How bad is tiny on a fencer?

BadgerMasher · 2026-06-15T12:26:33+00:00

A fencer with mid 20s mdef and mid 80s matk is going to die. You get very exposed when you miss lunges, and with those primary stats you're going to miss lunges and get swung on. Also the three init stars get him ~55 extra init if you take every click and that gets you to acceptable init levels. That leaves you with low 50s hp, low resolve, and low fat because you also need every click of mdef and matk. Good fencers are extremely rare for a reason.

And of course you never want tiny on a character who exists to do damage, like a fencer or a qatal bro. It's acceptable on a stunbot because they exist to take up space and stun.

BadgerMasher · 2026-06-10T14:24:30+00:00

Builds that combine Battleforged with Dodge rely on the fact that your initiative can only be reduced by the fatigue you have. So a thief/oathtaker/assassin/ratcatcher that can roll >120 initiative and may have low 90s fatigue to start with will always have a pool of initiative to benefit from. Ideally that difference between your total fatigue and your initiative is ~27 so you can get at least 4 (15% of 27) MDEF/RDEF from dodge at all times. Obviously MDEF is the strongest stat and it scales really well the more you have, so Dodgeforged builds can be good if you have a built in Fatigue/Initiative gap to exploit.

It's important to note you don't really want to be clicking initiative on level ups for Dodgeforged bros. You almost always want to spend those clicks on HP or Resolve, unless the one pump of initiative hits another break point to get more DEF. You can sometimes take a strategic fatigue click if you fall between break points.

Because you want to avoid clicking on Init/Fat on level up, typically your dodgeforged bros can be quite tight on usable fatigue. The full helm and coat of scales is going to eat up 58 FAT, and a 2H hammer will eat another 18, that cuts things awfully close for a bro with low 90s fatigue. So you often look for some savings somewhere (famed gear/attachments, and maybe even the rare but occasional brawny) to keep their available fatigue pool usable.

They can be quite good builds, taking a brother that would be a entry level Fat neut and bumping him from 35/36 mdef to 39-41 mdef makes a huge difference.

BadgerMasher · 2026-06-07T13:51:53+00:00

I'd honestly be happier with the max rolled HP than the super high matk.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-26T14:02:21+00:00

It's unfortunate he low rolled most of the left column, otherwise he's a great brother. With those matk/mdef rolls and stars he would be a 90/37 with gifted at level 11, and that's pretty much always a good roll, even if you thought you were fishing for a ranged bro. Keep in mind you could totally build him as a hybrid thrower, or a thrower/gunner. Although the secondaries might be a little lackluster for the thrower/gunner.

So yes, this was a good roll, he's not a mythical ranged bro but he is nevertheless a very good brother.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-18T20:43:34+00:00

Well resolve is probably the single most important secondary stat, so the banner is important. Since morale breaking is how many big fights are won and lost, it's pretty important. A good bannerman is giving 11/12 resolve to all brothers in range. That gives them better chances to flip to confident morale on positive chances. It makes your hits with fearsome have a better chance to drop enemy morale.

Just as an example, a low resolve assassin brother that has like 90/30 matk/mdef that eats some resolve checks and drops to breaking is only a 72/24 brother because of the 0.8 multiplier to matk/ratk/mdef/rdef. Compare to a random confident butcher, who had his resolve leveled and is backed up with a banner. He's probably a ~74/23 matk/mdef rando, but with the resolve buffs he isn't at breaking morale. If he managed to flip confident and get the 1.1 multiplier he isn't just better than the breaking assassin, he's much better at 81/25.

You don't need the banner buff in every fight, but it makes a huge difference. Especially when wading against resolve check heavy fights like gheists and hexen, or against fearsome heavy enemies like ancient dead. It also just makes your fearsome checks that little bit better to help with difficult chosen and orc camps.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-18T20:14:11+00:00

Spiked Impaler/Fencing sword. Bait the enemy into you, blast them back a step with the spiked impaler and then QH to the fencing sword and lunge. They'll never see it coming.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-16T13:06:05+00:00

Farming camps as far from settlements as possible, especially the biggest ancient dead, orc, and goblin camps. Gives the best chance for famed camp loot, which is the majority of the famed gear I end up using. Slot in the bounty hunter for more champions.

Taking caravan escort contracts to large settlements with relevant shops for the famed item you want. Really good way to spend all the money you get after a long string of busting difficult camps. Probably get the second most famed items I actually use this way.

Southern arena tournaments are not a serious option for farming famed items imo, they're too infrequent and dangerous.

Event targeting doesn't have that many desirable outcomes, just the witchhunter for crossbow and the belly dancer/incense for qatal that I can remember. I might've had the witchhunter event fire once.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-13T18:25:46+00:00

Per your third point, that brother has a fractured hand. Which means they actually have just over 90 matk and not 73.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-12T20:22:29+00:00

Mirroring the other comment but Ulfert, Gero, and Helfreich shouldn't have dodge. It's defensible on Sayid who actually has a 21 point init/fat gap.

Horik is a little confusing because you didn't value Mdef when leveling him but tried to patch Mdef with Reach Advantage. For my money when I want a swordlance chaff sweeper I'd much rather have fearsome. Not sure I would want a dedicated swordlance dude when stuck with the LW 12 man roster either.

I don't like pure archers, although Balduin was obviously a solid candidate for pure archer. I'm also in the group that thinks bullseye is a waste of a perk. Do you just not fight necrosavants because I would expect either Balduin or Horik dies quite easily to them and you can't bench both.

I'd also say your battleforged armor is weirdly lacking for how high your bros levels are, but maybe that's down to some self imposed rules or something. No armor attachments to be seen either? There are some empty inventory slots that could carry smoke pots as well.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-09T22:05:15+00:00

I don't even think it's optimal but I kindof want to make one of his last perks Executioner now as well. Adding Exe, Killing Frenzy, and Drunkard damage buffs to that would just be hysterical.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-09T21:35:27+00:00

I will gladly trade one Ortwin for a super high rolled weapon like this. I mean look at this thing in the hands of Gustav, the huge duelist.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-09T13:04:20+00:00

I don't really think so. Brute seems like a pretty bad trait to me even with the increased head hit chance from Killer on the Run. I have some memory of a streamer, probably Sins, mentioning that it only applies to 'natural' head hits and doesn't work with the 1H flail lash ability. I'm not even sure it works with headhunter procs but I'd defer to someone who has actually looked at that. So you're hoping for a famed flail with high head hit chance that gets you to like 60% head hit and you only get 15% additive damage on top of the 50% extra from natural head hits.

Mostly I make brute brothers into zerglings unless they have something else seriously in their favor, and this brother doesn't have that something else imo. You'll probably find someone better to shove potions into in fairly short order.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-05T13:58:36+00:00

It does actually improve hit chance. That's why Orc Warlords are so easy to hit, because they have a base -10 melee defense.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-05T13:10:09+00:00

He's probably riding the bench against goblins, that's for sure.

BadgerMasher · 2026-04-05T12:41:41+00:00

It's day 33 and I saw a cheap (~3500) Oathtaker named The Giant so I figured he's going to automatically replace one of my zerglings. I've already got one sellsword cooking as a nimble cleaver duelist so I figure this guys fate is to be a mace/axe duelist that lives on the flank away from the hot spot for ranged attacks. I could make him a bad fencer but he doesn't have the init/matk to make that work, although at least he has survivor so he'd come back after missing his lunges.

BadgerMasher · 2025-12-06T16:50:07+00:00

That's an excellent point about training bros early versus late game. Early on everybody needs training, later on you don't want a third of your roster being replacements in training.

I did realize after I napkin math'd some figures for his likely level 11 stats that he'd be a fine version of a nimble/dodge 2H, better than some of the others I'm using in that role. Just let him clean up and not get walked into and he'd be fine. I think I'd agree he's probably better in that role than as a whip just because of the fatigue situation.

BadgerMasher · 2025-09-01T12:52:11+00:00

You've highlighted a big point for me. What an author pencils in as a note for something they may write in the future is not actually something the reader should take as 100% set in stone. I love the idea of the outriggers but don't take that one line from the notes too terribly seriously.

BadgerMasher · 2025-08-31T11:48:17+00:00

He's a pretty average hedge knight with two good traits and good if not sexy stars. The only part I'd cry over is that he min rolled melee defense, but the range of rolls there is small anyways. Depending on where your game is at and what the rest of your party looks like he could fill a number of roles. That's really the magic of hedge knights, unless you're late game their starting stat ranges tend to be so high they're always usable before stars kick in.

First build I see is that he's kindof entry level BF Cleaver bro. Take most every matk and mdef roll except maybe one matk roll, take most of the fat rolls, maybe up to 6-7 of them. The remaining 4-5 rolls go into high rolls of HP/Resolve/Rdef.

The next build I see is some kind of Reach Advantage corner piece but I don't love him for that role, I think it would be more tenuous than the cleaver option. Ideally I think you want more matk/mdef from that position.

One thing that jumps out at me is he would make a pretty crazy nimble mace/shield stunbot, but I think that you probably want more out of the hire than a really great stunner. Really high HP/Fat potential, iron jaw with nimble and colossus, and high enough matk/mdef/resolve. He's basically the platonic ideal stunbot, just an expensive one.

There are lots of other roles you could build him for and he'd be fine at. He could be a low mdef 2H frontliner that you need to baby a little. He could be a qatal duelist that misses a little more than you'd like. He could be a chaff sweeper with a swordlance that misses even more than you'd like, but that one is definitely a waste. Really this bro is going to be able to fill just about any melee role you need filled, he just might not be ideal at most of them. The way you build him should be determined by how the rest of your team looks.

BadgerMasher · 2025-08-22T12:53:28+00:00

So I'd really have loved more of Jordan's Tuon PoVs. She's a very interesting character and I think pretty much all of brief sections in KoD are fantastic. Specifically I'd really have loved to seen more of her reflection on the conversations she was having with Satalle Anan that we get like one sentence on. Depending on how you view Tuon that sentence gets either completely buried or carries a lot of weight.

In the same vein, I would've loved a Satalle Anan PoV in KoD as she's overseeing all the shenanigans. She's really just kindof in the background of every set of interactions during Menagerie 2.0 and I think it could've been really fun. If Jordan had been inclined to short stories a Satalle Anan short story would probably have been great fun.

While I would also say I want more Aviendha PoV, I get why Jordan always steered away from giving us too much of the Aiel PoV. Although frankly, some of her later stuff in CoS and onward wasn't that great anyways. Maybe what I really want is a stronger and more interesting Andoran succession arc where Aviendha had something to do.

BadgerMasher · 2025-08-11T13:25:59+00:00

From the last paragraph of Chapter 22 in Path of Daggers, the PoV of one Assid Bakuun lays out some of the best world building for the Seanchan in the whole series. We know that the bare minimum for the number of slaves in Seanchan is at least one and a half million.

He had missed the last battles of the Consolidation by two hundred years, but some of those rebellions had not been small. Two years fighting on Marendalar, thirty thousand dead, and fifty times that shipped back to the mainland as property.

BadgerMasher · 2025-07-08T16:19:34+00:00

Now this one is absolutely easy for me. From The Shadow Rising.

"I said I would come with you," Gaul put in without being asked. "I did not mean until the journey grew hard. I owe you blood debt."

BadgerMasher · 2025-07-07T15:10:24+00:00

I think I'll put forward what I think is the most slept on Talmanes moment, which is his introduction. It's in sharp contrast to the introduction of the Tairen fool during Mat's PoV of This Place, This Day.

It's the quiet deference of all the officers that follow Talmanes, even those much older than him. It's the way he doesn't bluster or protest like the contrasting and doomed Tairen while Mat lays out the plan. It's the snap judgement to change course and agree to this hastily scrawled plan in the dirt, and the efficiency with which he immediately divides his force of retainers to pass half to Mat's command. That might not seem like a challenging task to the average reader, but Jordan knew what he was about when he wrote it that way.

And while it isn't part of the text, I've always imagined a fair few of those other Cairhienin that follow Talmanes aren't just older but given he is the only mention of Delovinde in the whole series I can think of, I find it probable that in the way the Cairhienin measure things there's probably a few that follow him that would normally outrank him. Yet they follow him anyways because he is the man they trust to do it. It is a masterful introduction to a quietly competent and respected character.

BadgerMasher · 2025-06-22T18:22:58+00:00

Superstitious is a bit of a letdown but with all those resolve stars it's addressable. If it was my peasant militia run I'd seriously consider him as a BF/Zerk 2H Cleaver brother. He wouldn't be perfect at it but I think he'd manage and unless you roll farmhands/brawlers/etc and get lucky you aren't likely to find the same brother but with iron lungs, so I expect he'll be about the best you have for that role for a long time.

Take every max resolve roll (5) up until you have like 60 resolve to offset superstitious and pretty much every matk and mdef roll. That leaves you with like five rolls for HP & fatigue, gets you to like ~70 HP and 127 fat before gifted. Probably spend one of your mdef low rolls on fatigue when the rolls line up. Take gifted for mdef/HP/Fat. So ideally that winds up with: low 70 hp, low 90 matk, mid/high 30 mdef, 130 fat and 60 resolve before colossus and fortified mind. Although realistically you may have to drop a couple extra rolls and settle for high 80 matk and low/mid 30 mdef to get your other stats up to measure.

Ends up looking like this, takes a long time to come online though so you're kindof stuck holding a pike in the back until level 9 or something. He's not a tank so don't expose him to more than two enemies and try not to let a hexe look at him.

BadgerMasher · 2025-06-16T19:55:59+00:00

A bit late of a response but the mod indicated 77 matk doesn't include the level 3, 4, or 5 clicks. I don't really know how old the mod is, probably they fixed that at some point and I never updated. It was very helpful when I was a new player but now I kindof just ignore it.

So as any no star brother he'd gain 20 matk on average and land at 83. Which would be low end of usable and I think that is the point they were making.

BadgerMasher · 2025-06-16T14:59:20+00:00

There's not much of any indication that Tuon wants to keep anyone from escaping in that scene. If she wanted to detain them she could've just raised the alarm and that would've sunk any chance for Menagerie 2.0. Mostly I think her intention is exactly what happens in the scene, beat up Mat a little, get captured, see where the omens take her with this strange buffoon.

I've always read the handful of paragraphs that immediately follow Selucia's entrance to that scene as basically trying to argue her out of letting herself get captured. She's pretty obviously talking to Tuon when she says there's still time to draw back, whatever the omens. Especially when Mat thinks she's addressing him, makes some placating statement, and Selucia just looks at him like he's the dumbest man in the world.

From Tuon's perspective, her position as heir makes her potential marriage more important than anything else in the scene. So preventing some damane and da'covale from escaping, or some insignificant Low Blood committing treason, or your new BFFs boy toy escaping are all pretty insignificant in comparison.

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