The Melee Warrior

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

I have only played the game so I may have missed something so do not rely on this.

 

When I started playing I was all excited about how, with the new action point system, the Warrior would be much better in melee. It was not. In melee, without magic, if you want to last long you need good armor. With the lower increase to encumberence rate increase from strength you had to waste many precious skill points on strength. The armor weight seemed to not have been decreased enough for you to have the best (and heaviest) armors without having massive strength. I needed 12 strength, by Moseh, to have the best protection.

 

Another problem is that it would be much harder without a creation to back you up. Since you're a melee warrior you want a ranged creation to back you up. This means that since you aren't going to spend many points on intelligence, you want a fourth or third tier creation. This means Wingbolt, Kyshakk or Drayk. I personally chose Wingbolt, mainly because of using no canisters (I was a Shaper), but I would have chosen it anyways. You then need to use up more skill points for magic or fire shaping.

 

There is also the problem of leadership, mech and luck. This uses up skill points that could be spent on melee skills and endurence.

 

You now end up with far fewer skill points to spend. In G3 I had an average of 15 for fighting skills, strength and endurence. I also had high skills in mech and leadership. I had a tank for a character that could heal as much damage with his health sucking sword, as a rot could do. This game I had 19 in strength (early needed strength plus late game items), 7 in endurence and an average of 12 in melee skills. This game I had a lower level from the Artila/Wingbolt, less skill points from strength and less skill points from shaping.

 

It may just be my bad playing or just being new to this game, but the melee warrior is alot weaker then the melee guardian.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmm, my melee servile had to pump strength pretty high too, for the same reason. He's got it at 12 now. But he isn't wearing all the heaviest stuff he has found, just some decent stuff he can carry. He has good buffing magic, but it's true that his melee attacks haven't really been impressive for some time. He gradually hacks things to death, but he hasn't had really impressive chopping ability since Chapter 2. It's just hard to get excited about spending so many skill points to get an average +3 damage per strike, against enemies with health in the hundreds.

 

It sounds as though the strength versus weight thing may indeed be a bit off. And I'm beginning to think there may be a systematic problem with the way these games handle melee damage. It's directly proportional to your relevant ability scores. Over the course of the game, these grow ever more slowly, from levels gained, as their cost in skill points rises. Your rate of picking up boosting items accelerates somewhat over the course of the game, and this partly compensates. And high Quick Action, with more frequent second swings, does provide some nonlinear growth, I guess, inasmuch as it amplifies your other boosts. But I think the result is still not much better than linear growth overall as the game progresses, if it is even quite that.

 

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (and let's face it, by 'someone' I mean Slarty), but I don't think you get any items that boost your melee damage die size past the 1-5 you first hit with the broadswords you can get in Chapter 1. In contrast, battle mages and shapers are getting higher die sizes for their damage steadily throughout the game.

 

So I think melee inevitably stagnates. Chopping power relative to monster toughness seems to decline after a high point somewhere in early chapter 2, or even chapter 1 (that steel broadsword was great).

 

Somehow I never really thought about this while beta-testing.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Yes, and also the ethereal bindings seemed to do less to your weapon then the similer crystal did in G3. In G3, when hasted, I got QA 90% of the time and ended up healing around 100 damage each turn. In G4 I got QA 35% of the time and healed around 30 each turn.

[Randomizer]

I don't remember any weapons that have the higher damage die than 1-5, but the weapons in chapter 3 start doing better special damage. You really need to get strength and melee damaging items. The guardian claymore from killing Shaftoe is +2 strength, legs of the tyrant gives +3 damage levels, piercing gloves, girdle of might, etc.

 

You do need high strength for the better armor. It kind of levels off with the inability to target mutiple opponents that an infiltrator can with essence orbs, acid shower, and aura of flames. You have to increase mental magic throughout the game so you can use daze, strong daze, and mass madness to give you time to fight. Even terror, dominate, and charm can even the odds.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

That makes the Warrior more of a Servile, and defeats the purpose of playing the character at all. With Serviles you get cheaper magic so they are better. I was a shaper and I didn't have the ingredients to make legs of the tyrant.

[Student of Trinity]

Sure, there are lots of ways to survive. Our complaint is that chopping stuff becomes a less and less significant part of that package, though, as the game goes on. This is a drag for a build that's supposed to be about melee. All the boosting items are naturally to be used, but they still only go so far.

 

Just think: picking up a weapon in chapter 4 that did 1-8 would be like getting a shaped blade that raised Melee Weapons by about 10. For comparison, Kill does 1-12.

 

Of course, Kill drains energy and chopping doesn't. But I'm not sure that entirely compensates.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Also, it's easy to train BM to the kill level. The weapon damage is sort of high so with hasted QA you could match kill, but to get enough QA you need to ignore one of the other important warrior skills whhich once again screws up damage or if it's parry, gets yo killed to fast. I think that if the problem of strength was not there and ethereal bindings were better, the Warrior would be around infiltrator level at endgame, but with the current problems it's not going to happen.

[Randomizer]

The only items that can't be made as a Shaper loyalist are the ones using the deep focus orb since that involves killing Eliza. Legs of the Tyrant can be made using Shaftoe's recipe that you get for helping him and items that you find by the Golem's Fen. Synergy showed and I also found that you can slip into the place in Turabi Gate to the south of the gate past the Shapers to get the essence infused skin. Getting the second blood poison from the Western Morass is hard but with terror and a lot of work you can get to it so you can also have gloves of Savergy.

 

You need a lot of strength and combat boosting items as a melee fighter. By concentrating on mental magic you can deal with mobs of creations.

[Delicious Vlish]

The thing is, you can add ZERO to melee weapon skills, rely on items, and with powerful blessing magic, do more damage with a sword than somebody that dumps 10 or 15 in to melee weapons.

 

There is something wrong there.

[Drakefyre]

The most valuable melee skills have always been Parry and Quick Action.

[Drayk Armitage]

First off, magic is overpowered. Magic is frequently overpowered in CRPGs and I think there have been a few overpowered bits in most of Jeff's games.

 

I also think I know why that is. Geneforge 1 was an exception to this rule. There were 12 spells, compared to 30-60 in other Spiderweb games. Creations were way more powerful. G2 toned down creations a little and added more spells which were wayyyy more powerful, and did not balance magic to compensate. Nobody noticed because the brokenness of Parry was far more obvious.

 

In G1, weapons did 1-8 while spells did 1-5, 1-6, 1-7... weapons had Quick Action AND Anatomy. And there were fewer enemy resistances all around, certainly including armor. This was very balanced, because melee opened you up to opponent's melee attacks under that AP system, plus it was less tactically flexible.

 

Now weapons do 1-4 or 1-5 while spells and creation breath range from 1-3 to 1-10. (Yes, SoT, nothing beats 1-5.)

 

The acid and ice blades and so on are definitely good, but I want to correct an error people keep replicating. They do NOT do special damage. They do physical damage. They cause status effects, but they only do physical damage directly.

 

Also, Quick Action has a problem. It's inconsistent. Even at very high levels there's a chance you'll not get the second strike. That's fine as far as damage output over time goes if you're attacking, say, Matala. But if you're just trying to knock down some wingbolts, it makes your task much harder since you have to allow for a range of damage. (I actually like that, but only if it's applied to everything; the problem is that spells do extremely consistent damage, while QA does not.) At moderate levels of QA, it's a coin-flip. Assuming it's the same as A4, which it looks like, 10 QA is a 50% chance of a second strike and 20 QA is a 75% chance.

[Student of Trinity]

Quote:

Originally written by Randomizer:
The only items that can't be made as a Shaper loyalist are the ones using the deep focus orb since that involves killing Eliza.

Wait, doesn't Eliza let you have the DFO as a reward for helping her out? I'm pretty sure she does, or at least she did.

[Randomizer]

I never got any reward from Eliza for helping her out. Shaftoe lets you in to his locked areas after his second quest. There are some nice items in the areas you can get to in Eliza's bunker, but not the DFO in the eastern room.

[Hume]

In GF1, melee weapon does d7 damage, not d8.

Are you sure oozing blade does physical damage in GF4? In GF3, fire and ice blade indeed do physical damage but oozing blade, the only melee weapon does non-physical damage, does acid damage, which is great.

Quote:

Originally written by --Slarty:

First off, magic is overpowered. Magic is frequently overpowered in CRPGs and I think there have been a few overpowered bits in most of Jeff's games.

 

I also think I know why that is. Geneforge 1 was an exception to this rule. There were 12 spells, compared to 30-60 in other Spiderweb games. Creations were way more powerful. G2 toned down creations a little and added more spells which were wayyyy more powerful, and did not balance magic to compensate. Nobody noticed because the brokenness of Parry was far more obvious.

 

In G1, weapons did 1-8 while spells did 1-5, 1-6, 1-7... weapons had Quick Action AND Anatomy. And there were fewer enemy resistances all around, certainly including armor. This was very balanced, because melee opened you up to opponent's melee attacks under that AP system, plus it was less tactically flexible.

 

Now weapons do 1-4 or 1-5 while spells and creation breath range from 1-3 to 1-10. (Yes, SoT, nothing beats 1-5.)

 

The acid and ice blades and so on are definitely good, but I want to correct an error people keep replicating. They do NOT do special damage. They do physical damage. They cause status effects, but they only do physical damage directly.

 

Also, Quick Action has a problem. It's inconsistent. Even at very high levels there's a chance you'll not get the second strike. That's fine as far as damage output over time goes if you're attacking, say, Matala. But if you're just trying to knock down some wingbolts, it makes your task much harder since you have to allow for a range of damage. (I actually like that, but only if it's applied to everything; the problem is that spells do extremely consistent damage, while QA does not.) At moderate levels of QA, it's a coin-flip. Assuming it's the same as A4, which it looks like, 10 QA is a 50% chance of a second strike and 20 QA is a 75% chance.

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Quote:

Are you sure oozing blade does physical damage in GF4?

I'm pretty sure that it does acid, because it barely does anything to rots but does a lot to everything else.

[Drayk Armitage]

In G1, melee damage does 1-8. Period. I just rechecked the scripts.

 

In G4, The Oozing Blade does physical damage. Period. You can look in the scripts. Its ability is just a copy of the Broadsword ability with acid splash. You are right about the acid damage in G3, but that has been changed. Rotghroth damage also changed from acid+splash to physical+splash (and even the comments in the script file changed to reflecet this).

 

(Rotghroths do have 50% resistance to physical damage, which is unusually high, AND 3 points in Parry, but those reductions will affect all weapons.)

 

Next!

[I_am_a_Minotaur]

Oh, ok.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally by Slartucker:

 

Quote:

Next!

The Geneforge 4 of comic strips?

 

To make this post more relevant, Dikiyoba will also ask: does anything still do a non-splash acid attack or has that been removed from the game?

[Hume]

Quote:

Originally written by --Slarty:
In G1, melee damage does 1-8. Period. I just rechecked the scripts.
Next!

Strange. All weapon damage displayed are multiplies of d7. Like the guardian claymore 10-70. It is d8 in GF2 however.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Hume:

Quote:

Originally written by --Slarty:
In G1, melee damage does 1-8. Period. I just rechecked the scripts.
Next!

Strange. All weapon damage displayed are multiplies of d7. Like the guardian claymore 10-70. It is d8 in GF2 however.

It's possible that Jeff goofed. There's a well-known off-by-one error in BoE monster attacks; all attacks do 1 die more damage than they're supposed to (so a 1d8 attack is treated as 2d8).

[VCH]

I felt severely underpowered as a servile melee warrior. Even now when I've been tromping around some of the harder areas like Matala (sp?), I still fell like I can't hit. My damage is nearly 200 + after two swings. But that isn't enough to take a wing-bolt down. A third swing however would be perfect for many situations. I just didn't feel as powerful as in pervious G1-G3 games.

 

And, what's with all the canisters that boost spells? I would rather have +1 to strength or healing craft or spell-craft or dexterity. I could have gotten through the game using no canisters. They simply aren't beneficial to a warrior.

Oh well, I probably just put my skill points into the wrong areas like melee weapons and such. Excellent game though.

[Randomizer]

You don't see strength canisters until late in chapter 5. No increases in healing craft except by items and a few rewards are increases in Major Heal,

[VCH]

Exactly. Why would I want major heal, when I don't even have enough points in healing craft? It just seems like there's an abundance of "spell" canisters.

[Randomizer]

You pretty much need major heal for the occasional full heal in battle when mass energize and major healing pods won't give you enough. Fighters have to have enough spell capability to equal the non-combat spells of the spell casters. It's not enough to be able to almost kill the higher level creations when they still have enough health left to get in one more round of combat.

 

Matala is a great example of the difficulty of a single character fighting a prolong battle against a high health opponent. Most of your time duration spells wear off in combat, you need to heal, and still do damage each round.

[Drayk Armitage]

Quote:

Originally written by Dikiyoba:
does anything still do a non-splash acid attack or has that been removed from the game?

Good question.

It has, in fact, been removed from the game.