Ricki finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Ambush I: +1 Atk when attacking a target that hasn’t interacted with a character previously.
Backstab I: +1 Atk when attacking a target an ally is also attacking.
Big Haul I: +2 Enc.
Careful Thief: 50% chance not to expend Thieves’ Tools when used.
Case: As an action can identify all items an enemy in the same room carries, even if some items are not visible. Once per dungeon can identify contents of a nearby chest without opening it.
Comforting Weight: +1 Def for each full stack of Gold Coins carried.
Crossbow Proficiency: +1 damage when wielding a crossbow or similar weapon.
Dagger Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a dagger or similar weapon.
Dash: +1 Mov.
Dodgy I: Incoming attacks have a 10% chance to miss.
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
Light Armour Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with a base Def bonus of +2 or less.
Sneaky I: Once per dungeon can become undetectable by enemies until end of turn. Can’t be carrying any item of weight 3 or higher while sneaking.
Steal I: Once per dungeon in place of attacking, can try to take one item from an enemy. An item that is carried but not wielded or worn has a 100% chance to be taken successfully. An item that is held or worn has only a 50% chance to be taken successfully. Items have a -10% chance to be taken for each point of weight heavier than 1.
Trap Detection II: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies.
Trap Disarming: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to render traps harmless, even if they can’t normally be circumvented.
My vote is either Careful Thief or Improvisation. We had to struggle a lot for sheer lack of keys.
That sounds like a good idea. I vote for Careful Thief.
I agree, Careful Thief all the way
I think Careful Thief is pretty low impact…
1 – This assumes we have thieves tools to start with which is unlikely to be the case.
2 – This is useless in a fight
3 – It’s still only a 50% chance to reuse a disposable item
Improvisation adds at least 1 more lock pick to each dungeon and many more if we can find a dagger somewhere (very likely).
Still, at level 2 and with rats nearly killing us, I think our first skill should give us some ability to improve our chance to avoid trouble.
Or killing power. Improvisation or Dagger Proficiency are both good options.
Ricki already has the “always prepared” skill.
(Always Prepared: Starts each dungeon with one Thieves’ Tools if able to carry it.)
So if we are somehow allowed to change her inventory before the next dungeon starts (or, for example the key from the jail are auto-discarded), she will start the next dungeon with a set of thieves tools. Just FYI. 🙂
Take a look at Ricki’s skills. She has one already that has her start a dungeon with thieves tools in her inventory if she doesn’t already have one
I think you have them backwards? Improvisation doesn’t necessarily add lock picks to any dungeon, there’s no guarantee we’ll find more daggers to replace the ones which are broken. Meanwhile, Always Prepared guarantees that we start with thieves’ tools.
I like trap detection II
WE GOT HIM BOYS
Since we have Kamau with us, I would recommend picking a skill that isn’t combat-oriented. There are a lot of good options, but I want to pick
Careful Thief
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As a reminder, I am (going to try to keep) maintaining a running record of dungeons as we play, located at https://lucid.app/lucidchart/0b7c14d3-ba45-4f39-8c6b-c5fd256792c6/view
Is Kamua with us? He’s not on the character page – https://dungeoneyes.com/characters/
He escaped with us. Nothing said he joined our party.
I feel like backstab may be good for working with kamau.
that being said, improvisation also sounds useful. daggers are kinda common
Limited use. Someone else must be in a fight first.
Actually, ‘daggers’ class seems quite limiting. Right now, all we’ve seen is swords and torches everywhere. And probably in other places it will be 1 weapon per 1 person, and there are axes, staves, wands, polearms, cross/bows, and a whole lot of all other types that ARE NOT daggers. If the skill said “anything that resembles a stick and is relatively sharp” then OK. But as it stands now, I’d skip.
How about a Case and in future combo it with Steal?
Or, ever-useful Backstab, as we’ll probably tag along with Kamau for some time.
My vote is for Improvisation
Let’s go for Careful Thief. Maybe later we can get Trap Disarming and have a really nice combo.
I don’t think most dungeons will be so lock-and-key focused as this jail. I’d vote for Light Armour Proficiency, with a backup vote of Comforting Weight. The longer Ricki is alive, the more abilities she will gain
Dash or Careful Thief!
It’s looking like we’ll probably get careful thief, but I don’t know how essential the extra 1-2 lockpicks will be. My vote is going to be for Sneaky 1, which will definitely come in handy somewhere down the line.
For a first ability, we want to choose something that will always have a benefit for Ricky.
Trap detection, while nice, wasnt all that helpful with us AVOIDING said traps.
Careful thief could potentially be useful, but is pointless if we come across a dungeon without anything locked.
Improvisation…. let’s not destroy Ricky’s current only reliable weapon plz xD
Dash could be pretty useful. But keep in mind we can’t travel more spaces if we discover a new room.
Light armor proficiency could build her def more, but if we find a +3:armor, we.wo.t want to put it on…
Comforting weight…. let’s hold off on that until we actually get some gold :P, but its good. Especially if we save
So my vote is for either Case or Sneaky 1. Being able to see what an enemy is holding, visible or not, is already great, but add in a 1 time use to check a chest before opening is amazing! Sneaky 1 is more of a “if you don’t like that, how about this” choice. Being able to completely avoid a fight could save Ricki.
Improv will be good if there are spare daggers around.
Hmm, (not quite in order) my faves are:
Dodgy I: if it stops something that might kill us or put us in critical condition, that’d be marvelous, but even if it just occasionally mitigates blows, it’ll greatly increase our survivability. Plus multiple tiers!
Light Armour Proficiency: Give +1 armour, reducing every blow for now… but in a couple duneons may no longer be handy. Also less handy with multiple attacks at once?
Sneaky I: Great desperation move with bosses/timer escapes/etc. but also for stealing something guarded maybe. Limit is an issue. How it scales would matter.
Trap Detection II: We don’t know how bad the current traps are, or the future ones get, but they are probably the biggest threat to a powerful ally other than bosses/dungeon limits. I absolutely think we should get this, but we might have a dungeon buffer before the traps get too bad.
Steal I: Stealing weapons/armour off a boss could be a life-saver stealing a mcguffin could avoid a deadly fight entirely. Percent risk is an issue, as is limit, scaling might solve, but if not it’s a big gamble that might only be necessary once in a blue moon.
Many others are great too (encumbrance, either lock pick, proficiencies), but these feel more… “keep Ricki alive” and “keep Ricki alive” is very necessary. So my vote is mainly for dodgy, but the others aren’t bad.
I’d like to add some thoughts to yours:
Dodgy: I agree it sounds great. I’d like to know how many tiers can be acquired in total, tops. I also wonder if higher up tiers will allow us to dodge “damage” instead of “attacks” (like from traps and other stuff), that would be awesome.
Light armour proficiency: It is possible that “light armour proficiency” is needed in order to get “medium armour proficiency” later on. At least in many D20 games this is how it works. Also, I’m fairly sure Ricki could possibly be limited on what she’ll be able to carry (see sneaky for example, if the armour gets too heavy, it might stop her from doing some thief stuff).
Comforting Weight (because it’s def increasing, too, I’ll just mention it here as well): It would be ideal to know first, how much gold is needed for a full stack and how easy it is to acquire gold.
Sneaky: I agree, it would be useful to know what improvements “sneaky II” will have, like can she sneak more often or can she sneak once, but carry more equipment while doing it, or will there even be a skill tree where we can choose a path?
Trap Detection II: I’m also very much in favour of getting this one sooner or later.
Steal I: I agree that there will be situations where this skill might decide over make and break of the whole operation, but since it is limited to once per dungeon, I feel like there are other skills we might profit from more at the moment.
Also should probably be combined with the “case” ability so Ricki can tell what’s worth taking and from whom… 😀
Improvisation/disarm trap: I wonder if you have both these skills, you’ll be able to disarm traps (at the cost of one dagger each). I also wonder if the “careful thief in combo with the improvisation will lower chances that the dagger breaks (though I doubt it because it says “always” in the description of the improvisation). Also, there seems to be no tiers to improvisation, so we won’t get better chances there.
Dagger proficiency:this is something that seems a bit more useful than any other attack + skill, because Ricki has a dagger right now and until/unless she uses it, all of her attacks will be more deadly, as opposed to “backstab” or “ambush” (which need specific situations to work) or crossbow proficiency (because atm we are lacking a crossbow).
VOTE:
Personally, I think we should get either “big haul I” or dodgy I” (and leave the damage dealing to Kamau, while he’s still around)
Reason for big haul: we were constantly having inventory problems in the jail already, and somehow I think there will be even more stuff to pick up in a “normal” dungeon. Also, many other skills would profit from having more inventory space – like Always Prepared (we would not even get a thieves tool kit atm, unless we are allowed to drop the jail keys before the next dungeon), comforting weight (two more spots for full stacks!), improvisation (can carry more daggers), …
Reason for dogy: helps keep Ricki alive and that is the prerequisite to keep this comic/game going!
I agree with most of what you’ve said, yeah. I almost did add Big Haul to my suggestions, but I wanted to prioritize survival.
As for Comforting Weight… it would be in the top 2, except I cannot imagine we are going to be showered in gold, or bring gold with us (esp since it sounds like it takes slots), meaning we’d start each dungeon with +0 and work our way up probably. If so, we might practically be forced to go encumbrance next, while with Dodgy, we could have many options for our next choice.”
Good call on the armour proficiency, I hadn’t really considered non-tier prerequisites much, and missed that possibility.
Still, in the long haul, my vote is Dodgy I ^^
Sneaky I Right now, getting around or away from trouble is much more important than anything combat related or things that could be situationally helpful (like opening doors) or stealing stuff.
It’s also an ability that requires no items or circumstances to use, will almost certainly be useful in any situation and is probably going to be very powerful when used correctly.
While “Sneaky I” may be useful in many situations, she can only use it once per dungeon. And it IS dependant on something, namely her having only items below weight 3 in her inventory (currently not an issue as all her items are weight 1 tops, but could prove annoying in the future, depending on what we find).
Additionally, Ricki should (if/when possible) do something against the Malnourished status. Removal would rise HP and Def. Second, healing those lost HPs would be a good idea. Third, recharging Grit comes to mind. Remove the ball & chain from Kamau. Maybe turn him into an ally?
Don’t worry about recharging Grit. From How to Play:
It’s generally assumed in these settings that you rest and recover to full between dungeon delves, but that isn’t actually spelled out anywhere.
I initially thought that getting the fruit back would cure Malnourished, but that wasn’t an option. Agreed that we should take the next chance to get a good meal; I’d be up for pawning the Rusty Longsword if one gold coin can get some food.
That said, while there’s mention of buying items between dungeons, it’s less clear when we can sell items.
Will the guards follow Rikki through to the next dungeon?
People should be aware: Kamau has not joined Ricki’s party (noting people making plans for Ricki to use abilities in tandem with Kamau). At least not yet. They just escaped the jailgeon together instead of Kamau staying to die. While I understand having him in the party would be spectacular, I’m content knowing a good man will continue to live. Honestly many of these things could have some use. But my vote is Big haul. Ricki needs to be able to carry more. She’s a thief that can barely carry what she steals. 😛
I like case and sneaky.
I’m personally partial to Sneaky 1. I feel like being able to basically steal an item we shouldn’t be able to yet due to danger once per dungeon would be huge for sequence breaking, so to speak. Having a chance to unlock more doors isn’t nearly as good as just stealing the keys to the entire compound because you sneaked past the guards.
Big Haul I. There’s five inventory slots, one is spent on any keys the dungeon has, one is spent on armor, one spent on weapon, ideally one on a shield to die less, and we’ll need an open slot for thieves’ tools. Our thief can’t bring home any loot like this.
That said, I’m glad to see Careful Thief in the lead. We’re playing a D&D-style thief, if we end up in a dungeon with nothing to unlock then what’s the point? This is a world with treasure chests.
Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity, or will the same options (and maybe more) be available after the following dungeons, too? (Hoping that Ricki masters them.)
According to this page: https://dungeoneyes.com/how-to-play/
Ricki will be able to pick from skills after every cleared dungeon (“After clearing a dungeon, Ricki gains a new ability!”).
But we don’t know yet if we will be offered the same choices every time, or a (slightly) different selection (aside from being offered higher tiers of multi tier skills after picking the previous one). It might also be dependent on the dungeon she cleared. (e.g. after going into a dragon’s lair, she might be able to pick “dragon friend”, which she would not offered after any other dungeon. I’m just making this example up, mind you.)
Sneaky, with a secondary choice of Case and a tertiary of Big Haul. Gonna pray Kamau will be around for at least one more dungeon, so utility will be more important than combat.
Careful Theif is a pretty marginal benefit, Improvisation is a little better but still not worth it.
Trap Detection II is absolutely essential but hopefully can be put off for one more dungeon.
We have Kam, at least for now. I vote Improvisation
I gotta vote big haul, it’s just too much of a problem having such limited carry capacity
This kind of level up spread is what makes me grateful that my introduction to D&D was 5e. This is just WAY too much to keep track of, no offence meant.