Melee, Missle, and Spell - The New Balance

[Randomizer]

The early Geneforge games were heavily favored towards spellcasting and missle weapons since melee weapon fighting required closing with the target and still having 5 AP (action point) left to swing. The Geneforge 4 combat system allows an attack as long as you have 1 AP left. Now a melee fighter can race across the screen to hit the monster.

 

In hasted mode there are other advantages for the melee fighter. If you cast a spell or use a missle weapon like a baton or javelin, you are now frozen in place until the next turn (will skip the search item cheat). Melee fighters can swing at a nearby target and move to another one without penalty as long as they have 10 or more AP when the do the first attack. Now that massive damage and there are many items to boost melee damage can go to more than one target.

 

In hasted mode if you watch the APs left you can attack/spell, use 3 AP for crystal/pod/spore/rod action, and do another attack/spell. When you have 12 or more AP (usually with bonus AP items) you can do even more between the first and last attack/spell. This means now 3 to 4 actions each round instead of what used to be less under even the Geneforge 3 system.

 

But the new combat system makes melee fighting at least equal to a spell casting Agent type.

[Punctuation rains from the heavens]

I'm not convinced.

 

Melee is better -- partially because of what you mentioned and partially because PCs (but not creations) now have a 5-multiplier melee attack, the new broadswords, which I failed to mention in my attack types thread. That amounts to a flat 20% damage increase, plus a manueverability increase.

 

That's all good and well when you are attacking one enemy over and over, or a swarm of enemies that cluster around you. But if you're attacking enemies that use ranged attacks, they don't stay close enough to hit two different enemies on the same turn when you are hasted. So ranged attacks still have that big advantage, of always being able to use all attacks when hasted.

 

I do want to try, at some point, a Missile Servile who puts all his points into Dex, to get deadly missiles and a super-high dodge rate. The engine previously nerfed that by not allowing consistently high dodge rates and I'm not sure if it still will, but it's a nice idea.

[Randomizer]

You actually need to balance melee and missle since some creations (drayk, kyshakk, and wingbolt) do significant less damage if you can back them into a corner so they have to use a melee attack. There are some encounters where melee attacks mean that they will get to slow, curse, or weaken you each time either you or they hit. Monarch in Chapter 3 is a slow when he does melee attacks.

 

Slarty - since you seem not to have played much. Be sure to kill enough patrol roamers in Chapter 2 the Secured Crossroads to get the nimble sandals (dexterity +2) and Chapter 4 Fort Raevinn the stability boots (dexterity +2) dropped if you help the Rebels.

[Drakefyre]

I had a servile with high missile and high blessing/medium mental. I would run through with Daze and Speed, and when there were monsters I liked to put in a corner, Spine Shield was amazing.