KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Mortmal]

I haven't had a Fighter yet, so it's very hard to say.
However, you can purchase a Belt in the High Sewers that allows you to use your Full Attack after a Charge. This doesn't replace Wade In, but it's a pretty good substitute.

I will say that in the High Sewer I often wish I had Wade In. Gladiator's biggest strength is early game and later on, the increased ability scores.

That said, if we're strictly speaking Mantis I just don't see why you wouldn't want to be a Gladiator; you will miss out on crazy AC if you are not a Gladiator due to not being able to wear armor, and a decent AC, while not as important in some games, is still very important.

Another point is that you can't really afford spending gold/XP on crafting so being able to use any weapon you find is a big advantage.

But when you do that to them , their casters always have a gust of wind next round to blow away even a cloudkill... AI is very good indeed.

 

[NJClaw]

Finally I managed to beat the big encounter that starts with the child sacrifice. I know I'm late to the party, but I'm studying a lot in this period and I don't have much time to play (and, boy, this game requires A LOT of time). You can reach level 3 before that fight, but the encounter is doable even at level 2, where "doable" means that you still have to reload at least 5-10 times to get the desired outcome out of every action. The main problem is that a single turn from one of the two spellcasters (I guess they are a psion and a cleric) means game over and usually they don't go down with a single attack. So it's imperative to disable them in the first round and the easiest way to do so is to use the Confusion scroll to disable everyone in the room (except for 4 enemies in the top part: 2 of them can be dealt with a single Grease, while the other two can be immediately killed by a warrior with Cleave).

At least for me the percentages of success on the two spellcasters were 75% and 50%, so that's roughly 37% of confusing them both. You can still win without disabling the 50%, but you need to win the initiative with more characters and that means even more reloads. After the Confusion scroll, you just have to mop up the room. The enemies that come from the bottom aren't a big threat and can be kept in their place with the Web scroll (or you can learn Web if you reach level 3). With Web + Fireball you can easily kill everyone due to the "fire on web" effect.

 

[NJClaw]

One last thing: at least for the this very first part, a Druid is pretty useful. You can't keep more than one summon at any given time (shame on you, Pierre...), but the summoned wolf has a lot of hp (around 30), so it can endure a lot of damage (the elementals have 5-7 hp): usually an elemental doesn't last more than one or two rounds if an enemy focuses his attention on him, but the wolf can survive multiple rounds even against 3-4 enemies, with a bit of luck. I haven't seen him succeed in a lot of maneuvers, but he can deal a lot of damage when charging (enough to one-shot almost every enemy in the first area).

I know that's not that interesting (since it's just the first area of the game), but I really hope the Druid manages to stay relevant during the game.

 

[Rpguy]

One last thing: at least for the this very first part, a Druid is pretty useful. You can't keep more than one summon at any given time (shame on you, Pierre...), but the summoned wolf has a lot of hp (around 30), so it can endure a lot of damage (the elementals have 5-7 hp): usually an elemental doesn't last more than one or two rounds if an enemy focuses his attention on him, but the wolf can survive multiple rounds even against 3-4 enemies, with a bit of luck. I haven't seen him succeed in a lot of maneuvers, but he can deal a lot of damage when charging (enough to one-shot almost every enemy in the first area).

I know that's not that interesting (since it's just the first area of the game), but I really hope the Druid manages to stay relevant during the game.

Druid is the best summoner in the game, just give him augmented summoning and summoning mastery feats. If you pick a sphere element at the start his elementals of that type are even stronger and you get an extra CR 6 summon spell. He is summoning faster than other classes as well. Summon elemental is standard instead of Full, and summon animals is a move action, meaning you can summon a beast and do a heal/buff/nuke or a quicksand (OP level 2 spell )
Besides all that you got an extra healer that can cast super important spells like mass protection from energy as a move action and he has nukes that the cleric lacks. He doesn't get domains like a cleric but he does get extra feats and natural armor. Very nice class, I am surprised not many experiment with.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Jasede I wanted to ask your opinion on the mantis fighter/gladiator comparison. These are the main benefits of going for a gladiator:
- competence in all weapon groups (it can be relevant because you want to be able to use every good weapon you can find, I guess);
- slightly higher abilities;
- higher AC, due to the class feature;
- blinding strikes.

Is this enough to trump the benefits of the Wade In feat? When your full attack action consists of 8 attacks, being able to use it consistently seems to me the most important thing for this character.

with gladiator you also get blind fight, cleve and great cleve for free at lvl1, kinda huge at the beginning

 

[NJClaw]

One last thing: at least for the this very first part, a Druid is pretty useful. You can't keep more than one summon at any given time (shame on you, Pierre...), but the summoned wolf has a lot of hp (around 30), so it can endure a lot of damage (the elementals have 5-7 hp): usually an elemental doesn't last more than one or two rounds if an enemy focuses his attention on him, but the wolf can survive multiple rounds even against 3-4 enemies, with a bit of luck. I haven't seen him succeed in a lot of maneuvers, but he can deal a lot of damage when charging (enough to one-shot almost every enemy in the first area).

I know that's not that interesting (since it's just the first area of the game), but I really hope the Druid manages to stay relevant during the game.

Druid is the best summoner in the game, just give him augmented summoning and summoning mastery feats. If you pick a sphere element at the start his elementals of that type are even stronger and you get an extra CR 6 summon spell. He is summoning faster than other classes as well. Summon elemental is standard instead of Full, and summon animals is a move action, meaning you can summon a beast and do a heal/buff/nuke or a quicksand (OP level 2 spell )
Besides all that you got an extra healer that can cast super important spells like mass protection from energy as a move action and he has nukes that the cleric lacks. He doesn't get domains like a cleric but he does get extra feats and natural armor. Very nice class, I am surprised not many experiment with.

At level 3, with Summon Mastery, you can summon a wolf with 50+ hp. The crocodile is cool because he has 2 attacks with fairly high bonuses (+10/+8), but he wastes his turns trying useless maneuvers...

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

The main problem is that a single turn from one of the two spellcasters (I guess they are a psion and a cleric) means game over and usually they don't go down with a single attack. So it's imperative to disable them in the first round and the easiest way to do so is to use the Confusion scroll to disable everyone in the room (except for 4 enemies in the top part: 2 of them can be dealt with a single Grease, while the other two can be immediately killed by a warrior with Cleave).

i gave my psi boi improved stomp on lvl1 which was more than enough to fuck them up entirely.

 

[Jasede]

Got to confess I haven't tried Druid either. The way you roll stats makes him impossible to be used in melee but they certainly seem to get very useful spells.

Replay party will be:
HG Fighter (Glad better early but I want to test Wade In on a Trip character)
Mantis Glad
Psion
Wizard or Sorc or Warlock
Druid
Bishop (all Curing/Healing, but this time low Cha and no Turn Undead feats)

Pure casters are baller in this game. Party intended not to use NPCs. However, I maintain that the Paladin girl is quite good and having a paladin is very very helpful. But not enough so that you should have one.

 

[Jasede]

BTW
I think improved stomp is a crutch and a waste of a feat.
Yes you get greater stomp later but by then you also have many other skills that can knock down. And your trip giant does it better.

 

[Noddy]

Been on the final boss for five fucking hours
kill me

 

[Dickie]

I was looking at a Druid for a while, but I couldn't decide on an elemental sphere. I was thinking air, since knocking stuff down is so powerful, and I always have Grease everywhere, but I haven't gotten far enough to know what's useful later.

 

[NJClaw]

I was looking at a Druid for a while, but I couldn't decide on an elemental sphere. I was thinking air, since knocking stuff down is so powerful, and I always have Grease everywhere, but I haven't gotten far enough to know what's useful later.

I picked Water because Invisible Stalkers, Crystal Golems and Efreeti are ultra gay compared to a motherfucking GIANT CRAB.

 

[Dickie]

Maybe a stillfinger (+1 ranged atk, -2 ability points) halfing druid that focuses more on casting spells. The +1 ranged attack maybe helps for ranged touch attacks, if I need any. Halfling also gets +2 to all saves, and +1 size bonus to AC and attack rolls.

Maybe use an array like:
Str 11
Dex 20
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 20
Cha 8

That'll give him high initiative, armor, will and reflex saves, and ranged attack rolls.

 

[NJClaw]

If anyone cares about that, you can manually edit the HP rolls for your characters. Each character has a "[HP Rolls]" voice in the "SaveChar.cml" file. I still don't know if it's safe, so you probably should backup your save (actually, you should backup your save regardless...): sometimes it corrupts your save file, sometimes it works without problems.

You can find the same values in the "CharacterRoster.cml" file. This means that HP rolls are statically determined at character creation, so it can be useful to check your rolls even if you don't plan on cheating. Personally, I will just roll a new character because this is my fucking fighter after level 2: 1/3/1/3/4/3/1/2/9/10/4/3/1/1/5/5/2/3/4/4/1/1/2/4/7/6/5/4/1/1/1/1/5/4. What a disgrace.

 

[Jasede]

Your fighter: 5'8'' is AVERAGE

 

[Tweed]

Bishop is good but you are missing spells like mass remove negative levels, and the single target one comes to late . The other draw back is you need very high cha to make turns usefull, a cleric just need high wisdom so you dont sacrifice anything you max that and have very hig spell DC. In Kotc 2 every classes that requires to be good in more than 2 stats must not be taken. I dont see why pick warlock either , rather have one pure wizard and one psion.

So I've noted. Scrapping the bishop and putting back the cleric, going to swap the warlock for a second psion. Cleric will be healing, but I dunno what other domain to put on, magic isn't really all that helpful though I did kick a lot of ass with freebie boosted magic stones.

So the final kobold party that shall finally go n to victory shall be:

Kobold Gladiator x2
Kobold Psion x2
Kobold Cleric
Kobold Red Wizard

 

[NJClaw]

Bishop is good but you are missing spells like mass remove negative levels, and the single target one comes to late . The other draw back is you need very high cha to make turns usefull, a cleric just need high wisdom so you dont sacrifice anything you max that and have very hig spell DC. In Kotc 2 every classes that requires to be good in more than 2 stats must not be taken. I dont see why pick warlock either , rather have one pure wizard and one psion.

So I've noted. Scrapping the bishop and putting back the cleric, going to swap the warlock for a second psion. Cleric will be healing, but I dunno what other domain to put on, magic isn't really all that helpful though I did kick a lot of ass with freebie boosted magic stones.

So the final kobold party that shall finally go n to victory shall be:

Kobold Gladiator x2
Kobold Psion x2
Kobold Cleric
Kobold Red Wizard

Where is my earthquaker Kobold Druid?

 

[Tweed]

Where is my earthquaker Kobold Druid?

Maybe next time, anyone know if domain flux will stack with extend range feats?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

If anyone cares about that, you can manually edit the HP rolls for your characters. Each character has a "[HP Rolls]" voice in the "SaveChar.cml" file. I still don't know if it's safe, so you probably should backup your save (actually, you should backup your save regardless...): sometimes it corrupts your save file, sometimes it works without problems.

You can find the same values in the "CharacterRoster.cml" file. This means that HP rolls are statically determined at character creation, so it can be useful to check your rolls even if you don't plan on cheating. Personally, I will just roll a new character because this is my fucking fighter after level 2: 1/3/1/3/4/3/1/2/9/10/4/3/1/1/5/5/2/3/4/4/1/1/2/4/7/6/5/4/1/1/1/1/5/4. What a disgrace.

you need to use notepad++ and you can't change the numbers to all 10s which creates more chars and might break the savegame, if you change everything to 9 however the number of chars stays the same and you won't have problems.

 

[Rpguy]

Wait you can't just edit it with the character editor in the game?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

the game has a character editor?

 

[Rpguy]

the game has a character editor?

Load the module editor ( from the main menu or alt+a in game )
Then press V to load the creature editor, pick load creature file, find your save game and you can edit your characters there, do whatever you like, add levels, companions etc you can even give your half-giant gladiator 10 arms to carry all those weapons and laugh at your mantis.

Just make sure you save the character file back at the same location ( the game will offer you a different name for some reason )

And backup your saves!

 

[Jasede]

I want to add that I never did that because I consider it cheating, but rolling for the right stats is such a pain in the ass that editing your characters is mighty tempting.

 

[Rpguy]

Anyway I didn't find a way to change the character hp rolls, best I can do is remove the rolls and then you just get 0 hp on level + constitution bonus. The only way I see is to manually change your hp to whatever you want ( not the rolls )

I want to add that I never did that because I consider it cheating, but rolling for the right stats is such a pain in the ass that editing your characters is mighty tempting.

I only use it for testing, I rolled my characters for hours! ( 3 times now with 3 parties )

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I want to add that I never did that because I consider it cheating, but rolling for the right stats is such a pain in the ass that editing your characters is mighty tempting.

I found that when investigating why my lvl3 death knight has 17HP.
1/1/1/2/4/1 etc

sry in those circumstances I prefer to cheat. I'd be OK with rolls for HP if the minimum you'd get was HD/2.

Also, sitting there for hours like a retard rolling for the same stats (eventually) that I have after 2min of "cheating" might feeld like it's legit. In actuality you're just dumb tho.