Re: Legends questions/advice

From: aiko@avalon.physik.unizh.ch (aiko gieskens)

Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1993 11:52:50 +0000

griffith@xcf.Berkeley.EDU (Jim The Big Dweeb Griffith) writes:
: In article <1mj2i3INNpsg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> bjohnson@athena.mit.edu (Brett W Johnson) writes:
: The most useful arcane skill seems to be seers, because of seers' crystals.
: Seers have no in-discipline offensive spells, but seer spells are useful for
: gathering information, which most players never bother to do.  Wizards are
: nice because some of the cooler spells (teleport, move location, shells of
: protection).

Don't forget that a druid main-character for a mercenary can be very
interesting due to the Charm herd spell combined with the flora
gathering ability.
Also summoners might come in handy, as you can summon something which
has skill you might have need of.
Just look at the spells of the various disciplines closely, to see what
best matches your intentions. A note on the seers crystals: they are
nice, provided you have the materials to make 'em (cinderoak & precious
gems) because sometimes they can be hard to find.

: >- Stats don't appear to be all that useful, +5% AF seems pretty trivial
: >     I know they also determine carrying capacity, weapons usable, healing,
: >     do they have other affects also?
:
: Stats are useful in subtle ways.  If you like Elves, you may want to buy up
: stats to ensure that you can actually wield some of the neat weapons you find.
: Certain supernatural statuses will give you stat bonuses, and after three
: or four morphs, you can get +100% from status stat increases.  But you're
: right in that it's not useful to buy up stats.  Buy skills, PC, TAC, or INF,
: and that's it.

Well apparently opinions differ on this. Some people virtually ignore
them, others swear by them (including myself). I'll try to explain why.
First remember that Stats cannot be trained like skills and attributes,
so what you take in the beginning will be what you have the whole game
(a few items can raise stats though, but when you remove the item, the
stats are gone again). I agree that 5% isn't much, although 5% for
somebody with a high Personal Combat is more than for somebody with a
low PC. However when used in the amount people use for skills and
attributes things tend to become more interesting, especially if you
have support from other chars in terms of skills (the order to
learn/teach a skill is in the game for a reason). Take for example the
Fighter/Arcanist, he'll typically (for a E-type char) have 40 points in
his Arcane art, and 24 in his PC. Instead of now spending the rest on
things like weaponmaster skills(Axemaster/Bowmaster/Swordmaster) or
militant skills(Ranger/Berserker/Knight), depend on other Chars for
those and put the remaining points in Str & Dex Giving you the ability
to wield most of the fancy weapons you might find later on and giving
you an additional 80% AFbonus. With a total CF of somewhere around 140
this would give you an increase on your AF of 0.8*140 = 112. This sure
is significant.
Another example of the use of stats is with the Influencer type. If you
go for the influencer type, take about 8-10 points on your Beauty, as
this significantly increases your chances with influencing.

Also High Dexterity and reasonable Strength are a must for Thiefs.
Especially if you want to do some of the more difficult thieving.

Aiko Gieskens

References

Re: Legends questions/advice
griffith@xcf.Berkeley.EDU (Jim "The Big Dweeb" Griffith)
Fri, 26 Feb 1993 08:20:13 +0000