"Who convinces whom of what is irrelevant."

The answer to this question mirrors the point I was trying to get across. The answer of course is predicated upon the person being convinced; a person being convinced decides who is convincing them. (again it is apparent, (through however a high degree of obfuscation - which was the reason for the current political jibe).)

"A guy would have to be Conan to survive in a job like that!" .........So of course he could "terminate" the competition! (yup, that was painful...even for me.)

(for this and greater mysteries of life consult your nearest Confuscious practioner....... or fortune cookie.)

Honestly EE, I wasn't personally taking offense to anything you said - I was just trying to get across that a Hypothosis offered as advice, (or any advice for that matter), when presented on this forum is implicitly opinion and not fact, and as such does not need to be labeled as "the way things might work" or some derivation thereof. In all probability most of what is written here is NOT Fact. For general info. the words Advice and Fact are inopposite to each other in the manner you used the word Advice. Advice as you used it, was to advise or to counsel - to do so is to give opinion (though what you are stating may or may not be factual). (If you still don't belive what I'm saying or think that I was raised differently than you, try looking up advice and advise in a dictionary.) Of course wether I have convinced you that you don't have to apply caveates, exceptions or the like, when providing advice to others is up to you. (At best all I can do is offer information in support of it in a manner you find to be persuasive.) btw, "I suspect" is also a modifier raising an exception or caveat - and again it isn't neccesary.

To all:

Over the weekend I had some time to start up a new game (a solo game) where the character's eventual main meathod of killing will be Critical Strikes. The emphasis would of course be to hit as often as possible with a maxed critical strike score and dual wielding high critical strike weapons. I first tried a felpurr with a 64 in Senses and a high dex. and speed, for a solo character, however it was flawed because while it could give "hits" it couldn't take them. The next character was a Mook with a 55 in Senses and a high dex. and vitality.

I found out some very interesting things about the game - I'll state a few things here relevant to critical strike.

1. Senses is only marginally useful for increasing the SKILL critical strike (if at all - with 9 points difference in Senses they were both increasing their skill at almost exactly the same rate).
2. Senses however seems to impact how often you will get a critical - and rather substantially so. With the two characters I mentioned above (and neither having more attacks than the other) The felpurr with an additional 9 points in Senses was achieving criticals almost twice as often as the mook. The characters were otherwise VERY similar UNLESS speed has something to do with your probability in achieving a critical (beyond an extra attack which was ruled out here.)
3. Your critical strike skill increase seems primarily dependent upon hiting a target (not achieving a critical - though it does seem to increase faster when doing so). I can't say wether penetration is needed to either increase the skill or even to achieve a critical (both characters were hiting just about all the time - though for minimal amounts of damage).

[ 08-28-2003, 02:36 AM: Message edited by: ScottG ]

As far as i can tell, the current skill compared to the average of the controlling attributes ('magic number' for now) is used for the chance to increase the skill. So when you have skill 10, and stats around 55, then 9 points of senses (4 points on the magic number) makes very little difference. But when your skill reachs the magic number, additional increases are very slow. So high senses will make a big difference when your skill is high, but not at the start.

wearboar - what you just said makes total sense to me. i hadnt considered it in that way before.

it reminds me recently of my wife and i running parallel parties, each with a bishop. we both ran intelligence and piety to 100 and both wore the brilliant helm, for a net of 120/100 in int/pie.

typically, my style is to cast slightly more often than she does, so late in the game i'll usually have 20-30 more points across the 6 colleges (in total) while she'll have about that much more in ranged/throwing or close/staff.

now, in this game, i decided to wear two ankhs of piety, giving my bishop 120/120 from level 12/13 or so.

by ascension peak, i was actually ahead a good 5-10 points more in each college. and that's at the extreme end of the spectrum; the difference between 89 and 99.

i didnt think much of it, assumed that i'd done a bit more casting than her this time around (i certainly had more fights based on kills/exp by the same point in the game).

but, given what wb said, it makes sense i would be further ahead as i would have gotten those last few skill points quite easily. and i must admit, it was really cool to cast level 7 earthquakes on green [img]smile.gif[/img]

Practically speaking though I still wouldn't spend the points exclusivly for increasing the rate of increase for Critical strike skill. As it is right now the skill is rocketing up and is currently in the lead of my other skills (exclusive of the 25% Ninja bonus).

sultan - take a look at alchemy and psionics of your wizard. Thats what made me sure it works this way. In my fighter/bishop duo, i intended to switch the bishop to something else (samurai maybe) when all casting skills are at max.
Thus i tried to use spells from all realms. But at one point i noticed that i had wizardry and divinity at ~95, while alchemy and psionics were ~75. Doing the math, i realized that they were exactly one point above the average of their controlling stats (while int and wiz were at 100).

Note however that alchmey might get very high fast from potion mixing (which i only do when i need a potion, not for money making)

Humm,

Leaving Piety at the starting level of 60 for the Priest, still allows Divinity to rise to more than 100 quite rapidly. No significant slowing at 75.

When Intelligence is 100 and Piety 50, Realm Magics still rise all the way to 100.

When Intelligence is maxed in the Mage early, like level 8, increases in Wizardry still slow way down above 100.

Obviously higher controllig stats will mean faster increases (Sultan's observations), but has the factor of the of spell usage, and the pattern of that affecting increases, been eliminated from your observations, Wereboar?

[ 08-29-2003, 12:35 PM: Message edited by: EEWorzelle ]

eew - i would assume wearboar is casting evenly across the spellbooks. personally, my preferences are for alchemy first, wiz/psi second, and pri way behind. so, the pattern of my book stats is nothing like what wb described.

however, i think you precisely summarised the dynamics wb described, such that they would explain both our observations (sample size = 2, highly significant, so it must be true!)

while ironworks was down, i spent some time trolling on other boards (i know, a moment of weakness), and observed some posters saying that the first stat weighs higher in the *magic number* wb describes. IOW, it's not a straight average, but instead the first stat listed as controlling counts more. how much more? dunno. interesting thought, tho.

Sultan, there are three theories put forth.

1) That is the average of the primary and secondary controlling attributes that matters, like Wereboar puts forth.

2) That it is the primary (first named) controlling attribute that matters more than the secondary.

3) That it is the higher of the two which matters, whichever that is.

Frankly, I do not know which one it is... yet.

Actually, at this moment, I am leaning towards #2, but my reasoning is indirect.

A) Having just the primary maxed seems to be enough to reach 100 in the Skill without difficulty - that doesn't prove anything.

B) The Priest is designed in the game to have high Piety, but not Intelligence. The classic example is a Dwarf that has relatively low Intelligence. If I were a designer and saw that the Priest would then have lower Spell Points than the other casters because Piety is only the secondary controlling attribute (if #2 above is true). I would see that as a flaw and feel the need to do something about that, like give Piety the power to add directly to Spell Points... which it does. Just a speculation.

C) When the controlling attributes are named, they are not alphabetical, and the order seems very significant. For example, with Mythology, Senses is the primary controlling attribute and Intelligence the secondary, while for Artifacts right next to it, it is just the opposite. I notice that the Ranger, when given very high Senses and Intelligence left at the Hobbit starting level, grows Mythology very quickly, while his or her Artifacts is nothing special. This is a little evidence.

No. I wrote:
"Thus i tried to use spells from all realms".
I know that my healing spells were counted for divinity, and that wizardry has many attack spells. But i used psionic fire or fire bomb instead of fire ball (for example), to raise all realms.

I don't recall what level i was when i checked the numbers. Probably at level 18-19, when i noticed that i wasn't able to learn all these level 7 spells.
I had int and wis at 100, and wizardry and divinity were at ~97.
But senses was 50 and dex was ~55 IIRC, and psionics was at 76 and alchemy at 79 or something like that.

When i noticed these numbers, i very much focussed on psionic and alchemy spells, and raised the skills all the way to 100. But it took a long time (psionic less, since might to magic is great whith only one spellcaster).

I should note that i play on expert (but i assume you do too). In normal, stats raise much faster. I accidently started a game at normal once, and realized it when my stats were already very high at level 10.

Funny. In my current party, i have a mook spionic, and an elf and a fairie mage, which all go for powercast. Now my psionic has a much higher artifacts skill than the mages - about 50% more (currently at level XXX (deleted wrong info)). I thought this is the result of the significant higher senses, although his int is somehow behind. But then, as you wrote, int is primary and senses is secondary... have to check how they develop, and take a look at their mythology.

[ 09-03-2003, 06:17 AM: Message edited by: Wereboar ]