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Some self-buff abilities would make more sense if they were instant

A topic by petercordia created Dec 11, 2023 Views: 205 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 7
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I'm particularly looking at the Barbarian's bloodlust, and considering whether +3 melee damage for 5 turns will ever be worth the loss of a turn. You already have to be on blood, which already makes it situational. If it was an instant ability I think it'd be cool and worth having.

So having used it, I feel like bloodlust is actually instant, but that could have been clearer in the UI?


Earlier I lost a character because Second Wind cost a turn, which I didn't anticipate. Second Wind is strong enough that I can see you justifying it should cost a turn. Then again, instant or not is worth about 1sp, which brings it back to a question of preferred design.


I've also had a character killed the turn he cast Evade, because a monster noticed (and killed) him immediately. That also felt somewhat unfair.

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Killing Strikes also fits here, somewhat. My initial interpretation was that it would auto-kill an enemy if it had less than 20% health left after a melee attack, or if you end your turn next to an enemy with less than 20% hp. (I wasn't sure which.)

Does it trigger on bosses? I don't know how I'd be able to know, and other skills have had unexpected exceptions for bosses before.

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It does trigger on bosses, and the trigger is if an enemy with <20% hp gets hit by a physical attack from you.

What other abilities don't work on bosses? I can only think of dominate.

I suppose the first pip is worth it in the late game as a boss-killing tool then, particularly for the end boss. And it sounds like Killing Strikes would let you snipe low-%hp enemies with the bow? For the most part I wouldn't be willing to put in that effort.

Dominate is the big one.

I felt like the skill that freezes enemies in a block of ice also refuses to trigger on bosses. I had a fight with an Enchanter against the octopus (with the tentacles) where only my Discord and Confuse skill did anything at all, I had to blow a lot of resources on that fight. Though I can't remember what spells I had precisely, and it's possible I misunderstood other game mechanics.

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Killing Stirkes: Sniping enemies with a bow is one of the uses. A lot of people don't think it's particularly good, the main suggestion to improve it is to show when things are in KS range visually. After that, we can see if it does much or not.

Dominate: 8mp to not only instant kill a boss, but have it fight for you would be hard to balance. It should state this in the description though, so there are no surprises.

Freeze: Works on everything, completely OP against Yendor and bosses. I double-checked it on the Kraken, it's even better than normal: The Kraken starts suffocating when frozen, dies in two casts.

I wouldn't like the visual noise that highlighting below-20% hp enemies would give.

As for the power level of KS: few enemies survive more than 5 hits. Bosses can receive +100% damage vs Discord and can apparently be frozen in a block of ice. I think with the current mechanics getting instant kills at 40% hp wouldn't be too far out of the scope of the reasonable. But KS killing enemies without extra actions being required would still feel nicer to me.

I understand why Dominate doesn't effect bosses, but it not being mentioned in the skill description made me a bit paranoid.


I think I misunderstood how the range of the freeze spell works, probably the kraken was out of range and I misinterpreted it as 'boss immunity'.

Thanks this is quite useful.