The Iron Oath Update #59 - Combat Improvements
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This month's Kickstarter update for Curious Panda's gritty turn-based RPG The Iron Oath showcases a number of recent combat improvements, including better route planning, line of sight changes, environmental interactions, and more. Here's a quick video featuring all of the above:
And some additional information:
Hey everyone! As mentioned in our last update, we recently made a bunch of combat improvements and QoL changes that we're excited to share with you today. We're also in the process of adding some new combat environments such as the Tundra that you can see in the video below[...]
1) Movement & Route Planning:
You can now plan out your route by holding 'Shift' and drawing along the path you'd like to move. This is useful for avoiding hazards and potential attacks of opportunity. It's not shown in the video, but as an alternative you can now move your character multiple times so long as they haven't travelled their max distance. So if your character's movement value is 3, you can move 2 cells, and still be able to move 1 cell afterwards. So long as you don't take any damage or incur an attack of opportunity, each movement can be undone as well.
2) Line of Sight Changes:
We've made a few tweaks to our line of sight mechanic. Like before, larger obstacles will block LoS entirely, and characters you don't have vision of won't be viable targets. Enemies and smaller obstacles (such as a barrel or waist high rock) can partially obscure LoS. If you only have partial line of sight to your target, your attack will do 50% damage. Previously, partial line of sight incurred an accuracy penalty instead of a damage penalty, but for the sake of reducing RNG and saving frustration when an ability misses (thus wasting a charge), we decided to change that mechanic.
3) Swapping Places:
We've changed up our swap mechanic do be more useful and easier to use. Swapping allows you to trade places with an adjacent ally. Previously it was a secondary action on the hotbar, and using it expended that character's turn. We felt it was a bit weak however, and ending the character's turn removed some potential player creativity. Swapping is now done during the 'move phase' of a character's turn by clicking on the ally you want to trade places with (so long as they're within movement range). After swapping, the character is still able to act like they normally would after moving.
4) Reviving downed allies:
Characters can now help up an adjacent downed ally, which is activated in the same fashion as swapping (targeting a downed ally during the move phase of a character's turn). The other methods for reviving a downed ally are still viable (using a potion or heal ability).
5) Knocking targets into objects:
You can now push a target into terrain, objects or another character, triggering extra damage from the impact. Additionally, they become 'Staggered' for 1 round, which prevents them from evading attacks. It's now even more important to pay attention to your positioning and surroundings, as certain enemies can do the same thing to you!
6) Knocking targets into pits:
You can now push a target into any pits/holes that exist on the battlefield. Similarly to the above, the target will incur extra damage, but instead of being Staggered they will be Stunned for 1 round. We know it's not entirely realistic that the target survives such a fall, but we didn't want to make it an easy way to insta-kill enemies (and bosses especially!).
7) Unique Traps & Hazards:
We'll be giving each combat environment at least 1 unique hazard. The new Tundra tileset has a special terrain type that cracks when stepped on. After being stepped on twice (or if a character stands on it for more than 1 round), the ice and snow will give way and open up into a pit.
8) Day/Night/Weather Effects:
For now these are purely visual just to mix things up, but we do have some plans for them to have an impact on combat (such as night time reducing visibility to 2-3 cells out from your characters, or a lightning strike on the battlefield).
