Let's Play - Knights of the Chalice, Ironman

Why I'm going to attempt an ironman playthrough of KotC I can't really say, but it should prove highly entertaining watching the dice damn my party to a swift death. Maybe I'm just a masochist at heart...

For those that aren't familiar with the game, think of it as a close relative to ToEE. Despite the relationship, there are some significant differences even though both being based around 3.5ed. Most importantly, there are only three classes (knight, cleric, and wizard) and there are no skill points at all. Also, both casters behave similarly to a sorcerer in that they don't memorize specific spells but rather are capable of casting a set number of spells of each level. Some other changes include party members not bleeding to death after being knocked unconscious but rather disappearing from the field until either combat ends (In which case they return with 1hp) or they're healed during combat and a modified selection of spells (At least I'm pretty sure they're modified as the mage has no summoning spells). There are probably other minor changes, but those are the only ones that come to mind at 6am...

Despite those rather dramatic cuts, the game still proves to be a more faithful adaptation than other D&D games, *cough*BG*cough*. So with that all said, on with the LP!





Am I the only one that thinks this title screen looks a hell of a lot better than most modern mainstream games?



Here's to hoping my cries of frustration as my parties die one after another will be entertaining enough to outweigh the hell that I'll be enduring.

Onwards!



One of the aspects that makes things a bit more interesting here is one's limited ability to modify the stats after they're rolled; you're limited to rerolling one stat and swapping one pair. Only after your stats are set can you modify your race (Muls get's +2str, -2dex and half-elves get +2dex, +2int, -2str, -2con) and select feats/spells.

Below are the four characters to be used:









This makes our party the typical two knights, one cleric, one mage setup. And yes, I spent a bit of time waiting for decent starting rolls for the characters, but this is an ironman LP, damnit, so this'll be the only time throughout the entire game where I can wait for the dice to come out in my favor.

The only other comment to add is that improved initiative is a must. This is especially true for your mage as later on he can take out a significant number of the enemy casters before they have a chance to go, but it's still useful for every class.





Now taking bets on how far this party gets before they wipe.







Right after creating the party we're thrown into this conversation and giving our first tasks: To find this Constello fellow and to practice our skills in some nearby caves. Oh, and by "practice our skills," he really means "get brutally raped and left alone to die," as you will soon see...

Time to check out what else there is in the keep.



General shopkeeper that we'll hardly visit as a) he doesn't sell anything all that great and b) we'll be crafting almost every item that we use. He does, however, have the key to the nearby storage room that he gives you as the reward for completing a quest in the nearby caves.

We're also pretty much broke at the moment as we start with only 280gold and your basic longbow costs 700+.



A campfire. Note that campfires are the *only* areas where you can rest in KotC, and since time is never an issue, it's best to rest whenever you come across one of these while exploring a dungeon as you never know when you'll be able to rest next.



The wizard of the keep. Only thing of note that he sells is a wand with 22 charges of cure light wounds. Healing wands are probably one of the most, if not the most, important items to carry around in an ironman game as, without them, you'll be fucked in some of the dungeons that prevent you from leaving via the entrance. It'd just be a matter of time before your cleric runs out of healing spells and you're stranded at the final encounter with a near usless cleric, a mage who likely only has a handful of low level spells left, and knights with only 30% hp.

Can't afford the wand yet, but this task he has should pay well enough so we can afterwards.



On with the fight!



Three lowly water elementals, should be easy as they only have 5, 6, and 7hp each.



The mage comes out on top in the initiative roll so I move'em up to cast burning hands on the top two elementals. Yea, he's likely going to get knocked unconscious after casting, but considering he has all of one level one spell to cast, I don't really care what happens to him.



Burn ya fuckers!



And it shouldn't surprise anyone that the level one mage's spell ends up doing almost nothing. Sure, they each have around half their starting hitpoints, but my knights would've taken them out with one swing even if they were at full life.

Now it's time to watch the elementals rape my mage while the knights and cleric clean up.



Ashery lines up the rear elemental for a charge hopping to kill that elemental as well as a neighboring one with cleave...and misses his mark by a mile.

Afterwards the other knight takes his chance with the elementals and misses his swing as well.

Meh, no biggie, both tanks are still at full life as well as the cleric.



The cleric miraculously lands a blow!...and does four damage to the elemental with five total hitpoints.





Down goes the useless mage!



Oh, fuck. One knight's down for the count after taking multiple hits. Fortunately, clerics can cast a single target heal on unconscious party members and bring them back into the fight, so the situation isn't as bad as it looks.



I'm back in the fight, bitches!



What do ya know...Both knights miss their fucking attacks again.



Oh god, oh god, both knights are now down and all three elementals are left alive. Time to summon my own elemental and pray he can land a swing or two on the other elementals...



...Guess I shouldn't have expected my elemental to have any better luck hitting the water elementals than my knights. Not that it mattered, though, as the one on the side rushed my cleric and knocked him out in one swing...

...Wonder how many people bet that there'd be a wipe on the first encounter...

Well, regardless, betting is now open on the fate of the next party. Already finished one update's worth of screenshots, just need to catch some sleep before I do the write up.

Also, suggestions are welcome for possible additions/questions. I'll try to type out a bit more during the next update as well as this one was typed out at 6:30am, so I'm not all that awake at the moment...

You are fucked, have fun!

Also, this updated font is seriously fugly, I must say. I really prefer the original one.

you will need alot of luck of even surviving the Orc attack.

The new font looks better than the old one, but it is stylistically really funny. I'd prefer the one featured on the beta gameplay videos (old blocky c64 style), but that one is apparently copyrighted...

Is someone working on an official Codex review of this game? That needs to be done ASAP

Thanks, I was waiting for someone to do this LP.

The new font is pretty wack, but I had no complaints with the old one.

I think the dev put ironman in this game as a lark or something, it will be impossible.

Wait...you tried to get good rolls and still died on the first encounter? Is it that hard or you just had bad luck?

Can someone do a side-by-side of the new and old font? The "new" is still pretty fugly.

The viewing perspective on this game makes me feel a bit... disoriented.

Joe Krow said:

Can someone do a side-by-side of the new and old font? The "new" is still pretty fugly.

Click to expand...

Looks like fun. Do continue.

What the mouse said. Please continue.

BTW, both fonts are fail.

Summons can put a good bit of hurt on especially if you take the Improved Summons feat early on, especially since you can make wand charges out of them.

I half wonder if a party of Summoner Clerics could go all the way given lots can happen with 8 on your side versus the usual small team.

Otherwise, good luck with the LP and have fun with it and the variety of party builds that will meet death. Probably need to keep good track of the patching situation too, as this morning it was up to version 1.11.

There is a improved summons feat? Problem with summons is - you can only have one.

Ashery: you are crazy. No way this game can be played without reloads - plenty of them.

summons are awesome

It appears that the AI does some calculations to see who it can hurt the easiest.

since your summons have like no AC and your fighters are are well protected the AI loves to use it's 7 attacks on your elemental instead of your fighter

Summons are nice and all, but investing two feats for +4str/con? As I normally just use them to cover my flank, I don't really think it'd be a worthwhile investment (Esp since the cleric needs most of his feats for crafting). And as you can see from the last few images, they're not terribly great as a distraction at this level.

You also have no control over them, so while having four summoned elementals would seem like it'd be better than two knights, you can't pull the enemy into a doorway and deal with'em one at a time.

And that first encounter was just bad luck. I should've used sleep instead of burning hands, but beyond that mistake, I played it as well as one could this early on. Well, since all four of my characters were on top of the initiative list, I could've also pulled them all out of the room and fought in the doorway...

And that orc fight wasn't as tough as I remembered it...Two out of the three parties survived (One just barely, the other by a wide margin). I actually succeeded on my first attempt, but restarted for the LP because I royally fucked up one of my tanks. I expected weapon finesse to also use dex as the damage modifier, but it only modified the the attack roll, so while my knight with 20dex would land almost every hit, he'd hit for a whopping 3-4 damage on average while my other knight would hit for 8-9 on average.

I'll start work on the next update's writeup in an hour or so.

Ashery said:

I expected weapon finesse to also use dex as the damage modifier, but it only modified the the attack roll, so while my knight with 20dex would land almost every hit, he'd hit for a whopping 3-4 damage on average while my other knight would hit for 8-9 on average.

Click to expand...

I don't know about KotC (I haven't played it), but in TOEE, I felt a properly built Dexterity-based fighter, with Weapon Finesse, was more effective than a Strength-based one in the long run. By the end of that game, weapon enhancements basically dwarved damage from any other source. So, while a Strength-based fighter probably gained an extra 4 or so damage (compared to the ~5-30 the enhancements provided) and some extra carrying capacity (meh), a fighter focused on Dexterity gained an extra 4 extra points to AC, initiative, and reflex save.

God damnit, Firefox just crashed after I finished typing out 98% of the update. Yea, I should've used note pad or something similar for typing it out, but laziness and desire to constantly preview changes won out...

Expect the next update to come within an hour with limited text...I don't fucking feel like typing everything out a second time.

And for your comments Flux, the problem is that a) full plate is the most effective armor and only allows one point of ac to come from dex, three if it's mithril (Most effective as the total bonus from the armor comes out to be nine while all other armors only provide a total potential of eight or less), b) adamantium heavy armors provide 3/- damage resistance, while light armors only provide 1/-, and c) the five damage difference between a dex and str tank is not insignificant, especially when trying to break damage resistance. Carrying capacity isn't even modeled in KotC, so that's a non issue altogether.

...Time to get back to work on the fucking writing portion...

T2-C1:

Arise my children! Arise and seek revenge on those...three level one elementals that managed to wipe a party of four.

...*cry*...









Considering how little actually happened in the initial update, I don't feel the need to repeat all of that here.

Time for some fuckin' revenge!



Now all that's left is to see if our knights can actually hit something this time...



Hah!



By some miracle, even the Cleric lands a swing and takes one down!







...

That revenge was surprisingly unsatisfying...The party goes from wiping without killing a single elemental to taking down every elemental before they even get a turn. Just goes to show the amount of luck involved with combat during the first few levels.

Time for some basic crafting before we head out of the keep...



There's not all that much we can craft at the moment due to our limited gold supply, but a couple of shields for the tanks should go a long way to help their survivability (It should be noted that the sprites are based solely on class and gender, so despite looking as if they're carrying a shield, they don't start out with one).

Time to head out to the nearby caves and "practice our skills."



Egads!



This is where one should realize that KotC doesn't hold back its punches. You're only level one and yet the game throws at you a dozen or so orcs and gnolls, including a cleric and, sitting right outside view range, several more equipped with missile weapons. We do, however, have eight friendly npc guards to help with the fight, but they usually drop in a single hit.



Oh, and they also have a mage...

Although I suppose entangle is better than watching my entire party fail their saves and fall asleep only to have a nearby orc preform a coup de grace.

Note that entangle only slows characters down as they move through it instead of stopping them from acting entirely. It does, however, reduce your dexterity and attack rolls as well as preventing you from taking a five foot step.



It really does limit your mobility early on, however, as characters wearing medium or heavy armor are already restricted to a twenty foot move. Throw in entangle and you're only able to move ten feet and still take an action, or, as can be seen here, a total distance of one diagonal tile.



Note two important actions that the ai has taken here: They've wasted one of their actions to bull rush the right gate guard into the entangled area and that they prioritize avoiding entangled areas to the point where they'll sit back and ready versus approach instead of helping allies.

Both of these actions should be exploited to their fullest potential against ai opponents. For example, once you get some basic fire resistance enchantments on your knights, use walls of fire to funnel your opponents into your two knights. Not only will you limit their approach, but even if they break through, they'll often bull rush you into your own wall of fire instead of doing an actual attack. The end result being that you take, at most, five points of damage instead of facing a full out attack.



Time to even the playing field and cast bless for my side.



And down goes my mage (as well as a few more of the guards). Ready versus spell can really screw over your mage early on...



I could've brought my mage back at this point, but considering his limited firepower, the elemental's the better choice of the two as the elemental can actually do a significant amount of damage in melee.



Just an example of one of the guards being grappled. There are several consequences of this, but I'll go over the rules for grappling later (Firefox crashed and wiped out my earlier explanation).



Not much else for the knight to do, so he readies versus approach just in case the guard dies in front of him.



Time for that investment in the healing wand to pay off already. Ashie already burned through both of her spells (Bless + Elemental), so the wand'll allow us to bring the unconscious mage back to get that sleep spell off and hopefully prevent a few of the orcs from attacking for a round or two.



Time to buy some time with that sleep spell.



So a total of three orcs were prevented from taking an action for one turn, not bad, but definitely could've been better (Two orcs failed their save and another orc spent a turn waking up one of the sleeping orcs).



And now it's just a matter of cleaning up...provided the dice don't roll as badly as they did back with that first fight with the water elementals.



But that won't keep a few more of the guards from dying.



Two left!





Behold the power of cleave! Good timing too, as Grum only had one hp remaining. Probably the worst spot for a tank to be as that actually puts them in a situation where they're likely to outright die, not just get knocked unconscious.





Woot, enough experience for that second level. Can also sell off all the shit they dropped and do a bit more crafting before an attempt is made at the caves. Main items on the list: Masterwork weapons (both steel and silver) forboth of the knights as well as a few hundred bolts and arrows.



Just an example of the level up screen. If you gents want, I'll post these for the party whenever they level so that you can keep track of their development, but I skipped taking screenshots for the rest of the party this level.

Now that all of that is out of the way, time to rest up, explore the last bits of the keep, and then head off for the caves.

We also found this on the dead orc leader's body...



...but fortunately there's someone in the keep that can help with this.





What a twist!





These are just two examples of different types of encounters (combat and non-combat) in the game. The former being an example of how, while exploring, your search will often trigger combat encounters and the latter deals with how the game handles lootable chests in a chestless game.

Anyways, that's it for the keep. Time to attempt those fucking caves and get another update in here tomorrow.

Damn it seems KotC will be the best game that was published this year.

Also do include level up screenshots. And comment more on whats going on( I know, I know, your browser crashed, but its your fault, who the fuck uses Suckyfox when Opera is available).

Other than that Good LP.

Ashery said:

And for your comments Flux, the problem is that a) full plate is the most effective armor and only allows one point of ac to come from dex, three if it's mithril (Most effective as the total bonus from the armor comes out to be nine while all other armors only provide a total potential of eight or less), b) adamantium heavy armors provide 3/- damage resistance, while light armors only provide 1/-, and c) the five damage difference between a dex and str tank is not insignificant, especially when trying to break damage resistance. Carrying capacity isn't even modeled in KotC, so that's a non issue altogether.

Click to expand...

That's too bad. From what I've seen and heard, while it initially looks like you have a lot of options for developing your characters, in the end, you really don't. With the limited class selection and small party size, the situations your party is put in, and some feats with rather dubious value, there doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of leeway allowed for developing characters that will be effective later in the game. Maybe its just a failing of the ruleset.

I prefered Mithril Breastplate. 5 armor + 5 Dex + 5 enhancement. Also take into account that you have less armor penalty (can move more squares).

T2-C2: Why must the gift be a corpse?

Where we last left off (all three posts ago at the time I started typing this), the party had finally finished, or at least thought they had finished, their preparations for their tom...err...practice sessions in the caves. Onwards!



The world map in all of it's simplistic glory. The party is that little blue dot in the southeast by the river and, fortunately, there's only one location southeast of the party, so that's where we head.



*Cue foreboding music*



*Waits*

You hear a voice in your head: "Greetings, adventurers. Years ago, a forest druid gave me powers of telepathy. Since you do not have hostile intentions, you are welcome to my lair."

"Nice to meet you."

"Feel free to ask me any questions you like."

What we learn from the bear: The cave contains two or three lower levels, the uppermost of which contains a community of giant spiders that he has no contact with as well as some walking corpses, and, most importantly, if we bring him a zombie corpse as a gift, he'll allow us to make camp here...

...Why must the gift be a corpse? We don't have much choice in the matter, though, so down we go...





Looking back at this, I have absolutely no idea why I wasted one of my precious few spells in order to cast light on the party. It increases the range of the party's line of sight by a fair bit, but it also means we have one less spell to use during combat.

This is a fairly straight forward fight, so there's no real reason to waste many of our precious few spells.



Which means our wizard, after being rushed by the NE centipede, is forced to cower in a corner and take occasional potshots with his bow. Yes, he's using a bow at this time despite the fact that he lacks proficiency. You'll see why once I get through more of the caves.



After the mage is again attacked, the cleric pulls out of melee range with a five foot move (To both avoid the AoO and because the elementals require a full round action to summon, so you're restricted to only a five foot move) to summon some support in.



Maybe this is just a fluke, but it definitely seems that the ai prioritizes protecting mages as well as the elemental moved off of the target he was adjacent to in order to kill the one on the mage.



Down goes another to one of our knights; only one left now.



What do ya know...the ai goes right for the mage again.



And the elemental ends up landing the final blow of the encounter. Just goes to show how useful the elementals are early on when most of the time your damage based spells land for only a handful of damage.



"Welcome adventurers! We have watched your fight and congratulate you for your martial ability."

"Why did you not help us in the fight?"

"Surface dwellers, please believe us. We arrived too late to be of any help."

"You said you watched the fight."

"Have you come all the way from the surface to bandy words with us" Will you listen or not?"

(They obviously cannot be trusted, but at the same time we haven't had a chance to heal our mage after the previous encounter so this isn't the best time to engage two magical spiders in a fight.)

"Yes"

"Our domain is constantly under attack by evil undead creatures! Their lair lies east of here. Noble souls, may we ask you to go and destroy them? You will be rewarded for your efforts."

"I will see what I can do." (Only choice.)

The spiders then return to their lair to the south. Having immediately gone east on my original play through, I decide to investigate the spider community a bit more before heading that way.

Here's why it's not a good idea to enter a fight against the spiders with a weakened mage:





24hp and 5/magic damage resistance. The members of the group are only level two and it's impossible to have a single magic weapon and we're already facing fucking 5/magic damage resistance. Obviously we'll need to explore the eastern portion of the cave before engaging the spiders in combat.

Anyways, time to gather some more information on what we're up against before we head east.



"I wish to talk to your leader."

"Why do you wish to see the goddess?"

"I have a gift for her."

"Very well, we will take you to her, surface dwellers."

I'll let a few pictures of dialogue do the talking from here...







Oh god...I do believe the party may be fucked...



Yup. Fucked they are.

And I suppose the party did bring her a gift in a way...They brought their corpses...



Here's the information on the queen:





There's the queen...75hp, 5/magic damage resistance, and several levels as a wizard...and the party doesn't have a single magical weapon...

Along with her, there are six other spiders, two of which have a few levels as a cleric.

Hopefully this massacre will at least be an entertaining read...



The party's pretty much already dead, but might as well put up a bit of a fight.

Chaaaaarge!



...*Cry*...



Mmm...half-elf...



And the spiders add insult to injury by casting web. Fortunately, only one party member is stuck so the other three are only hampered (The entangle spell causes characters to become hampered, so they just have a reduced speed along with a few other penalties. However, every tile you move onto that's webbed, you have to make another check to see if you're stuck or just entangled).

Not that it matters, though, as the party won't be able to take down even one of the low level spiders before dying.



Well, at least one of the knights landed a blow...even if it was only for one damage.



...Is that really necessary?

If you're unable to see who's doing what, the bottom left corner indicates the character that's currently active.



And down goes the mage. To be quite honest, I'm surprised he lasted this long.



*Sigh*

They're really determined to wipe the party out as efficiently as possible. That knight in the north was the one that got stuck in the web, so the ai just pulls off of him and lets him sit there unable to do a damn thing about it.

Not that he could do a hell of a lot when he wasn't webbed, what with his charge attack that did a whopping one damage.



Screw this, I'm just going to let the last few screenshots speak for themselves, I'm off to roll another party.













Oh, grappling, something I still need to explain.

As you can see from the upper left, two things must occur for a grapple attempt to succeed. First, one must make a successful touch attack (This is one area where a dex tank performs better than a str tank) and then, if the touch attack hits, each character involved in the grapple make opposing grapple checks (This, however, is always based on str. So while a dex tank can avoid them initially, if he fails that check, he's royally fucked once he gets to this point) and the highest roll wins. So if you initiate a grapple and have a lower grapple check, the grapple fails and the situation returns to normal, but if you have a higher check, the characters are now grappling.

Also, you provoke AoOs if you attempt to initiate a grapple without having the improved grappling feat. Despite grappling's usefulness, I tend to avoid that perk due to it requiring improved unarmed strike and the fact that it doesn't actually improve your grapple checks; you only avoid AoOs and get +4 to your attacks while grappling.

The consequences of grappling: You're no longer able to make AoOs, you lose your dex bonus to ac against enemies you aren't grappling, you cannot move, and any ranged attacks on the grappled characters have a chance of hitting either target. You also cannot cast spells unless you have the metamagic still feat. When grappled, you have three options: To attack with your main natural weapon (Fists for the PCs), to attempt to break free, or attempt to pin your opponent. When pinned, a character takes a -4ac penalty and are unable to take any action except to attempt to break free. The latter two options require opposing grapple checks to determine success or failure.

A bit more verbose than it needed to be, but there it is. Back to watching the party get slaughtered.



Not being satisfied enough by watching her minions horribly rape the party, the queen decides to throw a fireball into the web to finish the party off (Fireballs do additional damage to characters in a web, +2D4 to be exact).

Now that that party has been wiped out, a couple of questions for the readers:

How should I deal with combat encounters that have already been described in detail?

Should there be more or less detail in new encounters? I know I can definitely improve over the first few posts and have started taking an excessive amount of screenshots while playing and picking out the ones I'll use once I start the writeup.

Other suggestions also welcome.

Next time, go first to the northeast village and clean it, and travel back to the tower to rest each time you need it, as boring as it may be. If you going ironman, better get any advantage and exploit you can.