quote:

Originally written by Lover of GIFTS:
Hold on a moment...

Doesn't Avernum 4 say that every Nephil has the chance of becoming a Nephar? It's in the description of the first Nephil Chief.

Yes. They have the chance, at birth, to randomly become a nephar instead of a nephil.

[Alorael at Large]

In utero, not at birth, or so I'd imagine. Then again, it's possible that they're like bees and some environmental or dietary cue triggers nepharism. Maybe it depends on how they're fed before they pupate?

 

—Alorael, who would like to see a nephil pupa one day.

[Aoslare]

You know, we've seen lots of Slith nurseries... and Aranea nurseries... but never any Nephil nurseries.

 

Maybe they spring forth fully formed like Athena. They are all divinely touched, you know

[Dikiyoba]

There never seem to be enough human children to replace all the adults that die of old age or battle or monster attacks, even in the Empire. There must be spontaneous generation.

 

Dikiyoba

[RAmpaGE]

Hehehe! But there's a pretty good reason for the lack of children. Avernum's a war zone, and, having a choice, not many would like to raise their children in a place like that. Money is pretty much the only reason keeping people down there. I would guess that most of the people are living in upper Avernum or trying to settle Valorim.

 

Anyway, as far as previous games go, the dead were being replaced by newer "exiles".

 

That said... there's hardly anyone not in the army, too. And there are not enough houses for everyone. I wonder where do all those merchants live.

 

RAmpaGE.

 

Edit: I remember there was a reason for the lack of children in Valorim. You read it in the introduction dialogue for a child.

 

Edit 2: Damn, I forgot to ask! Do we get our lawful GIFT love in this game? Or is THAT gone too?

[Alorael at Large]

GIFTS is singular as well as plural, and yes, you will meet a GIFTS. Several GIFTS, in fact.

 

—Alorael, who assumes most people inhabit houses hidden below secret trapdoors in the cave floor to prevent ransacking by adventurers. Avernum seems to have reached a stable population, though, and A4 has a lot of born Avernites who don't want to head to the surface as well as born citizens of the Empire who head down for fame, fortune, and freedom.

[RAmpaGE]

Uh... yeah, sorry about that. Didn't remember what the abbreviation was, so I looked it up on google and then just ignored the "S", for whatever stupid reason.

 

I would head down to Avernum myself. Never was a fan of the Empire. But, if I ever had kids, I would let them see the sun a little first, instead of imposing darkness on them.

 

RAmpaGE.

[Henrik]

For some reason I thought nepharim where a cross of Humans and Nephilim...

[the horned slayer]

Quote:

My super cool ninja party leader throwing razordisks and slicing everyone who dared stand on his badass way! Ah, the good Exile 3 days, when I would go all the way back to Ghikra just to stock up on razordisks...

man, i agree with you
my a2 party didn't have a single bomb/tank
it was about stealth!
i'd be have super high agility and great thrown weapons ability and i'd just be flinging razordisk after razordisk(though i had to cheat to get enough

[RAmpaGE]

Hmmm... I didn't mean to say I had a stealthy party. Actually, all I said was that my party leader used the ninja graphic and was a melee tank equipped with razordisks.

 

RAmpaGE.