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.
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.
Dodgy III: Incoming attacks have a 30% chance to miss.
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
Poison Use (Lara Bond): Can use venom when attacking.
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 III: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies. Automatically avoid poorly hidden traps.
Sneak I
Dungeons are getting harder and more dangerous. This dungeon alone Ricki almost died vs the 3 winter wolves (1 in 8 chance btw). Sneak would have been a perfect solution. Not to mention it would have saved us the risks of getting past patrol (and the swarm fish in Well)
To be honest, Sneak is as good as we are willing to use it and loose this trump card for the rest of the dungeon 🙂 but yeah. This is the best pick. It has no traditional condition like “usable only if started turn undetected” or similar, so it actually should be usable to gtfo straight from a previous-turn combat that went critical.
But, it’d eb the best to test it first to see if it can be used like that in some safe-ish conditions.
Sneak is a good save for when we inevitabely mess up. And it can help us escape dungeons which is often part of a goal
Sneak would be a useful Ability. However, the rather chaotic way that actions are determined by voting means that the ONE use of Sneak could end up getting used early in a dungeon to scout an unknown room that there might not be a safe way out of, or to go after loot, rather than being saved for escaping or getting past a patrol.
Isn’t that true of every ability, or at least every once-per-dungeon ability?
No, the Sneak ability is unique in that it can get Ricki INTO a bad location that she then may not be able to get out of without another use of Sneak.
Comforting Weight
We have a purse, we have the ability to get a lot of gold IN a dungeon, and we need more defense. Dodging isn’t always enough.
For sure, but this means we spend less money between dungeons and we have a lot to buy still. Maybe next level?
I think the implication was that we would start the dungeon with little or no gold, and prioritize taking down a high-hp monster with the gloves early so that Ricki could have good defense for the rest of the dungeon.
Comforting Weight
Gold generation is ramping up considerably. We will have close to 40 labour after this dungeon and with the Midas Gloves we will probably have no issue filling up our purse for a single slot +3 defense on Ricki. We can always bring a Rabbit Paw into a dungeon if we need to spend that gold too, so no big loss there.
Yes, but not this level up.
I want Comforting Weight long term:
but I don’t trust us, the players, to leave aside gold for Ricki;
or not to skip some important home renovation, or equipment purchase, because we fixate on using Gold for Defence.
Our loot is greatly dependent on the dungeon. Poisoned well was terrible for sellable loot compared to armory and magic research.
Not to mention, any gold we’re carrying us not being put towards manor upgrades which we have a lot of useful ones to go. Let’s get it next lvl up
10 gold for +1 def -1 enc is already a better price than heavy greaves or gauntlets. After midas it gets to +2, which is crazy for a 1 enc item. We should definitely take this, but I’d prefer to be cautious and pick sneak first
+3 Def for 1 Enc is a superb ratio. The mistake that people have been making about Comforting Weight ever since the first time we saw it is this flawed mindset of “but what if we want to spend that gold on something?”. The way to think about it is that we ARE spending the gold: on Def for Ricki, which is arguably the single most valuable thing gold CAN be spent on.
This isn’t a “rainy day” fund to be tapped into because there’s something shiny in Paws’ shop: it’s a 30GP purchase. It’s also the single best “item” we can buy, because Gold Rings of Protection don’t exist (yet) – but if they did, they would very likely cost the same 30GP (+1 is 20, +2 is 25).
Sneak I is good, but it’s once per dungeon. That means we likely either save it to Abandon/Exit with, or don’t use it at all. Given that there’s a Sneak II that will up that to 2x/dungeon, meaning one actual use, there’d (rightly) be clamoring for that next levelup, leaving us with -3 Def for two more dungeons. I’m not sure I’d call that the “cautious” play, given how much damage has been ramping up by over the last few dungeons and how much we haven’t been able to hide behind Kamau.
Wait, gold stacks to 20. That’s a bit more expensive. On the bright side bringing gold into dungeon synergies with paw nicely: we could buy lockpicks/lenses/healing if we run out of them instead of carrying extra everything throughout the dungeon.
The Purse holds 3 ENC of coins and there are 20 coins to 1 ENC so the Purse can hold up to 60 coins for 1 ENC on Ricki.
Unless money becomes so common it is a non-issue in the next series of dungeons*, like breaking gear became a non-issue after the first series, I foresee extensive discussions (or arguments) at the end of each intermission about exactly how many gold coins to not spend on manor upgrades and items so they can be brought into the next dungeon to help protect Ricki. For instance, do we keep only 20 coins to start Ricki with +1 Def for 1 Enc, or do we keep ~25 coins for a better chance of getting to +2 Def during the dungeon, or do we keep ~45 coins to start Ricki with +2 Def and hope to get at least 15 coins out of the dungeon to fill the Purse, or do we keep 60-66 coins to start Ricki with +3 Def and the hope of getting to +4 Def during the dungeon? Are two extra Magic Lenses (cost 8 each) worth starting Ricki with 1 less Def? Do we bring the Rabbit Paw since we’ll have gold to spend if we really need to? etc. etc. etc. If we bring the Rabbit Paw we can get extra Thieves’ Tools, Magic Lenses or Healing in the dungeon… but then that will cost us Ricki’s Def. etc. etc. etc.
*this seems possible, since a Safe to store coins is one of the Manor upgrades that will be available, see what Paws told the group at I7P4: “Well, if you fix up this foyer, you could probably install a replacement safe. Then at least you wouldn’t have to worry about any of it going missing between jobs.”
The author seems to enjoy seeing the players argue and Comforting Weight seems to be tailor-made to promote arguments.
It has been interesting to watch the voting conflict between Comforting Weight and Dodgy III go from 9 to 13 in favor of Dodgy III to 12 to 9 in favor of Comforting Weight just 12 hours later. I’d say we’re probably not seeing people changing their minds or new people voting, but rather likely the same few people voting multiple times, repeatedly upvoting their choice and downvoting the other. I’ll be curious to see it it stabilizes or if it continues to change every few hours which one currently has more votes.
Dodgy III
Ricki can be at 60% dodge next dungeon!
At this point some dodge pails in comparison to an almost guaranteed +2 def in 1 enc that comforting weight provides
No, next time the dodge ring goes to Kamau. He is the main tank and he has the health to afford relying on dodge
If we want Kamau to have a good evade score then we should probably have Mac smif two Silver Rings of Evasion for him. The Gold Ring of Evasion should always remain with Ricki, since if she dies the story is over.
TLDR: Dodgy III will make incoming attacks on Ricki 20% more likely to miss!
Because of how the math works, the value of an extra +10% of dodge/evade score increases with how much evade the character already has. If a character has no evade then +10% gives them a 1 in 10 chance to avoid each attack or a 10% lower chance to be hit. However if a character already had an 80% evade then +10% evade would decrease their chance of being hit from 2 in 10 to 1 in 10, which is a 50% lower chance to be hit. I’ve been told that the author has stated that 70% is the maximum evade (or chance for an attack to miss after all modifiers have been applied) in Dungeon Eyes, so the 80% is just an example for illustration of how the math works, but Ricki going from 50% to 60% dodge would decrease her chance of being hit from 5 in 10 to 4 in 10, a 20% lower chance to be hit. So Dodgy III is better than the simple +10% might seem (mainly because Ricki already has 30% because she now always has the Gold Ring of Evasion we got at D11T28).
On the other hand, 10% dodge now doesn’t increase chances of survival as much as +10% dodge 2 dungeons ago.
Consider the situation with ice dogs earlier. Ricki would die if all 3 hit her. That’s 0.5^3 = 0.125. Going to 60% dodge reduces the chance to 0.4^3 = 0.064. So the improvement is 6%.
Now compare it to getting the first 10% dodge. It would take probability of death from 100% certainty to 0.9^3 = 0.729, an improvement of 28%!
I’d argue probability of being hit by several enemies at once is a more important metric than “by how much the chance of being hit is reduced”. The latter is useful in a long battle to the death, the former is better suited for probability of catastrophic failure after a mistake.
(although if you care about prolonged battle, pick comforting weight. If you care about survival pick sneak)
Hummm, I believe that in your example, going from 0.5^3 = 0.125 (12.5%) to 0.4^3 = 0.064 (6.4%) would be better described as halving the probability of getting killed (50% less chance of being killed), not merely changing it by ~6%, although it is 6% because that is half (50%) of a 12% chance of dying.
Although I don’t like getting into situations where Ricki is going to be killed if everything hits her (rather than just taking some damage if they all hit), I’m pretty happy with the idea of reducing her chance of dying by half (50%)… Of course you could also look at this situation as there being a 88% chance of Ricki’s story continuing at 50% dodge and a 94% chance of her story continuing at 60% dodge, which is where that 6% comes from (94%-88%=6%).
The increased dodge is even more valuable (or less valuable, depending on how you look at it) where there are more enemies that all need to hit for the damage to get through the character’s DEF. If there were 4 enemies that all needed to hit in order to inflict damage that’s 0.5^4=0.0625 (6.25%) at 50% dodge/evade and 0.4^4=0.0256 (2.56%) which is about a 60% reduction in the chance of taking damage, even though it is only a ‘difference’ of ~4%. If there were 5 enemies that all needed to hit in order to inflict damage that’s 0.5^5=0.03125 (3.125%) at 50% dodge/evade and 0.4^5=0.01024 (~1%) which is about a factor of 3 less chance of being damaged, even though it is only a ‘difference’ of ~2% — it is the difference between a 97% and 99% of not taking damage.
If the consequence is only that the character is going to take a few points damage that won’t be lethal then going from 97% chance of avoiding the damage to 99% may not be that big of a deal since the consequences are improbable in both cases and are manageable, which is I believe the point you are making, but if the damage is going to be lethal and story-ending then the chance going from 97% to 99% can be a rather big deal since it reduces the chance of the story ending by two-thirds (a 1% chance instead of a 3% chance of the story ending).
In a more extreme version of this sort of thing you could compare the chance of the story continuing being 98% vs 99.999%, which is only about a 2% difference by subtraction but a difference in probability of 2000 times (2%÷0.001%). Do you look at the difference as 2% or 200,000%? If you had to buy a ticket for an airplane flight and the choices were an airplane that had a 98% chance of making the flight without crashing and a 99.999% chance of making the flight without crashing, how much is that “extra 2%” worth?
What you are pointing out here seem to be how useful dodge/evade is in protecting a character that has a decent DEF against a combined attack from a group of opponents. This wasn’t such a big deal in the early dungeons where we rarely got attacked by large groups but has become a bigger issue in recent dungeons as large groups of guards (or skeletal swarmfish) can be quite dangerous.
If a character with DEF:10 is facing one opponent with ATK:12, then going from 0% evade to 10% evade means a 0.9^1 = 0.90 of being hit and thus a 10% chance of taking no damage instead of 2 damage, but if a character with DEF:10 is facing 4 opponents that each have ATK:3 for a total of ATK:12 then going from 0% evade to 10% evade means a 0.9^4 = 0.6561 of being hit by all of them and thus a ~35% chance of taking no damage instead of 2 damage. Yep, the basic effectiveness of evade is much greater against multiple weak enemies that against single strong enemies because ALL (or at least most) of the weak enemies have to hit in order to penetrate the character’s DEF!
Thus even very small amounts of evade can be very helpful against large groups of opponents like normal guards. This means that we probably should smif a Silver Ring of Evasion for Kamau (or our tank du jour) ASAP. Maybe the next dungeon will be advertised as easy enough that we can bring Kamau and Macadamia and have Mac do some smiffing with some shields to get Rings of Evasion.
However just because going from 50% evade to 60% evade isn’t as impressive as going from 0% to 10% does not mean that going from 50% to 60% is somehow bad or underpowered. If the example character with DEF:10 above is being attacked by opponent(s) that have a combined ATK:12 and the character only has 1HP remaining such that taking any damage will be fatal then going from 0% to 10% evade means going from sure death to a 90% chance of dying against the single ATK:12 opponent, but going from sure death to a 65% chance of dying against the 4 opponents with ATK:3 which is an impressive (90%-25%) 25% difference by simple subtraction but both the 90% chance of dying and the 65% chance of dying are really bad (although better than certain death). I’d much prefer to be considering going from 50% to 60% evade where you’re looking at going from a 50% chance of dying to a 40% chance of dying against the single ATK:12 opponent and going from a 6.25% chance of dying to a 2.56% chance of dying against the 4 opponents with ATK:3. Going from a 40% chance of dying to a 2.56% chance of dying is a (40%-2.56%) ~37% difference by simple subtraction (which is better than the 25% difference we saw for going from 0% to 10%) but more importantly, a 2.56% of dying is at least fairly tolerable when compared to 90% or 65% or 40% and it is even significantly better than 6.25% (about a 60% reduction in the chance of dying to go from 6.25% to 2.56%, 2.56÷6.25=0.4091).
Crossbow proficiency. How have we been sleeping on this?
Improvisation. How did we let this one pass by so long?
Backstab for sure – We’re often fighting in groups, so more damage is best
I noticed that the Level Up announcements showed up instead of a Turn number so that means the dungeon is finally over. Now I’ll go back and read what happened after Turn 13.
Here is what Ricki looks like right now on the Current Party page on 25-Sept-2024 at the end of Dungeon 13 (mainly for future reference, since this is difficult to figure out when looking back at the Archive three dungeons from now):
RICKI
Optimistic Thief
[picture of Ricki]
[grit, used][case chest, unused]
HP: 7 (4 red, 3 black)
Atk: 2 (1grey + 1purple)
Def: 14 (1grey + 3blue + 2green + 4yellow + 2purple + 2white) (50% evasion)
Mov: 2
ITEMS [11 slots]: hidearmourbat[2] , magmashield[2] , heavygreaves[1] , wandholster[1] , wandwieldergloves(2 charges remaining)[1] , staffofanimation(2 charges)[1] , heavygauntlets[1] , fullhelmet[2] .
WORN RINGS [2 slots]: silverringofprotection , goldringofevasion .
WAND HOLSTER [3 slots]: wandofmagicmissile , wandofvenomoussting , wandofheal .
Pet: Mushroom 46
ABILITIES
Always Prepared: Starts each dungeon with one Thieves’ Tools if able to carry it.
Big Haul III: +6 Enc.
Careful Thief: 50% chance not to expend Thieves’ Tools when used.
Case [case chest]: 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.
Dash: +1 Mov.
Dodgy II: Incoming attacks have a 20% chance to miss.
Dungeon Eyes: Can see the full room while in a dungeon, as well as party’s stats and abilities.
Grit [grit]: Once per dungeon can recover 3 HP in place of taking another action. The amount recovered increases by 1 for every two characters with full bond, even if they’re not in the dungeon. Nearby allies can use their action at the same time to recover 3 HP.
Light Armour Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with a base Def bonus of +2 or less.
Lockpicking: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to open regular locks.
Small: Can be lifted by other characters and enter small openings, but can’t reach high places without help.
Spored: Counts as a mushroom.
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.
Ideally there would be a copy of the Current Party page for each Turn linked to that Turn in the Archive, then it would be MUCH easier to figure out what is going on when reading the Archive.