Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 6 Faceism Knowledges (Patreon)

Physiognomy

• Type: Strategic Terrain Manipulation
• Stages: 2
• Observations Required: 5/-
• Advancement: Interact with Terrain
• Lumi Costs: 2/3
• Bonuses: +1 terrain/+1 terrain from a choice of 2
• Parallels: Strategist

Our core tenet is mechanically the odd one out in this philosophy; however, as discussed in the previous article (check the bottom of this post for the collection link to all Arc Survivor articles), this is a thematic inclusion that wins out through narrative and setting. Mechanically terrain does add some additional defensive options, but the terrain deck has a lot of variance in what you are going to get. However before we get into the mechanics, lets just briefly discuss what Physiognomy is, where it fits into history and why we should leave it to fantasy board games about primitive idiots like our survivors. You've got to love them, but they are idiot savages at best.

Physiognomy is a very old, discredited form of pseudoscience where like phrenology it was claimed you could judge elements of a person's character from their appearance. Of course I am sure you can immediately see the problems with something of this nature; it has often been used to ascribe negative traits to whatever outgroup the physiognomist is seeking to discriminate against. Aristotle is the source of the earliest written treatise on this subject, and while these earlier texts lean into the descriptive, later on it becomes a form of predictive astrology. 

All of this is thematically in sync with the societies we see in Kingdom Death; early faltering steps towards civilisation that entertain things like ritualistic sacrifice/cannibalism; augury and similar; it's just the survivor's "gods" are physically present in their own settlements. This human desire to learn meaning in the world could naturally translate into an obsessive and beneficial interest in faces due to the nature of the landscape and creatures in it (as discussed last time). This tenet is a thematic win even if it jars with the mechanical ethos of all the other knowledges within faceism. 

Because some terrain can be repeatable in its activations this knowledge is something that can be completed in as little as a single showdown (especially if your hunt team doesn't mind one survivor hopping over and over a pillar while everyone else gets slapped around by a chicken.

Terrain is mostly a net positive as it represents a lot of different ways to gain resources or various forms of protection. In particular hitting early resource generators like dead survivors, debris piles, acanthus and similar is a huge boon. In People of the Sun this is also going to increase the chances of you getting a [SR] Bleeding Corpse Lily in order to unlock the Sunlion armor set from the Sunlion White Box Promo.

So this is a very potent tenet, but it does not have very much synergy with any of our other tenets. What that means is we're likely to use Faceism survivors to unlock the other options, but later on the individual Knowledges below are better used in combination with other philosophies rather than directly with Faceism/Physiognomy. This is not actually uncommon with the Tier 1 philosophies, their core tenet can often run counter or at least be agnostic to what the other knowledges in the philosophy are trying to do.

Stone Heart

• Type: Defensive
• Stages: 3
• Observations Required: 1/5/-
• Advancement: Suffer severe injuries
• Lumi Costs: 0/2/5
• Bonuses: Theory/+1 to Severe Injury roll results/+2 to severe injury roll results
• Parallels: Tough Fighting Art

Stone Heart is a really interesting and potentially powerful knowledge that reduces your overall chances of death and lowers the severity of any injuries you may suffer. For the most part this is not a knowledge you are going to seek because it is designed to only work at the failure state that you are trying to avoid. One does not ever want to be rolling on severer injury tables, but sometimes it happens. So if you have this on a survivor, that's fine, but I do not think paying 5 Lumi for the fully upgraded version is something you'd do without a specific plan in mind for the survivor gaining it.

Levelling up this one is also a concerning prospect, you have to take multiple severe injuries to get this one levelled up. The first step, which is a single severe injury isn't too bad, but even with the +1 bonus getting through five observations at level 2 is a real gamble at times, you'll probably want to keep anti-death/severe injury ignore tools around to help get through this gauntlet. It's also SUPER expensive to purchase once it is fully levelled up, in fact I'd call it overpriced by at least 1 or 2 lumi. (I'd argue that the stage two, which is just [FA] Tough, is worth 1 lumi not 2), putting something that only works for worst case scenarios in one of your precious knowledge slots is expensive.

The most successful utilisation of this Knowledge I've had to date involved combining it with the Gorm expansion, where using it in addition to a full Gorment Suit plus Regeneration suit created an incredibly durable survivor who acted as a punching bag for the monster. Stone Heart pushed the survivor to the point where most severe injuries only had a 10% chance of killing (20% at the head) and at maximum one would suffer only one severe injury per attack. Combine this with rerolls from [K] Guardian (Dreamism) survivors, block/dodge to minimize head hits, a Gormchymist Life Elixir and some anti-bleeding and I ended up with a survivor who suffered horribly every showdown only to completely heal at the end of it. It was a very interesting playstyle of no-selling attacks rather than the usual style of soaking the damage through armor points. It was also a horrific existence for the proto-Deadpool survivor.

It's decent, it's just without a plan this one isn't worth 5 lumi for your typical survivor in average situations. Gets better if you have monsters that cause direct severe injury rolls through AI/HLs though!

Unyielding

• Type: Defensive Damage Reduction
• Stages: 2
• Observations Required: 5
• Advancement: Targeted by AI
• Lumi Costs: 0/3
• Bonuses: Theory/Reduce Damage from every hit by 1 to a minimum of 1
• Parallels: Silk Body Suit (Gear), White Lion Cloak (Gear), Lion Slayer Cape (Gear), Green Ring

Now this knowledge is an absolute powerhouse and is a complete steal at 3 Lumi. Reducing damage from Hits is a really efficient way to nerf one of the main ways monsters level up against survivors. Unyielding cancels that +1 damage token on the level 2 monsters and also makes moving from Node 1/2 Monsters to Node 3 ones a lot softer. In addition, this knowledge advances very quickly, a survivor can easily be targeted five times during a showdown and that's it, this thing is online and good to go. Tank unlocked!

Damage reduction is really good for any kind of survivor because taking damage is an inevitable part of the showdown, even attacking survivors suffer damage as part of the process, trading armor points for wounds on the monster is the name of the game. This card pushes that trade further in your favour, which means the monster's natural advantages of high accuracy and automatically scoring wounds are blunted.

This knowledge also stacks with other forms of damage reduction like the gear listed in the parallels above (Green Ring isn't damage reduction, but gaining armor points works in the overall same fashion unless the monster is able to completely remove the armor points before dealing damage). While the various suits, cloaks and caps all have a minimum cap of 1 damage per hit/source that still has impact against higher level monsters and more damaging attacks. Some monsters can deal 5+ damage per hit, now that is less. It's also great with the "Muffin Hat" (Singing Armor Head Gear) because it's another way of reducing the overall damage being input. Likewise Dodge/Block compound onto this one and we've not even gotten into other philosophy knowledges that can benefit from synergies or additional defensive options. You can be certain I'll be referencing this one in the future.

As such I think this is probably the best knowledge card in the Faceism suite of options because of how generically potent it is on top of how it can easily be scaled up through the expenditure of one or two gear tableau spots. This is a Knowledge I think should cost 5 lumi.

Sculptor's Apprentice

• Type: Panic Button
• Stages: 1
• Observations Required: N/A
• Advancement: N/A
• Lumi Costs: 4
• Bonuses: 9 Armor Points to all hit locations
• Parallels: Green Saviors

Our last Knowledge is not that great considering it comes from Rank 4. It is in essence a "I will be removed from the campaign at the end of this showdown in exchange for 40 armor points." There are situations where this can completely save a showdown as demonstrated by Green Saviors, but with alternative kill mechanics like bleed (or Terrify) this is not as potent as one would like. Armor points are not the only thing that matters when a showdown is going wrong, mostly they can just buy you time to handle other matters or soak damage to help blunt the monster portion of the monster vs. survivor race to kill each other.

Still, while limited in scope there are places where this can mean a lot, the most notable of which are the Core Nemesis and Final Nemesis monster showdowns where losing means Game Over. That is a place where this type of effect can be quite useful, as players who have used the Green Survivor panic button can attest.

However, this is a situational, single use per survivor ability that nets you a loss of the survivor activating it. That is not something I am much interested in outside of the kind of showdowns mentioned above. Armor Points are the cheapest form of protection in the game, even 40 (9 per hit location) isn't enough to move the needle for me on that front. It is a lot of damage soak, but I would rather have some other knowledge in that slot. 

That is one of the largest issues that also plagues situational gear card. One has a finite number of slots you can spend on gear and something which triggers only once a showdown should be absolutely incredible while also providing passive benefits. Knowledges are even more limited as your typical survivor only has two slots for non-tenet knowledges, so something like this, which is not only once per showdown but also represents the removal of the survivor from the campaign is for most of the campaign unwanted. I really do not want this card in my knowledge deck for at least 19 years. It might be useful just before the core nemesis showdown and again before the final campaign nemesis showdown; but a lot of the time it's bloating the Knowledge deck with little value when drawn on the forum.

Quick aside. Don't ask me how the gear and resources get back if your last survivor activates this, wins and then wanders off during the aftermath. It's the same issue that happens when Spidicules commits its revenge against the victorious survivor on the board when they are the only one there. I assume one day it'll get covered in the FAQ - I'd hope the survivor takes everything home before leaving, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that's not the case.

Summary Review

Faceism is an exemplary Tier 1 Philosophy, it provides layers of world building in combination with a selection of knowledges that include some standouts for helping you get through the early game. Physiognomy's additional terrain gives us more opportunities for defensive or resource advantages while Unyielding is just a standout staple Knowledge that helps throughout the early and mid game. Only falling off a little when the monster damage gets so high that damage soak no longer becomes a lead way of surviving. Stone Heart is decent if gained rather than purchased, plus it has some synergies and Sculptor's Apprentice may occasionally pull a win out of the hat even if most of the time it does nothing.

The levelling up tables are likewise strong up. The Stone Face Engraver is incredible for settlements not using the 'choose your philosophy' variant and having the ability to 'go again but better' when you max out Faceism or gain +1 population at hunt XP 2 with a philosophy of your choice are also benefits to not be sneezed at during the period where survivors will likely be completing this Philosophy.

That means for me the biggest hits are Unyielding, Physiognomy, Stone Faced Engraver and the Rank 4 rewards which are not the Sculptor's Apprentice. Though Stone Heart always has potential and you won't mind it being on a survivor if you have nothing better.

Faceism is flavourful, strong without being overpowered and applies benefits to the game in a direct fashion. Combine this with the extra lore/world building, plus that phenomenal art and you've got a knock out winner that has a lot of impact which will assist a settlement in finding their feet quickly.