Kamau finished a dungeon! He can gain one new ability from this list:
Adrenaline I: +1 Atk if HP is 5 or lower.
Cleave: If an attacked enemy is killed, can make another attack at -3 Atk against another random nearby enemy.
Dauntless II: Once per dungeon when reduced to 0 HP, regain 2 HP at the end of the turn.
Heavy Armour Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with a base Def bonus of +3 or more.
Heavy Strike I: Once per dungeon can make a melee attack with +3 Atk.
Heroic Effort II: +2 Atk against enemies with twice as much HP or more.
Light Sword Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a longsword or similar weapon.
Shield Bash: Gain an Atk bonus from a wielded shield equal to its Def bonus -1.
Shield Proficiency: +1 Def when wielding a shield.
Throw Shield: Can use a shield as a ranged weapon, dealing damage equal to the shield’s Def bonus. The shield must be retrieved afterward.
Heavy Armour Proficiency. Let’s build up a tank, we have the cash for heavy armour and some has been available anyway in dungeons 2 and 3. Kamau could hit a consistent 7 defense with this, likely 8 with plate and 10 with a shield.
im not a fan of skill that can stop functioning if we get bad roll.
Imo this skill only after we get armor that can fullfill this perk requirements with no break-on-hit chance
I believe the plan is to buy said armor ASAP.
That’s kind of why I wanted to do the loot dungeon. Paws sells undamaged chain and plate armour.
I believe it will be better to buy plate armour (the best one Paws sells) and not spend our money buying subpar chain armor that can only be sold back for half of the price and is too heavy for Ricky to wear in Ricky-only areas (doesn’t activate light armor proficiency and takes 3 out of 5 Enc. slots)
I also like Heavy Armor Proficiency. The two shield skills both have situations where they no longer work. HAP is a constant with the armor.
Since it is not guaranteed that we’ll be able to shop with Paws during this intermission, I would get “Shield Proficiency” much rather than “Heavy Armour Proficiency”.
It gives +1 Def (so the same bonus as the armour skill) AND we already have GOT 2 shields. If Paws is missing (we had that empty panel showing him NOT being there) and we can’t buy any armour, we’ll be dependant on luck in order to get equipment that qualifies for the armour skill.
True, we will only get the +1 Def from “Shield Proficiency” as long as Kamau is wielding the shield and not any weapon (whereas he pretty much keeps armour on him 100% of the time, except when he has to lend it to party members that are more squishy than him), but that might still be more turns in the upcomnig dungeon IF we can’t buy “unbreakable” heavy armour. At least we get to decide what Kamau has in his one remaining hand. We don’t get to decide what loot drops.
Smart choice, Kamau has been getting his health down a bit too quick for comfort. Let’s just hope lowering the stakes doesn’t end up getting the dangers in dungeons higher as a meta-consequence.
Kamau has been losing his health so much, because we didn’t have much armour to speak of (leather armour for Kamau with +1 Def is not offering a lot of protection). If the solar armour from the chapel hadn’t broken eventually (as soon as Lara put it on), then he could have tanked most of the sewer dungeon (with the additional shield) without losing a lot of HP (or possibly any of them, I’m disinclined to look through 20 turns and take notes whenever he took more than 2 HP damage).
The additional +1 Def from the proficiency will help (especially in the future with more dangerous enemies/enemy groups), but getting the heavy armour is more important.
Cleave. Kamau will be in more of a defensive role as we get more people, but every dungeon has had rats and also sometimes bats. Swarms of small enemies take a while to work through, and with a longsword (or empowered Rat Fang…) to do more damage on the secondary hit, this could clear groups quickly. Especially since it doesn’t say “once per turn”, though if the -3 Atk stacks across cleaves then it runs out pretty quickly.
Interestingly this means cleave could be procced on a counterattack too.
Good to know that Cleave doesn’t have a %-chance like Counterattack has. “Random enemy though can sometimes make Cleave useless – since it can target an enemy which is too strong in def. Anyways, bonus attack/bonus dmg is always welcome.
Shield Bash looks tempting to get around that Kamau can’t equip a Shield and a Weapon by having him equip a Shield as a Weapon. It also pairs well with Counterattack when he has to Interpose… in theory anyway… I’m not sure if Interposing allows Counterattacks or if Kamau is just really unlucky. Might be both.
Not a fan of Shield Bash, as it really looks like Interpose is just enough of an attack to keep from moving out of the room but not enough of an attack to allow the “extra” attack from Counterattack. I don’t see this letting us do new things. If Kamau needs to attack, I think it’s because we need to hit hard.
I get what you’re saying about needing to deal damage and I’ll admit it’s a good point, but I can’t say that Shield Bash doesn’t add new things any more than any of the other options. (Except Shield Throw, but that’d only look good if it bounced back like Captain America’s.) To me, all of them look like they’re just are along the line of just extra defense or just extra offense.
The way I see it, Cleave is basically extra weaker attacks against crowds and Shied Bash is basically not having to give up defense to attack.
True. But check our what Shields we’ve seen so far. Lots of cracked shields with 1-def (-> Atk bonus= +0), and some Lots of shields with 2-def (-> Atk bonus= +1). And we sometimes have to give a shield to the girls.
If we really wanted to have this +1 Atk now, then we have 5 (FIVE) other skills that can grant Atk bonus under some cases, the simplest being Light Sword Proficiency (no, I don’t say we take it). Or Adrenaline-1 since Kamau usuallu runs around with low health anyways (it’s “5HP or lower”, compare i.e. the current dungeon), and Adrenaline has a number, so it can be further upgraded (possibly higher damage, or rising HP threshold).
Until we see really good shields with really high DEF, ShieldBash isn’t that useful. And if we see shields with really high DEF (10, please?), then it’d be so cool. But I think it’ll take time to see such, if ever.
That’s the thing- extra defense and extra offense both open up new options, either widening the range of encounters Kamau can tank or increasing the rate at which enemies drop. Shield Bash gives us extra offense while focusing on defense, so it doesn’t help when protecting allies and it’s less effective than using existing weapons on offense, especially when we need backup anyway to provide light. If the extra +1 from Heavy Armour Proficiency makes the difference, then that functionally also gives us +2 attack by switching from shield to longsword.
Of course, there are situations like the plague rat chest where our other characters are busy and Kamau would get hurt without the extra defense, and there Shield Bash could speed up a safe fight. Hopefully this would involve groups of enemies (like the King Rat’s room) so that the fight could be made safe by taking some of them out, and then switch to weapons to finish up faster. Going from 3 to 4 damage is pretty big as we’ve seen with Lara, the next step up from tiny 1-HP enemies has been a 3 HP/1 Def body (stray dogs, skeleton dogs, dire rats, beavers).
I mean if we just look at this dungeon, Kamau only took damage from enemies 5 times from what I can see, which means there’s a 32.8% chance of not getting a single counterattack. That’s not terribly unlikely.
Shield Bash
if we are making him a tank, but he still needs to attack from time to time.
let’s build for that.
also should allow us to use counterattacks in full defence mode (while using shield)
i like Marth reasoning for Cleave. that would be my secondary choice, but Bash should be first.
Shield Proficiency. It gives us bonus Def the same way Heavy Armor Proficiency does, but we already have a shield (even 2 shields).
When are we paying a cleric to cast Regenerate on Kamau’s arm?
Not until we find out whether it is even possible. We don’t know much about the world the game is set in and what clerics can/can’t do. But it seems to me that restorative magic is not very powerful here. For example, it was explicitly stated on the ‘How to play’ page that we can not raise the dead under any circumstances. Overall this doesn’t look like a world where you can “heal your arms and legs back on by taking a five minute nap”.
We just need to find a mad artificer who will install him a one-of-a-kind grumpy sentient magi-mechanical arm, which can talk back and sometimes disagree and do different actions than ordered to, and is a pacifist, so it won’t wield a weapon, or attack anything in anyway.
I know, I know. But that way Kamau wouldn’t become OP.
Well, use that arm for the shield and the other one for the sword!
It’s downtime between missions. Ask the fence and the mother about where to find a temple that casts Regenerate. It’s a standard service in any adventuring town.
If this happens, I think it’ll be in a bond Dungeon.
I played a D&D character once who took a bargain basement regeneration and ended up with a skeleton arm. He could keep it under control, but had a policy of nailing it to the ground during rests to keep it from wandering.
> Throw Shield: Can use a shield as a ranged weapon, dealing damage equal to the shield’s Def bonus. The shield must be retrieved afterward.
OMG. How did I miss that earlier. Shields do not stack and occupy more inventory slots, but imagine this: cracked shields ‘breaking’ probably would not trigger, since it’s not “after being attacked.” But it’s just 1 DMG, and better shield that would do 2 DMG costs 20gp, so the ammo is quite expensive, eh. However, if we start finding 3-def or 4-def type shields which have ‘returns to the wielder at the end of turn’, that’d be a freaking fantastic ability lol. Too bad it’s not “Throw Shield 1”, just “Throw Shield”, so it won’t become better. Yeeahh.. doesn’t look useful for now.
I’m not suggesting taking this. Just analyzing the effects.
Main problem with this is that a throwing dagger just costs 5 and also gives 2 ranged damage. This would share the slot though, and I agree that bigger shields make the shield skills more interesting.