General skills

[tbbd]

Is it worth investing points in hardiness, defense, first aid, or luck?

[Brock The Archmage]

defintely. first aid will make you hael a little after every battle, so at least one character must have at least one point.

luck gives a small bonus to everything.

defense makes you harder to hit, and is good for mages and essential for archers/warriors.

hardiness is great for all characters because it makes you take less damage when you are hit.

If you have first aid, and your warrior has high defense and hardiness, he will be very hard to kill.

[Lilith]

Defense is useful mostly because it's a prerequisite for Parry, the best defensive skill in the game.

[Ishad Nha]

First Aid is very useful, all of my PCs had a few points in it. I don't know how much you need, perhaps you could research that, see what the payoff is for increasing it.

[Evnissyen]

Hmm... I didn't think that First Aid was very useful, either, since I could just magic myself into health, so I didn't invest in it. It is, however, nice that it restores some of your spell points (though I rarely (close to never) use my spell elixirs anyhow, so... whatever)... .

 

So I'd be interested, too, in knowing exactly just how helpful First Aid is.

[-=microphage=-]

I usually buy first aid when it's cheap and spread it over whole party.

 

It is cumulative so it's effectiveness is a total of whole party count.

 

It kicks in at the end of combat. The more you have the more healing and restoration takes place. This can be more convenient for your party to "apply firstaid" as you may not need to use potions and spells.

microphage

[Archaeolagent]

In both A4 and A5, there is a cap to how much healing/restoration First Aid will provide per enemy defeated, scaled by enemy level. In A4 this cap is relatively high and it takes a lot of First Aid skill to get there. In A5, for most (but not all) enemies, the cap is very low and reached by only a little First Aid.

 

The skill is in fact so much less useful in A5, that it actually makes Magical Efficiency slightly less awful. And that's saying something.

[Grimm]

Quote:

Originally written by Slarty:


The skill is in fact so much less useful in A5, that it actually makes Magical Efficiency slightly less awful. And that's saying something.

Less awful? Hope you mean that Magical Efficiency is already so good it almost can't be improved. Thanks to that skill, I've had a mage cast Arcane blow 3 Times with 40 energy left. Pretty much won me the game right there.

[Archaeolagent]

Magical Efficiency just requires a buttload of skill points to get up to a level where it's really making a difference. And considering the ease of replenishing spell points in A4/5, this is not a particular need.

[Evnissyen]

That's not true. My mage and priest, respectively, have a Magical Efficiency level of 11 & 15. They have not trained in that trait at all (since they haven't attained the (requirements): they've gained buying them, plus special-trait bonuses, plus equipment. They can both cast fireball without spending any spell points. Their spell points (especially my priest's) on all other spells are significantly reduced, so they can cast a lot of otherwise costly spells that do not reduce their spell energy much at all.

 

Yes, I do love my Magical Efficiency.

 

EDIT TO ADD: In fact, this combined with high Intelligence, in both characters, means that they've almost never needed to use any spell elixirs.

[Archaeolagent]

CAN cast fireball (I assume you mean bolt of fire?) without using SP, but they don't do that every time, right?

 

Really, the only time you need so much SP at once that you need an elixir is in boss fights, or other prolonged fights. So while the bonus is neat, it's not particularly necessary. I guess a natural 15 is pretty good, though I am curious if you passed up other equipment in favor of items boosting ME.

[tbbd]

well thanks for all the info, gives me some ideas of more point spending

[Lilith]

I'm pretty sure Magical Efficiency was significantly improved between A4 and A5: it saves a lot of spell points now. Not so many that it's worth actually meeting the requirements to train it instead of just putting those skill points into Intelligence, but any ME you get from traits or items is quite handy.

[Evnissyen]

Slarty: just by cursory observation: a Magical Efficiency of 11 will reliably cut the pain of costly spells in more or less than half. Bolt of Fire will almost never cost you more than 1 point, and very often none, especially with my priest who has 15 ME. I'm using that as an example because it's an easy way to inflict significant damage and not waste your spell points.

 

Without ME, my priest & mage would be drained pretty quickly by the more costly spells. Now I can use spells like Arcane Blow and Divine Retribution with near abandon.

[Archaeolagent]

Time for me to eat my words. Well, sort of. You guys are definitely right about ME being better than I'm saying. I still think it's not particularly important given the ease of replenishing SP in other ways. But it is nice! Here are the results of my test. I tested with Minor Heal (2 SP) and Augmentation (15 SP) 20 times each at 5, 10, and 20 ME.

 

5 ME, 2 SP Cost: Mean 1.4, Range 1-2

10 ME, 2 SP Cost: Mean 0.8, Range 0-2

20 ME, 2 SP Cost: Mean 0.8, Range 0-2

 

5 ME, 15 SP Cost: Mean 12.0, Range 8-14

10 ME, 15 SP Cost: Mean 7.7, Range 3-11

20 ME, 15 SP Cost: Mean 3.6, Range 1-7

[Leesil]

I used the EDITOR to give one of my characters a 40 luck from day one and he:

 

1. Doesn't get hit that often, even though he has an armor rating of 24 %

2. Almost never gets poisoned when bitten by spiders, chitrachs, or other nasties.

3. Hits almost all the time, even with low points in a given attach style.

 

I have no idea how Luck factors into the math of the game, but a high luck really did help.

[Archaeolagent]

First off, you used the editor to give yourself 30 Luck. That's the cap

 

Armor rating has nothing to do with your chance of being hit. Armor rating only affects damage taken. Luck does reduce your chance of being hit by 2% per point, and it increases your chance to hit enemies by the same amount. However, getting Luck anywhere near 30 is completely impractical, given how much the points end up costing. Also, other stats influence dodge and hit rates to a greater degree. So Luck is helpful, but it isn't such a great value.

[Toby-Linn]

I love all four of the skills!

 

I made sure each of my characters had 8 each in hardiness and defense, and at least 5 in first aid and luck.

 

First aid I definitely noticed in large battles, defense also helped a lot, I noticed my characters received less damage from magic, poison, acid, fire, coldness (I think that's the hardiness skill?).

[Xelgion]

Never really boosted hardiness too much, mainly went for defense and first aid, I also gave a slight bonus to luck just for the small bonuses, its much more useful than it is in Geneforge.

 

And just out of curiosity, Leesil, are you named after the character in the book Dhamphir?