Avadon

After a long and brutal conflict, five nations renewed their pact of mutual protection against the many threats surrounding them, and created the fortress of Avadon as a neutral party to enforce it, with more power than any individual country. To serve it is an honor, and to face its justice is a terror. It is both feared and respected, and those who resent it do so quietly.

You are a freshly recruited Hand of Avadon, somewhere between a warrior and an assassin. You and four other Hands will be sent to fight against a series of seemingly unrelated threats, and to uncover the hidden connection between them. It's up to you to defeat the enemies of the Pact.

Unless, of course, you decide to join them.

Avadon is a roleplaying game from Spiderweb Software, and serves as a Spiritual Successor to Avernum--with a bit of tone and themes from Geneforge, and some clear admiration for Dragon Age Origins.

This game provides examples of:

 * Anti Grinding: The game has a pretty low level cap (30), which you'll likely reach about 80% of the way through the game if you've been keeping up on sidequests.
 * Badass Beard: Redbeard. The intro even gives you a very detailed look at it.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Redbeard is shown to be a jovial sort, but if you, he'll get quite pissed at you for "wasting his time".
 * Convection Shmonvection: Lava is simply impassable terrain, and won't harm you if you get near to it.
 * Dark Fantasy: In terms of background and overall story arc, though it's got too much of a sense of humor to fully fit the category.
 * Fighter Mage Thief: The standard varieties of Hand. Shamans are something else entirely, but the lore would have it that they're quite rare (not that this stops you from playing as one.)
 * Flunky Boss: Zhossa Mindtaker never attacks you directly during his first fight, instead calling it a "game"—you earn a point every time you drop a flunky's HP to 1 and force him to heal it, he'll earn a point if his flunkies kill you and he devours your corpse. (And yes, that's pretty much how he phrases it.) Earn enough points, and he'll eventually flee, leaving his flunkies to die.
 * Global Currency
 * Grey and Grey Morality
 * Guide Dang It: As usual for Spiderweb, a lot of stats have effects that aren't fully explained in-game.
 * Instant Awesome Just Add Ninja: It's pretty clear right off the bat what the "Shadow Walker" class is based on--one of his earliest spells is basically a smokebomb.
 * Item Crafting: You can't make items yourself, but a few NPCs will make them for you if you bring them ingredients, and most types of equipment can be augmented once with runestones.
 * Kleptomaniac Hero
 * Locked Door: Some require lockpicks and mechanical skills to open. Others require special keys. There are also doors blocked by runes, which a require a special knife to open.
 * Memetic Badass: Redbeard is one in universe, as explained by the intro.
 * Multiple Endings: It's a Spiderweb Software game.
 * My Greatest Failure: How Sevilin got his scar.
 * Nature Hero: Jenell both deconstructs and reconstructs this trope in her conversations.
 * Numerical Hard: One, but not the only, way in which difficulty scales up. Enemies gain health and damage on higher difficulties, but also sometimes get extra turns, and bosses usually have a new attack or two.
 * One Stat to Rule Them All: Dexterity is the best of the four basic attributes by a significant margin.
 * Our Monsters Are Different: Most of the entries under that heading on the Avernum page are equally true here.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Redbeard's private notes observe that you've been assigned the most dysfunctional Hands in Avadon to fight alongside you. It's hoped that you'll be a good influence on them.
 * Relationship Values: A binary 1 and 0.
 * Retraux: It's been compared a lot to Baldurs Gate.
 * Soul Jar: The battle against . The golems that you have to kill are even called "soul jars."
 * The Empire: The Tawon Empire used to be this, back when it ruled over much of the continent of Lynaeus. There are those who would like to see it become this again.
 * Universal Poison
 * Vendor Trash
 * Wake Up Call Boss: If you're playing on Tough difficulty, Zhossa Mindtaker will probably be the first boss that will require potions and scrolls. (Cruelly, he's the last boss you need to beat to reach Castle Verbeaux, and there's an achievement for getting there on Tough without ever getting knocked unconscious--you can't leave his dungeon until you beat him, so if you sold all your potions and scrolls, you're in trouble.)
 * We ARE Struggling Together: The entire reason Avadon exists is to hammer this into the Pact members' heads.