Butcher's Circus

The Butcher's Circus is a location added in The Butcher's Circus DLC.

Behavior
The Butcher's Circus has drastic differences in combat from the base game; turn order has changed to be less random, and heroes are reworked to provide balance.

Turn Order
Instead of a dice roll to determine turn order, there will be a coin toss that determines which player will go first. The winner of the coin toss gets to choose which hero acts first, while the loser gains a special team-wide buff for the first round. After the chosen hero acts, the play passes to the other player and they get to choose which hero acts. This continues until all remaining heroes have acted, then a new round will begin. The player who won the coin toss always acts first.

Hero Corpses
Slain heroes will leave corpses, rather than disappear from combat after being slain. This allows the player to maintain some semblance of their original party formations, and reminds them of the horror that the Circus brings.

Stress Damage
Stress is introduced into the Circus as a unique way of slaying opponents. Due to the strength of the healing abilities provided by the Vestal, Occultist, Crusader, players will need to pay special attention to the Stress mechanic in order to escalate battles. Heroes will inflict stress through critical hits, but some have specific abilities that deal stress damage. Heroes include: (WIP)


 * Crusader: Zealous Accusation
 * Occultist: Abyssal Artillery
 * Plague Doctor: Noxious Blast, Plague Grenade, Blinding Gas(?)
 * Vestal: Dazzling Light

Stuns and Dazes
Stuns are still powerful in the Circus, but still grant a 50% stun resist to the target. Dazes on the other hand, do not(?) provide resist buffs, and instead force the hero to act after all non-dazed heroes, effectively forcing players to choose them last in a round.

Other Changes

 * Physical damage is generally higher.
 * Bleed and Blight do not trigger Deathblows.
 * All heroes are available as "contestants," but only one of each hero can participate.
 * DLC heroes require their respective DLC in order to be used.
 * Resistances to DoTs and other debuffs have been lowered. Heroes that are strong against Blight are often weak to Bleed, and vice versa.
 * The Butcher's Circus DLC doesn't impact the single player campaign much, but it adds two new town events that relieve the stress of heroes, if at least one circus match is played before beginning the week.

Strategy
While DoTs do not trigger Death's Door checks, they can be useful for dealing with the high PROT buffs the Crusader provides.