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A:EftP - Things I'd love to see a return.


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It's too bad there's no English version of the IZJS version. It sounds like a much better system.

 

In the same way, FF6 is tremendously improved by never equipping espers. Suddenly, all the characters are totally unique and the battle system no longer turns into "I win" halfway through.

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Well, when I meant more characters, I simply meant a six character party system and not a four character party system--- not the 8-12 character sub system that games like Final Fantasy has. For some reason, it irks me more than it should that I can only use four characters in a battle... not that it's stopping me from playing, I've played Avernum 1-6 and Avadon and enjoyed the experience, and overall they were better games than Exiles... but there was simply a less epic feeling to each game.

 

Having six characters simply made it feel like you had more firepower in the 'me vs the world' feel of Avernum, it allowed you to realistically fight more foes and made it seem like you were going up against entire armies instead of fighting guerilla style against small roaming squads. I also don't believe you need more spells and more items for six characters, you simply have some redundancy and you can tactically choose what redundancy you need--- two tanks, two healers, a few hybrids, maybe a character devoted for lockpicking and scouting and speed and somesuch.

 

I don't really know why Avernum went with the four party system, I remember e-mailing the question way back in the day to the designers and I didn't get a clear reply (although they seemed apologetic, which was nice, cause there was no reason to be) but I don't believe it has anything to do with the player, it's probably more a designer issue. Less characters means easier times making harder battles, as well as giving you less playable options so there's an allusion of more choices.

 

Still, I got WAY too excited when I learned I could fight with five people in Avadon. Kinda sad, really.

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I suspect one of the technical reasons for limiting the party to 4 characters was simply that when you enter a new area like a dungeon or cave and the game has to place your party, the placement algorithm goes a bit wonky if it has to place too many characters in too small a space. You can sometimes see this in Blades of Avernum when you have a full party plus NPCs tagging along.

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Much fewer, which, I think is a shame. Sure, we've two less party members, but... for my money, it's more epic to be fighting MORE enemies that threaten to overwhelm you with sheer numbers rather than a health reservoir that'd make lake Lake Mead blush.

 

It gets much worse later on, though. Rather than fighting an army, you just get thrown up against irregular mobs with stupid, lumpy amounts of health. Rather than the elite force that saves the kingdom, I always feel like a band of toddlers ganging up on the baby sitter in this situation.

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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Very, very old editions of D&D expressly advise the DM to appoint a player in the role of crier, but it didn't exactly catch on, mostly because most people didn't have such large groups that one was necessary.

I remember that, though I think the term was "caller." I'm pretty sure we used, or tried to use, the idea even with smaller groups. But as you say, with larger groups it would be necessary.
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Having a party of more than 4 characters may be difficult to display when they are in the world/exterior maps because the party is displayed shrunken down into a single square. Can't remember how it was done with NPC party characters in Nethergate, (did they follow you outside or were they restricted to staying in certain towns/maps?)

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Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.
But I thought you had to have a PC wait in a inn and have that person come with you, and you cant have more than 4 in your party.
Nethergate had six party slots, but only allowed you to create four characters when starting a game.
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Nethergate has the four standard slots, one slot for one of two NPCs you can pick up in a town a couple of chapters into the game, and a sixth slot for area-specific temporary party members. There's no way to drop off a party member even if you want to.

 

Avernum has never let you have five real party members at once. Some games give you an NPC who follows you around helping. The first three let you drop off party members and replace them with new members if you want, and they also let you recruit premade characters. Nethergate let you recruit premade characters into a slot specifically for them.

 

—Alorael, who found this much more exciting for Romans than for Celts. Romans get the chance to pick up a druid. Celts just get their choice of fighters, and a fighter at the back of your lineup isn't quite as useful as one in the front.

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Originally Posted By: Musical Malpractice
—Alorael, who found this much more exciting for Romans than for Celts. Romans get the chance to pick up a druid. Celts just get their choice of fighters, and a fighter at the back of your lineup isn't quite as useful as one in the front.
What always bothered me was that there was no way to respec the 5th character. They didn't even show up in the editor.
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Originally Posted By: Musical Malpractice
—Alorael, who found this much more exciting for Romans than for Celts. Romans get the chance to pick up a druid. Celts just get their choice of fighters, and a fighter at the back of your lineup isn't quite as useful as one in the front.


Numerinus at least made a decent javelin-thrower, and his starting Tool Use was handy sometimes.
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To the original question:

 

Capture Soul/Simulacrum

Move Mountains

 

Obviously the former wasn't available until A2; I hope it will be in the next remake. And I really miss being able to knock things down. Although it was never strictly necessary, it gave you more options. And it was fun.

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Originally Posted By: The Turtle Moves
To the original question:

Capture Soul/Simulacrum
Move Mountains

Obviously the former wasn't available until A2; I hope it will be in the next remake. And I really miss being able to knock things down. Although it was never strictly necessary, it gave you more options. And it was fun.
Actually, Move Mountains doesn't show up until A2 either. There is no plot-centric reason for this though, so it could easily be included in A:EftP
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It's great that the character editor is coming back, But I hope they will also include a cheat code that will give you the item specified IE "Gimme 357" will give you the item corresponding to entry 357 in the item table. This was sadly lacking from the later Avernum trilogy though it was included in the first trilogy as I recall. Of course you could make this cheat code not work with certain items like the orb of Thralni or Demon-Slayer.

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Eh, I'unno, I personally have a tendency to slink away from "insta-death" like spells like that.

 

Sure, watching Mephistopheles scream in agony and DIE after he rolls a 1 against my Finger of Death might be weaponized hilariousness, but the only reason I would have even considered using it is because it still does SOME damage on the side even if it fails to completely disassociate my enemies organic systems with one another.

 

I'm sure there are a lot of people who love spinning the metaphoric roulette wheel of such all or nothing spells, but I'm just not one of them.

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Originally Posted By: Darth Ernie
except for the fact that it is an avernum special
Not really, I think somone in a AIMHack campaign had it as a spell as well, of course, they took it from Avernum 6, but who cares. Besides, you can easily replace "Anvil" with "Large Rock", which would smash just as well.

For some reason, that has reminded me... I want Divine Thud back so freaking much.
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Originally Posted By: FnordCola
I recall Divine Thud being a fairly standard (if quite powerful) damage spell. Is it just the name that makes people so fond of it, or is there something I'm forgetting?
Divine Thud was part of the reason for my Mad Monk Squad in the Exile scenarios; 3 fighter/priests and 3 priest/mages. This was possible since armor encumbrance did not interfere with priest spells. Kill is very effective against a single target, but being a mage skill, only three of my PCs could use it. Divine Thud is a strong area effect spell, and being a priest spell, that meant even my heavily armed and armored fighters could use it. Six Divine Thuds, 12 when hasted, on a mass of targets is truly impressive, especially when you consider encounters like the plains before the Ornotha Ziggurat.
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