Compelled Duel | Patreon Weekly #183

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to detail one of the Duelist’s class armor abilities!

There’s also a new Patreon Poll running! The results of this poll will help me prioritize which Duelist subclass gets implemented first.

A Duel Ability

As mentioned previously, one of the Duelist’s armor abilities will be a fairly direct attack that works based on her weapon’s enchantment. Naturally there will be some utility abilities too, and what fits better than actually having a one on one duel?

This ability, which I’m tentatively calling ‘compelled duel’, forces the duelist and a chosen enemy to fight each other, while all other enemies are ignored. This has obvious value in situations with multiple enemies but should work well in true 1v1 situations as well. Characters that are not part of the duel will not be able to attack the duelist or their target, and won’t be able to be harmed by them either. The duel will last for a set amount of time, or until the target is killed.

Of course, this ability can be augmented with talents too, here are a few ideas for that:

• The Duelist might be able to gap-close toward an enemy when the duel starts, making it very handy for dealing with ranged enemies.
• The Duelist might get some sort of reward for defeating the enemy before the duel expires, such as healing for some of the damage taken during the duel.
• Allies probably won’t be able to participate in the duel at base, but a talent could easily change that to let everyone on the Duelist’s side gang up on the chosen enemy.

While I don’t want this ability to be quite as strong as some of the pure positioning abilities like smoke bomb and heroic leap, it will definitely fill a similar spot in terms of helping the duelist deal with a sudden threat. It’ll likely have some particular value during the Yog fight as well, given that being able to fight a fist and ignore all else should be pretty helpful.

This sort of ability is new functionality though, so while I definitely want to add it, I can’t predict all the various quirks it may have just yet. We’ll have to wait until I’m implementing armor abilities to see exactly how this one might behave.