Development Info Knights of the Chalice 2 Development Update

[Jasede]

Fuck balance, man. Fuck balance.

Figuring out what does the biggest numbers is part of the fun. If you can't create a hilariously OP team of smashers you're missing half the fun of RPGs.


Balance leads to Ryu being the only character in a fighting game.

 

[Lhynn]

Fuck balance, man. Fuck balance.

Figuring out what does the biggest numbers is part of the fun. If you can't create a hilariously OP team of smashers you're missing half the fun of RPGs.


Balance leads to Ryu being the only character in a fighting game.

Fuck it right in the ass.

 

[deuxhero]

People specialize in rare weapons then get butthurt when it turns out they really are rare.

I didn't really understand why they dropped the weapon categories from BG1. You had to pick your weapon specializations with very little knowledge in BG2.

They also didn't make much sense. If you're an expert with a longsword, you should be pretty decent with a katana.

Not just pretty decent. A large portion of kendo and German fencing are nearly identical because the human body's range of movement is universal.

 

[Average Manatee]

"I am the master of the long sword, I can attack 10 times in the blink of an eye and cleave a human hair down the middle."
"Cool bro, take this short sword. It's about 6 inches shorter."
"Ohh fuck how do I even hold this thing?"



Incidentally, has there ever been a combat system in which familiarity with your opponent's weapon was a major factor? Because that should honestly be far more important than anything else assuming you are moderately experienced. Any conventional weapon should be utilizable to a high degree of proficiency, the trick is knowing how to exploit the weakness of whatever weapon your enemy is using.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Fuck balance, man. Fuck balance.

Figuring out what does the biggest numbers is part of the fun. If you can't create a hilariously OP team of smashers you're missing half the fun of RPGs.


Balance leads to Ryu being the only character in a fighting game.

You deserve a good fisting.

 

[Lhynn]

"I am the master of the long sword, I can attack 10 times in the blink of an eye and cleave a human hair down the middle."
"Cool bro, take this short sword. It's about 6 inches shorter."
"Ohh fuck how do I even hold this thing?"

No... attacks and chance to hit come mostly from your experience level...
IF done right it means that youll just be better with a long sword, while being competent with any other weapon.

 

[Excidium]

Incidentally, has there ever been a combat system in which familiarity with your opponent's weapon was a major factor? Because that should honestly be far more important than anything else assuming you are moderately experienced. Any conventional weapon should be utilizable to a high degree of proficiency, the trick is knowing how to exploit the weakness of whatever weapon your enemy is using.

I never played it but I figure The Riddle of Steel is like that from what I've read. Although the weapon is far less important than the fighting style.

 

[almondblight]

I am fucking lost now, DPS territory? no, crit/crit range are more on the spike damage territory, armor penetration depending on its implementation should go to the burst damage area.

Over time criticals are going to average a certain damage increase. The fact that they spike would be useful, I suppose, in situations where you're trying to kill someone in one hit, relying on the critical, and deciding to take a gamble. But the majority of the time it's going to mean a certain damage bonus. Armor penetration even more so - this weapon ignores two points of damage, this one ignores one, what's the relative damage outputs? DPS stuff.

and yes, on BGI it was commonly accepted that proyectile weapons for every party member were very important, thus you had an "archer" formation. on IWD i remember having members with reach weapons to fight behind tanks. everything can have tactical relevance if you do it well.

Eh? By "archer formation" you mean giving every bows until the enemies get within a certain range, then switching your frontline guys to shields? (or just having them run in circles while the enemies get picked off) Not what I'd call "formation efficiency." And were you playing IWD with some kind of tactics mod? The enemies just attack the first person they see. You also couldn't block them with tanks unless you had created a bunch of tanks and were in a narrow corridor.

But eh. That's besides the point. You're arguing about weapons that (could) play very differently, not katanas/long swords/short swords/axes/maces/warhammers. For example...

Specialization does not make things worse, fucktards that build their games around all warriors being specialized is the real root of the problem, specialization shouldnt be something to "keep up", it should be something to make you stand out. But not only that, it should open new tactical possibilities, not close others. A warrior with a whip and a warrior with an halberd should play wildly different, not only in numbers but also in the type of actions they can take in a single round, thus making every weapon a small "spellbook" and specialization a way to get new "spells".

Right, they could play wildly different. And then we would be talking about something else entirely. We'd being talking about games like AoD or Deus Ex, where specializing in particular weapons means choosing a particular tradeoff - there's no weapon that inherently inferior, they are different. That's just about the opposite of the BG specialization, which is choosing from amongst a number of weapons that play the same way and hoping the one you picked has good drops. You're arguing that the latter is OK because the former is cool, which makes no sense.

And there is a limit to how much skillchecks you want and how specific they can be.

Bullshit. Where im going at is not how different can a weapon be from the other, im just saying, stuff needs to be there because the concept of roleplaying is playing a role, what role? your choice. Does the game allow you to play that role? depends on the limitations of the character creation.

So why limit the player when you don't have to? Screw balance.

 

[Roguey]

I see we've entered the portion of discussion where some posters build up strawmen so they can tear them down. Time to lay down some concrete.

In Knights of the Chalice you can have up to four party members. You may have one or two knights in this party; three would really be overdoing it because this is three point fail and weapon-classes will soon be shit compared to spellcasters. There are five weapon-specific feats: these are weapon focus x, greater weapon focus x, weapon specialization x, greater weapon specialization x, and improved critical x. The weapons that apply are dagger, light mace, sickle, club, heavy mace, morningstar, shortspear, spear, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, light hammer, handaxe, kukri, light pick, short sword, battle axe, flail, longsword, heavy pick, rapier, scimitar, trident, warhammer, falchion, greataxe, greatclub, heavy flail, greatsword, halberd, scythe, longbow, shortbow, bastard sword, and dwarven waraxe. That's a lot of fucking weapons you can sink five feats into and they're not going to be equally supported. Now if you're dummy you'll say "Just put points in longswords if you want to play it safe durrrrrrrrrrrrr" but that's boring and unnecessarily constricting for what is already a pretty damn boring class to build and play with the Three Point Awful ruleset. If someone only wants to play through a combat sim once they have a right to specialize their knight in a weapon they think would be more interesting to use, but unfortunately Begue might not share that interest and they could end up with a knight who is even more dead weight than usual. Fortunately, crafting feats allow you to create a weapon of any type and make it super-enchanted, but that's a bandaid on fundamentally flawed shit design. "Must-have" feats are boring, period.

By the by, Knights of the Chalice 2 will do the smart thing by putting weapon feats into groups. He removed crafting entirely so he pretty much had to do it this way (unless he wanted to make a bad game). Deal with it, nardtards.

 

[Lhynn]

Roguey
Based on 3.X, what were you expecting? casters are THE shit, fighters are gimp, only way fighters can compete is by borrowing magic powers in the form of items. All because the system is poorly designed.

The only reason fighters are boring is because the one that makes the game (the dev) makes them boring. thats all there is to that. Its true that specialization feats take away from the experience of playing a fighter, thats why they should be either free or increase your options on the field instead of just giving you a flat bonus.

If you want to make that class interesting and entertaining all you have to do is be willing to do it.

almondblight i seriously dont even know what you are arguing about anymore. seems like its mostly semantics or your lack of understanding about different kinds of mechanics. Plus im pretty sure you repeated something i said 3 pages ago, but too lazy to search for it.

To answer your last question, why make it an RPG at all? why not make it a movie? if everything is going to be easy its going to be boring. a player wants his OP shit he has to work for it, as long as he does im ok with powerful things in the players hand.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Time to lay down some concrete.

Followed by "but waaaah some people might get shitty weapons waaah waah waaaah".
Some fucking concrete, right there.

 

[Gregz]

Time to lay down some concrete.

Followed by "but waaaah some people might get shitty weapons waaah waah waaaah".
Some fucking concrete, right there.

You're such a fucking shit poster.

 

[Average Manatee]

Incidentally, has there ever been a combat system in which familiarity with your opponent's weapon was a major factor? Because that should honestly be far more important than anything else assuming you are moderately experienced. Any conventional weapon should be utilizable to a high degree of proficiency, the trick is knowing how to exploit the weakness of whatever weapon your enemy is using.

I never played it but I figure The Riddle of Steel is like that from what I've read. Although the weapon is far less important than the fighting style.

Yeah, Fighting style is more what I meant. The most important part of a battle should be your ability to quickly read your opponent and pick up on their tells, then knowing and utilizing the proper counterattack.

It'd be an interesting RPG where a fighter would have a mostly fixed stats and skillset with the main avenue of improvement being their knowledge and experience vs. different enemies.

 

[DefJam101]

DnD warriors suck, news at 11.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I enjoyed the first a lot and look forward for the next!

 

[mondblut]

I always considered a tree-like system of interdependent grouping for weapons (incidentally, that could also be used for magic schools and other groups of logically connected skills, up to "athletics" encompassing running, jumping, swimming etc). Basically, there would be "stem" skills such as swords, polearms, etc, and more specialized subskills such as long sword, short sword and so on. As your specialized skill increases, it drags its related skills along, albeit at slower pace. When you improve your longsword by 2, you get better at other swords by 1. That would both allow for narrowly specialized skills (which I do like), and avoid the D&D's "broadsword grandmaster who can't hold a longsword without wounding himself" silliness.

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

I always considered a tree-like system of interdependent grouping for weapons (incidentally, that could also be used for magic schools and other groups of logically connected skills, up to "athletics" encompassing running, jumping, swimming etc). Basically, there would be "stem" skills such as swords, polearms, etc, and more specialized subskills such as long sword, short sword and so on. As your specialized skill increases, it drags its related skills along, albeit at slower pace. When you improve your longsword by 2, you get better at other swords by 1. That would both allow for narrowly specialized skills (which I do like), and avoid the D&D's "broadsword grandmaster who can't hold a longsword without wounding himself" silliness.

 

[mercyRPG]

KOTC 1 isn't on GOG. The demo is good however, but some people find $20 a little too much.
The developer definitely deserves the money, however I won't pay that much.

Anyone interested in a group buy of Knights of the chalice 1. ? (If yes, send me an email to baszermaszer@gmail.com with subject KOTC)

 

[Jasede]

Best RPG since 2007 and you- NNGH
/me develops cancer

 

[Declinator]

Best RPG since 2007 and you- NNGH
/me develops cancer

Fixed

 

[Castanova]

KOTC 1 isn't on GOG. The demo is good however, but some people find $20 a little too much.
The developer definitely deserves the money, however I won't pay that much.

Anyone interested in a group buy of Knights of the chalice 1. ? (If yes, send me an email to baszermaszer@gmail.com with subject KOTC)

If you can't spare $20 for one of the best cRPGs ever then you should get off your lazy fucking ass and work at a job for all of the two hours it would take you.

 

[Cosmo]

The messiah has come to visit us again. I'm surprised you didn't quote yourself on that one...

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

Oh man.

You guys are so fucking messed up that I am forced to come out of retirement for this one post:

The entire idea of crafting (And anything that directly relates to economy) is only meaningful and enjoyable when it satisfies two criteria:

1) The ingredients are very very rare
2) When crafting is limited by character skill

This assures that you don't find +1 swords on every dire rat and not every character with int 8 can make Bow of the Pink Hippopotamus. Additionally if the recipes make actual sense in context, more the power to the system.

 

[Mangoose]

Just noticed that KOTC2 is being worked on so I registered and popped into the Buyers forum. Since this update he's provided 6 more updates, so about one every two months, and the last one from June. Seems like he's serious about getting this made, at his own but consistent pace.

 

[JarlFrank]

"I am the master of the long sword, I can attack 10 times in the blink of an eye and cleave a human hair down the middle."
"Cool bro, take this short sword. It's about 6 inches shorter."
"Ohh fuck how do I even hold this thing?"



Incidentally, has there ever been a combat system in which familiarity with your opponent's weapon was a major factor? Because that should honestly be far more important than anything else assuming you are moderately experienced. Any conventional weapon should be utilizable to a high degree of proficiency, the trick is knowing how to exploit the weakness of whatever weapon your enemy is using.

GURPS comes p. close, especially if you modify it a bit.

There really needs to be a GURPS RPG some day.