Part 44: A Belated Mechanics Intro 2

A Belated Mechanics Intro 2:


More bar music.


Now, back to our mechanics stuff.

Here's Morte. Good old reliable annoying Morte.

Morte is a terrific fighter, and as you can see he's a little more than 1000 xp shy of the Level 6 mark, which we'll earn pretty quickly. For a fighter he's got crappy strength, but his Dex and Con are pretty terrific, which means he gets an AC boost and extra HP per level. Yet for someone so witty (high Int) he's annoying as fuck and has no persuasive ability at all, resulting in a low Charisma.





What makes Morte a terrific ally, though, is the fact that he gets not just an AC boost to all but one form of physical damage (Bludgeoning), he's also immune to cold and is 75% resistant to all forms of physical damage. This means Morte is a terrific front-line fighter since he's the ultimate damage sponge.

Morte is Chaotic Good.







The problem with Morte is that he can't wear jack shit, what with being a floating skull and all. If only we could put an earring around his jaw bone or something, or glue a tattoo to his shiny dome.

All we can really do is equip him with weapons... and right now all he has is Ingress' teeth which we picked up from a quest. You can click the "Use" option to change the damage type.







Of course, with Morte's snarkiness he's developed the ability to sling insults with the best of 'em. Thus, his Litany of Curses skill, which unfortunately I just about never use. I'll be casting it on big boss baddies later on. If the subject fails the save, he'll be so pissed with the barrage of taunts and jeers that he'll attack Morte with fist weapons. Quite useful, especially if it'd take a mage out of action.





Now here's Dak'kon.

Normally Githzerai hone their skills towards close combat, and use hand-to-hand attacks instead of long-ranged psionics. However, instead of adding new mechanics to the Infinity Engine it was just much simpler to create a bunch of nifty spells and say that a Zerth is just a kind of mage multi-classed as a fighter. While this makes him a great deal more flexible, Dak'kon has to split his XP between two classes, which makes him lag behind Morte and TNO by a couple of levels.

In addition, Dak'kon gains a middling amount of hit points. While mages get an expected 2.5 HP each level, and fighters get an expected 5.5 each level, a fighter/mage gets an average of 4 HP total each time he gains a level in BOTH fighter and mage.





Though, a blade that sharpens itself with the will and knowing of its user is just fucking awesome.

Dak'kon has the same Dex and Con as Morte, but his Strength is a good step up. 18 is the max you can get from a normal roll, and really his is boosted by a tattoo right now. His remaining stats of Int, Wis, and Chr are also pretty good, but rather inconsequential.





Dak'kon is Lawful Neutral.

Without a doubt Dak'kon deals awesome damage, especially since the Way of Zerthimon grants him spells that help buff him further. Whereas Morte is high on defense, Dak'kon has terrific offense, and a smattering of low and mid-level spells gives him both flexibility and the ability to dish out ranged magical damage.





Now here's Dak'kons inventory. Still kind of spartan, but now that I think about it I can probably put a couple rings and bracelets on him and make him all pretty (and deadly!).





He originally came with a Whispering Flask, which is just a quick-item that boosts strength as well as giving a few extra hit points over maximum. His Zerth armor is pretty decent, and the Tattoo I bought for him from Fell boosts his strength by one point.











Now originally in AD&D, if you rolled an 18 naturally and were a fighter (and only a fighter, I believe), you had the opportunity to roll for "exceptional Strength," essentially a value from 1-100 determined by a roll of 2 10-sided die. An exceptional strength of 18/01 was the lowest, while 18/00 was the highest, and boy did people drool over the much-wanted 18/00. Thanks to an overlooked bug in the programming however, further Strength-boosting items will cause Dak'kon to skip straight through the ranks of exceptional strength all the way to 19, which is like, a four or five level increase in strength just from one point.





Pretty swanky.

His Zerth blade is also a good weapon. As of now it only does 2-9 damage and has an enchantment of +1, but as time goes by and he gains levels it'll improve a great deal and grow in power. I'll update it as this happens.









As for The Nameless One, you can see I've got him twinked out with some pretty good magic items. For one, there's the Amber Earrings that Mebbeth gave us, which improves AC as well as the number of spell slots we have. The Negative Token protects us all from attacks by shadows (important later on).













The Twisted Ring improves our AC by one point, which is kind of negligible. There's also the Magus Guard, which helps improve our base AC. It improves our AC to 6, and other bonuses reduce it further.







We also have a Tattoo of the Spirit, and I plan on picking up a Tattoo of the Soul (I think that's what it's called) to get an additional +2 Wisdom. Again, it'll improve our XP bonuses by about 30% or so at that point.





The Number of Ku'u Yin gives us protection from Chaotic creatures, which if I recall correctly is a +2 bonus to AC and saves from all attacks from these guys. Finally, TNO has been using a pretty good Bone Dagger, which gives 2-7 damage total and provides a +1 to hit. This is actually pretty good since this dagger deals the same damage as a +1 short sword, which is on the ass-end of swords but still inaccessable to mages normally.







Well that's it for another mechanics update. Next time I'll go over our current spells.