Charm of the Hedgehog: I think it’s great and will hopefully incentivize a few more people to try a retribution build. I recognize it’s a jump above the rares that have been printed in the slot, but it’s great for players to not have to track down long OOP tokens to get a decent retribution modifier.
In PUGs and most unthemed runs there won’t be enough charms to get higher than the base damage from hedgehog. Even low AC classes are targeted by a few melee attacks in a PTD game. The dwarf and paladin can coax an extra hit or two in a combat but only in certain rooms. So a 6 point charm or 10 point cloak seems high at a glance, but it doesn’t trigger every round and is sometimes worthless in a room. There are occasionally advantageous fights are when a monster multiattacks one target, but let me tell you the hedgehog pays dearly for that damage.
I’ll also share with you how well Hedgehog runs go in VTD. The short version is that we don’t survive a lot.
The good: When the monster(s) make melee attacks against everyone in the party, they die in 2-3 rounds. We nail these rooms.
The bad: When the monster makes 1-3 melee attacks per turn (common,) The fight takes 15+ rounds. Anyone without substantial resistance to any ongoing effects in the room melt and need substantial healing. Even the melee attacks can be brutal because remember we can’t fully negate those and trigger RD. The group basically needs to have meta knowledge of the dungeon to survive these rooms. There is a big caveat in that we intentionally don’t attack the monster in these rooms, but even if we did, follow along with…
The Ugly: When we can’t hit a monster with RD we are HILARIOUSLY ill equipped to fight at Nightmare level. We sacrifice amulets, belts, rings, armors, cloaks, charms galore and more. Dexterity and saves are in the gutter, spell damage doesn’t carry us, and if a monster has DR we sometimes accomplish negative damage. We’ll likely lose the combat and if it’s room 7 we’re definitely not surviving. Oh and sometimes room 7 monsters have OHKO attacks which make me laugh the hardest, but we die all the same.
So my points (ha) are that RD focused damage isn’t anywhere near game breaking levels at this point, and the hedgehog runs aren’t a silver bullet meta-killer.
Thanks for coming to my hedge talk.