Kingdom Death questions

So is there a reason you would EVER want Grand Weapon Mastery, or even Specialization? They both seem terrible. Okay, Specialization isn't that bad. A lot of critical wound effects end up knocking down a monster in the first place, but enough don't that it would be useful. But the Mastery? It's basically a worse version of the Katar specialization! Do Grand Weapons make up for this crappy Mastery with their stats alone, or something?

Furthermore, Scythes. The Specialization is weird. What is it good for? My best guess is trying to exploit persistent injuries to make monsters waste their turns, and the Mastery SEEMS to support this. Nothing says the first activation needs to be a Scythe, just the bonus activation. Maybe you can exploit that with another weapon or activation?

And a thing I've noticed: It seems that Luck and Speed are the best stats, period. Accuracy is trailing behind, but Strength and Evasion seem mostly pointless. Who cares if you can wound or not when you can make your crit range so wide you're practically critting every attack? And Evasion... The White Lion at least is so accurate that Evasion would really only help if you had a lot more of it than is practical to get. Katar Mastery alleviates this by making Evasion spammable, but that's not exactly something you get early game, either. Is there something I'm missing here?

user bait is best served subtly. When you slather that much on in one go it just makes you obvious.

Are you serious? These are actual questions I have. I played my first game tonight. Farmed White Lions a little, got some decent gear, wanted to see what kind of options I had with specializations.

If I'm so wrong about my observations that you think I'm baiting, I guess I need to rethink my first impressions.

>tfw you never get ageless on the saviors

Evasion is pretty good, you just don't get hit. Luck is great, but Speed is bad if you don't have the Strength to back it up.

If you're actually being serious then yes, you need to rethink your first impressions. Literally everything you just said is the polar opposite of the generally accepted dominant strategy in the game. Except for the bit about Scythes, I can't say shit about that.

That said, if you've only fought White Lions then it explains the misunderstanding somewhat. What makes high speed weapons terrible is that later monsters enormously punish drawing hit locations and then failing to wound them. Most later monsters have punishing reactions on nearly every single hit location. Thus, having a slow but guaranteed to connect weapon is not only safer but actually higher damage output to boot.

Really? What if you just substitute Strength for Luck entirely? As I understand it, a critical wound always wounds, even if the wounding roll didn't pass Toughness. Maybe I just got lucky with stat gains, but I have one survivor with 2 luck, and another one with 1, and it seemed to make a big difference.

Good luck with that; there is basically no way to get luck in the game. The Lucky Charm can give you a +1, and if you're wielding a deadly weapon that's another +1, and the Flower Knight expansion can give you some more apparently (though I haven't played with it so I can't speculate) and that's basically it. Beyond that you're reliant on random events giving you luck and that just won't do.

Many monsters don't have critical effects on their hit locations as you go on.

Aaah. Yea, that makes sense then. But my thoughts on Grand Weapons weren't that Grand Weapons suck. I haven't looked at the Grand Weapons yet. It's that their Specialization is decently good, but the Mastery seems absolutely terrible. Is canceling a reaction on a Perfect Hit really that good when you can cancel a reaction with 100% success with a Katar much earlier?

Speaking of Katar, I noticed they're Paired. As I understand it, Paired isn't attacking with two of the same weapon, it's attacking with the same weapon with added speed, so that Specialization bonus won't kick in again on the Paired attack, right?

So three gains by LY3 is abnormally...
>shades
Lucky?

Explains the Specialization, yea. And the bit about nasty monster reactions explains why a Grand Weapon is just better than a Katar later on. Paired would just get you killed faster if only one attack out of the bunch canceled reactions.

What were they? I'm guessing one was from the death milestone event

I honestly don't remember. None are from Lucky Charms, though. The Death Milestone is one of them, though.

RIP Cannon Fodder. At least you died in the most appropriate way possible to your name.

You aren't considering something else.
Katar weapon specialization only works with katars. Grand weapon mastery only works with grand weapons.
Do they do similar things? Yes.
Are they actually redundant? No, because nobody wants to get hit with reactions.
There aren't any weapons (to my knowledge) that are both katars AND grand weapons, either, so it's not like they're ever going to interact. One gives the speedy, low-strength weapons a way to circumvent getting fucked over by not wounding (and that's honestly more important for them early so they don't fucking die), one means your low-attacking, but probably-going-to-wound weapon is 10% less likely to bite you in the ass from on-wound or automatic reactions

So is Katar mastery as good as it seems, or is it a trap option?

Makes you harder to hit by things that require attack rolls, but only when you're rolling 10s on the to-hit, which luck has nothing to do with.
It's a nice little bonus but not super ohshit awesome or anything.
The standard bonus of 'everyone gets Katar Specialization' is better there, but that requires people to be using katars.

Does the sword you get from King's Man actually have a use?

It's an accurate weapon with an average strength of 10.
I'd say yes, it has a use.

Ah, I missed the Sharp keyword. Thanks.

Can be super sweet if you have things that increase PH like Timeless Eye, Sun Vestiments, etc. Kinda corner case though.

>but that requires people to be using katars.
The spider katars are really good imo, even into late game.

Which requires you to be using that expansion.

>When you crit the strange hand, but there isn't an AI card for easy understanding

You think that's bad
>Playing people of the skull
>get portcullis key
>hunt 2 years later, get portcullis
1/2000 or something chance to get perfect slayer capabilities in a campaign, and I can't equip it for this variant.

Use at least one black skull in there and you can

I'm interested in learning more about this game, but it seems like it's all out of print right now, especially since the most recent version was a Kickstarter that just recently started shipping.

How many people play the actual, physical game, and how many sim it? If the latter, what do you prefer to use?

I sim and use tabletop simulator. Its 20 bucks and can be used for other games too. The two best mods are the scripted version 2.0 and achromic scripted. They help automate so much boring stuff and make things easy.

It was worth mentioning I pulled it mid lantern year 11.
And that perfect crucible is a resource.

I am hunting my first phoenix this campaign right now, though, running with a scavenger kit

I've used both what said. 2.0 is better for new people, as a visible tech tree helps and some other minor things. However, the achromatic is slightly more advanced, but I can't really point out anything in specific at the moment.

I saw that those were available on Steam, but I wasn't sure if they were worth it. I do like tabletop simulator for the most part, so I'm glad to hear this version is worthwhile.

Fingers crossed that Dark Souls gets a similar sim pack, too, so I can play with my Discord crew.

Does anyone here ever host games of it? I'd want to play with someone who knows how it works before I go and start hosting games.

>Fingers crossed that Dark Souls gets a similar sim pack, too, so I can play with my Discord crew.
Generally speaking only games that are good get fanmade TTS mods. I wouldn't hold your breath for a Dark Souls mod; it's thoroughly, offensively mediocre.

you do realize the dark souls game is already out, right? it took exactly 15 days to get into TTS from the date they started shipping it.

People can get those made that quick? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I've been hearing people slag on that game around here, but I haven't heard anyone saying why in particular. I haven't gotten to actually play it yet. What's the deal?

>tfw survive Hack City first time but roll a 5 on the event
>tfw survive Hack City a second time with the same survivor and roll a 10 on the event
>tfw Butcher kills everyone, anyway

...

Movement and Evasion are the best stats.

>survive hack city, get Legendary Lungs
>since Legendary Lungs isn't a 'may', gets character and another person killed due to hitting the trap too many times

Huh. I didn't realize it wasn't a choice, however... This survivor was the third to die before getting Legendary Lungs. The last guy was playing the harp, desperately trying to remove the moods in play, and I can only imagine the sheer terror the 'support' character felt as he watched that guy die the turn after getting Legendary Lungs.

>was the third to die; he got Legendary Lungs just before dying*
That was more than a little confusing after I re-read it.

So, when should I consider hunting the second level of a monster? I'm about to get to the Butcher and I'm scared shitless considering what I've heard about him. I want to get some more lion pieces, and going up a level is the best way to do that. What should I generally have to take on Lion L.2

You want paint, and for it to be after Ly4.
That's about it for the lvl2 of pretty much any quarry monster, and the lvl1 of the phoenix.
Since monsters also get tougher, if you haven't had much in the way of stat increases you might want to have a weapon or 4 from not the bone smith.
Other than that, just be prepared for overwhelming darkness. It's a huge goddamn pain in the fucking ass for 2 more guaranteed resources, but hunting just lvl1s isn't nearly enough to actually get the gear you need later down the line.

I got hovels instead of paint. Woe is me. But more or less everyone is wielding a non-bone weapon, except for the Axe using Survivor, who has been holding their own incredibly well. As in, outdamaging everyone else consistently.

Going to be honest, one of the biggest failings of the game is that level 2 monsters are never really worth hunting. They don't give you enough of a bonus in resources to justify the dramatic increase in power of the quarry.

Are L3 monsters worth it?

Disregard, they give unique loot. Of course they're worth it.

You should be aiming to innovate every year, if you're not. At the very least, should be attempting to be using every endeavor
Even when I managed to do that, even with symposium one campaign took until Y13 to actually pull paint.
They're also a large jump over the level 2s. Lion gets some of it's actually good hit locations removed and doubles it's undodgable grab damage it does every turn, antelope can continually gain tokens and is harder to hit, only gives a broken lantern unless you draw legendary horns making it even /tougher/, and that's not even getting into the bullshit that is hunt phase lvl3phoenix/antelope, and how easy it is to simply leave the board and have your settlement starve for nothing.
1.5 can't drop soon enogh.

>how easy it is to simply leave the board and have your settlement starve for nothing.
What. They can just LEAVE?

This actually brings up a question I had about Intimacy. If a Survivor has Matchmaker, they can trigger Intimacy after coming back from a hunt, right? That's just ONCE, I'm assuming?

The hunt board, they can get away before you are able to fight them.

I'm pretty sure it says you can only do it once. But sometimes you get many matchmakers

yep.
If they reach past starvation, they leave the hunt board.
There's actually a fighting art or something from the maneater that's sole purpose it to prevent that.
Good Luck.
No, that's every year. It's fantastic.

So have any of you guys played the game varients, like Hero mode, or Seven Swordsmen?

I want to try the Twilight Knight in Training as a solo one. Having a good combatant the whole game through should let me focus on learning settlement advancement. Though I guess Hero mode would work too.

My bad, thought you meant once a year.

I did, but I won't fault for trying to help. It is a subject that's led to confusion, since Intimacy seems poorly explained. In that it's really not.

You could totally have Hero Mode on Twlight Knight in Training and have an unkillable hero, maybe solo fighting all the monsters as the settlement grows and relies on him

Such a survivor may even grow to be your first hero, so to speak.

I'd like to try doing Seven Swordsmen, but with an actual population.
They can't fight, but they can breed and whatnot.
Only the Swordsmen can go on hunts. They must protect and provide for the village of noncombatants, and if either all the swordsmen OR all the civvies die it's game over.

And you could also use the rules for 5+ players, so you have all seven swordsmen going out to hunt at once

That sounds much more fun than the actual variant. What about taking it a step forward to Seven Samurai variant? They all use katanas, and when they reach mastery, they leave as normal, and make a survivor a new swordsman. But if one of the seven die, their weapon is gone forever, so you effectively lose a maximum number of active hunters.

I did seven swordsman hero mode when I was new for some retarded reason. had no idea what I was doing, fudged dice everywhere, just to figure out the game. Kinda worked, but wouldn't recommend it. Currently am doing PoTS preparing for The Hand. It's actually been pretty easy going, but I'm having to re-think a lot.
Skulls hand you the things you can't easily get normally, more evasion, luck, accuracy (evened out a bit by being relatively unable to upgrade weapons), and movement, but they also hand you speed. Traps being more prevalent and dangerous is pretty shit, the lion skin cloak and monster grease are basically your new gods.
I'm really not quite sure who came up with the seven swordsman variant. 7 is an awkward number of survivors to juggle until they start dying off, the only real reason I can think is just under the threshold for permanent armored strangers bonuses, or poots watches too much anime. I'd think seven swordsman+people of the stars might be more interesting, Tbh

Grand Weapon Master is originally from BECMI, and it altered the amount of damage a player could do with a weapon, by a significant amount. It was BECMI's way of trying to keep the fighter relevant at later levels, when compared to the wizard.

Example: In BECMI a grand master wielding a single long sword dealt 2d6+8 damage, along other benefits. Don't know how it works in 5E but it worked well in BECMI.

Are you baiting? Is this real? Or do you really have no idea what's being talked about here?

What are people's general opinions on the innovation deck?

I'm working on a highly customized campaign, and I keep thinking of things to add to the innovation deck, but don't want to dilute it too much. Instead, I'm thinking of removing certain innovations that make less sense in the setting.

I also am curious what people think about inner lantern and paint specifically. Do you like surge and dash being tied to innovations like this, with a somewhat random chance to obtain them, or would you prefer there be a guaranteed way of getting these actions?

As an example, I was thinking about removing paint and the art tree and replacing it with a few things, but not removing dash. Instead, I was thinking of adding it to a different innovation, but one that you can only get by fighting a specific nemesis for the first time. I feel like that adds a lot more importance to getting an ability like that, while also taking out the randomness of "maybe I'll get it LY1, maybe I'll get it LY 15"

The tradeoff is you definitely don't get it early. I'm estimating maybe LY 7 in my campaign? Depends how everything works out.

So yeah. Thoughts on the innovation deck and survival actions in general?

They're a little boring compared to other innovations, but they're very important to the game. Don't remove them. Don't even think about removing them. All you'll be doing is fucking yourself over unless you intentionally gimp monsters.

It can be a pain sometimes, but I like it. The randomness spices things up some.

I've made it a point to remove partnership if I'm running a solo campaign, but that's just me hating the fuck out of it.

What if partnership gave the couple +1 to intimacy rolls with each other?

It's a shame that innovation is as shit as it is.

Do you mean don't remove art innovations, or don't remove surge/dash? Cause I have no intention of removing surge/dash. Just changing how you get them.

Also any innovations I take out are being replaced by something else. Not necessarily by 1 to 1 type things, just new stuff to use in the new setting.

Dunno if that guy was around the other day, but I've been tinkering with a desert based campaign and some guy the other day said he thought about what KDM would be like if you were a caravan rather than a static settlement, so I've been rolling with that idea. I've been thinking of innovations relating to trade and surviving in the desert, and feel like maybe they don't really need to learn how to create sculptures or paint their faces.

On paper I like the idea of getting survival actions from an actual event rather than just rolling the dice on drawing it as an innovation, but mechanically, maybe it just works better that way. I still think it would be interesting to try.

It might be useful if it was +2, with an option for more but possible to lose, like it is in people of the Sun and purification/suneater.
But even that still runs into the issue of "why should I take SotF"
except even more so, since IIRC that's just way easier twins, minorly easier saviors, with absolutely no risk of death.

>Buy the Dark Souls board game, thinking it'll be a good game with good minis to paint
>Buy Kingdom Death: Monster after seeing how incredibly deep the gameplay mechanics are, and how outstanding the models are
>The Dark Souls game arrives
>Models are absolute ASS, and lacking in detail
>Their sole purpose it to serve as trainer models to hone my skills as a painter for when KD:M gets here

I cannot stress how disappointing the Dark Souls minis are. Everything in KD:M blows them straight out of the water.

Also, Axe Mastery is where it's at. Crits all day, every day

I was wondering about Club mastery. Since multiple attacks without canceling reactions is bad, I assumed Club mastery was less good than it sounded, but I can't possibly imagine Paired SAVAGE weapons being a bad thing. Not to mention both perfect hits AND critical wounds benefit you with Club Master.

Look at the 1.05 expansion

So more stuff like Hands of Heat?
Hell, maybe just go completely that way, instead of removing stuff. After each nemesis year, put a story event that gives you a specific important innovation as your reward for going through that bullshit (and, depending on how you want to do things, have it continue the tradition of having a table with Low Roll Get Fucked, but still get the thing)

That's the idea. One of the first things that happens like that I have around LY 3 or 4, where your settlement learns to travel as a caravan and bring all their shit with them. You get caravans as an innovation regardless. But the survivor that gains the knowledge MIGHT just be so overwhelmed with the possibility of other places to explore that he goes off running into the desert in search of them never to be seen again.

Do you mean 1.05?

Wow. 1.5.

Kingdom Death: Orc

Kingdom Death Orc is an experiment in game crafting and creativity with the goal of mashing 40k Orcs (or Orks) into Kingdom Death because of reasons mostly to do with -fun-.

Themes and shit;
Feral Orks "Only"

Settlement Locations (Tentative)
Idol of Gork
Idol of Mork
Doc's Shop;

Roll a Hit Location Dice and immediately roll both results on the Severe Injury Table.
Draw 1 Disorder.


7+ Restore one Permanent Injury on any single Orc.*

Mek's Werkshop;
Shaman's Hut;
Da Fungus/Gumbo Bar;
If you haven't innovated Cooking when you build Da Gumbo Bar you may spend 2 resources to immediately innovate it.
Gobbo Shanties/Slop Pit
Da Fight Pit


Have to redo all the principles and stuff too. was thinking something like this for the first day.

Event: First Day
1-3
2 Slaves and 4 Boys + Returning Boyz
4-6
3 Slaves and 6 Boys + Returning Boyz
7+
4 Slaves and 8 Boys + Returning Boyz

You can reduce your slave count by 1 to restre a permanent injury or to get an endeavor or something. But if you have no slaves the Boyz might start a brawl.

Also had a idea for "da boss" where one survivor gets chosen for a +2 str boost right off the bat. However if any other Orcs ever gain an equal STR bonus they have to fight for leadership of the settlement.

Principle Conviction could be changed to WAAAAAGH as well seeing as once you get enough Orcs that's what happens.

Thoughts?

Yes, numbers are hard.

That is a pretty significant buff over just giving them Paired and Savage. Wounds for days.

Probably a reference to the Seven Samurai maybe

I actually have a question on the innovation deck

Do I keep picking the base innovations till I have all of them and then start branching out, or do I just draw any innovations until I get ones that are connected to the base ones I've already found and choose from their. Or do I choose, specifically, to innovate from a branch I already have?

As soon as you get a innovation you add all the innovation that have "X consequence" on them to the Inno deck.

So if you get Lantern Oven you add all the Lantern Oven Consequences to the deck for the next draw.

Ah, thank you kindly.

Intimacy would have to get replaced with something to do with spores.

Yea I'm thinking of something like
"Muckin' About"
Intimacy with Orcs only takes 1 of them but the rolls are a lot worse to begin with and improve year to year as the spores propagate.

That was my original idea anyway.

Is there anywhere I can get a run down of the rules? I'm not going to be able to purchase the game for a while and I have bought some of the minis because they are pretty cool.

>it's thoroughly, offensively mediocre

Fucking this.

...

Yeah, they let Guild Ball shit the bed for this crappy game???

>Hating on people bothering to do cool shit like this.

Principle choice: "Red Onez Go Fasta/Green Iz Best" (early-midgame choice)
Red - If you have at least two red affinities, +1 movement.
Green - If you have at least two green affinities, +2 strength.

Principle choice: "More Choppy/More Dakka" (very lategame choice)
More Choppy - All Orks get Axe Mastery
More Dakka - All Orks get Bow Mastery

yeah both are probably bad/broken I'm just throwing shit out

:(

Blood Paint. Always Blood Paint with any one handed weapon. Become a damage machine, or a solid tank.

Blood Paint.

Fighting the Butcher:
Two people in full Rawhide Armor, and enough to activate the Rawhide Vest on everyone. 2-3 non-frail weapons, preferably the King's Spear and the Bow. Monster Grease on everyone. Cat Eye Circlet. Bandages. If you managed to open up the Leather Works, then a shield makes him half easy.

+2 Evasion when the Butcher has, comparatively, shit accuracy, means that you'll be negating about half his hits. If you can Block on top of that? You're golden.

Paint and maybe Inner Lantern. Use Paint to escape Hack City, as long as the Butcher chooses a target, you still get to roll on Legendary Lungs, even if he never performs the attack. When you realize you're going to trip over into Frenzy, spend all your survival on Surges. To mitigate this, allow 1-2 people to act as the tanks, so that he doesn't perform Menace all the time.

His HL deck is smallish, but it reshuffles every turn. Be careful of "digging" too deep into it, because the trap is dangerous.

Level 2 Monsters:
Vaguely similar to the above in prep work. Tougher monsters tend to have a greater number of actions available to them. Either drawing more AI cards, or getting free actions on top of their cards. All I'd say is that you want to be able to take advantage of what you can.

There's very little incentive for routinely hunting level 2 monsters. Hunting a level 1 white lion with the right "harvesting" gear can give you notably more, while being safer.

If anything, you should remove the innovation cards, but make acquiring them and their effects, special endeavors.

To elaborate on the value of level 2 monsters...

The small number of extra resources they give you for winning the fight isn't the value in fighting them. The value is in fighting them and getting more chances to critical wound and turn those crits into resources.

Axe and Bow masters are especially adept at this.

Careful management of the monster's AI deck can easily accomplish the same thing while keeping the survivors safer. The White Lion has an AI card that will steadily recover its wounds, and the Screaming Antelope has several healing options. By making sure you don't destroy these cards, you can extend the fight and bait out more critical wounds on the monster, generating more resources for yourself. Getting one of these with some crit-farming characters can easily let you empty the monster resource deck.

I think the Phoenix has a healing card as well, but that is a thing I do not like to hunt, and never try to actively exploit.

>speed is one of the best stats
Isn't too much speed fucking terrible? Your chance to trigger the trap card skyrocket.

In my experience, accuracy and luck is by far the strongest combo. We had a survivor with 6 luck, a couple accuracy, and only 2 speed and he was extremely useful. He could ignore a lot of negative wound reactions or reflexes since crits typically prevent reactions. Sword specialization also allowed for further control over reactions and the high luck meant that he had a strong chance against opponents with extremely high toughness.

Plus, paired with a bow/circlet user, it was guaranteed that he'd never hit a trap card. That wouldn't be the case with even just 3 speed. The cat arrow also lowered the monster's evasion which helped out a lot (if it hit). We wound up against a level 3 lion when we felt ballsy while hunting an antelope, and wound up using the circlet + rawhide hat twice every turn to control the lion and just let the high luck guy fuck him up the whole time.

Haha, what the fuck. I'll have to keep that in mind. I have one more hunt before the Butcher, and a bow and an axe, so I should be able to do this method.

Anyone have experience running the core variants? Seven Swordsman sound impossible with all the random "roll, you die" events.

>Orc
>Ork
>Boys
>Boyz
Poots is that you?

Bow and Axe MASTERS, not just bows and axes.
Bow masters get Deadly 2. Axe Masters automatically get criticals on persistent injury locations if they wound. Regular bows and axes don't.
Otherwise you're relying on rolling 10s to do that farming, in exchange for a marked increase in difficulty. Level 2 Lion, for example, has 10 toughness, gets an extra hit roll on every attack, all of those attacks do an extra damage, AND it will automatically grab and full move (which is now 7) anyone adjacent to it at the end of its turn on top of its action.
This is on top of the 5 extra AI cards it gets.

I'm running a solo seven swordsmen with hero mode, so even when one of my swordsmen dies, I just have him sit out the next hunt