History Characters / SlayTheSpire

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/watcher_2.png]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/watcher.png]]

** Also her ways to 'block' an attack is primarily dodging things by jumping around or moving very fast. Hell, even her power card that increases Dexterity (which increase block gained from cards) is called [[DanceBattler Footwork]].

* SkeletonsInTheCoatCloset: Wears a rather prominent skull with spine still attached.

* LightningBruiser: Has a decent amount of health, good defense via Frost orbs, and decent damage via Lightning and Dark orbs. However, the Defect can also [[StoneWall building an icy, impenetrable fortress]] by generating a lot of Frost orbs and stacking Focus before slowly whittling enemies down, or [[GlassCannon evaporates all of them before they can retaliate]].

* EnlightenmentSuperpowers: ZigZagged: While a lot of the Watcher's cards suggest this with cards like Vigilance, Nirvana, Inner Peace, and Insight, a number of her Wrath cards like Eruption, Tantrum, Simmering Fury, and Indignation also imply that the Watcher is not necessarily always in harmony with her spiritual peace. This implies that the Watcher is either not so enlightened, or that inner peace and goodwill [[EnlightenedAntagonist isn't a requirement for enlightenment in this universe]]. Made worse by a card like [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons Reach Heaven, which produces a powerful attack card Through Violence.]]

* EnlightenmentSuperpowers: ZigZagged: While a lot of the Watcher's cards suggest this with cards like Vigilance, Nirvana, Inner Peace, and Insight, a number of her Wrath cards like Eruption, Tantrum, Simmering Fury, and Indignation also imply that the Watcher is not necessarily always in harmony with her spiritual peace. This implies that the Watcher is either not so enlightened, or that inner peace and goodwill [[EnlightenedAntagonist isn't a requirement for enlightenment in this universe]]. Made worse by a card like Reach Heaven, which produces a powerful attack card Through Violence.

* AffirmativeActionGirl: Added after the game left early access, and is not part of the official trio. However the Silent is also a woman and the Defect is a non-gendered robot, so this actual means the games playable characters are majority female.

* AffirmativeActionGirl: Added after the game left early access, and is not part of the official trio.

A blind ascetic who has come to "evaluate" the Spire, following her peer who had mysteriously disappeared ans stopped reporting about it.

* CastFromHitPoints: Has various [[BloodMagic]] cards that also costs HP to use. A card named Rupture increases your attack damage every time you do this, and you can build a deck round hurting yourself to gain more strength and regain lose health with [[LifeDrain Reaper]] or his starter relic.

** Can veer into [[LightningBruiser]] type by employing various cheap attacks such as Anger or Twin Strike and quickly ramps up attack power using Spot Weakness and upgraded Limit Break.

* GradualGrinder : The Silent usually slowly wearing her enemies down with poison and a lot of knives, while ensures that they would be too weak to fight back with a vast number of [[StandardStatusEffect]] in her arsenal. With proper support however, she can becomes a terrifying [[GlassCannon]] that can kill even an enemy with 999 health by turn two.

* BoringButPractical: The Silent, Defect and Watcher can be very unwieldy and their large variety of strategies can make it difficult to build towards specific decks. The Ironclad on the other hand is much simpler, and thus his deck archetypes are much easier to achieve. While he won't reach the insane potential of the other characters as easily, he can unleash some devastatingly powerful combos if built right. Case in point, it's widely believed that the single strongest combo in the game is the Block stacking strat enabled by his Barricade card. Where the Silent unleashes dozens of knives or the Defect rotates out orbs to buff himself to high heaven, Ironclad simply stacks his block to extremely high levels and becomes [[SimpleYetAwesome functionally invincible.]]

* FighterMageThief : The clear fighter of the main trio, with a simpler deck relying on brute strength.

* MightyGlacier: His card archetype. He's slow and rather simple to play in the early game, but if his deck becomes strong enough it will slaughter anything with ease.

The Silent specializes in two major areas- Knives and poison. The Silent can either construct a deck based around drawing a high number of low-damaging but extremely cheap Shivs that slowly ramp up in damage (and are supplemented by a wide variety of other knife-based attacks as well) or a deck based around applying a damage-over-time debuff on her enemies to penetrate through their defenses.

** She even has a card named Thousand Cuts to accentuate this.

* FragileSpeedster: One of her major archetypes is clearly based around this. She forgoes the slow-but-safe measure of the Ironclad or the risky-but-rewarding orb generation of the Defect in exchange for finding somewhat of a middle ground based around laying down a ton of knives very quickly, very fast. While she can easily out DPS the other heroes, she leaves herself open a lot more as a result and it's not uncommon to have many more attack cards than defense cards in certain occasions. Considering some bosses can hit well over your max HP and then some, this means that the Silent can run into serious problems with staying alive long enough to begin really pumping out some blades.
** Also her ways to 'block' an attack is by jumping around with acrobatic moves, or just by moving very fast. Hell, her power card that increases Dexterity (which increase block gained from cards) is called [[DanceBattler Footwork]].

* MasterPoisoner: Since 2.0 update, the Silent has an exclusive access to Poison, which damages enemy through their block. Her arsenals includes multiple ways to directly poison the enemy, envenoming her attacks, or multiplying one on the target. She can also find Poison Potion to toss at her enemy, and has an access to relics that help her with inflicting poison as well.

* YouAreAlreadyDead: Anything hit with enough poison will die on their turn before they get to act.

The Defect has a unique mechanic- orb generation. The Defect can generate up to three orbs that each have a passive effect and an active effect. Passively the orbs float around the Defect and give them bonuses such as increased energy or free block, but they can also be invoked to consume them and deal a more noticeable effect such as a burst of damage.

* MechanicallyUnusualFighter: None of the other characters have orbs, and their management is the [[{{pun}} core]] element of the Defect's playstyle.

* YouAreAlreadyDead: anything facing the defect that doesn't not have enough health to survive it's lighting strikes on it's next turn.

A blind ascetic who has come to "evaluate" the spire.

Most of her playstyle hinges upon her ability to switch between two fighting stances: Calm, which grants her bonus energy when she leaves it, and Wrath, in which she deals and receives twice as much damage.

* TheBerserker: Wrath mode is this in a nutshell, doubling damage dealt and taken. Uniquely, you can switch out of it almost at will, and timing your Bezerking is an important aspect of playing the Watcher to full potential.
* BlindSeer: She is blind and many of her cards allow her to scry, letting the player see upcoming cards and move some of them to the discard pile.
* CrystalDragonJesus: The Watcher's religion is never explained, but from her cards it's a mix of Buddhism (Meditate, Tranquility,Nirivana, the "Empty" series of cards) and the more smite-happy western religions (Ragnarok, Smite,Battle Hymn, Deus Ex Machina, Blasphemy)
* DeathorGloryAttack: Blasphemy givers you one turn of Divinity stance to kill your foes in...and kills you the turn after if you fail.
* DissonantSerenity: Calm stance lets you oversee an immense amount of slaughter despite being, well, calm. Downplayed in that it's leaving calm stance and getting the bonus energy if provides that is usually more dangerous.
* GlassCannon: Wrath stance causes her to both deal and receive twice as much damage.
* EnlightenmentSuperpowers: ZigZagged: While a lot of the Watcher's cards suggest this with names like "Nirivana" "Inner Peace" "Master/Deceive reality" and "Empty Mind/Body/Fist", few of these cards are mutuality exclusive with the more rage-based cards like "Eruption", "Cresendo", or "Reach Heaven Through Violence". This implies that the watcher either isn't so enlightened, or that inner peace and goodwill [[EnlightenedAntagonist isn't a requirement for enlightenment in this universe.]]
* LimitBreak: Divinity stance normally acts like this, proving powerful bonuses but requiring a buildup of mantra to achieve and lasting only one turn.

* ReligionIsMagic: Closer to the eastern interpretation, but still has some god-calling magic such as Ragnarok and Deus Ex Machina.

* SuperMode: Divinity stance has painful requirements to activate, but provides an energy boost and ''TRIPLES'' your damage output, without subjecting you to the damage increase of wrath.
* StanceSystem: The watcher has two main options (Calm and Wrath), and a hard-to-activate MasterOfAll stance (Divinity).

* UnstoppableRage: Wrath form...is actually an aversion. While doubling damage dealt is incredibly powerful, doubling damage taken means that you'll be stopped very easily indeed if you're careless with your cardplay.

His primary card colour is red. He begins with the Burning Blood relic, which restores 6 HP at the end of every battle.

Her primary card colour is green. She begins with the Ring of the Snake relic, allowing her to draw 2 more cards at the beginning of each combat.

Its primary card colour is yellow. Its relic is Cracked Core, which allows the Defect to automatically generate one Lightning orb at the beginning of each round.

Her primary card color is purple and her relic is Pure Water, which adds a Miracle into her hand at the start of combat.

* DissonantSerenity: Calm stance lets you oversea an immense amount of slaughter despite being, well, calm. Downplayed in that it's leaving calm stance and getting the bonus energy if provides that is usually more dangerous.

* UnstoppableRage: Wrath form...is actually an aversion. While doubling damage dealt is incredibly powerful, doubling damage taken means that you'll be stopped very easily indeed if you're careless with you cardplay.

* LimitBreak: Divinity stance normally acts like this, proving powerful bonuses but requiring a buildup of mantra to achieve.

* ReligionIsMagic: Closer to the more eastern interpretation, but still has some god-calling magic such as Ragnarok and Deus Ex Machina.

* StanceSystem: The watcher has two main options (Calm and Wrath), and a hard-to-activate MasterOfAllStance (Divinity).

** FighterMageThief : The clear fighter of the main trio, with a simpler deck relying on brute strength.

* GlassCannon: Wrath stance causes her to both deal and recieve twice as much damage.

* DeathByAThousandCuts: Her shiv builds run on this. Shivs do low damage, but boy howdy can you produce a ''lot'' of them, and if looped properly, will allow you to draw 0-cost shivs to chuck at the enemy ''perpetually'', allowing you to one turn even the FinalBoss!

* BFS: Has one that almost as tall as he is. Heavy Blade also implies that it has quite a weight, and is increadibly strong.

* ArtificalIntelligence
* CyberCyborg: Has a large 'eye spot' in the middle of its face plate, giving it this aesthetic. It has another, smaller 'eye spot' above, however.

* KnifeNut: Most of her attacks involve knives. Stabbing you with knives, tossing knives, tossing a [[MoreDakka lot of knives]], poisoning you... by stabbing you with a knife, etc. The card art for Grand Finale, Die Die Die and Infinite Blades demonstrates that the entire inside of her cloak is lined with knives.

A combat automaton who has recently gained sentience and is exploring the spire in order to understand the meaning of his newfound intellect. Begins with 4 Strikes, 4 Defends, 1 Zap and 1 Dualcast.

The Defect has a unique mechanic- orb generation. The Defect can generate up to three orbs that each have a passive effect and an active effect. Passively the orbs float around the Defect and give him bonuses such as increased energy or free block, but they can also be invoked to consume them and deal a more noticeable effect such as a burst of damage.

[[/folder]]

* TheStrategist: She has multiple cards that retain themselves, with many becoming stronger or cheaper over multiple turns, can Scry cards to see her next card draw and remove potential "dead cards", and cards which enhance or are enhanced depending on which type of card you played last turn. Much of her game plan involves cycling between stances, going into Calm stance for energy gain later and going into Wrath stance to deal extra damage and exiting out to avoid taking more damage.

A combat automaton who has recently gained sentience, and is exploring the spire in order to understand the meaning of his newfound intellect. Begins with 4 Strikes, 4 Defends, 1 Zap and 1 Dualcast.

It's primary card colour is yellow. It's relic is Cracked Core, which allows the Defect to automatically generate one Lightning orb at the beginning of each round.

* DifficultButAwesome: Where the Ironclad and Silent are much safer picks to win a run, the Defect defines itself primarily based on luck to a much greater extent than those two. It relies heavily on it's orbs, and getting just the right draw in just the right circumstance means can be extremely difficult. At the same time, the Defect can enjoy a veritable tidal wave of free buffs if it draws properly, either causing it to dish out tons of damage with it's Lightning, have a great amount of block with Frost, and so on.
* MechanicallyUnusualFighter: None of the other characters have orbs, and their management is the core element of the Defect's playstyle.

[[/folder]]

* ArmorPenetratingAttack: One of the reasons why a poison build is so powerful is because poison goes around block and acts first before an enemy does, meaning that extremely tanky enemies will eventually be brought low.

[[folder: The '''Watcher''']]