Dark Knights

[Nycticora]

I would love to be able to give beia a vamp to play but the entire rest of the pbase would jump so far up my ass I'd never hear the end of it

[Fireballe2]

A few vamps for anyone is better than no vamps for anyone.

[beia]

I would not be able to Rpz a vampire right now anyway.

I found this old gif of Nycticora when he use to get pked as a mort.

[Davairus]

[Mummy]

I don't think Drow DK is underpowered with addition of mounts giving them a formidable bash and protecting from trip and caltrap.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try incorporating some of these next time I fight a DK.

[Fireballe2]

tripping or caltraps vs hybrids is a nonstarter anyway. Maybe vs paladins, but not vs dks. There's no reason to do those things.

like you said, the mount gives them a better bash, which really means that a ton of racial gimpiness was explicitly coded against with a specific skill/spell for a specific class. Its like sticking one's finger in a dike.

[Ergorion]

[Nycticora]

[Hrimoyan]

[Mummy]

Fire giant race page says strength.

[Fireballe2]

Its probably strength, since bodyslam is dex based. If we're talking about a dwarf zerk bodyslam, I've been told dex is the stat for it.

[Mikoos]

The only way to kill a skilled dk as a ninja is assassinate. Else you're at the mercy of randomness. As a drow ninja your poison might make him drop his wep. But I'd say a skilled dk would have it cursed. If assassinate fails you'll just find your self getting bashed to death by a dk who has maxed his unholy strength. So flee and reset as fast as possible. Also anyone who says dks are underpowered needs to do some more pking against or with one. Esp a jotun. I think ninjas have a better chance of killing necros or illusionist at this point.

[Fireballe2]

a cursed weapon is asking to be owned by weapon skills. Why don't you guys try using weapon skills to nuke them? Lead with assassinate for damage and a possible instant death, skirmish to wear down their hp and unholy strength, grapple toss them off their horse, dirt them in towns or other areas that'll give them the longest time to rub it out since they don't have blind fighting, and then give them the weapon skill nukes. Those things hurt, and they have secondary effects.

Sidestepping someone whoring polearms really, REALLY hurts.

[Mikoos]

You have some points, but a good dk will have a weapon changing alias he'll use after he flees. First it'll quaff a potion of weapon freeing then change his wep to what he wants. Then initiate with bash. All the while the ninja might be stuck recovering or just recovered from a weapon skill. And I'd never use sidestep for a few reasons. Even if it hurts the dk a bit, thats 3 rounds of lag + a bash on top. And a dk worth his salt would flee, wear a male break and vamp back to a few scratches. Laughing all the while if he managed to hit the ninja with faerie fire. Of course the ninja can use acupuncture in response, If that works then the ninja has only delayed the inevitable. Now I might use sidestep if I see an opening, such as a missed bash, but that might pass me to quick, I'd rather try to blind and hope we come out even lag wise and that the RNG hasn't screwed me in the rounds. The dks just pump out too much damage and even more if they use a drow vuln.

[Fireballe2]

weapon freeing is -15 strength for one tick. If they try that, they wont have a weapon in their hand and you get free damage on someone with no strength. If they have full unholy armor from their weighty armor, they'll also be draining the crap out of their moves trying to run.

[Mikoos]

Well that's lame, esp if unholy strength doesn't counter that. In that case I would just wield a cursed polearm and go to town on the poor ninja.

[Fireballe2]

sidesteps ahoy.

[Mikoos]

I still don't think that's enough against a polearm dark knight. In order for it to work great you're counting on sidestep landing AND trip which leaves more to the RNG. And if he is on his pony trip won't work. Meanwhile he is trying to get lucky with a bash or blinding you or other skills. And even if you do try to blind him that gives him two more rounds to bash you. And ninjas don't have polearms so that increases his chances of landing hits. I suppose he could trade DMG equipment for str equipment and hope unholy strength makes up for the damage while he switches weps, but that's a lot of work and I'd be too lazy of a dark knight to to that.

[Fireballe2]

I'll playtest a ninja and see what I can figure out. You're right, the sidestep lag is too long. I don't think having it lag so much is a valid counter to how much damage it does. We want more of the gameplay in the skill hand, less in the luck or shutout hand.

from what I can tell, it's supposed to have a similar effect to strike of faith/pain. It has the same lag, so I think it's supposed to be as gamechanging as those abilities. The irony being that SoF/P is useless against anything but spellcasters, and also against them if they're any good at keeping ward up.

[Olyn]

Good plan.