KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Mortmal]

Yeah, deleting the warlocks, rolling a full wizard party. Which moon guise? Red? Blue?

RED, blue is not worth it.

 

[Nryn]

Chapter 4's Gate Breach and Courtyard fights make the Death Snare and Spider Queen fights from Chapter 3 seem like friendly tutorials. Even my successful attempt for each fight still took around 30 - 45 minutes each while praying that the RNG does not fuck my party up too badly. Still had to burn through multiple true rez scrolls, and even the precious spell slot consumable.

Despite somehow overcoming those fights, I don't think they are well designed. They both amount to win initiative or literally die in round 1. In my case, it took over 3 dozen reloads for a favourable turn order in the courtyard fight, including a nonsensical string of 9 consecutive reloads where at least 1 of the 3 black wizards inexplicably rolled a 19 or 20 for their initiative rolls.

While the game's difficulty and encounters are always stacked against the player, I feel that the moment prismatic spells became available to both sides, the encounters became too rigid and one-dimensional relative to what came before.

 

[Jasede]

Casting that prismatic shit on your enemies feels great, though.

 

[Jasede]

Yeah, deleting the warlocks, rolling a full wizard party. Which moon guise? Red? Blue?

5 Red Wizards 1 Mantis Gladiator, Warlock+Sorc NPCs for ultimate pewpew.
(Kidding, you won't get enough Star Diamonds)

 

[Noddy]

3 reloads on final battle for me.



No, really.

Damn son.
What did you do?

 

[Nryn]

Casting that prismatic shit on your enemies feels great, though.

Unfortunately my party had terrible luck. Never managed to take out any of the casters in the courtyard fight through the instant death effects of the prismatic spells. A true-seeing wade-in fighter with a skewering enchanted scythe was my MVP. Even took out the dragon in a single round.

 

[Jasede]

3 reloads on final battle for me.



No, really.

Damn son.
What did you do?

I won initiative.

I used a lot of Prismatic Void, Prismatic Spray, Prismatic Wall (notice a theme?), Acid Burst, Energy Wave, Protection from Elements (Mass, Fire) and the best spell, Mass Greater Ectoplasmic Cocoon (makes everyone useless except psions.)
Melee dudes kill helpless enemies & balor.

Reinforcements dealt with by damage prismatic sprays/energy waves. The vampires are dominated with Dominate Undead, the mummies are kept busy with summoned mariliths and killed by melee dudes / undead to death from the Bishop.

If you don't have Red Wizard, most of the enemies can be Dominated relatively easily by a Psion or Wizard. Hold spells also work.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Both types of spells count towards the daily limit.

I was expecting the Sorcerer to get twice the spells as a trade-off for having to invest in two more attributes (Int + Wis) as opposed to max Cha + some Dex and as much Con as possible.

Well, i guess it's pure casters only.

It could be an interesting way to "balance" some new modules by only allowing hybrid classes if it's possible instead of throwing a chain of impossible fights at the player.

 

[Jasede]

Warlock/Psychic Healer get spell slots + power pool, so effectively they get twice the spells (unlike Sorcerers)

However, I still find it hard to roll decent ones, because having to spread your stats that thin is not my playstyle.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Warlock/Psychic Healer get spell slots + power pool, so effectively they get twice the spells (unlike Sorcerers)

However, I still find it hard to roll decent ones, because having to spread your stats that thin is not my playstyle.

We just need real rolls during character gen to make them viable.

Maybe the sorcerer lack of different spells pool is a bug, otherwise, it should at least be limited to CHA/WIS or maybe just CHA or WIS, getting spells later is already a serious handicap if he doesn't get 2x spells pool.

 

[Tweed]

Still meandering about the upper sewers refusing to rest or level though I probably will before the ambush and dragon battle. This game seriously needs an option to disable item destruction from acid, losing items is just as bad as dying.

 

[Mortmal]

If you don't have Red Wizard, most of the enemies can be Dominated relatively easily by a Psion or Wizard. Hold spells also work.

No , just no, dominate is unrelaible with very low % success most of the time.

 

[Jasede]

In the final battle of the game are several enemies you can dominate with 50% or better odds, mainly vampires and melee mooks.
My wizard didn't have SF: Enchantment or anything like that. He did have Greater Spell Penetration, same as the Psion.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

6 wizards, 5 human ones and a elven one. Each one has 16 dex, 16 con, 20 int. Im going in guise!

 

[cruelio]

The secret to winning the game is 3 red wizards , 1 psion , 1 cleric or bishop eventually , 1 gladiator or fighter . I v'e reached chapter 4 and melee are fucked up, mages and archers installed in the towers you cant reach them, they will nuke you with everything in the book , no fly spell there's absolutely nothing you can do. It's like Jasede said, accelerated casting, 2X prismatic void or go home.

Those are the top tier classes ,melee hybrids are garbage no point even to look at them, caster hybrid are garbage as you will get spread out attributes and lower DC on your spells , sorc , warlock to the trash bin.Of course you get one sorc and one warlock as companions i still recommend to pick them for the extra casting hey are just sub optimal .
So many classes , i've probably spent 100 hour on this game rerolling by now , most of them must not be picked, thats sad. Even wizard , there's only one viable way its evocation, by end game my spec enchantment wizard had like 4% success on dragons, 20% on marilith, only manageable mobs were those you could fry in one round.
Win init and nuke first round that's all there is to kotc 2 .

I've come to the conclusion that this game is just insanely bad and Pierre is a retard. Next time stick to copy and pasting old dnd campaigns.

 

[Jasede]

Is the original game based on some old adventure book? KOTC 1 I mean.

 

[Sergiu64]

Hmmm, if you need to load on so many wizards - maybe Death Knight is better than gladiator or fighter for the dc lowering aura?

 

[Jasede]

Honestly not a bad idea, a Death Knight. Having high DCs + lowering enemy saves + SR penetration is one key to victory, and a pretty damn good one. I didn't have one, though. He could be your Half-Giant grappler. Or maybe a Mantis Death Knight could work? They seem to need too many feats to really be effective as high melee DPS or grapple, which does hold the Death Knight class back a fair bit.

Remember, though, most of us didn't beat it with that many wizards. It's just my observation that the final chapter would be much easier with more casters (except 1-2 melee characters to chop up dragons.)

 

[felipepepe]

Is the original game based on some old adventure book? KOTC 1 I mean.

Yup, Against The Giants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Giants

The plot of each of the three original modules focuses on a particular type of evil giant. Each can be played as a standalone adventure, or as a series. In Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, a tribe of hill giants have been raiding lands occupied by humans, and the humans hire the player characters to defeat them. Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl pits the player characters against the evil Jarl of the frost giants. Hall of the Fire Giant King concludes the series, this time against a group of fire giants. The first two modules disclose the existence of a secret force behind the giants, which in the third module is revealed to be evil drow elves. The plot involving the drow continues in four additional modules printed between 1978 and 1980.

 

[Mortmal]

In the final battle of the game are several enemies you can dominate with 50% or better odds, mainly vampires and melee mooks.
My wizard didn't have SF: Enchantment or anything like that. He did have Greater Spell Penetration, same as the Psion.

First tower met, remember i have 3 gladiators 1 mage 1 psion 1 cleric . I could also had 3 different melee , point is none of them can climb on tower and do their damage,nor trip, their only role. Half the party is now uselsss jsut cause pierre decide so . I have 80% chance on dominate with the mage , i reload till i get iniative so shes not downed by all those archer, they target her first. I casted and failed, several reload later i cast it psion use cocoon on all of them except one . I expected the dominated one to kill the encased ones , this only last 2 rounds. Only option would be encase and nuke them to death but my party completely viable till now cannot do that. Only way relaod init till psion can coocoon them, and waste countless PP to nuke them , and the mage throw fireballs. An enchantment mage should ahve been able to cast fly or buff to bypas this. Encounters are designed to be done in one way and only one.
Another approach i cast chaos, they all turn berserk , so they are supposed to attack the closest enemy, nope they still alpha strike the mage with range.

 

[Jasede]

Themed party idea for roleplayers that might be viable:

5 Wizards, one of each moon (making sure to specialize spells because you will not get that many scrolls!) and 1 Death Knight leader/champion. Rely on summons early on, and transition to blasting/enchanting/knight buffing later. Get by with healing items early on, and later make Erzimon heal. Make the Warlock do Psionic stuff. You can probably get by without Tornado by using Prismatic Void scrolls.

Only Transform the Red and then, later, Blue.

Mortmal
Use SILENCE on the towers, the fucking mages of destruction can't cast in zone of silence. Preferably Widened. Just gave you the keys to the kingdom, bro. You can 100% do it with silence. Silence 1 tower with the cleric, and put Stinking Cloud + Web on the other. Also spam Cocoon until it works.

And yeah, that fight fucking sucks.

 

[Mortmal]

Themed party idea for roleplayers that might be viable:

5 Wizards, one of each moon (making sure to specialize spells because you will not get that many scrolls!) and 1 Death Knight leader/champion. Rely on summons early on, and transition to blasting/enchanting/knight buffing later. Get by with healing items early on, and later make Erzimon heal.

Mortmal
Use SILENCE on the towers, the fucking mages of destruction can't cast in zone of silence. Preferably Widened. Just gave you the keys to the kingdom, bro. You can 100% do it with silence. Silence 1 tower with the cleric, and put Stinking Cloud + Web on the other. Also spam Cocoon until it works.

And yeah, that fight fucking sucks.

Mass mute ? they can still resist that .

 

[Jasede]

Not Mass Mute.
Circle 2 Cleric spell Silence. Or Bard silence song. You have a cleric, right? Or a Bishop? Or Erzimon? It works.

 

[Dickie]

Hmmm, if you need to load on so many wizards - maybe Death Knight is better than gladiator or fighter for the dc lowering aura?

I think a Bard would be better than a Death Knight for that. A Bard can add +1/2/3 to spell DCs for your casters, but it's limited per day, so I don't know. The Death Knight has to be pretty close to stuff for his save-reducing aura to work. The Bard also gets 9 bonus feats if you want him to trip stuff or whatever.

 

[Mortmal]

Not Mass Mute.
Circle 2 Cleric spell Silence. Or Bard silence song. You have a cleric, right? Or a Bishop? Or Erzimon? It works.

Nope no companions, but i am not even speaking of front gate just the towers surrounding it since you are suppsoed to clear around to get enough xp . Even that is umanageable till you win init. Reload till you get init, cast cocoon every single one of them save ! Reload till you get init and it works. Fucking tedious.
Whole encounter is retarded, what kind of party would assault a keep front gate in daylight, in pen and aper sessions everyone would look for an alternative way to enter , or probably just say fuck it.