The most important changes of this update concern four Attributes: Strength, Constitution, Quickness and Coordination. Experienced players already know the importance and effectiveness of Endurance, to the point that the other four physical Attributes felt less relevant, especially Constitution. The newly introduced changes aim at reinforcing their usefulness in combat and at offering more strategic and tactical options.
Quickness and Coordination
The default Attack bonus of the Rapid Attitude has been lowered from +8 to +6, but Quickness and Coordination now play a significant role.
When the Rapid Attitude is active, if the attacker's Quickness is superior to the defender's, a bonus of +3 is added to the Attack Modifier. For every 4 points of difference, the Modifier is further increased by 1.
If the attacker's Coordination is superior to the defender's, a bonus of +2 is applied to the Attack Modifier, +1 for every 7 points of difference.
In other words, the Rapid Attitude is now more convenient when the attacker is nimbler than the defender.
Also, the base Ability for the Recover action is now Coordination instead of Coordination/2, and the base difficulty is 25 instead of 0. This implies that the roll is a bit more difficult for characters with low Coordination and easier for those with high Coordination. The amount of Stance recovered has also been increased a bit, especially if Coordination is high.
Strength and Constitution - Stance
Fighting against opponents whose Strength is superior to your Constitution can be more dangerous now: if your Stance gets lower than theirs, Strike and Shield Attacks against you receive a +3 bonus to the Attack modifier, +1 for every 4 points of difference between Strength and Constitution.
This means that if you choose to use Constitution as a dump stat, you will have to be more careful from now on. In battle, the protection provided by your formation will probably be enough to keep you safe most times, but in optional, more difficult fights, exposing yourself might get you in trouble more easily than before.
Of course, the opposite is also true, and if your Strength is high, you will benefit from the same advantage against opponents with low Constitution.
Strength and Constitution - Forceful Attitude
When fighters whose Strength is inferior to the opponent's Constitution use the Forceful Attitude, all their attacks suffer a -4 penalty, -1 for every 4 points of difference. This is in addition to the default attack penalty of the Forceful Attitude.
Broadly speaking, characters with low Strength will use the Forceful Attitude less effectively than before against opponents with high Constitution.
About the future
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Changelog
When a fighter uses Strikes or Shield Attacks against an opponent with inferior Stance, an additional bonus of +3 is applied to the Attack Modifier, but only if the attacker's Strength is superior to the defender's Constitution. For every 4 points of difference, another +1 is added to the Modifier.
The basic Attack Modifier of the Rapid Attitude has been decreased from +8 to +6.
The Rapid Attitude gives an additional +3 to the Attack Modifier if the attacker's Quickness is superior to the defender's. For every 4 points of difference, it gives another +1.
It also gives an additional +2 if the attacker's Coordination is superior to the defender's, and an additional +1 for every 7 points of difference.
The Forceful Attitude now includes a further -4 penalty to the Attack Modifier if the attacker's Strength is inferior to the defender's Constitution. For every 4 points of difference, the penalty is increased by 1.
The Attribute descriptions shown during character creation and in the tooltips have been extended.
A successful Intimidate action now applies a temporary penalty of -6 (instead of -5) to all the Modifiers of the opponent.
The Recover action now uses Coordination vs a base difficulty of 25, instead of Coordination/2 vs 0.
Besides, the amount of Stance recovered has been increased from 8 + Coordination/5 to 10 + Coordination/4.
The formula to calculate the restored Stance when the Recover action is Undisturbed, has been simplified to 30 + Coordination/2.
In the fight for the second civic crown, the Constitution of your ally has been increased from 54 to 61. In addition, the Melee Skills of the two most dangerous opponents have been decreased.
The ground is no longer against you in the optional fight in Part 11.
The Bypass Difficulty of all greaves has been increased by 10.
Computer-controlled fighters should no longer select Offensive Focus and Rebound Focus in the last round of a fight.
The Modifiers below the action buttons in combat are bigger and should be more comfortable to read.
The tooltip text that shows the breakdown of Modifiers has also been enlarged.
The Opening round in combat runs faster than before.
The Special Orders should be easier to notice on the Battle UI.
Fixed a bug that applied the Share Hardships penalty to Morale Stability twice when changing century.
Fixed the missing Morale requirement in the tooltip of the Intimidate combat action.
The date of save files is now shown using the ISO 8601 format, so that it is readable on machines set on languages that do not use the Latin alphabet.
Fixed a glitch that could trigger the same alert twice when a new fighter joined an ongoing fight.
Other minor changes and improvements.