KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[FA7]

I get western vibes :D

 

[Raghar]

Actually what's your opinion about sorcerer and wizard?

 

[Desiderius]

how one "learns" if one always does the same thing?

Lol, I'm on like my seventh party. Definitely not a problem.

Why the insistence on Salamanders? Does the ability to be a living thermometer sounds as exiting compared to other racial skills?

Because there was a Salamander-only check around the time I last restarted and I wanted to see what it did. Before that I thought they sucked too. Half-Sal Sam just doesn't, especially for the purpose of clearing most of Finchbury at level one and no rest to raise cash for Inn Merchant and bank EXP.

You make good points re: Drake but that's kind of moot since the point was to play a Half-Sal and get Word of Honor and Half-Sal Reach Sam is a good fit for those goals. If I wanted to just play Sam I'd probably go Half-Giant and Drake would be better with some other classes since there's overlap between Whirlwind and Breath Weapon. My guess is that best Drake is a class with some spare feats (to develop Breath) that needs an alternative action economy either to save casts or to add an AoE effect. Haven't found a dialogue reason to play Drake yet though.

Why Ranger? What does one "learn" by trying a mediocre class that offers less unique mechanics than most others do?

It's not mediocre and it offers more unique mechanics not less. It starts with Precise and Careful so can actually hit things at range right away which is in fact pretty unique in this game. If you use Stillfinger Halfling you hardly ever miss. The challenge is making the damage relevant which is where Half-Giant comes in. 20 STR and auto-Enlarge does it. Guardian can get to 16 WIS (also helps your spells obv), use Zen Archery and WIS headpiece from Inn Merchant and you're good. Once you get Far Shot you can deliver the payload from 16 squares away. Mobility is the name of the game and nothing is more mobile that that. And you can still whale with a two-hander as needed.



You get Improved (Standard Action) Careful Shot just in time for your iterative, so you can now Move + Careful or do a Full Attack (picking up Rapid at this point). Likewise Improved Critical comes in at about the time you can first afford to put Force on a Weapon and now you're rolling.

Auto-crit seems pretty unique! Not needing Skewer means Force instead which is pretty good with HG + Warbow.

Two strong saves instead of one, free AB bonuses, decent supply of bonus feats, Improved Precise early and free. Hell, free Precise means you maybe could skip Point-Blank altogether but I think Far Shot is too important. Enchanting your own arrows as Free Action (more of a Halfling Archer thing I think), using high level Divine scrolls.

What's not to like?

It was a zen archer cleric.

It was a Hunting Domain Cleric. I've had a 20 DEX Druid with ZA that didn't get it. Hunting Domain is a little bit of a trap I think. I've found ranged underwhelming for everything but Ranger and Cleric does fine in melee setting up flanking and the like. Magic Domain gives you plenty of action economy without ploinking with a Bow. Game's about focusing on your strengths and ranged combat ain't it for Cleric.

I'm curious whether that particular dialogue has consequences down to line so I'm sticking with it until I find out.

base = Jorad

Jorad is Toughbone and wastes a Feat on Cold Resistance. On the question of the better Grappler I think the Sun Monk eventually gets there but you can certainly make a case for Jorad as well. I've just already got a HG in my main group and want the top end speed and saves (and SR etc) from the Monk (and Stunning Fist as need). Plus I've got the Fire Mage to go with.

Jorad would benefit from Mobility so if he could get it Whirlwind wouldn't be that big of a waste but Great Cleave can often have a similar effect by midgame so no huge loss.

 

[Desiderius]

So whenever I save with Jorad in the group (active or inactive) game crashes. Any suggested fix?

Time to play KotC 1 I guess.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Wanna try a Death Knight. Try to see how I can fit him into a party.
Any cool build suggestions?

From earlier:

Nobody's better than a pure fighter at killing things with a sword, that said, either you take other classes because you know what to do with their special skills, you want some diversity or just don't.

DK is one of my favorite class because of the aura of dread, -3 AC - 3 to saving throws is a big deal when it matters the most, aka when fighting powerful foes.
If you specialize your casters to make the most of it, it makes a huge difference.

As for the rest, you need to spend a couple of feats on his special abilities to make the DK worth it and also build him right.
Conviction requires an INT bonus and Smite requires CHA bonus.
Smite is only useful when you need some extra THC or if you use a skewer weapon.

Life steal, I don't use it much, as Serus said, it requires 1 feat at least to make it a free action.

Some DK builds:

Spoiler

Race STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
Hu. (M) 18 - 8 - 14 - 16 - 8 - 15
Hu. (M. North.) 20 6 14 16 8 13
Centaur (F. Arb.) 18 6 14 14 8 15
Drake and Dwarf males works as well, even Half-Giant.

With 1 Attribute point every 4 levels, you can spend 4 in STR and 1 in CHA.

Of course, you could do something different with a bit more of DEX or CON and remove some CHA points if you don't plan to use feats on smite or remove some INT points.
Or even go with 10 CON and go full CHA or with a lesser DEX penalty.

Low DEX might be a problem so you might want to consider something different with less STR and CON.
These builds work very well with a smite DK using a 2H Skewer weapon, like the axe you get in chapter 3 or another one with high base damage and high crit multiplier.

Actually what's your opinion about sorcerer and wizard?

I don't like Sorcerers, you can transform them like wizards but their spell slots are shared between divine and arcane magic (they use the same spell slots).
I find the Warlock better.
Still, both of them require too many abilities to work.

So a pure wizard works better, a highly specialized one even ore if you know what you're doing.

So whenever I save with Jorad in the group (active or inactive) game crashes. Any suggested fix?

Time to play KotC 1 I guess.

YES!

Send a bug report to Pierre through steam or e-mail with your saved attached to it.

 

[covr]

It also crashed for me once - I reloaded the game, had that fight again and there was no crash at the end. I did not use any spells or skills during second attempt though

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Jorad seems pretty good to me. Why is his subrace bad? And why can't he get whirlwind?

Because a Cloudtop Half-Giant gives up 2 Con to get 4 Dex compared to base = Jorad. Good trade.
Why no Whirlwind? It requires -> mobility -> dodge -> 13 dex. He has base 10 dex and few feats.
Jorad is pretty good,, what makes him only good but not great is, in my opinion, the class not the stats. I find barbarians lacking but they were never good for me in any 3.x game.
I'm a fighter (or even paladin) person not a barbarian or ranger person. In Kotc2 the competition is even fiercer with Gladiators, Samurais or Death Knights.

Get a load of this guy ERYFKRAD

At least he's a fighter/paladin person and not a casterfag.

 

[Serus]

how one "learns" if one always does the same thing?

Lol, I'm on like my seventh party. Definitely not a problem.

Why the insistence on Salamanders? Does the ability to be a living thermometer sounds as exiting compared to other racial skills?

Because there was a Salamander-only check around the time I last restarted and I wanted to see what it did. Before that I thought they sucked too. Half-Sal Sam just doesn't, especially for the purpose of clearing most of Finchbury at level one and no rest to raise cash for Inn Merchant and bank EXP.

You make good points re: Drake but that's kind of moot since the point was to play a Half-Sal and get Word of Honor and Half-Sal Reach Sam is a good fit for those goals. If I wanted to just play Sam I'd probably go Half-Giant and Drake would be better with some other classes since there's overlap between Whirlwind and Breath Weapon. My guess is that best Drake is a class with some spare feats (to develop Breath) that needs an alternative action economy either to save casts or to add an AoE effect. Haven't found a dialogue reason to play Drake yet though.

Why Ranger? What does one "learn" by trying a mediocre class that offers less unique mechanics than most others do?

It's not mediocre and it offers more unique mechanics not less. It starts with Precise and Careful so can actually hit things at range right away which is in fact pretty unique in this game. If you use Stillfinger Halfling you hardly ever miss. The challenge is making the damage relevant which is where Half-Giant comes in. 20 STR and auto-Enlarge does it. Guardian can get to 16 WIS (also helps your spells obv), use Zen Archery and WIS headpiece from Inn Merchant and you're good. Once you get Far Shot you can deliver the payload from 16 squares away. Mobility is the name of the game and nothing is more mobile that that. And you can still whale with a two-hander as needed.

View attachment 23895

You get Improved (Standard Action) Careful Shot just in time for your iterative, so you can now Move + Careful or do a Full Attack (picking up Rapid at this point). Likewise Improved Critical comes in at about the time you can first afford to put Force on a Weapon and now you're rolling.

Auto-crit seems pretty unique! Not needing Skewer means Force instead which is pretty good with HG + Warbow.

Two strong saves instead of one, free AB bonuses, decent supply of bonus feats, Improved Precise early and free. Hell, free Precise means you maybe could skip Point-Blank altogether but I think Far Shot is too important. Enchanting your own arrows as Free Action (more of a Halfling Archer thing I think), using high level Divine scrolls.

What's not to like?

It was a zen archer cleric.

It was a Hunting Domain Cleric. I've had a 20 DEX Druid with ZA that didn't get it. Hunting Domain is a little bit of a trap I think. I've found ranged underwhelming for everything but Ranger and Cleric does fine in melee setting up flanking and the like. Magic Domain gives you plenty of action economy without ploinking with a Bow. Game's about focusing on your strengths and ranged combat ain't it for Cleric.

I'm curious whether that particular dialogue has consequences down to line so I'm sticking with it until I find out.

base = Jorad

Jorad is Toughbone and wastes a Feat on Cold Resistance. On the question of the better Grappler I think the Sun Monk eventually gets there but you can certainly make a case for Jorad as well. I've just already got a HG in my main group and want the top end speed and saves (and SR etc) from the Monk (and Stunning Fist as need). Plus I've got the Fire Mage to go with.

Jorad would benefit from Mobility so if he could get it Whirlwind wouldn't be that big of a waste but Great Cleave can often have a similar effect by midgame so no huge loss.

Ok, so I misunderstand you what Your goal and how much you played but you weren't very clear on that. In that case it makes sense. Overall i still think that Salamanders are good mainly for "flavor".

Auto-crit? You mean the 1 shot at -8? The advantage I see, is that you get to do it as standard action later on, which admittedly is very nice. But suggesting that damage-wise it's good is not supported by any math from this dimension. As "unique" mechanic goes this one is pretty meh. Compare to, for example, an always present aura that gives -3 to saves and AC(?). This is a good one. Anyway, half of the time you can't even aim properly. Basically, you are saying that Ranger can fare better in a form combat that is significantly worse than others. OK, I can buy that.

I'm not sure it was the Hunting domain and not Zen Archery that allowed my cleric to do the shot and cut the hand off in this dialogue option*. Your Druid had Zen and he didn't get the option possibly because your Ranger got it. A single option is shown only once, AFAIK, even if several characters qualify.


*Any one has Thorgal vibes here? A character from the comics, Kriss de Valnor did this to some shaman or priest once (book "The Archers") But she did use special arrows. Arrows that one other character from the comics was manufacturing. Pierre is french. Comics are french too.

 

[Desiderius]

Overall i still think that Salamanders are good mainly for "flavor".

I mean you can't really say a game is all about initiative then ignore abilities that prevent surprise. And I haven't gotten back to that check to see if there's something there even more significant than that. Somehow I suspect that you don't know either.

Auto-crit? You mean the 1 shot at -8?

Oh for fuck sake, why do people insist on bloviating bout something they haven't even tested? And then have the temerity to condescend based on nothing more than theorycrafting?

I will never, never understand this.

You never use it at -8. As with most unique abilities there's a feat that goes with it.

half of the time you can't even aim properly.

Second person really isn't working for you here. Your inability (or more likely unwillingness) to play the class doesn't apply to me or in general. The whole point is that played properly you can aim just fine.

*It's the only class that really can* The trick is making that ability relevant. One way is to Haplo it up by stacking dice multipliers like Half-Giant + Force. You're Vital Striking. *From across the screen*

Basically, you are saying that Ranger can fare better in a form combat that is significantly worse than others. OK, I can buy that.

Ah, the Codex, where people feel compelled to parade around their ignorance then condescend from atop a pile of clown noses.

How would you know if it's worse than others if you haven't even played it? It's worse than others... unless you're playing a Ranger, which is the point of the class.

Your Druid had Zen and he didn't get the option possibly because your Ranger got it.

That party didn't have a Ranger. I was expecting to get it and didn't, then re-read the skill.

 

[Darth Canoli]

*Any one has Thorgal vibes here? A character from the comics, Kriss de Valnor did this to some shaman or priest once (book "The Archers") But she did use special arrows. Arrows that one other character from the comics was manufacturing. Pierre is french. Comics are french too.

Probably, and The Archers is one of the best comic book out there if you like heroic fantasy.
I'll ask him in my next feedback e-mail.

 

[Desiderius]

So whenever I save with Jorad in the group (active or inactive) game crashes. Any suggested fix?

Time to play KotC 1 I guess.

Yeah, that was a little... rudimentary. Decided I've learned enough from the main game to play the Tutorial.

Fog Cloud seemed to work on the Golems...

 

[Lios]

So, I replaced all the tokens of the module with better looking ones from the Nexus, and then the new update undid all the changes just like that. Maybe I did something wrong since I'm a bit ooga-booga, maybe it's Pierre's shit engine, either way, weak, dude. Weak.

 

[anvi]

I love my little character sprites. You can see their equipped gear and everything.

 

[Whisper]

I'm hoarding xp by staying 2/3 level below my total xp, trying to reach the Spider Queen at level 17/18, usually, I get there around level 16.

I'm not sure how I'm faring so far, after clearing Pizarra + the shadows ambush and the remained cultist near the stairs, the team is level 8 but with enough xp to reach level 11.
Beat Pizarra at levels 6/7/8, 6 was a mistake, I thought the fighter was level 7 like the rest (aside from the monk + druid companions at level 8) and he got 21K xp for winning the fight (18/19K at level 7).

It was really tough, I had to use my 2 acorns of earthquake and one raise dead scroll to resurrect the monk (which was replaced by Pizarra afterwards).
Both my mages were muted after 3/4 turns so the DK Skewered his way through the fight with the druid to heal, summon and quicksand, the monk to tank to death and the Psion to nuke, stun and heal while I got the rogue sickened by my own spell and then scared and blinded by the demon and an archer.

First time I think I'm fucked each time any reinforcement arrives, the demon was bad enough, skewered after 2/3 turns, then the orcs and then the Vroks but luckily, they gathered all in one spot to allow me to energy stun them, how nice!

What is your party setup now?

 

[Tweed]

I'm glad Pierre doesn't even pretend to be fair during the tutorial. It would lull players into a false sense of security.

 

[Efe]

wow perfectly placed to die in 1 breath

 

[Tweed]

But I won.

 

[Reinhardt]

I'm glad Pierre doesn't even pretend to be fair during the tutorial. It would lull players into a false sense of security.

looks like some kobold flatters himself

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I've learned enough from the main game to play the Tutorial.

What a time to be alive.

 

[Serus]

Overall i still think that Salamanders are good mainly for "flavor".

I mean you can't really say a game is all about initiative then ignore abilities that prevent surprise. And I haven't gotten back to that check to see if there's something there even more significant than that. Somehow I suspect that you don't know either.

Auto-crit? You mean the 1 shot at -8?

Oh for fuck sake, why do people insist on bloviating bout something they haven't even tested? And then have the temerity to condescend based on nothing more than theorycrafting?

I will never, never understand this.

You never use it at -8. As with most unique abilities there's a feat that goes with it.

half of the time you can't even aim properly.

Second person really isn't working for you here. Your inability (or more likely unwillingness) to play the class doesn't apply to me or in general. The whole point is that played properly you can aim just fine.

*It's the only class that really can* The trick is making that ability relevant. One way is to Haplo it up by stacking dice multipliers like Half-Giant + Force. You're Vital Striking. *From across the screen*

Basically, you are saying that Ranger can fare better in a form combat that is significantly worse than others. OK, I can buy that.

Ah, the Codex, where people feel compelled to parade around their ignorance then condescend from atop a pile of clown noses.

How would you know if it's worse than others if you haven't even played it? It's worse than others... unless you're playing a Ranger, which is the point of the class.

Your Druid had Zen and he didn't get the option possibly because your Ranger got it.

That party didn't have a Ranger. I was expecting to get it and didn't, then re-read the skill.

LOL. I suspect You don't get the irony of this? If I am condescending then You could swim in your condescension. And it's not the first time or place you do it. Why would anyone even stay here on the Codex, place full of ignorant (and condescending) people is always a mystery to me. Finally, the argument "You must eat shit - otherwise you can't say that it tastes bad" isn't as strong as you may think.

Having said that, i'll also say that I am an asshole, too often when i'm not planning it. So if i was here I am sorry. The above paragraph was me being an ass (and right) on purpose though.

As to ranged combat (not ranger combat), yes I did try it. I'm talking about not being able to aim due to coverage/blocking, not about damage or 70 vs 90% chances. If ranged doesn't work very well then any ranged class cannot - simple logic, i'm a simple man. However if you say that it works for you, then - perhaps - it does. I only know that you are the first claiming it. This versus: a) my own experience, b) a bunch of ignorant Codexers and c) Pierre Begue. However subjective opinion or numbers or being the author of something doesn't guarantee being right. You still might be right, I accept that. But pardon me if, considering the above, I am sceptical.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's Desiderius. He claimed the only proper way to play crusade battles in wrath of trannies is having multiple generals with different builds. Also he will probably add you to ignore soon.

 

[Serus]

It's Desiderius. He claimed the only proper way to play crusade battles in wrath of trannies is having multiple generals with different builds. Also he will probably add you to ignore soon.

Nah, I hope not. Whatever I might think of him or he of me, he also is someone who actually plays and likes CRPGs, the good ones included*. That it too valuable on the Dex. I don't want anyone like that to ignore me. There are some other people I wouldn't mind to ignore me but they rarely participate in threads like this one.

*Off topic but not an angry (or any) rant either:

Spoiler

Even Wrath I understand, I mostly liked Kingmaker myself and only avoided Wrath because I can't stomach Owlcat's bad writing anymore, woke-ism is just cherry on top. If you told me that Wrath has smaller word count than Kingmaker or it is of better quality (yeah, sure), I'd play it. I plan to play a little with a copy from maritime spoils and see if i can ignore most and stomach the rest of it. My hopes are not high though. It's such a shame really. Finally a partyu-based CRPG has actual horse(and other thing)-riding and horse combat. This is something I lack very much in CRPGs. Guys from Battle Brothers Legends wanted to implement it and made some progress but no luck so far

 

[Yosharian]

Wanna try a Death Knight. Try to see how I can fit him into a party.
Any cool build suggestions?

From earlier:

Nobody's better than a pure fighter at killing things with a sword, that said, either you take other classes because you know what to do with their special skills, you want some diversity or just don't.

DK is one of my favorite class because of the aura of dread, -3 AC - 3 to saving throws is a big deal when it matters the most, aka when fighting powerful foes.
If you specialize your casters to make the most of it, it makes a huge difference.

As for the rest, you need to spend a couple of feats on his special abilities to make the DK worth it and also build him right.
Conviction requires an INT bonus and Smite requires CHA bonus.
Smite is only useful when you need some extra THC or if you use a skewer weapon.

Life steal, I don't use it much, as Serus said, it requires 1 feat at least to make it a free action.

Some DK builds:

Spoiler

Race STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
Hu. (M) 18 - 8 - 14 - 16 - 8 - 15
Hu. (M. North.) 20 6 14 16 8 13
Centaur (F. Arb.) 18 6 14 14 8 15
Drake and Dwarf males works as well, even Half-Giant.

With 1 Attribute point every 4 levels, you can spend 4 in STR and 1 in CHA.

Of course, you could do something different with a bit more of DEX or CON and remove some CHA points if you don't plan to use feats on smite or remove some INT points.
Or even go with 10 CON and go full CHA or with a lesser DEX penalty.

Low DEX might be a problem so you might want to consider something different with less STR and CON.
These builds work very well with a smite DK using a 2H Skewer weapon, like the axe you get in chapter 3 or another one with high base damage and high crit multiplier.

Actually what's your opinion about sorcerer and wizard?

I don't like Sorcerers, you can transform them like wizards but their spell slots are shared between divine and arcane magic (they use the same spell slots).
I find the Warlock better.
Still, both of them require too many abilities to work.

So a pure wizard works better, a highly specialized one even ore if you know what you're doing.

So whenever I save with Jorad in the group (active or inactive) game crashes. Any suggested fix?

Time to play KotC 1 I guess.

YES!

Send a bug report to Pierre through steam or e-mail with your saved attached to it.

But which Wizards are best? Red is a no brainer, but what about the others? Blue's transformation seems rather good

 

[Yosharian]

I see Serus has had the pleasure of meeting Desiderius in the wild

 

[Darth Canoli]

So, I replaced all the tokens of the module with better looking ones from the Nexus, and then the new update undid all the changes just like that. Maybe I did something wrong since I'm a bit ooga-booga, maybe it's Pierre's shit engine, either way, weak, dude. Weak.

Copy paste the Graphics/Token or even Graphics/Tokens/PlayerCharacter from your old installation into the new one, don't overwrite except if you renamed some files, which you probably avoid.

Or just save the tokens you like somewhere and add them for each new installment, which is the same thing.

What is your party setup now?

Kobold Red Wiz, transformed
Human Stygian Black Wiz transformed
Centaur DK (2H skewer axe you get in chapter 3)
Drake Fighter (dual skewer, one crafter, one 2H scyte from Xadriphar's chest but I'm probably goign to replace it with a dispelling sword)
Mantis Rogue (4 weapons : dispel/shatermantle + skewer + undead destruction(crafted) + random fourth one)
I'm not sure what (Elf?) Psionicist
Sarrabas (Fire druid companion) - dedicated healer and quicksand caster for 2/3 of the game.
Pizarra (Warlock companion)

But which Wizards are best? Red is a no brainer, but what about the others? Blue's transformation seems rather good

I like the blue one, there's a lot of great enchantment spells but conjuration spells are overpowered late game.


So, the party is Level 18/19 now.
The death snare was a joke, I guess my hording xp to overlevel hard encounter strategy finally payed, some chapter 3 encounters were quite tough to manage since I sticked to level 8 almost the entire time.
Formians were clearly the hardest part but nothing stinking cloud and quicksand couldn't solve.

The death snare was just a joke, I was even disappointed the demon didn't even spawn, I think he's dropping some extra loot, oh well...

The Spider Queen, I saved a campsite just for that fight to I rested before going in.
Grouped everyone from the formation screen, buffed everyone for two turns, except for a chaos spell to keep the spiders busy, hid the allied spiders far south, just in case (which was a bad idea, late spawns almost killed them).

So, aside from all the buffs (mass everything i could think of), I put two vertical walls between the Spider Queen spawning spot and the big room alonside the "fake wall" which doesn't block spells and these two magical walls actually block spells.
With enhanced STR + enlarge and stuff, the fighter had 95% chances to grapple the Queen, I usually don't use grapple but it's an Ironman run, then pinned her, also put a anti-magic cloud up there for her and her other spawning spider mage allies with one of mine earlier.

So, that was it.
For the fun, I used all my prismatic voids and sprays on the Queen and her spider mages, fun part is, the wal was protecting my fighters surrounding her but not her because of her gigantic size...

It was like stealing candy from Rusty.
The Spider Prince now sells a SR 30 robe now, only 110K gold, 3 times cheaper than the SR28 mantle, I'll probably enchant it for the psionicist.