Asbeau: The stats in Grimoire aren't fully understood by anybody yet, because Cleve still keeps delaying and making excuses for the release of the manual. I've read speculation that some of them don't actually do anything at all.
dtgreene: This reminds me of the original Final Fantasy, in which:
* The Intelligence stat doesn't actually do anything.
* There is a hidden Magic Defense stat, which affects your chance of avoiding status ailments and taking reduced damage from spells. Furthermore, a Black Belt's Magic Defense grows much faster before class change than after.
Note that the GBA version (and all subsequent versions) changed this; Intelligence affects spell power, and Monks gain Magic Defence much faster *after* class change rather than before.
Incidentally, I am wondering whether any stat in Grimoire might be better off kept low; I know a few games (the original SaGa being one example) where higher stats have downsides due to bugs in the code.
Gurlok: This, so much this. There is no intelligent reason behind this choice.
Sigh, I'd like to see a patch like this for elminage gothic too...
dtgreene: In Elminage Gothic, characters who start older get more stat points to distribute, on average (in particular, I believe the minimum is increased); therefore, if you want to start with better stats, create an old character rather than a young one...
That actually sounds a little like the way one of my favorite character creation schemes, the one used in Darklands, works. You move a character through life from beginning career to newer, more advanced positions, increasing some stats, and increasing/decreasing skills as you use/don't use them. Finally, you reach a point where you can continue increasing skills at the expense of decreasing stats due to age. I always stopped for my fighter types, but continued another few years for my alchemists and prayer types, since strength and endurance meant less to them. (Intelligence and wisdom didn't decrease until much later.)
Glazunov: I will never understand why you need to work for a good character roll. I know SirTech was hardly the first to do this, but it's a time waster when all a person wants to do is get their character, and start playing. There's nothing macho about demonstrating the patience of a Buddha as we roll into eternity. I actually spread my party rolling out over a couple of days, because I didn't want to deal with all the hassle in a relatively short time.
dtgreene: Fortunately, in the Wizardry series, your initial roll doesn't govern your character for all eternity. You can gain stats at level up, and can then change into the class you really want to be. In other words, if you start with a bad roll, your character is not stuck with horrible stats forever. This is much better than in D&D based games, where your initial stats are also, for the most part, your final stats. (This is one of the things I don't like about D&D.)
With that said, Wizardry 6 and 7 do have some mechanics I find distasteful, like the way your magic regeneration depends on your initial class (should have been based on your current class and level), and the way base miss chance works (level up as a mage and change to a fighter, and you will never be as good at fighting than if you started out as a fighter).
By the way, how does Grimoire compare in these respects? (In particular, I'm wondering if there's a hidden stat that acts like base miss chance.)
The bit that I played was confusing and annoying. As stat-heavy as these Wizardry games and their clones are, that's a ton of information that needs to be clear, not because it gives clues to beating the game, but because it otherwise doesn't give you enough information to function sensibly in the game world. And Cleve's manual, promised for last Monday, presumably would have cleared that up.
My great niece, who played it longer than i did before she put it away (and borrowed my copy of Wizardry 7 to play it), confirms that several stats don't apparently work as one would think. Very generally speaking, she mentioned 1) stats that have a 1-100 progression, but appear to drop off all progress after a few levels, 2) stats that didn't appear to work at all, and 3) stats that actually seemed to decrease certain values, either in those stats or the way other stats played out. I can't confirm or deny these, and my attempts to get details only resulted in her turning red in the face and insulting Cleve very creatively. (She actually reminds me of my wife in that respect.) Hidden stats? I absolutely wouldn't be surprised. And it's not a big deal, *if we are only told what they are and how they work.*
Someone up on Steam suggested that we can expect a manual probably in 2037. I bet that stung a bit.
