Reply To: Character and Company Strategies with the New Perks/System?

[Wargasm]

Further thoughts:

— If anyone was wondering (as I was) whether you have to pick at least one perk from each lower tier to be able to take a perk from one of the higher tiers, the answer is no: so long as the total # of current perks is equal to the # of tiers below the given tier (they could all be from tier 1), you can take a perk from that higher tier

— Bullseye is no longer any use for helping you to shoot through melee to hit a target surrounded by allies, but it is excellent for hitting targets in forested terrain when there’s no way of moving into a clear line of sight

— the new Adrenaline perk costs 0 action points but 30 fatigue, and the new Recover perk costs 9 action points and zero fatigue … hence, if your max fatigue is well above 60 and is currently no less than 30 below exhaustion (say 44/75), you can use Adrenaline (74/75) and then use Recover (37/75) on the same turn and then act before any enemies on the next turn
— Adrenaline and Recover in combination work really well for taking the initiative against all manner of opponents without needing to actually have high initiative at all; they can allow you to catch bowmen, avoid being netted by goblins, avoid being stunned by an orcish charge, or have three attacks against a massive two-hander before you get attacked yourself
— If all of your melee fighters have these and you further combine them with Backstabber (and then Crippling Strikes and later perhaps Fearsome), you can potentially surround lots of dangerous opponents early in battle and inflict damage and impair their morale before they have any chance to get you back (and if you cripple them they might not be very good at getting you back once they do get their turn)
— Once the above is achieved, you could potentially protect yourself with Underdog and/or the new version of Hold Out, or you could try getting rid of shields and taking Duellist and/or Berserk, so that damage/momentum is increased still further
— You could potentially try to turn it into an exciting “Naked Savages” build where you wear light armour and carry no/small shields and don’t even do much to increase your defence skills, but just stake everything on swarming and devastating more heavily armed opponents, or you could go with Brawny + Battle Forged so that you can afford to take some big hits if things go wrong

— I could foresee Adrenaline and Recover being used in concert with Footwork for some new chicanery (especially by some skimishers armed with nets, missiles and 2-tile weapons)

— the new Backstabber perk is immeasurably awesome for 2-tile fighters; for each ally on an adjacent tile to your target, you get an additional +10 chance to hit
— I love longaxes, since they can take shields away from an elusive opponent, but with the hit bonus from Backstabber I often find myself going straight for Strike with a hit chance already well above 50%

— thus far, I’ve seen very little possibility for making use of the new version of the Nimble perk, but (thanks to mystical ancient armours with a massive increase in protection but a fatigue value similar to that of more mid-range helms) lots of possibility for making use of the new version of the Battle Forged perk

— the new version of the Shield Expert perk (i.e. the old Shield Expert and Deflect ones combined) isn’t all that attractive by itself, especially not if you haven’t even decided if someone’s going to always rely on shields, but it becomes an attractive possibility if you start looting lots of exotic shields that offer +20-30 melee and/or ranged defence, since the defence bonus is then a bit bigger and (more importantly) the durability is much greater against orcs, bandits and fallen heroes

— spears seem more attractive than swords for new recruits in the early part of the game, since the ability of swords against armour is eye-catchingly poor, but exotic looted swords with increased raw damage and unusual effectiveness at breaking/ignoring armour become an attractive prospect for most fighters, and the Sword Mastery perk would then allow them (with a fatigue cost of just 16 for two slashes per turn) to wear and carry as much heavy shit as possible without ever getting fatigued