Dev's Notes: Hex Education 3

Dev's Notes: Hex Education Part Three

As I said, I will be doing weekly dev blogs about new stuff in the upcoming content patch. This one is a few days late but it was an extremely hectic week IRL. So it goes!
In the last one of those, I looked at some of the skills that'll be getting unlocked for Ria in Low Kallech. But of course she isn't the only one getting an expansion to her kit, they all are (except Dorothy, her kit is expanded enough). So for this week, I'll be talking about Jameson and a few of his new mechanics.

Jameson's starting skills come equipped with some hefty survivability tools already and if you've played the previous demo all the way through, you've probably put them to good use. However, his initial kit leaves a little to be desired outside of boss-fights. Specifically, his damage. If you never find the sidequest that rewards you with the Faeblade, Jameson's damage can begin to lag behind the rest of the party in a major way.
Now, that's not a problem to be fixed per se. He can't be good at everything. But the trials that await him will require him to be more than simply enduring. Even a rock can do that, Jameson! So with that in mind, I've looked into expanding his damage options while still keeping his essential Jamesonosity and his playstyle.

Now while Jameson isn't getting passive skills like Ria is (passive skills will probably always be a Ria-only mechanic) but he can do something that's ultimately pretty similar. He can upgrade his pre-existing skills. Specifically in this case, Counter. During the upcoming segment, you will be required to choose between two upgrades to Jameson's basic Counter skill, upgrades that will apply to all other skills he gets that includes the word 'Counter' in the skill name. The two upgrades are:

1) Jameson's Counter skills trigger on magical attacks in addition to physical attacks. (As you may be able to tell from the above screenshot, this is the one chosen in the save that shot is plucked from).

or

2) Jameson's Counter states all last one more turn than they normally would.

You can only pick one. But fear not! Whichever option you don't pick will show up later in the game. Probably in High Kallech. Whatever option you don't pick isn't being discarded, merely delayed.

In addition to that, Jameson's all-round counterattack suite is being expanded with Wide Counter and High Counter. High Counter and Wide Counter are slightly more expansive versions of Jameson's base counterattack, just with a little bonus added on top. The counterattacks from High Counter deal double the damage as his regular counterattacks and while the damage from Wide Counter is only 75% of Jameson's normal counterattacks, each one hits all enemies. And as previously mentioned, whatever Counter upgrade you choose for Jameson will apply to both Wide and High Counter as well.
With these paired skills, you can swap between using AoE counterattacks for swarms of enemies and single high-damage strikes for singular bosses as you see fit. And the regular counter-attack is still there too, in case those both get too expensive. Jameson doesn't have the most ideal mana pool, after all!

But, also included among his Weapon skills, is a new skill for when you just want to mess stuff up. Traitor's Blade is a high-damage physical AoE that has a chance to inflict Targeted on every enemy it hits, forcing all of them to target Jameson. Beyond that, it also deals double damage to all human enemies. Not merely humanoid like Ria or Dorothy, just human. Fortunately, there are a great many human foes to come.
Jameson is himself human of course, so using such an anti-human technique is not without its downsides for him. The skill rejects him, just as it does all Man. This is a very flowery way to explain that using it costs 25% of his max HP but whatever. That's what it costs. No TP, no MP, no cooldowns, just health.
With this skill, Jameson finally joins the rest of the party in being able to throw his life away.

Those are all Weapon skills however and Jameson is a Weapon/Special user. So what of Special? Well, Jameson will be getting just one new Special skill in Low Kallech. It is a small thing but it took an unpleasant amount of thought to make. This is Receive Magic, a 5 TP-costing Instant skill that takes advantage of both Dorothy's extraordinary talent for blue magic and a specific practice shared between Church knights and their mage companions. Jameson cannot wield magic but he can be a vessel for it, drawing from it to strengthen him.
After Receive Magic has been activated (and at Instant speed mind you, so it ignores the usual initiative order), the next skill Dorothy uses will, if it is a Magic skill, be imprinted upon Jameson for the rest of the battle. The exact effect this has varies from spell to spell but generally speaking, they tend to be elemental attack buffs with a few extra gimmicks thrown in. There probably won't be much difference between say, a Blaze and a Firestorm but there are a few secret results in there.
Now, it might be worth asking why Jameson is extending this partnership to Dorothy and not to Trismegistus, the actual mage around here. This reason is twofold. Firstly that it should serve as another good way to demonstrate and reward the breadth of Dorothy's blue magic.
Secondly: Jameson doesn't trust Trish with that. I mean, come on.