The True Butcher - A Critical Look at Auto-wounds (Patreon)

Recently, as part of my general musing, consideration and work on homebrew KDM stuff I started looking at automatic wounds.  This was the primary killing tool in the Red Ring of Death build. But I didn't really go into it with too much detail there.

The problem with that build from a design standpoint is the ability to deal risk free wounds. Now, I am sure that the original design team thought that bleed tokens were a sufficient drawback that there was a risk involved, but outside of Black Blood (Sunstalker), there is very little to no risk of dying from bleed in this game as long as your hunt party has bandages.  So once you work out how to trigger the Red Ring repeatedly, the risk disappears.

As mentioned in the comments in that post, there's even another way to use the Red Ring.  If you combine Hero of the Young Story (gain 2 Bleed and 1 Survival) with the Blistering Plasma Fruit and the Red Ring you get another way of dealing wounds, but instead of being a support character, you're a tank instead.

It's very tempting to be convinced that this is because the Red Ring is a broken and overpowered item, but the truth of the matter is that the entire mechanic of automatic wounds is a flawed one.  In order to highlight this, I'm going to present a little build, it's not an easy one to make, in fact getting this is a real journey, but once you do there is little (outside of the Screaming Antelope) that can stand up to this build.

What you need to do is get a hold of the Canopic Jar while fighting the Level 2 Lion God.  This item can only be collected by an insane survivor with 8+xp during the sinkhole exploration event.  Once opened (and I recommend that a Necromancer opens it), you get this gear item.

Next part of this quest is beating the legendary Phoenix while you have Face Painting innovated.  When he dies he gives the survivor who dealt the killing blow the following fighting art:

This fighting art comes with an additional reward.  1000 insanity.  Plus as per the normal L3 rewards, you'll get Timeless Eye.

So if you activate the Butcher's Blood on this survivor, they're going to roll 100+ dice when attacking. Scoring Perfect hits on a 9 ot a 10.

If you then wield this item:

Then during step 2 of their attack (hit resolution), you will deal on average 20 wounds to the monster before you draw the hit locations.  Most monsters can't withstand that (FYI the GSK has 19 wounds) so you don't really need to worry about reactions or the trap.

Now yeah, there is a chance that you do this, fluff everything, and then your survivor dies. But as one of my patrons has pointed out, you can get -4 accuracy on this survivor by visiting the Bone Witch, so it becomes safer.  With -4 Accuracy, you're only going to be triggering either misses or perfect hits. So no chance of ever drawing hit locations.

All of this is genuinely difficult to achieve, in fact it's easiest to just combo the hero of the young story with the blistering fruit, but it demonstrates the problem of automatic wounds by taking it to the extreme.

Now it's not automatic wounds themselves that are an issue, it's not drawing a hit location - and that's the problem with both the Red Ring and the Counterweight axe. They bypass the hit location deck, anything that causes a wound without drawing hit locations is a very powerful ability, and having it happen over and over via the perfect hit mechanic or the red ring is a dangerous thing indeed.

However, we already have a version of this mechanic that is better balanced, it's in the Gorm expansion:

This does not bypass the drawing of a hit location, so wound reactions and the trap will still happen.  There is still risk to using this weapon, you couldn't get away with it on the Butcher's Blood build above, the trap would stop your attacks. It's got the same flavor as the Counterweight Axe, but there is the risk of drawing hit locations involved.  Not only is that more balanced, but it keeps suspense in the game.

As an aside, Devastating has the same issues, but at least you have to draw a hit location on the initial attack, so it's not as bad.

What does all this mean? Well I hope that in the future the design team uses the Acid-Tooth dagger design, and I know that this look at a rather troublesome mechanic (in my eyes at least) has allowed me to future proof any further custom content I make. Especially because Timeless Eye is going to be a part of the People of the Silk!