Twelve in Twelve #2: Lion Tamer Armor (Patreon)

For this month I originally intended to do work on a set of principles to add a little more variety to the choices one would have there, however the combination of additional complexity and the need to try and finish the basic hunt event cards in August has meant that one has been pushed back. I'll try and resurface it in October, because September's slot is now going to be filled by getting the next custom monster released (we broke 575 patrons, thank you everyone!)

Instead I present the Lion Tamer Armor. This is an armor set I've been working on for a long time, but the final piece of the puzzle only just turned up. As a consequence, this armor set is going to require the Gigalion mini-expansion to be able to use it.

Lion Tamer Armor is an armor set in the vain of Vagabond Armor:

Vagabond Armor is one of my favourite design ideas from the promotional white box range. Outside of the Black Sword balance issues it exists as a fantastic piece of armor, its very existence allows for settlements that are struggling to gain weapon mastery access to it, at the cost of having a rather sub-optimal leather armor set. In isolation the idea is amazing, it's just the execution of it being swords that has a couple of issues (true blade, tabard survival gains abuse and the aforementioned black sword).

So for a while now I've been trying to get a whip-centric armor set in the same vein to work, but it's always had problems in the final moments because until now I was using the tabard from the vagabond set as the body piece. This didn't differentiate it enough from the Vagabond set for my taste and the armor set was also not clicking in the middle game because it wasn't durable enough. This is because its baseline gear is White Lion gear, both for design space and thematic reasons.

However the Gigalion gave us the last piece we needed to get this armor set working, and now it's clicked and I'm very happy with how it works. So here it is:

There's a lot of text on the front of the card, but mostly because I chose to space out the mastery section a little more clearly. 

This armor set gives you access to whips that can be used to "block" (think cracking the whip to keep the monster at bay for a moment and make it hesitate) and also if you choose a barbaric settlement, you get a whip master. This makes training up whips naturally a lot less problematic while also allowing settlements that are struggling to get their hands on a strong weapon to focus around. It is very powerful, but you're not getting it without having a Lion Slayer Cape from the Gigalion and you have to also pay the price on two additional downsides.

That's right, no body armor (the Cape is an accessory) and no shields. So you are going to be somewhat fragile or need to be clever with how you build your Lion Tamer. 

To help visualise this, here are the two different sets of gear in the grid:

You'll notice that not only am I making you pay for this armor set by having the body (the most hit location) be so vulunerable. But I am also demanding that you not only make the Cape (which requires a Shimmering Mane) but you have to spend a second Shimmering Mane on getting the Headdress for your head "armor" (you can still wear another helmet if you want here). That's an expensive ask and it's been a big part in making the balance of this gear feel satisfactory, early versions had the White Lion Helm, but that was peaking the power of the armor set a little too much, so I toned it back a bit.

Cloth Leggings were included as an alternative leg gear for people who have the Vagabond Armor. I like the design of Cloth Leggings and wanted them to turn up a bit more often.

So there you have it, Whips are a criminally underused part of Kingdom Death, and I hope that this armor set allows you to explore and enjoy them more now.

Next time, in September, it'll be time for a new monster to turn up. I hope you can see it!