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A:EftP - New Races Ever?


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But even spellcasters benefit from having more battle disciplines, and you can always get some good use out of Gymnastics and more ability with ranged weapons. Making casters nephilim is probably a good trade: you save skill points that you'd have to waste on getting those disciplines.

 

—Alorael, who in retrospect thinks there's now clear evidence for the nephils vs. sliths debate years and years ago, and it's not the side he backed. Nephils are just better.

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Arrows have pretty much the same hit calculation as melee weapons in both trilogies, except they use Dexterity in place of Strength, Bows instead of Melee/Pole, and Sharpshooter (in games where it exists) in place of Blademaster.

 

—Alorael, who can't understand a complaint about damage, either. Bows aren't the optimal way to kill enemies, but they're certainly valuable enough to merit the investment of skill points.

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Originally Posted By: Pleasantries vs. Promises

—Alorael, who hasn't found Spiderweb's games to be all that bad on whiff factor. You don't always hit, but you don't stand and trade misses either.


i had problems with my PCs missing all the time when i first played Exile but that was because i totally ignored weapon skills. whoopsie~
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The maths of course says something else but really bows kind of suck when you really play the game, maybe it's just the playing style of some guys(including me) but a pure bow user always feels like a misfit in a rather overpowered party otherwise. I remember playing A5 with the pole user doing 50 damage and the bow user something like 10.

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Poles do more damage as a rule, and there are generally better swords than bows available. Still, accuracy should be similar, and damage shouldn't actually be so far off.

 

—Alorael, who would want a comparison between comparably statted characters. It's easy to make a lousy bowman, but that doesn't make bows lousy.

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The problem with ranged weapons in the first trilogy is that they require heavy and expendable ammunition. In terms of dealing damage based on weapon skill alone, they are equal to non-ranged weaponry.

 

However, in A1 at least, and possibly A2, Dexterity does not directly add damage to ranged weapons like Strength does. In addition, melee weapons get Assassination and Blademaster, while Sharpshooter doesn't appear until A4 (or BoA?), so unless you ignore all of these abilities, melee weapons will out damage ranged ones in a typical game, even with equal amounts of weapon skill.

 

The same thing sort of applies in A5 and A6 because of Quick Action, Dual Wielding and the high multipliers for pole weapons.

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Originally Posted By: Randomizer
The first time I played Exile I never game my mages and priests extra intelligence. I survived. smile


I did similar on Avernum 2 (I think), made all 4 chars with same skills (remembered to giive casters nm and ps although) and when adventuring started I noticed that I had forgot to give casters much intelligence so they weren't much help on battles 1st few levels and all skillpoints casters got went to raising intelligence.

Originally Posted By: Flame Fiend
It makes sense to me that the bow&arrow is much weaker than a melee weapon. Mostly because slashing someone's head off is much more effective than shooting them with an arrow from a distance.


Arrow thru eye is as effective as chopping head off and less risky.
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Originally Posted By: Earth Empires
Originally Posted By: Flame Fiend
It makes sense to me that the bow&arrow is much weaker than a melee weapon. Mostly because slashing someone's head off is much more effective than shooting them with an arrow from a distance.


Arrow thru eye is as effective as chopping head off and less risky.
No, because they have another eye tongue
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Originally Posted By: Flame Fiend
It makes sense to me that the bow&arrow is much weaker than a melee weapon. Mostly because slashing someone's head off is much more effective than shooting them with an arrow from a distance.

...What.

While what you're saying is technically true, your comparison is horribly flawed. It's like saying missile weapons should be far more powerful than a melee weapon because shooting someone in the head is much more effective than stabbing them in the foot. It's technically correct, but the comparison itself is wrong (or, at least, non-informative and irrelevant).

Personally, I always found bows to be rather powerful, both in the original trilogy and in the second trilogy. Physical damage at range hurts. But that's just my play style, and others may find melee weapons more effective with their play style.
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It depends on the weapons, of course, and individual or small unit combat is different from armies, but the Battles of Poitiers, Crécy, and Agincourt show that longbowmen can decisively defeat heavily armed and armored knights.

 

—Alorael, who will also point out that while slashing weapons can produce many minor wounds as well as major ones, arrows and other weapons that tend to puncture straight through are often either not hits or crippling. Arrows, in particular, can be incapacitating even when not lethal: it's hard to fight with a piece of metal in you and a piece of wood sticking out of you.

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Assuming we're talking about A6 (since Heartstriker in A4 is really good, verging on broken):

 

I never noticed lower accuracy with bows, but it seems to me pretty obvious that melee/pole weapons would do substantially more damage. Quick Action is a big part of it: according to Slarty's tests, 10 quick action increases damage by about 37%. Heartstriker does d4 damage instead of d3 like late-game swords, which is 33% more (2 vs. 1.5 damage per die), and that's not counting the low base number of dice (8 vs. 12-16 for late-game swords). All told, single swords deal 5-10% more damage than bows. Granted, getting quick action costs additional skill points, so with equal skills bows might do about the same damage as single swords. This is the most favorable comparison for bows by far, since single sword damage is pretty limp compared pole damage, let alone dual wielding. Chances are the extra base damage means that the Jade Halberd does more like 50% more damage than Heartstriker, and dual swords more than that.

 

It should also be noted that end-game comparisons are probably more favorable to bows, since for the majority of the game swords will have the same or better damage dice than bows.

 

This isn't to say that bows are useless by any means, by I don't think they stand up as a primary weapon. I find them useful as a secondary skill for a caster (so they have a decent source of physical damage) or a melee fighter (so they have a decent source of ranged damage). Also, given late-game bow bonuses, they're like an extra accessory slot, which is pretty nice.

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Eh, in a game where a life is a matter of numbers rather than vital organs, weapons will be ranked according to what makes for a balanced game, and what can cause the most trauma.

 

A sword to the eye and an arrow to the eye will result in the same amount of death either way in this world. However, a sword can bifurcate a person while an arrow cannot.

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An arrow big enough to bifurcate someone? I'm not even sure a ballista could do that, and they basically fired outright spears...

 

Eh, throwing knives can only bifurcate a person if either used as a regular knife, or multiple knives are used, which doesn't count. And, frankly, if your knife is big enough to cut a grown man in half in a single stroke all on its own, it's a sword and you're kidding yourself. And a throwing "sword" is fairly ridiculous anyways.

 

Throwing axes, om the other hand...

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Originally Posted By: Lilith
Originally Posted By: Necris Omega
A sword to the eye and an arrow to the eye will result in the same amount of death either way in this world. However, a sword can bifurcate a person while an arrow cannot.


sounds like somebody needs some bigger arrows

Or more dakka. No, that's not the sound of bows. More twang?

—Alorael, who will point out that it's ludicrously difficult to bifurcate someone with a sword as well. Decapitation is doable, but anything that can decapitate isn't going to pierce an eye and probably isn't made for stabbing through the heart.
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Originally Posted By: Custom Title
—Alorael, who will point out that it's ludicrously difficult to bifurcate someone with a sword as well. Decapitation is doable, but anything that can decapitate isn't going to pierce an eye and probably isn't made for stabbing through the heart.


Sounds like a bunch of cut-ups to me.
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Originally Posted By: miscommunication horribly maims

—Alorael, who will point out that it's ludicrously difficult to bifurcate someone with a sword as well.


See, NOW we're talking about just getting a bigger weapon.

In the absence of armor, bifurcation with a good sword is well within the realms of possibility if you've the sword to do it. Sure, it might make piercing a bit unwieldy, but why just poke someone to death when you can divide them up like postwar Europe?
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Maybe if they're tied down, but it's quite hard to get through a ribcage and spine. You can do it, but you're more likely than not not going to do it, and if you don't get through ribs you're not actually going to do much damage.

 

Of course, with force you might well get through ribs, cause massive trauma and near-instant death, and still get your sword stuck somewhere in a vertebra.

 

—Alorael, who isn't sure a bigger weapon would help. Yes, you get more inertia to get through bone, but you're also making it harder to swing that weapon around and giving targets more chance not to be perfectly arranged for bisection.

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It's still not easy to get through layers of muscle and viscera, then the spine, then more viscera and more muscle.

 

—Alorael, who should probably say something witty along the lines of "believe me, I've tried." He can't actually say that he's ever attempted that by hand, though. Or hand-to-hand, as the case may be.

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Regardless of whether or not you believe a sword can practically or realistically bifurcate someone, there's still no debate as to which can cause more raw carnage - a sword can decapitate, dismember, disembowel, and a whole host of other very nasty things. An arrow, for all it's long distance piercy goodness, has relatively limited trauma potential compared to that. Under ideal conditions, a sword can arguably cut a victim clear in half, or at the very least remove their head completely. Unless you want to talk explosive variants, and no fair bringing rockets to a sword fight durnit, an arrow simply can't do that.

 

Either weapon strikes home, you're dead, but a sword to the arm is a whole lot worse than an arrow in the vast majority of cases.

 

Translated to a game, that usually means that the sword will have a much higher damage potential.

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Originally Posted By: Flame Fiend
Why don't you just cut his freaking head off? Or at least slash at the shoulder or something.
Because that wouldn't be bifurcation. Well, maybe, but it wouldn't be an even split. And it's not what Alorael was talking about.

As for damaging potential of swords vs. bows, I'd rather have a bow and a tower over a sword and armor.
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Originally Posted By: Master1
Because that wouldn't be bifurcation.

Well, you'll have a much easier time bifurcating someone if their head is two feet away.

Originally Posted By: Master1
As for damaging potential of swords vs. bows, I'd rather have a bow and a tower over a sword and armor.
But in a bow+tower vs. sword+armor, the sword+armor would win. Mainly because a piece of wood with a string on it won't be much compared to a guy in armor and sword. And if your in a tower, it's even worse because there's no escape when the guy in the armor slowly creeps up the steps, sealing your doom.
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Originally Posted By: Tirien
You do know that at close range, a longbow can penetrate plate, right? So even at close range, if he should somehow get up the tower to you, you can still kill him pretty easily.
You'd have to be really strong to shove a piece of wood through a metal plate to kill someone.

I'm just saying.
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No, I'm saying that a bow and a tower would lose against a sword and armor because the guy in the tower only has a bow. A bow. As in no arrows. Did you really think I meant stabbing the guy with and arrow? I don't blame you.

 

Well, I guess a bow could win because you might be able to whip the armor guy in the eye with it while avoiding the sword. Then you push him out the window.

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