Hints, Tips, Tricks, and Optimization

Overview

This is meant to be a supplement to the Rules and Class guide by Felipepepe. Helping people to better optimize their characters growth

Introduction

This is meant to be a supplement to the Rules and Class guide by Felipepepe.

The main drive is to help people resolve their optimization questions in a way that does not spoil the main plot, particular battles, or items which will be found in the game.

If you read Felipepepe’s guide and this one you should end up with a fairly comprehensive understanding of the system and how to design the character that does what you want it to do.

General Tips

Attack is the most valuable statistic in the game: Warriors should focus on maximizing this at the cost of all else.
Dodge is the second most valuable defensive statistic in the game: Everyone should focus on maximizing this
Parry is a good secondary statistic for Mages and non-hammer blow warriors
Magic Resistance is particularly powerful against mages and magical creatures
Preventing Wounds is a Willpower Test which rolls against Strength, Constitution, and Courage. Willpower says “ignore the effects of wounds” but what it really means is “ignore getting wounds all together”
Damage Types Vs Armored Targets: Magic=Fire>Infantry>Bashing>Piercing>Slashing
Piercing is the only damage type (iirc) which a significant number of enemies will be entirely immune to. Ignoring armor does not help this
1d6 = 3.5 average damage: Useful for comparing various weapon damages.
Randomness is good if you’re behind, but bad if you’re ahead. Generally this means that 1d6 is worth less than +3.5 damage. How much exactly is up to you.
Always carry a torch: Some thing just need to be set on fire

Character maximization

Specific Bonuses tend to be more potent than base attributes: It takes 5 levels of attributes to equal 1 level of a specific bonus. Given that specific bonuses are half as cheap as base attributes even if you wanted all of the stats that a base attribute granted you would be better off investing in a talent or ability.
Don’t level up melee weapons to even intervals: even intervals add only a parry value when the slider is all the way on offense. The exception to this is level 16 for your second and third melee weapon skill or a non-axe shield user. Mages who slide all the way to parry have the same issue but in reverse, they’re paying for parry and every even skillup increases their attack instead
Five is the optimum level for “one drop” weapon skills, allowing every point to be put into offense and providing the maximum “flashback” strength for the minimum investment.
Weapon master is worth it only in the very lategame. It is +1 attack, +2 damage, and +1 parry for all weapons. It costs 2990 AP for 16 in two off main weapon skills and the ability.
In comparison for 2330 AP you can level strength from 13 to 18, providing +1 attack, +2 damage, +1 parry, +1 dodge, +2.5 HP, a significant amount of max carry weight, and a significant amount of reduction in wound chance
Weapons themselves have bonuses to attack and parry do not underestimate the effect this has on your combat effectiveness
Abilities which “ignore armor” ignore all of the percentage reduction significantly increasing their realized damage against armored targets
Do not underestimate the effects of wounds in combat: -2 attack, -2 parry, -2 dodge, -2 speed for every wound level having someone who can consistently apply wounds to high value targets is a valuable thing
Armor use is worth 1 attack and 1 dodge at the most recent relevant level. That is, if you’re wearing leather it does nothing. If you’re wearing chain it does 1 attack/dodge level on the most recent relevant level. It caps out at 2 attack/2 dodge for the entire tree
Armor: Bigger is better. Always and forever. Concentrate on having as high a % reduction as possible.

Melee Weapons

Each Weapon Type has various advantages and disadvantages in addition to their listed damage and damage types
One handed Axes tend to have -1 to -2 to attack and -2 to -3 to parry. There is one or two exceptions but these exceptions make Axes very powerful
Fencing weapons tend to have +2,3, or 4 to attack. Combined with Feint/Targeted Stab/Death blow this makes them very effective at causing wounds and dealing damage to armored targets. These attacks also do not negate parry attempts and Fencing weapons have some of the better parry values in the game.
Two Handed Swords have between -2 and 0 attack but all but one do slashing damage. They are not eligible for attacks that ignore armor
Two handed bashing weapons have between -1 and -2 but are the only weapons that provide infantry damage
One handed swords tend to have even attack values and the better swords have even parry values. While they only do slashing damage they also are available for targeted stab/death blow.
Daggers provide between 0 and 2 attack but come with some of the better special abilities.
Dual Wielding is only advantageous if you poison your weapons. Otherwise ignoring armor will be stronger for piercing weapons/swords and Hammer Blow will be stronger for the rest
Shields provide free parry stats to anyone using a one handed weapon. They can also provide free attack stats to anyone with the shield fighting skill. There is no reason to not use a shield if you’re using a one handed weapon.
Spears tend to provide +1 to +2 attack, decent special skills and access to the armor ignoring values

This tends to make two handed swords the weakest of the weapons though there does exist a single magic damage typed two hander which is sufficiently strong enough to justify using the set
This also tends to make “one handed+shields” as the stronger of the options
The best 2-handed axe has an attack malus of -1. The best one handed mace has an attack bonus of +1. The difference after shield bonuses is 4. So a 1 hander has a 20% better chance to hit than the two hander.
A fencer would have a total of +7(+4 on the weapon, +2 on the shield, +1 from 2 handed attack malus), for a 35% better chance to hit. Plus better options to deal wounds and penetrate high dodge/parry enemies.

Ranged Weapons

Because Ranged Weapons get each point to attack it tends to be a lot easier to hit with them than melee weapons: At 18 skill a Bow/CB user has + 8 to attack over a two handeded user, +3/4 over an axe/sword user, and + 1 over a shield fencer.
That doesn’t include the potential +2 from perception or +10 from Hawkeye (call it +5 as the difference between rank 4 Standfast Catlike)
Bows are generally stronger for a specialist than crossbows because they have access to triple shot
Do not underestimate the power of Marksman.
Throwing weapons are limited in their number of uses but do not require changing weapons in order to swap between melee and ranged

Spells

In general: Strength Spells>Protection Spells>Damage Spells
Consider the marginal on damage/cost when looking at spells
Spells which have overlapping effects have disproportionate impact
The best spells imo are: Shadow Force, Hawkeye, Standfast Catlike, Move as Lightning(3), Arcane Wall, Lightning Find you, Corpofe Paralyze(1,4), Karnifilo Frenzy(1), Healing Balm (3), Burst of flame(1), and Wrath of the Elements
Witches Bile doesn’t seem to hit enough to make it worth it, otherwise its basically a 1 hit kill spell as enemies will be held long enough to kill them in any reasonable fight.
This does not mean that direct damage spells are not useful, just that they are not particularly efficient damage dealers
Astral Mastery is worth precisely 1 point of Astral Regeneration if and only if you cast that turn. Value it accordingly
Steadfast Casting is worth roughly 5 points of spell level for all spells. This is very powerful for spells which have high AP cost, which you want to cast low levels of, and which you also want points in like Paralyze and Karnifilo Frenzy

Reasons for this

Hawkeye and Move as Lightning(3) overlap to make an archer super deadly. Hawkeye provides 5 damage for 4 rounds. (20 damage, 60 with triple shot) Move as Lightning doubles that to 40-120 damage. Per cast/cost this is extremely effective
Standfast Catlike gives your melee attack which they desperately need: Its also AoE and so benefits the entire team while you’re unlikely to have more than one specialist archer everyone needs dodge
Healing Balm (3) heals wounds, so think of it as +2-6 to attack, parry, dodge, and speed.
Lightning Find you is much more effective than Corpofesso. Level 3 corpo reduces attack on a single enemy by 5. Level 4 LFY reduces the attack of the entire enemy team by the same amount.
Paralyze, Arcane Wall, Karnifilo Frenzy, and Wrath of the Elements will take enemies out of the fight for some number of turns and prevent enemies from activating important objectives on the map, this is very strong
Paralyze level 4 is also the best tank buff in the game by far making you essentially immune to enemies which do not have ways to ignore armor (and making you immune to the wounds which those enemies cause
Burst of flame can be essential to setting some things on fire
If you have a weapon which does magic damage Paralyze(1) may let you easily kill any target as Paralyze gives magic resistance and few enemies translate MR into armor.

Conclusion and Contributions

I feel this is a fairly good selection of things to get people on their way to building the characters that do what they want to do as well as they want to do it. If you feel I have left anything out, please let me know in the comments and if I think its valuable enough to go in the guide I will add your comment with proper attribution.

Blackguards Guide