This Battle Brothers mod is an attempt to rebalance the perks and attributes to make more build paths good and open more options for near-optimal play.
Melee/Ranged attack and melee defense dominates character development resulting generally in the simple rules:
- 1 melee defense > 1 melee attack > 2 hitpoints/max fatigue/resolve
- 1 melee attack > 3 initiative
Defense scales too well. For example going from 10% to 5% chance to be hit effectively reduces in half the damage taken. On the other hand investing in it a little is not very good. This effect is already dampened with defense above 50 being halfed, but it is not enough.
Attack skill has the inverse property and has diminishing returns with respect to damage output. When hit chances are low additional skill is very beneficial. On the other hand he difference in damage output between 90% and 95% hit chance is small. It does reduce unpredictability though and killing the enemy fast is important.
With this mod hitpoints, maximum fatigue and resolve level up ranges have been increase from [2, 4] to [2, 6]. Initiative's range has been also increased to [3, 7]. Talent stars on them give +2 on level ups, making them more important in a similar way to primary attribute talents. With this change you will more often have to make the choice between +6 on a secondary attribute or +2 on a primary attribute. The +2 on a primary attribute will maybe still majorise other level ups, but at least you will feel bad for passing on a +6 :).
It is worth noting, that attribute level-up values are generated when the player object is created. In old saves, characters that have been created already, either being hired or are available to hire, would not benefit from the buff.
Defense calculation is changed such that actual defense below 35 is increased and above 35 is decreased.
With this change you gain more hit chance reduction when defense is low and less the higher it gets when compared to the vanilla formula.
The neighbor shieldwall bonus is buffed from +5 to +7.
With this change it is more beneficial to shieldwall on the entire front line
instead of just on the flanks.
Using shield breaking is more useful in the center of the line to weaken also neighbouring shieldwalls.
Melee and ranged defense of all shields is increased by 1.
With the nerfed scaling of defense shields needed some love and they
are generally weaker compared to double gripping, usually useful only on
dedicated tanks.
- Reduced damage by 5%.
- Reduced hit chance with 2%.
- Reduce damage by an additional 5% for 2H hammers and maces that have range of 1.
- Increased armor ignoring damage with 5%.
- Reduced damage by 5%.
Generally 1H melee weapons are inferior to 2H weapons. This rebalancing may make duelist and shield+1H more attractive.
Decrease Handognne damage by 10%.
Decrease damage by 5%.
The mechanic of the banner has been changed to give 10% of the resolve of the bearer
to another character, if adjacent directly to him.
The bonus falls off with each tile of distance by 2%.
The maximum distance that the bonus is active is at 5 tiles away.
The bonus then is 2%. The standard also must be in the vision radius to receive the bonus.
For example wearing -3 vision helmet at night would result in 2 vision radius
making it much harder to get the bonus.
The wings would receive much lower bonus if the banner stays at the middle,
you may have to be more strategic where you place the banner to maximize the local
effect by foregoing another part of the battlefield.
- Fast Adaptation - Buffed from 10% hit chance per stack to 11%. This perk is usually picked on fodder bros and late game bros would generally get little from this perk. Maybe 3% hit chance increase on average. This Buff makes it a bit likely that this perk will dominate the development of fodder bros. I think it is more important to have balance for good characters.
- Crippling Strikes - Buffed from 33% injury threshold reduction to 40%.
This perk finds little use because a lot of enemies are immune to injuries or
very hard to injure like Unholds.
With this change the perk becomes quite good against them.
1H duelists can also injure more consistently other humans.
Many enemies would be harder since they have this perks, like Unholds and Barbarians. - Colossus - Nerfed from 25% hitpints bonus to 20%. This perk seemed too strong and a part of 95% of builds. Even an auto-pick on backliners because of its synergy with Nimble. Although, Adrenaline is a viable first pick due to the explosive nature of early fights and having lower initiative than opponents in the very early game, Colossus usually finds its way into a build almost always. With the hitpoints leveling buff it is less important to take Colossus. Probably, the nerf is not strong enough to justify skipping it since survival is very important for your characters.
- Nine Lives - Buffed to give +20 instead of +15 to melee defense, ranged defense, resolve and initiative.
Also the effect is active for 2 turns instead of until next turn only.
Nine Lives is only picked on disposable characters or maybe on a swordmaster if he has really poor hitpoints. Hopefully, this change would make it viable on more builds. Necrosavants would be tougher to finish off now. - Bags and Belts - Buffed to decrease the maximum fatigue penalty of 2H weapons by 50%. With this buff caring 2 2H weapons in the bag would save around 7 maximum fatigue.
- Adrenaline - Buffed to cost 18 fatigue instead of 20.
This perk is good especially early game, but falls off later. In Blazing Deserts there are more character backgrounds with smaller fatigue pools and movement in the desert is really taxing on fatigue, so Adrenaline is less viable.
- Executioner - Buffed the damage multiplier when attacking injured targets from 20% to 25%.
Although, not as bad as Crippling Strikes, Executioner is rarely justified picking up. Some opponents like Barbarian Chosen and raiders would also benefit from the buff. - Bullseye - Buffed from 50% block penalty reduction to 40%.
Sniper build are generally inferior since they have much reduced damage output. This perk change would buff them a bit.
Some enemies like Goblins would also benefit of the buff.
- Backstabber - Buff hit chance bonus from 5% to 6% per surrounding allay.
- Anticipation - Buff of per-tile ranaged defense bonus from 10% to
13% of your ranged defense.
Aside from Goblin City, Anticipation would be rarely justified to be picked up. Goblin Ambushers also have Anticipation and 20 ranged defense, so they are not much easier to fight with this buff if you have the perk also. - Rotation - Reduced the fatigue cost from 25 to 20.
- Taunt - Reduced the AP cost from 4 to 3. With this buff Taunt could be cast 3 times per turn in the clutch moments. Doing this multiple turns would be too taxing on fatigue.
- Polearm Mastery - Nerfed the fatigue reduction from 25% to 16%.
With this change doing a basic attack with a polearm and the mastery costs 13 fatigue instead of 12.
Polearm mastery is really strong because it reduces the AP cost to 5, making even company builds where everyone has just Polearm Mastery quite good. This nerf forces you to sacrifice some fatigue. The nerf is probably not strong enough, except for special attacks that are heavy on fatigue. For example Reap would cost 25 with mastery instead of 23. - Throwing Mastery - Nerfed to do 13% more damage at distance of 2 and 7% at distance of 3.
Now without mastery there is a 15% damage bonus at distance of 2 and 7.5% damage bonus at distance of 3.
The total damage increase with mastery is 30% and 15% at 2 and 3 tiles distance respectively.
I tried several times to do a skirmisher build, but it sucked. Due to this throwing damage without mastery from 2 and 3 tiles away is buffed. Now Goblin Skirmishers, Barbarian Reavers, etc. are stronger. As Reavers needed any buffs :). Overall with the Bullseye buff leveling ranged defense is more important.
- Reach Advantage - Buffed to give +6 melee defense per stack instead of +5.
Although, melee defense is very important, Reach Advantage looks inferior to Underdog, since it is much less consistent and is lost when switching weapons. It is also applied before scaling down defense, while underdog is always a flat -5% chance to hit. Hopefully this buff does not force you to always pick both. - Footwork - Reduced the fatigue cost from 25 to 18.
This perk is way too taxing on fatigue for the utility it provides.
- Nimble - Nerfed to provide at best 50% hitpoints damage reduction instead of 40%.
- Battle Forged - Nerfed to provide armor damage reduction equal to 4% of
total armor. Reduced from 5%.
Nimble or Battle Forged are always picked and are must-have perks that dominate any character build. They are the most powerful perks in the game. Maybe aside from Berserk. Berserk is much harder to balance though, because of its mechanics. It will be much weaker on one-heanders if it provided only 3 AP on a kill, crippling the whole class. Therefore, Berserk is the yardstick for late-game perks. The nerf to Nimble and Battle Forged is probably not significant enough to justify not picking any of them. I am afraid that nerfing them further would break the game, making it significantly harder to survive.
- Duelist - Reduce armor ignoring damage from 25% to 20%.
With the buff to 1H weapons and with Duelist the armor ignoring damage is the same.
NPC strength has been rebalanced to reflect the perk changes.
Because of the nerf to Battle Forged and Nimble the scaling strength per level
for player characters has been reduced for 2 to 1.9.
I would be happy to get your feedback on how to improve the balance more.
- Battle Brothers (>=1.4.0.48)
- modhooks (>=20)
- libreuse (>=0.3)