KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Rinslin Merwind]

Okay, I might be asking a strange questions, but how exactly effective Drake Bishop described in manual? Is there a better domain combination? Is Bishop really better than Cleric?
Truth be told, I always feel uncomfortable while building divine casters in any game, because something in me screams " stop complicating things, motherfucker, make this character as healbot, leave actual fighting to fighters and spells for wizards" while my more rational and logical side tells me that healbot would be a waste of a slot in party.
My earliest MMO expirience wasn't WoW or wow clone, so perhaps association cleric = healing comes from a fact that healing spells kinda unique feature for divine spell casters (unless we talking about Artificer, but this is a different story).

 

[Reinhardt]

A good module needs months of hard work.

very optimistic.

 

[FA7]

but yeah that sounds nice too.

It's nice unless it's aeromancers and their pointy-eared tryhard friends showing you this.

Spoiler

Ambush encounter near lava pit is insane. Lava, knocking weapons, wind gusts, interrupts... and that damn initiative. Definately one of harder battles for me.

 

[rojay]

Okay, I might be asking a strange questions, but how exactly effective Drake Bishop described in manual? Is there a better domain combination? Is Bishop really better than Cleric?
Truth be told, I always feel uncomfortable while building divine casters in any game, because something in me screams " stop complicating things, motherfucker, make this character as healbot, leave actual fighting to fighters and spells for wizards" while my more rational and logical side tells me that healbot would be a waste of a slot in party.
My earliest MMO expirience wasn't WoW or wow clone, so perhaps association cleric = healing comes from a fact that healing spells kinda unique feature for divine spell casters (unless we talking about Artificer, but this is a different story).

Clerics can be pretty useful because divine spells are good and the domains can be really helpful. I like to take celerity as one of the two, in part because it grants you a 1/day haste spell you can activate as a special ability. I don't typically use healing spells much in the early game, but later on spells which restore a character's hit points and cure negative conditions are very good to have, particularly in long battles.

 

[FA7]

Do anyone find Feint or Sunder worth the feats needed to make them effective? I find that there are better feats to take even as fighter. Grapple is very useful. You can't go wrong with Trip as long as the enemy doesn't have an immunity. Disarm is situational but when it works then it works, I suppose. Bull Rush in some battles can be nice too. Those two otoh, i'm not convinced.

You can easily replace feint with grease spell, and it won't require opposite rolls to work. So yeah. As for sunder, I sort of like it - there are plenty of enemies that have very high natural ac and it seems like a good way to work them out. Trip is top tier. Grapple I use only on dedicated grapple char. Bull Rush is great to have on high str chars to be able to push/slide/pull weaker party members out of grapple or hazards without wasting action.

 

[Desiderius]

Okay, I might be asking a strange questions, but how exactly effective Drake Bishop described in manual? Is there a better domain combination? Is Bishop really better than Cleric?
Truth be told, I always feel uncomfortable while building divine casters in any game, because something in me screams " stop complicating things, motherfucker, make this character as healbot, leave actual fighting to fighters and spells for wizards" while my more rational and logical side tells me that healbot would be a waste of a slot in party.
My earliest MMO expirience wasn't WoW or wow clone, so perhaps association cleric = healing comes from a fact that healing spells kinda unique feature for divine spell casters (unless we talking about Artificer, but this is a different story).

Bishop is nuts. Argossian is the way to go though.

I could see Cleric with Mysticism and Reach being fine, but there are so many broken Domains.

But yeah Healing is whatever, you've got herbs out the wazoo.

 

[Desiderius]

Do anyone find Feint or Sunder worth the feats needed to make them effective? I find that there are better feats to take even as fighter. Grapple is very useful. You can't go wrong with Trip as long as the enemy doesn't have an immunity. Disarm is situational but when it works then it works, I suppose. Bull Rush in some battles can be nice too. Those two otoh, i'm not convinced.

You can easily replace feint with grease spell, and it won't require opposite rolls to work. So yeah. As for sunder, I sort of like it - there are plenty of enemies that have very high natural ac and it seems like a good way to work them out. Trip is top tier. Grapple I use only on dedicated grapple char. Bull Rush is great to have on high str chars to be able to push/slide/pull weaker party members out of grapple or hazards without wasting action.

Better bring a two-handed Disarmer. Pierre set up some of the hardest foes with one-handed weapons. Two-handed is +4, one-handed -4.

Do anyone find Feint or Sunder worth the feats needed to make them effective? I find that there are better feats to take even as fighter. Grapple is very useful. You can't go wrong with Trip as long as the enemy doesn't have an immunity. Disarm is situational but when it works then it works, I suppose. Bull Rush in some battles can be nice too. Those two otoh, i'm not convinced.

I grab Feint on Rogue to set up Sneaks. Water Elemental comes with Sunder so might as well kick up to Greater, though I've had him on Disarm duty too. Trip is the one where I just rely on Grease.

 

[Desiderius]

Going well with my second run. My 2 Rangers are better than I expected. Their bow shooting is not great yet but they did 1 shot an enemy with a single arrow, coup de grace on I think a stunned enemy, made that fight super easy. Also they get a bunch of Cleric spells so I have 2 healers in addition to my Cleric, and they can summon some simple pets too. Wolves and webs and stuff. If I knew both could heal like that I would have skipped the Cleric, but I'll change that into more offensive.

Psi is much better than Wiz -.- And this Samurai seems better than all other classes combined.

Psi is much better early from my experience, much more casts and more possibilities but once wizards start to gain some levels they catch up.

Only pure Psi gets improved version of Energy Missile, Mind Hammer. and Inflict Pain which are all great midgame. But I've been replacing my Psi with Pizarra when I get there.

I've got restartitis but plan is to replace starting pure casters with Erzimon and Pizarra since they eventually get to 9th level by endgame. Looking forward to Counterspell Mastery (Sorc Exclusive) and staying power of high level Warlock.

 

[Desiderius]

but yeah that sounds nice too.

It's nice unless it's aeromancers and their pointy-eared tryhard friends showing you this.

Spoiler

Ambush encounter near lava pit is insane. Lava, knocking weapons, wind gusts, interrupts... and that damn initiative. Definately one of harder battles for me.

That's why I try to cover as many skill checks as possible. 5hp Fire Elemental Mages nearly wiped me one playthrough with Sleep + stairs and Coups. Ambushes can get lethal.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Okay, I might be asking a strange questions, but how exactly effective Drake Bishop described in manual? Is there a better domain combination? Is Bishop really better than Cleric?
Truth be told, I always feel uncomfortable while building divine casters in any game, because something in me screams " stop complicating things, motherfucker, make this character as healbot, leave actual fighting to fighters and spells for wizards" while my more rational and logical side tells me that healbot would be a waste of a slot in party.

Drake is nice but you'll need a couple of feats to make it useful so it wouldn't work too well on higher difficulty.

Cleric/Bishop is nice for silence and holy smite but it's mostly for true res, heal and mass heal (for clerics) and specific domains for the bishop.
A druid can do the job using scrolls and the few healing spells he gets and be way more efficient with summons and crowd control spells.

So, depending on your knowledge of the game, you can do without even on the higher difficulty.
It's painful on very hard during chapter 4 but there is options to make it work.

 

[Desiderius]

As for how to build Bishop I just don't bother with fighting. You've got two action economies with casting and turning and that's enough. If you want to fight and skip the Rogue Trickery can work which lets you cover the Disarmer slot too.

I'm pretty set on Turning Domain. It opens up some unique skill checks, it's pretty much a must for turning not to suck, and it gives you Superior Concentration for free. Start with Improved Turning so you can blow out Elemental fights.

If you take Magic Domain you can just constantly cast then Turn vs Undead, Outsiders, Elementals, Constructs, and Dragons, which are some of the toughest fights anyway.

I'm trying Aberration this time to speed up my summons and give me something to do with turning activations in other fights.

In either case you grab Mysticism at 5 to turn on your offensive casting and double up Bless and Prayer. Reach at 10 in time for Holy Smites which are phat, long, enemies only, and few are immune. And medium/wide Sound Bursts aren't bad either. That combination makes Magic Stone a good finisher for stragglers.

Probably Banishment at 15 but biggest thing about late Domains is turning an 8th level spell you want into a 7th level so Bishop can cast it.

 

[Desiderius]

I leave Silencing to Bard/Rogue or usually have Champ or Pal or something. Or even Mass Mute. Cleric/Bishop wants to be beating saves with Mysticism.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I leave Silencing to Bard/Rogue or usually have Champ or Pal or something. Or even Mass Mute. Cleric/Bishop wants to be beating saves with Mysticism.

A rogue is a killing machine, his silence sucks and requires feats, you can't afford any of this on the highest difficulty and on lower difficulty, everything works, you just proved it, since you're happy with the shittiest builds you came up with.

Bards, sure, they can cast 2/3 abilities a turn so silence is pretty much the bard's role if you bring one.

 

[FA7]

That's why I try to cover as many skill checks as possible. 5hp Fire Elemental Mages nearly wiped me one playthrough with Sleep + stairs and Coups. Ambushes can get lethal.

Spoiler

In general yeah, but that's not the case here, I'm not talking about surprise round. On this particular ambush you use pizarra to get rid of surprise, but it's still nightmare on archmage because of high initiative enemies, terrain hazards, knockout weaponry, aeromancers with gusts, you start on rubble, there are bull rushing monks, not a single safe space etc. etc.

As for disarm idk. You mean some particular foe where this is effective? I think most enemies that you can disarm, you can also trip, and for the really big ones I have grappler. So disarm is pretty meh from my perspective.

 

[Ramnozack]

Okay, I might be asking a strange questions, but how exactly effective Drake Bishop described in manual? Is there a better domain combination? Is Bishop really better than Cleric?
Truth be told, I always feel uncomfortable while building divine casters in any game, because something in me screams " stop complicating things, motherfucker, make this character as healbot, leave actual fighting to fighters and spells for wizards" while my more rational and logical side tells me that healbot would be a waste of a slot in party.
My earliest MMO expirience wasn't WoW or wow clone, so perhaps association cleric = healing comes from a fact that healing spells kinda unique feature for divine spell casters (unless we talking about Artificer, but this is a different story).

I made a reach-weapon cleric whos pretty damn decent, I think.

Mysticism and tactics for all the free feats which makes the build a lot less feat starved.

Focused mostly on getting the usual fighting feats while also picking up improved holy smite and sound burst, put attribute points into wisdom so he stays a good caster. Buy the belt that bumps your BAB up one class, craft a good custom guisarme, and he's good to go. I find that he does everything you would want a cleric to do pretty well. Need healing/true-resing? He's got you covered. Need to nuke a group of enemies with holy smite? Got you covered. Want to help out on the front lines? He's good at that too, has good options for combat maneuvers too. Need buffing? He's got mysticism so he's good at that as well.

I'm pretty happy with him so far

 

[Desiderius]

Grapple is different from Disarm. Greater Disarm is Swift and you’ve still got your full action to burn. Once you’re in a Grapple you’re restricted as to what else you can do.

Snakemen, Effreet, and Ice Demon are all much more vulnerable to Disarm than Grapple (although Efreet can be Grappled too). You want access to both.

You can Ready vs Approach with Disarm up and Disarm up to three approaching attackers with Combat Reflexes. Good for protecting your team or cutting off a choke. Especially with Reach. There are a lot of things resistant to Trip. Pierre lists to advantages of Disarm over Trip in his description of Disarm but biggest thing is you can Trip with spells but can’t Disarm.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Personally I prefer trip over disarm. It largely accomplishes the same purpose while working against more enemies and also preventing movement, casting, etc. If actually disarming something is needed, I'd rather use suppress sword.

 

[Desiderius]

I leave Silencing to Bard/Rogue or usually have Champ or Pal or something. Or even Mass Mute. Cleric/Bishop wants to be beating saves with Mysticism.

A rogue is a killing machine, his silence sucks and requires feats, you can't afford any of this on the highest difficulty and on lower difficulty, everything works, you just proved it, since you're happy with the shittiest builds you came up with.

Bards, sure, they can cast 2/3 abilities a turn so silence is pretty much the bard's role if you bring one.

Rogue Silence requires no feats. You’ve got a round to cast stuff while you’re laying down clouds and surfaces and whatnot before the killing starts.

Bard’s role is to fight/shoot with full BAB and sow Mass Chaos and buff team DCs. Depending on how initiative order falls out it may need to throw a Silence in but that hardly it’s only role.

And get out of here with the trash builds bullshit. This isn’t a one weird trick game - there are a lot of ways to get there and I like having access to multiple angles of attack.

I’m playing Enchanter because I’m old and I’m new but I can tell what would work on higher difficulties and what’s barely good enough and I only post the former.

Be curious what you consider trash so I can own your weak shit with some Archmage screenshots next week.

 

[FA7]

Snakemen, Effreet, and Ice Demon

Ice Demon - gets grappled
Efreet - gets grappled
Snakemen - Not sure which enemy you mean here?

You want access to both.

Lol, no I don't. Disarm is D-tier in my opinion, at least in Augury of Chaos.

 

[Desiderius]

Snakemen, Effreet, and Ice Demon

Ice Demon - gets grappled
Efreet - gets grappled
Snakemen - Not sure which enemy you mean here?

You want access to both.

Lol, no I don't. Disarm is D-tier in my opinion, at least in Augury of Chaos.

Snakemen in Gob fight. Can burn Chaos scroll or own them with Disarm (and not much else due to high saves and STR/Size/AB).

People, I can tell you've never tried it. That's ok, it's a big game, but as I pointed out Pierre himself gives the rundown of the situations where it's good in the Feat description. Not a bad idea to have access to each of the CMs to match the weaknesses of different foes.

I've been skimping on Trip since I just use Grease instead but I'm sure it has it's uses too.

Disarm is +8 (at least, unless you're packing A LOT of STR and Size) vs Grapple against Ice Demon so unless you like reloading long fights its the more reliable option. Again, Disarm is +4 with a two-hander and -4 defense for one-handing, which Ice Demon is.

Suppress Sword does something entirely different. Apples and Oranges. The whole point of CMs is that you don't have to worry about SR or saves.

As with Trip you're burning a Swift to make a tough foe burn at least a Move (precluding a full attack) and in most cases generate AoOs.

Disarm is just an opposed attack roll - no touch attack needed so Mirror Image does nothing nor AC, and no STR check either. Disarmed foes lose Shield AC and benefits of Feats like two-weapon defense as well and can't attack until they rearm, even with their fists.

 

[FA7]

Snakemen in Gob fight

That is one optional enemy that usually dies before he has chance to get in melee range and even if he does then you skewer him in 1 round. Definitely not a reason to waste a feat there.

unless you like reloading long fights its the more reliable option

I'm not even getting into this, you seem to be convinced so I'll let you to it. But let me put it this way +8 won't let you get far on archmage difficulty on any kind of check.

 

[Desiderius]

Lol, you're lucky to have a weapon at all for the gob fight, let alone one with skewer. Good luck crafting with your equipment stuck in the crypt.

The +8 is compared to Grapple due to the two-handed bonus and one-handed malus to Disarm that I've already explained twice, not absolute bonus obviously since you get +8 from the Feats alone. And Pierre fixed the big dudes running into the pits - if you fight Green alone for the big bucks the Snakemen beeline to the front now once they're summoned.

You do well not to get into it with this negative theorycrafting nonsense. Just as I suspected. I thought the same thing about Disarm when I read it - but since Pierre was talking it up I tried it out and was wrong. Still don't understand why vets get their panties in a twist when I do that kind of thing.

Come back when you've got something of value to add rather than empty posturing. Play the game - it's great.

 

[FA7]

Lol, you're lucky to have a weapon at all for the gob fight, let alone one with skewer. Good luck crafting with your equipment stuck in the crypt.

Lmao, you can and ought to get your equipment back before that fight (in order to get most rewards).

The +8 is compared to Grapple due to the two-handed bonus and one-handed malus to Disarm that I've already explained twice, not absolute bonus obviously since you get +8 from the Feats alone. And Pierre fixed the big dudes running into the pits - if you fight Green alone for the big bucks the Snakemen beeline to the front now once they're summoned.

You stated that "+8 bonus you get in that particular case is more reliable than grapple" and "people using grappling need to reload much". In absolute values you aim for +40 when fighting pizarra, so really this 8 really isn't much in comparison as you're getting that much from just iron grip on lvl 9. You're just assuming things, just like you assumed that you need to fight in the arena without gear. You assume that Ice Devil can't be grappled reliably. You assumed that I'm talking absolute values. You're mostly disputing your own assumptions lol. So to clarify I wasn't fighting in arena without gear, and I didn't have problems with reliable grappling Ice Devil.

As I said before:
Snakemen - dies too fast to bother
Ice devil - gets grappled
Efreet - gets grappled even more

Still not a single valid argument for me to take this feat sorry. I didn't feel like I needed it and I'm about to fight imperial dragon on archmage run.

Come back when you've got something of value to add rather than empty posturing.

Further discussion is pretty much pointless, your only argument for feat is muh +8:
1. +8 ain't much
2. disarm has quite limited use
3. over rare enemies that either don't pose much threat or you can dispose on many different and often better ways

Also:

not absolute bonus obviously since you get +8 from the Feats alone

Spoiler

you get 4 not 8

 

[Desiderius]

Lol, you're lucky to have a weapon at all for the gob fight, let alone one with skewer. Good luck crafting with your equipment stuck in the crypt.

Lmao, you can and ought to get your equipment back before that fight (in order to get most rewards).

The +8 is compared to Grapple due to the two-handed bonus and one-handed malus to Disarm that I've already explained twice, not absolute bonus obviously since you get +8 from the Feats alone. And Pierre fixed the big dudes running into the pits - if you fight Green alone for the big bucks the Snakemen beeline to the front now once they're summoned.

You stated that "+8 bonus you get in that particular case is more reliable than grapple" and "people using grappling need to reload much". In absolute values you aim for +40 when fighting pizarra, so really this 8 really isn't much in comparison as you're getting that much from just iron grip on lvl 9. You're just assuming things, just like you assumed that you need to fight in the arena without gear. You assume that Ice Devil can't be grappled reliably. You assumed that I'm talking absolute values. You're mostly disputing your own assumptions lol. So to clarify I wasn't fighting in arena without gear, and I didn't have problems with reliable grappling Ice Devil.

As I said before:
Snakemen - dies too fast to bother
Ice devil - gets grappled
Efreet - gets grappled even more

Still not a single valid argument for me to take this feat sorry. I didn't feel like I needed it and I'm about to fight imperial dragon on archmage run.

Come back when you've got something of value to add rather than empty posturing.

Further discussion is pretty much pointless, your only argument for feat is muh +8:
1. +8 ain't much
2. disarm has quite limited use
3. over rare enemies that either don't pose much threat or you can dispose on many different and often better ways

Also:

not absolute bonus obviously since you get +8 from the Feats alone

Spoiler

you get 4 not 8

Finally some actual arguments.

(1) Thanks for pointing out my oversight in assuming the second CM Feat gives +4. I get so excited by moving to swift it feels like that but none of them get a boost so moot it discussing Grapple vs Disarm.

(2) How does doing Crypt first generate more rewards for Gob fight? Obv you can but Pierre's strongly hinting to go the other way (do the Mimic and Elemental Mages first sure) and seems like doing the rested fight first beats doing the Death Trap. Are you getting Wade In in time for gob fight as well? O/W pretending you're easily offing Snakemen Champs without putting yourself at (needless) risk makes no sense.

(3) Don't insult our intelligence by saying +8 doesn't matter. It also doesn't effectively Disarm yourself (as with Grapple), doesn't burn your full Action, and doesn't turn off your AoOs and DEX AC. I'm using Grapple too, but on another 2 characters, and you can follow up one with the other as well.

(4) 98% chance (that doesn't leave you as vulnerable) absolutely means fewer reloads than 70-90% with an extra Touch needed. If you've got 98% on your Grapple vs Ice Demon great (with True Strike for instance that's another thing you can do - as I said a lot of ways to beat the game). I'm using all the resources you're put into getting it that high into greater flexibility by taking advantage of enemy vulnerabilities rather than brute forcing. Limited means nothing if it's limited to the hardest challenges and doesn't preclude you from having Grapple available on other characters.

(5) You can say better until you're blue in the face but until you've laid out the specific case you're just echoing what seems to be the prejudices of the MMO-generation without coming to terms with the way games like this are designed to be attacked, which is more of a rock-paper-scissors. Don't take it from me - read Pierre's Disarm description.

(6) I guarantee you’d appreciate it if he gave it to more enemies. Skewer Weapon doesn’t do much if it isn’t equipped.

 

[FA7]

1. Yeah you make it bit hard to point out but yw.
2. This is for you to discover.
3. I'll try not to stumble here. +8 ain't much for MEDIOCRE EFFECT used against MELEE ENEMIES holding 1-HANDED ARMS that have TRIP IMMUNITY.
4. Not going into details here, but again wouldn't say 3 attempts on 70-90% to disable enemy completely is less reliable than 98% for stripping move action from enemy
5. Get a grip, if there's any echoing you keep hearing it means you have too much space between your ears.
6. That'd be good point for taking the feat in some other module.