Considering writing an alternative new-age woo-woo guide to A:EftP

[RaustBlackDragon]

Basically, when I first sat down and read the party-building guides for Avernum: EftP, I was depressed by how horribly imbalanced the system sounded. I walked away from that guide thinking the following:

 

If you are playing on torment, any character who invests in more than one stat, puts more than a few points into endurance, or invests in cave lore, magical efficiency, sniping, gymnastics, quick action, bows, sharpshooter, riposte, polearms or thrown weapons is a useless character you will have an extremely hard time beating the game with.

 

Needless to say, this is quite the damaging impression to get, and it pretty much destroyed all of my original character plans. Whether or not Slarty (or anyone else) would endorse this statement, I'm concerned that I might not be the only person who was almost scared away from the game by the "How to avoid sucking at avernum" guide.

 

At any rate, my signature attests to the fact that this depressing impression is unfounded: I have beaten Avernum: EftP on torment with characters that, between the four of them, gleefully ignore every single warning listed above. What's more, it was my first time beating any spiderweb software game on any difficulty.

 

So I was thinking maybe I should construct something of a second-opinion guide to party building, one that assumes you aren't putting all of your points into a single stat, for people who have more exotic character build ideas. Anybody think this would be a worthwhile endeavor?

[Randomizer]

Go ahead. Slarty and I both found that min-max approach works best for us. Torment is usually less forgiving of other builds.

[Jerakeen]

It's always good to have alternative viewpoints, especially if you include what strategies and tactics you used to beat the game in those circumstances. You should definitely note for beginners that there are other opinions.

 

I'm currently up to level 14 in my Torment run, with an archer in the party. So far, she's been such a key part of my team that I don't mind if she doesn't pull her weight for the second half of the game. Though I will say, I almost hit a wall around level 12-13, until I scraped together enough cash to get Steelward to level 3.

[Death Knight]

Raustblackdragon,

 

I am in the process of writing a faq or role-playing guide for fighters and such for gamefaqs. Im mainly writing the guide for purposes that you mentioned-roleplaying. This is not to say that the characters are not powerful, but moreso, it allows for much more choices than the old system allowed.

 

Im thinking that all of the characters Im working will be able to make it through hard, normal and easy. I usually only play on normal and hard though so if you know any tips for torment other than me pulling my hair out

[The Reverend]

I think that guide would add a valuable perspective. The min-max approach is certainly the easiest way to beat the game on torment (and even more so if you are playing with other restrictions for roleplaying purposes). But as you showed, with the right strategies and tactics, it is certainly possible to beat it other ways. In fact, I think that hearing about the tactics you used to beat the game without min-maxing would be valuable in their own right.

 

I'll look forward to the guide if you decide to write it!

[Earth]

investing to thrown weapons seems useless since tws aren't infinite (except iron javelins maybe) and party still needs 1 melee fighter, prolly 2.

[The Reverend]

investing to thrown weapons seems useless since tws aren't infinite (except iron javelins maybe) and party still needs 1 melee fighter, prolly 2.

2 melee fighters aren't necessary - my first party had a melee fighter (dual wielder), an archer, a priest, and a mage. The archer would often camp out in front near the swordsman to help hold off the enemy advance (her high dexterity meant that melee attacks hardly ever hit her). She would plunk away at enemy spell casters/ranged attackers that were behind the front lines - often taking out a couple of the "AOE leftovers" (those enemies that are left with a small number of hitpoints after the casters spammed AOE attacks). Her gymnastics skill plus 1 AP boosting item meant that she could often take out two of these leftovers in a round.

[Death Knight]

The best fighter skill is hardiness and that will likely never change. You can go without blademaster, parry, quick action and you will still be lethal. Quick action is useless unless you prefer to backstab a lot. You can use a finesse fighter to go first and attack and get as much aggro as possible, all while the slow rogue comes from behind for a wicked backstab.

 

Backstab seems weak, but if you get one a decent percent of the time, thats a considerable amount of damage your getting extra. I would recommend anyone that doesnt dual wield to use backstab. Sword and board gives it a kick as does spears. Dualwielding it kind of pointless to backstab as your already dealing a load of damge.

[Lilith]

Dualwielding it kind of pointless to backstab as your already dealing a load of damge.

 

This logic seems backwards to me. Backstab is a percentage bonus, so if you're a dual wielder then backstab will increase your damage output by even more than for other melee fighters.

[Alorael at Large]

Unless you can kill everything in one hit more damage is always a good thing. Well, no. You really care about how quickly you kill things. Two hits with more overkill versus two hits with less means nothing, but killing in one hit with no extra damage versus two hits with a ton of excess damage is a big deal.

 

In practice, since you're hitting enemies with different amounts of armor and health, many of whom will always take multiple blows to bring down, more damage is reliably one of the best things you can do.

 

—Alorael, whose complaint about backstab is more that sometimes it's hard to set up, but that's as intended. A pair of front-line fighters are going to spend a lot of time setting up backstabs for each other.

[Death Knight]

I just find the game to be too easy when dualwielding which is why I usually go sword and board. The damage you do with dual wielding is ridiculously overpowered. When I play my characters they are not overpowered, but still deadly on their own. I dont know, I might go with dual wield some day but for now my backstabbers and fighters are all sword and board.

[Death Knight]

I just find the game to be too easy when dualwielding which is why I usually go sword and board. The damage you do with dual wielding is ridiculously overpowered. When I play my characters they are not overpowered, but still deadly on their own. I dont know, I might go with dual wield some day but for now my backstabbers and fighters are all sword and board.

[Mosquito---Slayer]

Unless I missed something, you have won the award for the first identical double-poster on IPB.

congrats!!!

Someone bring out the cake!!!

[Jerakeen]

Nah, I've done that before. It happens sometimes if you accidentally double click "post".

 

I could use my modly powers to delete the duplicate, but then the following posts would make no sense.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Jerakeen

[Death Knight]

Unless I missed something, you have won the award for the first identical double-poster on IPB.

congrats!!!

Someone bring out the cake!!!

 

If your going to get cake, at least make sure its chocolate

[RaustBlackDragon]

Alright, I've decided to write the guide, but first I'm going to make a bit of progress on my second set of characters, so I have more builds to talk about. I'm currently test-running a dex-end full archer, a green mage, a str-end full warrior, and an int-end full magic-user (priest and mage spells).

 

I'm most excited about the green mage, in all honesty: she's going to get all of the blessing/curse bonus equipment, and her job is to spam buffs and debuffs like there's no tomorrow. I've never gone for a full-focus buff-debuff magic user before, and I'm wondering what the result is gonna be like

[Earth]

2 melee fighters aren't necessary

 

I meant 2 doing phys damage and since player's archers can't shoot enemy next to them (but enemies can shoot player's char next to them)) it could be nice if archers wasn't total crap with sword/pole.

[The Reverend]

I meant 2 doing phys damage and since player's archers can't shoot enemy next to them (but enemies can shoot player's char next to them)) it could be nice if archers wasn't total crap with sword/pole.

Archers have blade sweep (DEX based), and there is often (admittedly, not always) at least one enemy who is not right next to the archer - either a ranged attacker or a melee attacker attacking someone else. If not, the archer can still retreat one square and then attack.

[Earth]

yes archer can retreat if has space but it might not possible always.