Building your party is one of the fundamental and defining aspects of Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades, and this makes it a lengthy topic to discuss. There are many things to consider when assembling your group of mercenaries, but in this devlog, we will dive into the process you will face when picking the members and how they will serve you in battle, and the roles they play outside of combat.
By default, you can field up to 8 units in battle and maintain a total roster of 14, though certain Company perks can expand these numbers.
We want to preface that many of the things we are going to discuss are ultimately based on personal preference and playstyle. We’ll be focusing on setups that would appeal to most players, but we are eager to see which combinations and “meta” you will be able to find and exploit!
A well-rounded party usually starts with strong frontliners. Sellswords and Knights are the classic choices for tanking, relying on heavy armor and high HP. However, there are alternatives: Monks and Rogues can both act as more agile, evasive tanks if built for it.
Having some healing resources is usually a safe bet, which is where the Vestal shines the most. The advanced class Paladin also has some options there.
Still, players who prefer to rely on consumables can stock up on health potions or employ an Alchemist to enhance their effectiveness. Hardcore players might even skip a dedicated healer entirely, focusing instead on raw damage and efficiency. Just remember to plan for a well-equipped infirmary in your caravan to treat wounded mercenaries after battle!
Most battles can't be won without taking out the opposition, so while tanks and healers will keep your crew alive, someone's going to have to focus on taking down the enemies.
On that front, most classes have their ways of dealing damage. The Sellsword tends to focus on a single target in melee range. The rogue is a bit more balanced, with single target, multi target, and debuffs, and even ranged options, but they won't be as sturdy.
A mage brings solid ranged and AoE options, but they are quite frail and need careful positioning and protection to bring out their full potential.
Rangers excel at long-range attacks, and Bards are jacks of all trades, with a lot of team buffing options.
A mix of tanks, a healer, a few ranged units, and a solid front line is probably a setup that will appeal to most players, but in the end, it's up to the player and their style.
Making your party is not only about damage, tankiness, or healing. While in combat, you must also rely on the various members’ utilities and quirks that can help you defeat your opponent by gaining the upper hand, thanks to their unique traits.
Some units have very high mobility and even the option to become invisible, so trying to blow up specific enemy units from the start is a viable strategy too.
The above considerations are typical when it comes to a balanced team, but there are many other factors to consider.
For example, the elemental environmental effects are a point of consideration. A player can mostly ignore them and be fine, but at the same time, they can be pretty powerful, so many might be tempted to set up a team that can utilize as many as possible.
There are two main setups that utilize elemental interactions. Water + electricity is the first. This setup utilizes water puddles, which slow down most units, and electricity, which propagates damage through connected water tiles. The effects can be fairly potent, but there's always the risk that your own people will be in the water and exposed to the shock.
The other main setup is electricity + fire. This combination is about creating volatile motes on the battlefield with electrical attacks and then exploding them with fire. Electrical motes don't have any effect by themselves, but if you detonate them with a fire attack, they create a high damage explosion and a burning effect. The DPS can be impressive, but again, you have to make sure your own people don't get roasted!
Choosing classes with easy access to elemental effects that you'd like to take advantage of is certainly a worthwhile consideration when deciding on your crew.
That being said, no single strategy will "always work". Some enemies will be resistant to fire, water, or electricity. Some will be very evasive, and others have high physical damage mitigation. Having a few different options is safer than having a one-trick team.
There are many other combos a player might consider when forming their team. An example is “attacks of opportunity”. All units have "attacks of opportunity" (by default, they have 1 per turn), which are triggered by moving outside the range of an attacker's melee weapon. This helps your frontline punish opponents who try to get past them to reach your squishy backline.
But there is more to it than that. Some mercenaries you can hire, mostly the Knight and the Monk, have access to displacement abilities, either pushing or pulling other units. Forcefully moving a unit can trigger attacks of opportunity from teammates. As such, Knights and Monks can easily act as multipliers when positioned to maximize their displacement capabilities.
There are risks to such strategies, of course, as they tend to leave some units overextended or exposed, but it's a high-damage setup.
Many other combinations exist, some more subtle than others, many of which we probably haven't even thought of. A clever and resourceful player will find many ideas for building their team. Even with multiple units of the same class, how the player allocates their skill points can result in wildly different capabilities, so options abound for interesting compositions.
One other consideration is keeping extra units on your bench as backup for when other characters get hurt, or for particular encounters if a player favors a very specific strategy that might not always be the best. Some of the benched units can be assigned to crafting, manning cannons and ballistae on your caravan, and the like, and they become more effective at it at higher levels, so keeping a benched roster that's in good shape is a good idea.
And don’t forget about dungeon exploration! Different types of mercenaries have different dungeoneering specialties, so ensuring the player has extra exploration tools to compensate for their dungeon crew's weaknesses is a good idea.
Finally (and for some, possibly the most important aspect), you wouldn't be building your party if you didn't have options to customize it. The player can set the name, biography, and visuals of all their units, customizing them to their liking.
And that is all for today’s devlog! This was a meaty one for sure, but we really wanted to share with you all the potential and depth that we designed for the party building system that you will experience in Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades.
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