Better Long Shot II; Chained Girds

The elf’s Long Shot II skill now conveys no penalty on range 3 bow attacks. It was formerly a -1 penalty.

The dwarf’s Resilience & Uppercut percentages have been lowered from 25/35/45 to 25/30/35. But Gird Loins has been improved as follows:

Gird Loins I: +3 if you don’t counterattack after guarding
Gird Loins II: or, +5 if you Gird Loins twice in a row
Gird Loins III: or, +7 if you Gird Loins three times in a row

As always, please let us know what you think.

I think a lot, but haven’t tested anything. Do I need a flame scroll now as dwarf?
Usage: go into a corner and make a flame scroll around you. gird loins to the max -> charge onto a frenzy postion for good chance of getting into feats with a +7 active gird loins! On the other hand: Recieving red breath for three rounds does not sound like party - or too much like grill party… I am curious about the incoming observations.

I just got my dwarf up to Gird Loins II and I hadn’t thought of using the fire to hide in the corner and hunker. I’ll remember that :-) Still short of the +27 for a guaranteed massive hit on a dragon, but not too far off. Maybe with Frenzy III and Gird Loins III: +7, +7, +2, +9 +2 adrenaline? Risky against 5 dragons with only a few health! And you need a level 24 dwarf, which is not at all easy to come by. 4 dragons with level 20, haste and vanish, perhaps.

With the dwarf, I try to use the fire to keep away dragons that are not immediately next to me. Avoids taking breath hits I can’t counterattack, and makes some space to leap and charge. Or just use it elsewhere.

I was finding Gird Loins to be most useful in UN-crowded rooms, where it was possible to (stealthily) occupy a position across the room, and then repeatedly guard, as the dragons advanced towards me. Provides some extra utility to Vanish scrolls.

Something I haven’t tried yet, but plan to:

When the last remaining dragon in the room is a ridiculously enlarged Mage that is resistant to repeated attacks, it might be worth seeing whether holding off from attacking it for a few turns might be a way to kill it.

Rellik–rather than receiving red breath for multiple turns, what about using the Gird Loins tactic in situations where the player could sit two hexagons back from the Fire fence, out of breath range? Cases where arrows are too low-percentage to be worth trying.

@beetletoe 1. I am not sure. Still we need frenzy to have a good chance of feats. Without that option I would prefer to sneak close to avoid breath. But for tactical reasons (better place to fight) this might add up to a good strategy. 2. I try to attack mages first, so this should not happen. However, I once entered a room with 5 dragon mages… But still for this is uppercut the better choice, although it might fail a few times. 3. This is interesting! One could “let them come” when gird loins is maxed or leap-charge into it if there is a good frency position. Typically I do not fight with the dwarf like that, but that sounds like a real option.