Favorite rosters & scenarios?

[Evnissyen]

The first time I went through A4 I went with four characters: A fighter, an archer, a mage and a priest. I soon found out that archers become increasingly less useful as time goes on. (I don't know why: I mean, in real life, the arrow is quite a deadly weapon.) Same with thrown weapons: they cause lots of damage in the beginning but not so much later on.

 

So I reduced it to two. Fighter (mostly useful as a magnet to keep your enemies away from your spellcasters and clumped together for those area-spells I love so much) and combined mage/priest.

 

I found out that A4 became extremely hard with just two characters. So I made it 3: fighter, mage, priest. That's what I'm playing with in A5.

 

Also, ever since I started playing the Spiderweb games (Geneforge 3), I found that "NORMAL" was just way too easy so I started playing "HARD" to make it challenging enough. I've liked it that way... until now.

 

With 3 characters and level HARD, well, the game is neither too challenging nor too easy -- it's pretty much just about right... but a strange thing has happened, which is that it's started to tire me out. At the point where I was almost at the end of the Anama lands and had just one more quest to complete, I was thinking, "What the hell... I've gotta go through ANOTHER quest now?"

 

All the pleasure was gone... that magic that I'd found in Geneforge 3. So I hate to admit it, but I had to reduce it to NORMAL level. Now it's back to being a pretty easy game (though harder than it'd be with 4 characters).

 

I'm not sure if Jeff Vogel would be comforted to hear that a full roster + NORMAL = piece of cake... (except for the occasional crazy-tough foe)

 

Probably most of this isn't very interesting, but I was wondering if anyone else thought they wanted to share their favorite ways of playing the game.

[Student of Trinity]

I guess I can see how a game like this could be hard enough to require some thought, thus ceasing to be mindless fun, and yet easy enough that ultimate victory was clearly a foregone conclusion, so each required quest was just delaying the story. An interesting observation of a previously unsuspected problem in game design: the 'bad middle' range of difficulty.

 

I played the first time with a party of 4 on normal difficulty, and it was easy, but I got to explore and see what could happen. Then I tried it again on normal with a singleton, a human divinely touched natural mage who did everything, thanks to edited up Lore abilities. That was great. Each new quest or battle was an interesting challenge, or an opportunity to score something that I would be sure to need later on.

 

Jeff's games are supposed to be quite easy with a full party on normal difficulty. Yet apparently he still has customer complaints that things are too hard on normal, and he himself complains that people don't use the easy setting enough (and instead complain to him about the difficulty of normal). The fact is that there is an immense range of playing skill in a game like A5, mainly just because Spiderweb games have a lot of peculiar features that can be heavily optimized with experience but don't work the way other games do. Jeff errs on the side of making normal easier, and easy a breeze, because there are lots of ways to make the game more challenging for yourself.

[Randomizer]

Jeff tries to balance his games for normal and full party being playable for someone that hasn't played before.

 

Now I prefer torment (hardest level) which Jeff says isn't for a casual player. I start with a full party and have started with A4 running a single character through at torment level. A4 was fun with the only grind going back to recharge spell energy. A5 isn't as much fun since the fights require you to skip certain places until you are more powerful whereas in A4 you could usually do them when you reached them.

 

A1 singleton is on hold and I reached the maximum party level before doing any of the major quests. So now all I acquire is equipment. A3 is stuck in the Giant Caves while I play some other games.

 

For a party of 4 I go with a sword nephil thief, pole weapon slith, and 2 mage/priests with a heavy overlap in both spell groups so I can do whatever is best for the fights.

[Ociporus]

I've tended to like one human sword fighter, one slith pole fighter (there tends to be "ultimate" weapons of both varieties), one mage/archer, and one priest/archer that tends to pick locks. I get both mage & priest some skill with bows so they don't need to use offensive spells all the time.

Over time, the mage gets some priest skill (healing) and the priest gets some mage skill (fireball).

I recall that in one of the avernum games I had significant cross-over of mage & priests. Very significant. High levels of both in each character. But can't recall which one it was for sure (A3?).

I like the torment level, too.

[Taliesin]

My typical party is a slith pole fighter, a nephil archer/swordsman/rogue, human priest/alchemist, human mage/priest. In Avernum 5 the nephil was a pure archer, which meant I didn't really have a swords character, unfortunately.

 

Another design which I like is an all-human party of a swordsman tank, spears/bows rogue, priest/alchemist, and mage/priest. Which is pretty much my Celtic party from Nethergate, too.

[Cake]

The game is only "easy" on normal difficulty if you had chosen the correct party setup and the correct skills.

 

If Jeff truly wants to make it easier for the first-timer, he should set up a default level-up button (similar to BioWare games), so that the first -time gamer doesn't upgrade irrelevant skills.

[Evnissyen]

I think that if I go through this game again I'll do a four-member party on TORMENT. I haven't tried that before and it seems appealing. And NO GEASING this time! Damn that Gladwell; I can't wait to kill that S.O.B. . . . but it's been interesting seeing what he decides to make me do; I don't regret it, the geas is kind of fun, in it's own way.

 

Although, one advantage I noticed early on of having just 3 characters: It's easy to fit your whole party into a small room or house, in case you need to shut the door to keep people from seeing you steal something.

 

Cake: It seems to me that goofing up on what turns out to be wasted training is part of the learning process, which adds to the fun in the game, I think. (Maybe this contradicts the thread I just added about the more helpful and less helpful traits to train in?) So when you play the game again, or you play the sequel, you'll have a better idea of how to train your character initially and from then on. (More than once, with A4, I stopped playing part-ways in and started over, when I discovered that I'd done some training or bought some items or what-not that I really, really came to regret.) And as for making things easier for new gamers... methinks that a 4-person roster on EASY is pretty generous as it is, so I don't feel a great desire for optional power-up features; though I think I see your point.

 

Ociporous:

 

Is it really useful having two fighters? Most of the power lies in the spellcasters, I've found. I'm still trying to decide, if I go back to four characters in A6 or in a second run of A5, what my fourth character will be... having another mage/priest just doesn't appeal to me. I've been thinking going back to an archer but adding a thrown-weapons skill... but the thrown weapons don't seem to exhibit much more power, later in the game... plus having to juggle all those different kinds of spears and javelins, I don't know. Having a separate pole-fighter sounds interesting, but again... two fighters seems redundant to me.

 

Moving on: Over time I, too, have found it useful to share mage & priest skills between my mage and priest. My mage wanted a cold spell (smite) and an exorcise spell. My priest, in turn, kept nagging me for that Icy Rain spell she was so jealous of. And eventually I had to give my fighter the Firebolt, since there are occasionally fights in which conventional weapons don't do any damage (or, say, just 1 point).

[Bhima]

So, there is inevitably a plethora of forum topics on the subject, but this one turned up high on the search results and was an amusing read. Hopefully no one minds the resurrection of a 2008 thread...

 

I've been enjoying a mild walk through A6 with a relatively standard party setup: slith pole-wielding meatshield, nephil tool-turned-archer, human priest and human mage. Been kickin' butt through the game, and appreciating the variety of battles.

 

Here's the thing: I just returned to A6 from Avadon and really missing the "re-trainer" function. A6 features a much more hands-on and complex character training system and I regretfully know how many errors I've made and fear to think about how much waste I've created in my player development by level 30 (e.g., haven't made it to battle frenzy on my meatshield!).

 

I'm also wishing to goodness that I'd just chosen bows rather than thrown missiles, since the latter never refills enough!

 

Anyway, to the point: I'm looking for a re-run on A6 but with a fun twist on the party setup. I've read through the variety of options out there. I'm somewhat of a min-maxer, so I like characters that are super strong in some elements, while lacking in others. I was thinking about two fighters, two priests, but not liking the prospect of having to use limited-availability piercing crystals for everything (I HATE not being able to clear a complete area.)

 

It seems like some folks have gone with priest/mage combos, but does that end up with low-intensity spellcasting for either?

 

I'm a big fan of melee-style playing (when I play the BioWare games of just one character, that character is generally some suped up fighter). Is it reasonable to soup up a melee-heavy team?

 

Cheers to any feedback or general guidance I might get.

[Randomizer]

You can overlap the mage/priests for the low level spells and have one specialize in getting all the mage and the other all the priest spells. This gives extra healing, attack spell types, and most importantly two characters to unshackle minds against charm since even high intelligence doesn't make you resistant enough. There are plenty of levels if you don't give them both all the spells.

 

Melee tends to work better than range just because the weapons are better and do more damage for the same investment in skills.

[Bhima]

Thanks, Randomizer. I am thinking about playing a two-character party. Because of my affinity for melee, I'd love for those two characters to be one battle priest and one battle mage. I suppose I could add a layer of low-level spell crossover for both, so that both can cast level 6 mage and priest spells. Does that end up diluting any one character too much?

 

Also, in my character development, because of my melee preference, is it better to use DT/EW for both, or DT/PS and DT/NM?

 

Will my double-ton level up quicker than others if the experience points are shared only with two party members rather than four? If so, is there a level cap I should be aware of?

[Randomizer]

The experience increases with fewer characters to split the total between them and for only one character it goes up twice as fast as a party of 4 using the same experience penalty/bonus.

 

Jeff increased the level cap in the second trilogy so you don't hit it. The first trilogy has Avernum 1 at 40 and the others somewhat higher.

 

DT/EW works well for a primarily melee fighter because you get parry sooner and the blademaster part reduces battle fatigue. In a two character party the other doesn't matter as much. Some players prefer PS to increase magical efficiency sooner to save on spell energy. There is enough good armor for mages that you don't need NM to deal with bulky armor.

[Bhima]

I'm off to the races with two slith battle spellcasters. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

My starting config:

DT/PS Battle Priest,

STR=4

DEX=2

INT=4

END=4

 

POLE=4, MAGE=4, PRIEST=4

 

DT/NM Battle Mage,

STR=4

DEX=2

INT=4

END=4

 

POLE=4, MAGE=4, PRIEST=4

 

This starting config left a few skill points to begin with in case I bobbled the strength or dexterity points and needed to buff them. So far, I've enjoyed the rapid fire level-up, and the kick-butt damage already dealt with my bronze spears.

[Bhima]

So, making my way with my double-ton, and loving it. Love the pace of leveling and part management. However, I've accumulated a fair amount of skill points and not sure which direction to take. Wondering if anyone can pinpoint some shortfalls in my characters?

 

One:

 

Two:

[Earth]

more dexterity won't hurt you, priest spell is too high on 1st maybe while mage is too low and vice versa, endurance and intelligence more, arcane lore for 1st char, too much spellcraft, bows could be higher.