Seeking Support: The Class for those Who Can't Roll (Patreon)

I've often mentioned various 'classes' in Kingdom Death, and I thought it was time I highlighted the one I normally end up playing. However, before we do that we shall take a quick look at what I mean when I talk about classes.

We'll start very obvious; classes are based on the D&D concept of character classes, where each player would control a character of a certain class and as you level up you gain specific upgrades tailored to your classes role, mages get more spells, warriors get fighting abilities, bards become awesome - that kind of stuff. 

Kingdom Death is a 'classless' game, which allows you to play your survivors in whatever manner you require. For newer players this can result in an unfocused group of survivors who are all damage dealers. But, as time moves forward and you gain experience the benefits of specialising your survivors becomes more and more evident. Survivors who specialise are very capable hunters as there is greater benefit to be gained from a team of specialists over a group of generalists.

These specialist classes include the following:

• Tanks - Survivors that keep the attention of the monster and weather the storm of attacks. Their main weapon is Shields - however the Community Edition and Oxidisation made Whips a viable tank weapon also.
• Damage Per Swing (DPS) - Survivors who deal most of the damage to the monster. They use weapons like Grand, Katar, Axe, Bow and similar are most commonly used early on. (I prefer Grand and Katar because they cancel attacks from the monster a lot of the time).
• Bruisers - a combination of Tank and One-Handed weapon survivors who use the Antelope Gear Blood Paint to be able to attack and block for a single activation.
• Trappers - Offensive orientated users who deal damage and specifically take the role of hitting the trap in order to refresh the deck without suffering the ill effects. Spears and the Blue Charm are the tools used here.
• Debuffers - Primarily damage dealing bow based users (Axe masters can also do this), who inflict detrimental effects onto the monster in order to make them less dangerous. For example the Hollowpoint arrow reduces monsters movement and the Claw Arrow reduces its evasion. The Dragon King expansion really helps these guys shine because of the Shielded Quiver.
• Supports - the focus of today's article,  who have the relatively lackluster role of controlling the monster, preemptively mitigating damage and providing 'healing' wherever possible.

There are other classes as well, but they tend to get very specialised and often require either a single expansion item, or mastery of a difficult weapon type such as Dagger.

Supports: Lifeblood of a Hunt Party

That brings us to the focus of the article, the support survivor. Made possible by the existence of Rawhide Armor and gear like the Cat Eye Circlet and Rawhide Headband amongst other things. A support will often carry either a bow (making them a hybrid debuffer/support), a spear (support/trapper) or absolutely no weapons at all except for their fists and teeth. My preference is for the last category, because not bringing a weapon gives you an extra slot for utility and bringing lots of utility is the Support's greatest strength.

Armor

There is essentially two choices when you consider what armor you are going to take on your support, none at all or Rawhide. Rawhide is the usual choice because the Rawhide Headband contains one of the most powerful support abilities in the game. It is able to manipulate the monster's AI deck. 

In addition, a full set of rawhide gives you (on average) +50% survival with its survival regains and can even supply more when combined with the Thrill Seeker fighting art.

If you go with no armor, then your support survivor either has Leyline Walker, Crystal Skin, Gloom Man or Strategist. Leyline Walker gives you extra evasion for not wearing armor, Crystal Skin stops you wearing armor in exchange for minor protection to all locations, Gloom Man makes you entirely untargetable as long as you are insane and don't attack and Strategist allows you to spawn a toppled pillar which you can use to stay out of line of sight of the monster (in combination with Fecal Salve this will protect you from most monster attacks).

I'm now going to walk you through some of the more common early game choices for other support items.

Being able to manipulate the Hit Locations the monster has is one of the most powerful ways you can assist your damage dealing survivors, you can order them so survivors with deadly + luck hit the resource gaining critical wound locations and you can warn people about when the trap turns up so the right person can hit it.

Alongside AI control, this is one of the common ways the support survivor can help their hunt party.

Other options include: Trash Crown, Necromancer's Circlet and Wisdom Potion

Bandages is one of the primary ways you can avoid bleeding destroying survivors who would otherwise be fine. Bleed accumulates through monster attacks that directly cause it and through severe injuries. Being able to remove bleeding tokens is the strongest and most reliable way of mitigating this issue. You should have a set of bandages crafted before the Butcher turns up for the first time as a matter of course.

 (Sorry about the variation in card sizes, I'm working on sorting that out) 

This Gorm instrument is the only non-noisy instrument and it has a nice healing ability which you can employ to give protection to a knocked down survivor. As heavy injuries cause knockdown on a survivor it's relatively easy to trigger this at the right time. Getting more than one survivor at once is a bit harder however. 

Finally we have here the strongest piece of protection for any support survivor. The Fecal Salve, which removes your status as a 'threat' until you attack is incredibly powerful when you are not going to be attacking. Monsters like the Butcher won't even go near you because their targeting is exclusively at threats. But also most other dangerous attacks from monsters head at threats (including many intimidates), activating the Fecal Salve on your first act of the showdown can essentially keep you safe with clever positioning.

There are a lot of other support items you can consider/look into as most monsters/locations provide at least one option you can look at. Stuff like Satchels, Whisker Harps (nemesis fights only), Sunspot Lanterns, Reverberating Lantern, Knight Badges for tactics and so on. Once you are not bothering with attacking you have 4+ slots on your grid that can do a whole range of interesting things!

So until next time, if you're the experienced player in your group, consider playing the Support only survivor, this lets you spend less energy on harming the monster and instead you concentrate on making your friends do cool things and feel good (while handling the monster and other rules)!