Intermission 8 Page 49
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Lara has gained the Make It Count ability.
Kamau’s Hilt has improved.
Several days pass in peace at the manor. More peace than usual, certainly, as at least two of Ricki’s friends have stopped arguing with each other over every little thing.
After enough time has gone by for everyone to be well rested, Paws arrives to check on Ricki and see if she’s ready for another job.
“Hi, Paws! Did you find any new dungeons out there for us?”
“Nothing new this time, I’m afraid. Just the well and the tomb that you’ve already heard about.”
“Oh well. I still want to do both of those, anyway.”
“…So, are those bones you’re sweeping out of your house?”
“Yeah. The pets keep grabbing them and scattering them all over the place when we eat.”
“You might want to think about getting some furniture for your kitchen.”
“You could also fix up that old stove while you’re at it, so it doesn’t fill the entire building with smoke.”
“That would be nice.”
“Plus, I’m sure your kobold friend could do a lot more with a proper kitchen setup. A good meal before a fight could make a big difference.”
“Hmm, I’ll think about it.”
“Anyway. Since you already know about the two dungeons available, have you decided which you’d like to tackle next?”
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Wow, the “make it count” and improvement of Kamaus hilt are quite something. Though the whole background of Lara and Indira makes we want to have Lara use her corruption skills even less than before.
And look, Daisy has managed to snatch a piece of meat from Lohk, who doesn’t look too pleased about that. But Ricki obviously approves. 😀
Kamau’s Hilt going from a free dagger to a one-handed great sword is quite the jump, since now his Heavy Sword Proficiency kicks in and should stack with Light Sword Proficiency if we pick that up. Kamau swinging for 7 makes Cleave much more likely to be relevant, as he doesn’t even need buffs now to clear three rats with one swing (and the first one or two could even be dire rats). The main thing holding it back is still that we typically don’t want to attack with Kamau, but if the others can find something else to do far away from combat while Kamau solos fights, that could open up options.
I am glad we’ve avoided Shield Bash. There’s still an opening there for the first turn of horde fights to safely take down something small to reduce incoming damage enough to switch off shield, but Kamau has the option to use HP and the 7 damage will cut down on incoming damage faster.
In typical Lara fashion, Make it Count is much less impressive. It does line up nicely with my personal recommendation to use one Corruption per dungeon so she can do cool things, and it is a solid buff once in place. Still, conditional +2 ATK vs always-available +3 ATK. Oh well, free ability.
What might the others get..?
I mean, I don’t think it’s quite fair to call the hilt buff a +3. It’s contingent on him using the hilt, so he can’t be using a shield, and the most direct comparison is to what we would have had him attack with otherwise. That could be the hilt, but it also could’ve been a longsword. It’s basically plus 2 over the next best weapon we’d likely give him, in my mind.
Any other weapon would have cost encumbrance space. So calling the hilt buff a +3 is fair in any case. Whether you wanna call it +3 Atk or +2 Atk & +1 Encumbrance, what have you.
Eh, fair. We could have had Kamau use Rat Fang earlier and we didn’t.
Of course, that’s also because we couldn’t bear to use up any rat tails, right up until we sold Rat Fang. Maybe we’ll change classes later (D1T18, FF1).
Sudden realization: Make It Count could stack. In her last dungeon, Lara could get +8 Atk.