Five Fingers of Death - Fighting Arts Part 3 of 3 (Patreon)

As we've released the Secret Fighting Arts (files updated with typo corrections and the layout seems good) it's time to wrap up this overview of Fighting Arts.

Before I start out, I want to take a quick moment to remind people that the Romantic conviction lets you pick from 3 fighting arts whenever you get random ones. So if you are looking to make Fighting Art based builds as strong as possible, Romantic is absolutely the right Conviction choice over Barbaric (It's the stronger of the two anyway, and gets even stronger when you have the Vagabond armor promo set).

Ruthless

I mentioned last time that any ability of any kind that triggers only on the deaths of other survivors needs to be very, very powerful in order to make up for it.  Some examples of good ones are Last Man Standing, Gloom Man and Silk Surgeon Rank 3.  Ruthless is not one of those.

This is in most situations a bad cannibalize. It gets a little stronger in People of the Skull because skulls are super powerful in that campaign, but that's about it. It's just bad.

It is worth noting as well that Ruthless can only give you a skull resource if there is one in the basic resource deck, if it's out and someone already has it, this fighting art does nothing - likewise multiples of it are bad. 

There is a fairly odd situation that can occur when you combine Rutheless with Bone Whisperer(s), where the Skull is collected and then it is eaten multiple times without the resource being lost. Just one of those places where game mechanics make the reality of the world feel really silly.

1/5

Seasoned Hunter

This is a marginal benefit fighting art that you won't be upset with (if you can remember that you have it). It has a 10% chance of triggering on each basic hunt event drawn, which is reasonable - especially when hunting the higher level monsters.  

But that's about it, it doesn't directly help your survivors in the hunt or showdown and once they have maxed out understanding in particular (which is generally better than max courage), it falls off hard.

Pretty average, though it is great when you want to use it with the Thundercaller ability (result 100), as having 3+ courage is pretty essential there.

2/5

Sneak Attack

There was a bit of a discussion about Sneak Attack (Snack Attack) on the discord recently, with one poster feeling that the fighting art was 'broken powerful'.  However they landed in a solid minority, with most people (myself included) feeling that it was powerful, but not broken.

Sneak attack gives you a lot of strenght.  Now instead of going into this in detail over again, I'm going to cut and paste my comments from the discord conversation.

"...it's very balanced, it even allows shitty weapon types to become viable. But on the good ones? The extra strength doesn't matter so much because they already have what they need.  Snack attack brings diversity to the games weapons. 

 

There is diminishing returns on strength against most monsters. each +1 strength is not worth as much as the ones that came before it

for example, if you wound only on a 10, then +1 strength = 100% increase in your power (10% to 20% chance of success), but wounding on a 9, with a +1 strength is only a 50% improvement over the previous state (20% to 30% chance of success). These are just the extreme examples, but you can work your way down and you end up with 3+ (80% chance) to 2+ (90% chance) is only a relative increase in wounding power of 12.5%. Same thing happens with Luck, Evasion and Accuracy.  Yes it's nice to have Sneak Attack, you would keep it over many other fighting arts, but unless you are coupling it with low strength weapons, you're not getting much value out of it."

In essence, if you have Sneak Attack, you should be considering using stuff like Whips and Daggers on the Sneak Attack user (especially Daggers).

4/5 for the first two in your hunt party

Strategist

This one is given by Protect the Young 50% of the time and that's one of the stronger reasons for picking Protect the Young over Survival of the Fittest in People of the Lantern.

Strategist gives you access to an almost permanent +2 accuracy, +2 range on your archer by letting you set up a Great Stone Face (GSF) in the showdown.  (This is also one of the few ways you can get a Great Stone Face in when you are facing an L3 Dung Beetle Knight)

That's a huge benefit as the GSF is one of the most powerful strategic pieces of terrain that survivors can use.

5/5 for the first one in your hunt party, 4/5 for the second, 0/5 for the rest.

Tenacious

This is one for DPS characters, it allows you to slip those critical hit locations with resources/beneficial critical hits back on top of the deck for the second DPS or Surge to try and benefit at again.

It also has some really interesting impact with Dagger Mastery or setting up locations for an Axe Master to inflict permanent injuries.  

However, you do not really need more than one copy of it.

4/5

Thrill Seeker

Super powerful with Rawhide in the early game, Thrill Seeker can feel like one of the most powerful FAs in the game until you realise that you cannot spend all your time wearing Rawhide (unless you are the support character).

In the mid to late game, Thrill Seeker falls off unless you have some alternative way of generating survival on a regular basis (for example Abyssal Sadist).

4/5

Timeless Eye

This one enables so many different strategies on a bunch of weapons, fighting arts and weapon proficiencies that I wish it was just an option for any survivor who reaches Age I. 

For me, personally, it's the best fighting art in the game by a long margin, because it's the most interesting one there is, and it's gotten even more interesting with the introduction of things like Backstabber (Echoes of Death) that play with perfect hit design even more.

6/5

Tough

+1 to all (non-1) severe injuries is a huge benefit to any settlement. For most severe injuries that's a 50% increase in avoiding death for your survivors and it stacks with the equally amazing unbreakable (or things like Dried Acanthus).  

It's one that is really powerful on ageless survivors, but it's welcome for any survivor who is looking to last a long while.

5/5

Trailblazer

This one becomes more and more powerful the more survivors you have with it.  The main impact is skipping multiple steps on the hunt, the less hunt events you have to deal with, the less problematic the hunt will be.  Yeah it can be fun to draw all those strange cards and make all those dice rolls, but on the whole, the hunt is more detrimental for survivors than beneficial.

As an interesting aside, 4x Trailblazers skip the Forest Gate when hunting the L1 Flower Knight, because they start on it. This allows for crazy farming strats to gain Iron.

The start of the showdown ability is likewise very powerful.  This is lowkey one of the better fighting arts in the game to sculpture.

5/5

Transcended Masochist

Speaking of lowkey, Transcended is very powerful in the right builds (Story of the Young Hero Bleed builds) and it cancels out two of the most annoying disorders in the game (aichmophobia and apathetic). So it's a very powerful thing to have in your games.

It also has some huge benefits against the L4 Manhunter's tricks. Just a really solid and fun fighting art to have.

4/5

Trick Attack

This one can be combined with a Headliner tank to create some benefits from great monster control. However, even without Headliner it's a seriously powerful for a DPS character to contribute to controlling the monster. You move the tank to a space adjacent to the monster's blind spot where your DPS is, set your block, and then the Trick Attack survivor goes for it.

You can also use this in emergency situations as a form of monster control. If you have an out of position survivor, who will get crushed by the monster next turn, this can allow you to pull the monster away to a safer target.

4/5

Tumble

This one is given out as part of the Dancer armor package, which honestly is where it is often best utilised.  It is also present on the Green Boots where it works on a 2+.

However, because you get to avoid collision half the time with this fighting art it can be very powerful when you are dealing with monsters that like to use collision as a way of causing harm. For example the Dung Beetle Knight or Screaming Antelope.

Unfortunately, the 50% activation rate means that this FA isn't top tier, but it is still powerful.  

3/5 (5/5 on the Green Armor 2+ version)

Unbreakable

Along with Tough, this is one of the best fighting arts for ensuring that your survivor lives long enough to complete their weapon proficiency and become a real powerhouse.

This is even tutorable in People of the Stars, and just about every member of your hunt party should end up with it.

5/5

Unconscious Fighter

Along with Purpose, this is one of the ways to gain the Suppressed Shadow SFA when facing the Sunstalker. It's also a seriously powerful fighting art that increases your durability and threshold against random things that may kill you. It has synergy with Tough, Purpose and things that help you take multiple severe injuries but survive like some of the Gorm gear.

Durability is amazing in KD:Monster. This has it in spades, though often Bandages will do the job just as well.

4/5

Unrelenting

This one becomes more powerful the less dice you use, therefore Grand Weapon users are the number one beneficiaries of this fighting art and if you get it in Age I, that is the weapon type you should consider pursuing.

The more dice you roll to attack with (unless the weapon is wildly inaccurate), the less likely it is to trigger. So outside of low speed weapons it can become a bit worthless.

The survival costs is also hard to maintain without something like Abyssal Sadist to help.

2/5 - very situational

Vengeance

Repeat text about how weak things are that trigger on the death of other survivors.

I do not think there is a viable 'Vengeance' strategy where you kill off 3 survivors and have the 4th one gain +3 strength tokens.  

This is just something that you replace when you have the chance.

1/5

Wardrobe Expert

In most cases, gear is worth a LOT more than the survivor wearing it. There are marginal situations where Wardrobe Expert is worth triggering, such as when you are the last survivor alive and the monster is almost dead or during the final fight of the campaign.

But losing this piece of gear from your grid permanently is a really high cost to pay, especially when it also results in a loss of the armor set bonus ability, any abilities the piece of armor has itself and breaking of affinities.

I would suggest as a house rule that you send the item back to settlement storage rather than than archive it. There is still plenty of cost involved and that pushes the fighting art up towards the better part of the spectrum.

1/5

And that's it, that's absolutely all of the fighting arts in the game right now (apart from the strains) and next time we're going to look at the secret fighting arts, and I will not only review them, but write about how you can get each one to trigger more often!