Update #83: KotC 2 1.72 Upgrades The Paladin & Module Data + Tips for Udio!
Hello everyone! In the past month, again we had two updates for KotC 2. The latest version can be
downloaded here for Windows and macOS, or from
Steam and
GOG.
The updates fixed various bugs, upgraded the
Paladin class, introduced new title screen and music options for custom modules, and added new feats, including one for the
Gladiator, five for the
Paladin and two for
all of the classes.
With the new Module Data options, you can set an introduction picture and a title picture that comes on top. For the upcoming adventure The Dark Arena, I recently created the introduction image below. I hope you like it!
The Paladin's upgrade includes the Paladin's Oath, the Lay On Hands ability, the Scare Undead ability, and five new feats. A big Thank You to everyone who contributed ideas and feedback for the Paladin!!
The Paladin's Oath is a choice made during character creation. Here are the seven possible options and the benefits granted by each one:
- Oath of the Defender: at level 1, you gain six additional Hit Points and the Armour Class bonus from your spell Shield of Faith increases by one point. At level 11, you gain another eight additional Hit Points and the Caster Level of your spell Break Enchantment increases by one point.
- Oath of the Hospitaler: at level 1, your Lay On Hands ability is improved from d6 to d8 and your spell Cure Light Wounds is empowered for free. At level 11, your Lay On Hands ability is improved from d8 to d10 and your spell Cure Serious Wounds is empowered for free.
- Oath of the Avenger: at level 1, your Smite attack damage increases by two points and the bonuses from your spell Divine Favour increase by one point. At level 11, your Smite attack damage increases by another two points and the Difficulty Class of your spell Judgement increases by one point.
- Oath of Devotion: at level 1, you gain one additional spell slot of level 1 and the spell level of your spell Freedom of Movement Touch is reduced by one. At level 11, you gain one additional spell slot of level 2 and the effect of your spell Enhance Ability increases by two points.
- Oath Against Undeath: at level 1, you benefit from a +1 attack roll bonus against Evil Undead and the Difficulty Class of your Scare Undead ability increases by one. At level 11, you benefit from a +2 attack roll bonus against Evil Undead and +2 damage roll bonus against all Undead creatures.
- Oath Against Fiends: at level 1, you benefit from a +1 attack roll bonus against Evil Outsiders and +1 AC bonus from your spell Mass Protection from Alignment. At level 11, you benefit from a +2 attack roll bonus against Evil Outsiders and +1 AC bonus from Greater Mass Protection from Alignment.
- Oath Against Dragons: at level 1, you benefit from a +1 attack roll bonus against Evil Dragons and +1 damage roll bonus against large creatures and bigger. At level 11, you benefit from a +2 attack roll bonus against Evil Dragons and +2 damage roll bonus against large creatures and bigger.
Lay On Hands is a healing ability usable a number of times per day equal to your charisma modifier, while Scare Undead allows you to paralyse undead creatures.
You can improve these abilities with the new
Paladin feats, which include Extra Lay On Hands, Improved Lay On Hands, Improved Scare Undead, Fervent Faith, and Widened Protection. I've just updated the
webpages for the
Paladin,
Gladiator, and
Feats, so you'll find the details of all the new feats there.
Fervent Faith is particularly interesting for Paladins as it allows you to use Lay On Hands with a free action, Scare Undead with a move action, Divine Favour with a free action, and Shield of Faith with a free action.
The new
Gladiator feat is Superior Throw Creature, a very powerful and unique feat.
The two new
feats for all of the classes are Excellent Two-Weapon Fighting and Graceful Charge. Graceful Charge is particularly interesting because it allows your character to perform a charge through allied creatures, or even through enemy creatures if you have the feat Overrun or the Bypass Enemy ability of the
Rogue.
Udio.com review and tips
I tried the AI-based music generation website
udio.com recently. Currently, with the free offering, you get five prompts per day (10 credits), plus 50 prompts per month (100 credits).
It works like this: you provide a text prompt and the AI generates, in a couple of minutes, two soundtracks of 32 seconds each, that you can download in mp3 format.
Then, if you like one of them, you can select 'extend' to have the AI generate 32 seconds more, seamlessly, either before or after the first 32-second soundtrack.
You can have the extension be a normal extension, an introduction sequence, or an ending sequence (outro). You can select instrumental, or with lyrics you provide, or with AI-generated lyrics. Selecting instrumental, or leaving the custom-lyrics field devoid of vocals, can be a good idea for the introduction sequence.
If you select AI-generated lyrics, first the AI will create some lyrics for you (which you'll be able to view afterwards by clicking on the song), and then the AI will create the soundtrack using some or all of these lyrics, or, unfortunately, it may ignore the lyrics entirely and use different words (which then won't be given to you in text form).
I'd recommend leaving the 'Advanced Features' untouched: setting a higher quality didn't seem to work, and setting a seed number resulted in a single output soundtrack using up two credits. Also, you'll want to avoid asking for 'scenery sounds' in the prompt or lyrics field, as this will mangle your soundtracks.
For the prompt, you can choose between the default Automatic Mode, or Manual Mode. Automatic Mode allows you to prompt for the emotions inspired by the song, e.g. 'an ominous song with a sense of despair', and the AI will determine the appropriate tags for your soundtracks.
However, you can select Manual Mode if your prompt is quite specific and you don't want the AI to rewrite it. I did get really nice results using the Automatic Mode, but my best results used some of the following words in Manual Mode:
- in the style of Conan the Destroyer
- in the style of Carmina Burana
- in the style of Frodo of the Nine Fingers
- in the style of The Map Room Dawn
- in the style of Anvil of Crom
- in the style of Conquest of Paradise
- with a bass choir / tenor choir
- with Latin lyrics / English lyrics
- include sword clashes
It's very much hit-and-miss, though. You may think that you're asking for something quite simple (e.g. drums and cymbals) and yet it fails completely. And some other times, it creates a masterpiece. You could do an entire opera with it.
Sometimes, there are flaws in the output. That's more easily noticeable in songs with a single English-speaking singer. Some words may sound weird, or the person's voice changes. However, that's not too frequent.
If the vocals get cut off at the end of the 32 seconds, unfortunately, I've found that the AI will not do a good job completing them in the next sequence, producing a mangled word.
So, in that case, I think it's best to use the Crop feature before extending. Crop the last couple of lines of vocals from the generated soundtrack, and re-add the text of these lines to the custom lyrics of the extension. Or if you have a monthly or yearly subscription, you can try the inpainting function to regenerate a broken word.
Another problem is the lack of theme repetition, even if you ask for it in the prompt. For example, a small part of the soundtrack will sound great, and so, you'd like for it to be repeated; but it won't be, as the AI really wants to do something different in each 32-second sequence. It'd be so nice if we could highlight a part that should be used as the song's recurring theme!
However, in this
Youtube video, there are tips that you can use to repeat the style of a verse. Essentially, you have to use in the custom-lyrics field the words [Verse 1] and [Chorus] in the first generation, and then [Verse repeats] and [Chorus repeats] in extensions. [Instrumental repeats] may work too. You can ask
ChatGPT to write lyrics together with this kind of metadata.
Once you have a nice soundtrack, you can use
Audacity for improvements or corrections. The functions I use most often are fade in, fade out, compressor (to increase the volume), and amplify (with a negative value, to reduce the volume).
All in all, despite the flaws,
Udio is quite amazing in my opinion. It's particularly impressive for choir-based songs, the kind that may be very difficult to create without the AI. I was able to create ten amazing new tracks for The Dark Arena.
Two thumbs up, and I highly recommend using it if you're creating a KotC 2 module! In my humble opinion, it's the musical equivalent of
Dall-E 3.
Now, let's review the changes introduced by the latest KotC 2 versions, 1.71 and 1.72.
List of changes in KotC 2 version 1.72
- Added the Paladin's Oath. You select an Oath at level 1 and receive unique benefits at level 1 and level 11. You can choose between the Oath of the Defender, Oath of the Hospitaler, Oath of the Avenger, Oath of Devotion, Oath against Undeath, Oath against Fiends, and Oath against Dragons.
- Added the Paladin abilities Lay On Hands and Scare Undead. A big Thank You to everyone who contributed ideas and suggestions for the Paladin!
- Added the Paladin feats Extra Lay On Hands, Improved Lay On Hands, Improved Scare Undead, Fervent Faith, Widened Protection.
- Augury of Chaos: reviewed the Paladin NPCs to give them the new Paladin abilities. Also updated the pre-generated Paladin player characters.
- Added the new Gladiator feat Superior Throw Creature.
- Fixed a bug with the Mage Knight's feat Improved Enhance Ability.
- Fixed a bug with the Paladin's feat Mystic Shield. Thank you for the bug report Christiano!
- Added new sound effects for the spells Boulder Strike, Fireball, Lay On Hands, and Scare Undead.
- Fixed bugs with the script commands "Give HPs" and "Set HPs". Thank you so much Kai for the heads-up!
- Fixed a bug with party items that have charges not getting replenished when the party rests, if the item was stored in a container.
- Added missing text in the help entry for the condition Halted.
- Fixed an error concerning Reach Weapons in the help entry for Weapon Groups.
- Fixed a display bug in the Module Editor, in the equipment page of the Creature Editor, when right clicking on an item and bag items were displayed.
- Fixed some issues in the inventory screen when your backpack is full, or when using Spiked Gauntlets.
- Corrected an error in the text of the help entry for the Light Weapon Restriction of the Mantis, and added a link to it in the help entry for the Mantis.
- Added a tooltip information bubble in the Effects interface of the Creature Editor, saying that only permanent effects can be added in this screen (rounds-based conditions can be given through a pre-battle script). Thank you Kyle for the heads-up!
- The alignment Lawful Good will be selected automatically when creating a Paladin.
- Fixed some issues in the character-creation interface when choosing a class specialisation option and then clicking cancel (the selected option wasn't getting reset).
- Fixed a bug in the character-creation interface where the Hit Points of a newly-created character would be displayed as "uninjured" in the character sheet, rather than the actual number of HPs.
The new Module Data screen allowing you to set an introduction image, party-creation music, etc.
List of changes in KotC 2 version 1.71
- New Feats: Added two new feats accessible to all the character classes: Excellent Two-Weapon Fighting, and Graceful Charge. Graceful Charge allows you to bypass creatures when charging, especially if you also have the feat Overrun. Very useful for all melee classes! Excellent Two-Weapon Fighting reduces or eliminates the attack-roll penalties when fighting with two weapons. Great if you'd like to use two large weapons and your character isn't a Fighter or Gladiator! Fighters and Gladiators can receive a different benefit if they take the feat. Thank you so much Kyle for these awesome feat suggestions!
- Engine: Spells with a line area of effect will now stop when hitting a tall obstacle (being defined as any square of altitude 15 ft above the origin square or higher). The reason for this change is that I've seen the AI use Lightning Bolt through castle towers, which doesn't seem right.
- Engine: Large creatures, when squeezing, won't take falling damage when one of the squares they occupy changes altitude (unless it's the creature's 'main' square, the top-left corner of the area occupied).
- Engine: Added a few speed optimisations to accelerate the AI and gameplay.
- Module Editor: In the Module Editor, you can now set for a module a custom (1000 * 730 pixels) introduction screen, a custom (1000 * 730) title image that will appear on top of the introduction screen, a custom music for the introduction screen, a custom music for the party-creation screen, a custom music for the character-creation screens one and two, a custom music for the character-creation screens three and four, and a custom music for the 'Escape' menu during play. Please go to your module's Module Data screen to set these.
- Module Editor: In the Script Editor, added the possibility to retrieve the 'Name of the item user or caster'. This allows us to have items that apply an effect or cast a spell directly on the character holding the item. Thank you so much Kai for the heads up in the forums!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with the Mage Knight feat Improved Shocking Grasp not improving the damage from Shocking Grasp and Greater Shocking Grasp. Thank you so much Christiano!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with the Wizard spell Globe of Invulnerability having no effect. Thank you so much Christiano and frgrndrgns for the heads up!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a source of crashes when using the Delay action in large battles. Thank you Christiano for the bug report!
- Bug Fix: When creating a Rogue character, the game will now require you to select a Rogue specialisation. Thank you Christiano for the heads up!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with the Cleric/Bishop feat Fast Touch Domain Powers. Thank you so much Christiano for the heads-up!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that occurred whenever a script command would remove from a dual-wielding character his or her main-hand weapon. Thank you Kyle for the heads-up!
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with the spell Produce Flame not getting empowered when cast by Fire Druids. Thank you Christiano for the heads-up!
- Bug Fix: Fixed errors associated with the feat Epic Overrun.
- Graphics: Fixed a graphics issue associated with Dwarf paperdoll images.
- Augury of Chaos: Added a line in the Quest Journal entry for the quest of the Vanishing Sword highlighting the fact that if you go to any location not leading you towards the sword, the quest will be marked as cancelled. Thank you Kyle!
- Help Entries: Improved the in-game description of the spell Halt Undead and, in the help entry for magic weapons, added a note saying that you need at least a +1 enhancement value on a weapon or armour in order to enchant the item with other enchantment types like Flaming.
- Weapon/Armour Enchantment: In the weapon and armour enchantment interface, a note '+1 Required' will appear when the selected item hasn't yet received any enchantment. Thank you so much Kyle for the heads up!
Next Steps for Knights of the Chalice 2
The next development steps are the following:
- Continue work on the encounters & scenario of the upcoming KotC 2 module.
- Work on sprites from 3D models, new story images & the upgrade of spell icons.
- Work on voice effects for Critical Hits & monsters, and some voiceovers.
- Implement new features such as monster abilities, subraces, feats, familiars, items.
- Fix remaining issues mentioned on Steam, GOG, heroicfantasygames.com, or by email.
If you have any feedback, suggestions or bug reports, please feel free to let me know here,
in the Forums, or by email at
enquiries@heroicfantasygames.com. I appreciate it!
Many Thanks For Your Support, Honourable Paladins of the Kingdom!! Stay well
