A6 - Aldrenaline rush party

[Roentgenium]

I'm creating a new party - one with access to aldrenaline rush at the start of the game. They'll all have divinely touched, for the significant bonuses. They'll also all be melee-capable, mainly because I wanted to save some skill points and put points in melee weapons and bows. I also put points in thrown weapons, not that I'll be using them - I needed to reduce the cost of getting to aldernaline rush as much as possible.

 

Thoughts? Criticism?

[Txgangsta]

Some criticism:

 

Your wasting skill points. You'll get the battle disciplines anyway later, why waste them now, say for the want of challenge?

[Roentgenium]

I wanted to get the battle disciplines as early in the game as possible, so I could kill enimies at the start with ease.

[Txgangsta]

Then you will accomplish your goal. Spend as little as you can on each stat, and remember that bows/thrown missiles count as 1/2 a point. This means if it costs 7 to upgrade melee, and 4 to upgrade bows, melee is the better deal.

 

Note: I like unununium better than roentgenium. =p

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Roentgenium

I wanted to get the battle disciplines as early in the game as possible, so I could kill enimies at the start with ease.

Then visit the priest in Dharmon to buy his blessings and do the first two quests at the Castle so you can get past Almaria to reach the first trainer.

[Roentgenium]

I mean really early. Like, start-of-game early.

[So Much Killing]

The problem with adrenaline rush is that it costs you HP to use it. At the early levels you're going to need constant healing just to stay alive from your own use of AR. You're probably better off taking two rounds to kill some critter--letting it hit somebody once--than having to heal the whole party after they use AR.

 

In practice, I almost never use AR. Mighty Blow, constantly, but AR, rarely. You get Well-aimed Blow pretty early, and that's effective until you get Mighty.

 

Making your PCs hard to kill pays dividends every combat round throughout the game. The battle disciplines only work once every few rounds, and they're relatively expensive to obtain (SP per average damage inflicted) compared with things like blademaster, dual wielding, and quick action.

[Roentgenium]

The only thing I'm not liking about this party so far is that there's not much that isn't killed in 1 hit. Runkle is one person that I can use aldrenaline rush against. I easily killed him in 3 hits with the bonus AP. And I only took 4 damage from aldrenaline rush when I used it against him (I checked).

[Archaeolagent]

The HP loss to adrenaline rush is proportional to your max HP, and also quite small. The bonus you get from it is enormous. The above comment that battle disciplines are less useful than other skills might be true if not for the extreme diminishing returns placed on those skills (see the skill info thread and the numerical analysis of attack skills threads). As it is battle disciplines are incredibly strong.

[Øther]

My absolute favorites of the battle disiplines in this game are mighty blow and adrenaline rush.

[So Much Killing]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

The above comment that battle disciplines are less useful than other skills might be true if not for the extreme diminishing returns placed on those skills (see the skill info thread and the numerical analysis of attack skills threads). As it is battle disciplines are incredibly strong.

My point was that you have to burn through most of your initial SP to get up to AR at the start of the game, leaving your PC weak and vulnerable in many other ways. So you'd be playing catch up for a lot of the early game to have AR at the start. On the other hand, if you wait for the trainers and the priest at Dharmon to bump up your battle skills, you'd have a lot more SP to put into other valuable skills.

It seems like there are enough battles where you can't kill your opponent in one round that it makes sense to have your PCs be hard to kill (like the ride up the elevating platform in the bandit lair(?), for example). But I don't know for sure because I've never tried an all-offense build. Maybe it can work.

[Txgangsta]

An all offense build works really good unless enemies have an area effect attack, and your priest doesn't know group heal.

 

Ex: The giant in A5 is nearly impossible to kill before the drayk pillars simply because of the area of effect. I can kill him no problem as soon as I get group heal. Another enemy that is nearly impossible is the Pit Crawler. It'll kill a character every turn, while the worms swarm you.

[Randomizer]

You have to learn how to stay out of the area of effect attacks. That is the biggest problem as a singleton doing Avernum 5 where you can't afford to get hit by anything that lowers your action points or stuns you a round.

 

For those situations you need summoned creatures to sacrifice for melee attacks while the party does range attacks.

 

Using up those skill points when you know trainers will be available isn't that helpful. You can always use the skill points after the trainer even if all you do is keep them for later or put them to use for the stats instead of skills.

[Txgangsta]

I almost never summon creatures; I need to incorporate that into my strategy. Thanks Randomizer!