Characters / Darkest Dungeon: Heroes (G to L)

Darkest Dungeon Main Character Index
Heroes (A-F, G-L, M-Z) | NPCs and Merchants | Darkest Dungeon: Monsters | Darkest Dungeon II: Monsters | DLC Monsters

The Grave Robber

"You're looking a tad wan, friend."

^{Click here to see her in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"To those with keen eye... Gold gleams like a dagger's point."

The Grave Robber is a fast DPS-based hero with a focus on crits. Her skillset is versatile enough to fit in most ranks without issue comfortably. She also possess a high dodge rating to avoid damage, at the cost of her below average health and her regular damage being subpar.

See the Grave Robber's comic here◊.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Implied. Toxin Trickery has her take a swig from a green flask that not only cures Bleed and Blight while boosting her Dodge and Speed for the rest of the battle. The Grave Robber also has a natural 50% Blight resistance; most other characters are in the 20-30% range, 40% at most, with only the Abomination and Plague Doctor being higher. One of her Crimson Curse trinkets, a bottle of Absinthe, bumps it up even further.
• An Adventurer Is You:
  • In a more traditional role, she is a DPS, but not in a typical sense. In Darkest Dungeon, team positioning is everything to some classes, like the Leper or Arbalest, but for the Grave Robber, no matter where she is positioned, she can still have some skill to dish out constant damage.
  • She also makes for an excellent avoidance tank. She starts out with 10 Dodge, 5 more than most of the characters, in exchange for her fragility. Combine that with Shadow Fade and Toxin Trickery and she'll dodge like a butterfly, enemy attacks missing her left and right.
• Animation Bump: Her Palette Swaps have matching virtuous and afflicted portraits (in other words, the affliction sprite for the brunette Grave Robber is also a brunette, unlike the default blonde). All other classes in the game only have one virtuous and afflicted portrait per class (for example, a Jester in black wears the standard pink during his virtuous portrait).
• Anti-Hero: Her job is easier and more difficult now that the dead have already dug themselves up.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Pick to the Face ignores any Protection stats as of the Color of Madness balance patch. In the sequel, with the removal of Prot, it ignores Block tokens instead.
• Arranged Marriage: Her first Hero Shrine explains that this is why she was married to an abusive drunken noble of a husband, having been born into a rich family herself and likely wed for a large dowry.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Her camping skill Snuff Box has her inhale scents from a box she carries to remove a disease she or an ally has. The only real-world health benefits of snuff are that it isn't quite as bad for you as smoking tobacco directly and that those around you don't have to weather any secondhand smoke. That said, it isn't clear whether or not the snuff box contains some exotic materials that might actually cure diseases in-universe.
• Blade Enthusiast: Of the throwing knives variety. Three of her seven combat skills involve knives.
• Blue Blood: At least, she used to be, back when she was a noble's wife and from a noble family herself. Now she's just a common thief, though she prefers it vastly to her old life.
• Booze-Based Buff: "Absinthe" replaces "Toxic Trickery" in the sequel, and on top of giving her Dodge tokens it also heals her if she is below a certain amount of health to stabilise herself.
• Canon Name: Her default name in the game file is Audrey, a reference to the game's creative director's wife. This turns out to be a rather morbid tongue-in-cheek since II reveals that the Grave Robber murdered her husband and stole his jewelry from his tomb.
• Carrying the Antidote: Poison Dart inflicts Blight on enemies. Toxin Trickery cures any Bleed/Blight on the Grave Robber. Though, she replaces it with Absinthe in II.
• Combos:
  • In I Thrown Dagger does extra damage against marked enemies, and can also do more damage when they are blighted. These modifiers can stack. The former requires someone else in the party who can mark, however, as the Grave Robber does not have any marking abilities herself.
  • II expands upon this with certain moves like Pick to the Face and Thrown Dagger getting an additional 50% chance to crit when used on an enemy with a Combo token.
• Classy Cravat: She's got one of these, alluding to her noble upbringing.
• Coup de Grâce: Glint in the Dark ignores 20% of an enemy's death resistance, making it a good skill to finish off an enemy once and for all. It can even completely ignore death resistance if the Grave Robber is stealthed.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • In I, she had an innately high critical rate. Lunge and Thrown Dagger both increase that rate by an additional 10%, with more the more they're upgraded.
  • II puts a greater emphasis on this. Besides featuring an additional 50% chance to crit on Combo enemies, has both Lunge and Thrown Dagger possess a whopping 30% critical rate when mastered, with Pick to the Face and Pirouette following behind at an also impressive 15%.
• Dash Attack: Lunge moves the Grave Robber forward by two ranks as she leaps to stab an enemy in the gut.
• Devious Daggers: The Grave Robber's main weapons are her daggers, which suits her shifty and stealthy personality. In addition, most of her attack skills involving daggers are ranged as she throws them at the enemy. She'll throw one with Thrown Dagger, several at the middle ranks with Flashing Daggers and she throws a single dagger to the chest with Glint in the Dark. Lunge is the only melee skill involving her daggers.
• Domestic Abuse: She was subject of the abuse of her husband, notably his lust and his drunken violence. She quickly had enough of him and poisoned his drink to get rid of him.
• Draw Aggro: A stealthed Grave Robber can use Repartee to gain two taunt tokens and three dodges tokens. The icon and skill name suggest that she is literally taunting the enemy to draw their attention.
• Drunken Master: She is quite the drinker as show by some trinkets and moves of hers, but instead of leaving her more sluggish, alcohol makes her faster and even deadlier than when sober.
• Eat the Rich: Alluded through a town event called Eat the Rich. The event gives every idle Grave Robbers on your roster an increase in their level, making them stronger.
  Narrator: "To the resourceful thief, burials are merely... ephemeral affairs."
  Flavor Text: "Most curious of all, however, is the absent of any evidence in the crypt itself. Nevertheless, the chest was found open, and its contents conspicuously missing."
• Evil Feels Good: In Darkest Dungeon II, she's revealed to have poisoned her abusive husband and robbed his grave, while having murdered local watchmen who stumbled upon her. The conclusions of her Puzzle Boss flashbacks draw attention to her excitement, and it's implied that her later abandonment of her estate was partially motivated by a newfound thrill-seeking urge.
  She was awash in exhilaration, the glint in her eyes outshining the fistful of ill-gotten gains.
• Exploring the Evil Lair: Her Camping Skill Night Moves involves her scouting out ahead while the others rest.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Ninja. The Grave Robber is fragile, but is quick, can easily build up Dodge (Shadow Fade invokes the elusiveness of the ninja), and deals decent to high damage with thrown daggers, especially if her crit chances are maxed out.
• Flash Step: Shadow Fade moves her back in the formation and applies stealth to herself. It also gives her a short buff.
• Fragile Speedster: She has the highest base Dodge and Speed in the game, which can combine with Shadow Fade and the right trinkets to reach near-unhittable levels of Dodge, but her HP is very low. She remains so in II, even with the removal of the Dodge stat, having one of the highest Speed in the game and the lowest HP, but many of her moves can generate Dodges token to make up for it.
• Gallows Humor: One of her camp abilities, shared with the Highwayman. It can reduce stress for the entire party, however it has also a 25% chance to backfire and cause more stress to anyone other than the Grave Robber.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: She wears a shovel on her back. This is reflected with an extra shovel added to the party's supplies for each Grave Robber in the group at the outset of each mission.
• Good Luck Charm: Her Lucky Talisman trinket gives her an accuracy and Dodge buff, revealing itself as quite effective.
• Grave Robbing: It is her main job, but she is now stuck with fighting monsters mostly. She still brings a shovel with her when adventuring as a generic supply. She got her start by robbing the tomb of her husband to pay off crippling debts, but is implied to have become a simple Thrill Seeker afterwords. In DD2, she gets to do some actual grave robbing with her skill Dead of Night, which clears a corpse and grants her a 33% heal and stealth.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: With the Pilfer camping skill, the Grave Robber class can reveal that she nicked a generic supply item while they were in town that is then added to the party's inventory.
• Lady Drunk: She was this in her backstory comic before deciding to begin the grave robbing business. She can still take a bottle of Absinthe as a trinket, buffing her Blight Chance and Resist and Disease Resist. In the sequel, Absinthe is now part of her skillset and is used as a Healing Potion, but she gets another drink trinket with the Stiff Drink which enhances her speed.
• Lascivious Beauty Mark: She has one of these, and she is quite disproportionately flirty compared to the rest of the cast's no-nonsense attitude, frequently calling people "love", "darling" or "sweet thing".
• Let's Get Dangerous!: If she gains the Powerful Virtue:
  Grave Robber: Enough lolly-gagging. Now I aim for the heart.
• Master Poisoner:
  • Not to the degree of the Plague Doctor, but she has her own tricks up her sleeve: A Poison Dart that can peg an enemy in the back row to both Blight them and lower their Blight Resist, and a vial of antivenom for herself that also boosts her speed and ability to dodge. It also doubles as Acquired Poison Immunity.
  • She first uses this in her backstory by poisoning her abusive husband's drink.
• Multi-Melee Master: She can either slam her pick into an enemy's face or lunge at them with daggers drawn.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Whether hurling daggers with deadly accuracy or a spray of poisoned darts.
• Must Have Nicotine: She takes snuff. Her camping skill Snuff Box allows her to share a pinch with an ally, curing a disease for both the ally and herself.
• Noodle Incident: When performing first aid, she'll sometimes mention she used to do crochet.
• Poisoned Weapons: Instead of throwing daggers, the Grave Robber can throw a few poison darts at an enemy to cause Blight and reduce the enemy's Blight resistance.
• Powerful Pick: Pick To The Face is a powerful melee weapon that can even ignore an enemy's PROT.
• Princess in Rags: She once belonged to the nobility, but after poisoning him in revenge for his abuse, she discovered that their once plentiful finances had been run through the ground. Upon realizing he was buried with his jewellery, she decided to rob him, before realizing she enjoyed the thrill, leading to her current occupation.
• Riches to Rags: She was a noblewoman until her debts led her to rob her husband's grave (presumably including her deceased family members' nearby and later on graves everywhere) for valuables.
• She-Fu: With Pirouette, it is suggested that the Grave Robber can perform a great leap using an enemy as a springboard to propel herself backwards for 3 ranks, although the move also dazes her.
• Sex for Solace: Her comments when comforting people around the campfire imply that this is what she's doing to make the individual party member feel better.
  Grave Robber: Lordy me, you're well proportioned!
• Super Serum: With Toxin Trickery, the Grave Robber can gulp down a vial of potion to not only cure Blight and bleed, but also buff her Speed and Dodge until the battle ends. The name implies it's the same toxin she uses to inflict Blight on enemies.
• Sympathetic Murderer: As revealed in her Hero Shrines, she was forced into an unwanted Arranged Marriage with an abusive drunkard who spoiled both his and her family's wealth. She eventually poisoned him and stole his rings to pay off her debts, leaving her poorer but free and self-sufficient.
• Technicolor Toxin: The toxin in the bottle on her Utility Belt and poison darts is bright green.
• Thrill Seeker: Darkest Dungeon II implies an element of this in her personality - despite plundering her husband's grave for his valuable rings and heirlooms, the narration places much more emphasis on the excitement she drew from the act of robbing his grave than the riches she gained from doing so, and it's implied that her abandonment of her estate afterwards was driven by a desire to feed these urges.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: When she was just a simple noblewoman stuck in an unhappy marriage, she had a tomboyish streak, preferring to ride horses all day before participating in parties during the evening. Her tomboyish tendencies were then highlighted by her having a ponytail.
• Token Evil Teammate: She is the only hero in II who isn't The Atoner, instead reveling in the thrill of murder and theft. Notably, when she confronts her dead husband as a Specter in the fight against the Body of Work, she is the only hero who isn't frightened or taken aback, instead using the opportunity to get some quips in on him.
• Took a Level in Badass: She used to be a proper lady with no combat training whatsoever and turned to graverobbing to relieve the pressure of debts, but now she's a hardened adventurer wielding throwing knives with great skill.
• Tragic Keepsake: Downplayed. In the sequel, one of the Grave Robber's exclusive trinkets is "His Rings", the rings of her late abusive husband whom she poisoned. With them, she can gain strength when she hits enemies.
• Trap Master: Inverted. She has a higher-than-normal chance to disable traps… so long as you spot them before you walk right over them.
• Unscrupulous Hero: The Grave Robber has no shame, nor restrains about her life as a murderous thief (and in fact seems to revel in it), but she is still putting her life at risk to save the world instead of joining the likes of the Pillagers to murder and rob the innocents like the Antiquarian, making her at least a better person by default compared to the pitless thugs, bloodthirsty soldiers and various abominations she fights.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Her combat dialogue after she gets a solid hit tends to be very condescending to the enemy.
• Utility Belt: Includes a green flask of Technicolor Toxin, her Powerful Pick, and many pouches. She also has a strap to carry her shovel across her chest and torso.
• Walking Armory: The Grave Robber carries a seemingly endless supply of daggers, darts, and a pickaxe, with a good setup of them allowing her to able to attack nearly any enemy from nearly any spot in a party's formation. This is visible in her character art, along with a Utility Belt and a shovel.
• Weak, but Skilled: While fragile, the Grave Robber's potential for agility, accuracy, versatility in range, debuffs increasing the chance for Bleed or Blight to affect enemies, and a few abilities with a higher chance to critical strike can easily make up for that failing. She also has the highest trap disarm chance.

The Hellion

"I will FEAST on your HEART!"

^{Click here to see her in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"Barbaric rage and unrelenting savagery make for a powerful ally."

Wild, unpredictable, and utterly ruthless, the Hellion lives for the thrill of spilling blood! Her massive glaive affords her impressive reach in combat, while its razor-sharp edge leaves lasting wounds on enemies. Certain skills leave her exhausted, however, and she may occasionally need to take a turn to recharge her adrenaline before entering the fray once again.

See the Hellion's comic here◊.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: Her Trinket Set hints that she was cast out. Her backstory in the sequel confirms she was exiled from her tribe for cowardice in battle.
  Outcast. Alone. Shamed.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: In Darkest Dungeon 2, Howling End ignores any protection token while inflicting heavy damage, but it leaves the Hellion winded.
• The Atoner: It's implied that she's volunteered to brave the horrors in the Estate to regain her honor for her past lack of bravery in battle. By the end of the sequel it seems that her clansmen welcome her back for proving her valour by fighting against the darkness and saving the world
• Badass Boast: Almost all her class-specific barks are these.
• Barbarian Hero: As a rare female example, she previously took the loner aspect of the trope by her class' unique camping skills, being completely incapable of aiding her allies (indeed, Reject The Gods reduces her stress at the cost of increasing the others' stress).
• The Berserker:
  • Downplayed. She's not portrayed as fighting with reckless abandon like most berserkers. However, many of her stronger attacks cause a large damage and speed debuff to herself, explained as being from exhausting herself in their execution.
  • Her Crimson Court trinkets have this concept to them, granting her 20% more damage for every 25% of her health is missing, two more speed, 15% death blow resistance, and -15% healing received.
• Blood Knight: Aside from her general demeanor, Gameplay and Story Integration lets you know by how the Hellion will not voluntarily move backward in your formation in battle. She's one of the few classes that fight for the sake of fighting.
• Bloodlust: The Hellion's savage fighting style makes her rather themed around, making her enemies bleed. In the sequel, this becomes an actual skill the Hellion can use. The Bloodlust skill removes all Winded tokens on herself and gains a damage buff against bleeding enemies.
• Canon Name: The Hellion's default name is Boudica. Boudica was a Celtic queen of ancient Britain who led a bloody revolt against the Roman Empire. In popular culture, she is usually imagined as fighting to the death. Which pairs nicely with her bark when she's about to be sacrificed to The Heart of Darkness.
• Cowardly Lion: Her bravado and bloodlust is a front, the Hellion is secretly one of the most cowardly Heroes of the series, with only the the Antiquarian being even more of a coward than her. That said, in spite of her fears, she is still fighting nightmarish abominations tooth and nail to save the world and making up for her cowardice in the past when she run away from the an hopeless battle instead of dying fighting alongside her people.
• Critical Status Buff: Her Lioness Warpaint trinket from the Crimson Court trinket set gives her stacking damage buffs as her HP drops. The complete set makes this more effective, raising her Death Blow resistance to minimize Critical Existence Failure, raising her accuracy to ensure she delivers the pain, and reducing her healing received so that she remains within these low-HP thresholds.
• Dash Attack: In case the Hellion is not in the front ranks, she may use Breakthrough, running forward and impaling the three first enemy ranks.
• Death or Glory Attack: The Hellion has a few attacks that "exhaust" her with hefty damage and speed debuffs after being used. The Adrenaline Rush skill can increase her damage and make up for the damage reduction, but the speed debuff will stay. This is expanded on in the sequel, where a good part of her skills can leave her Winded though there are ways to eliminate the status effect. In the sequel, she has a specific "Winded" token to indicate her exhaustion.
• Death Seeker: The conclusion of her Hero Shrine flashbacks reveal that she's been throwing herself into fight after fight hoping to die due to her guilt and shame over her past cowardice. She sees her continued survival despite this as a sign that even Death itself is disgusted by her.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Not in general, but when she starts to break, she becomes this for The Berserker and the Blood Knight: Depending on her afflictions, her rage could completely fall apart and reveal herself as little more than a frightened child, in over her head; it could grow out of control, reaching such extremes that she goes from encouraging to her teammates to downright terrifying them; or it could spiral inwards, turning her bloodlust and fury to more… self-destructive tendencies.
• Dirty Coward: Her comic shows her cowering in fear while her fellow clansmen fought and died in battle. Darkest Dungeon II softens this by showing that she did participate in the battle, but she still ran when it became clear that the battle was a lost cause, and was exiled from her clan as a result.
  The Hellion[having a Meltdown]: No! NOT ME! TAKE ANYONE ELSE!
• Draw Aggro: With Toe to Toe, the Hellion can now attack and enemy, pulling herself forward and gaining taunt tokens as if she was stepping forward to meet the foe head on.
• Dreadlock Warrior: Minor example, the Hellion's hair on the sides of her head is arrayed into cornrows. The rest of it is a large ponytail.
• The Exile: While she is an outsider to the more civilized lands the game (technically) takes place in, certain comments and trinkets suggest that she has been banished in some form or another, though even her comic does not make it truly explicit that her own tribe has exiled her. It is later confirmed in Darkest Dungeon II, where one of her Puzzle Boss flashbacks at the Hero Shrine is the Hellion being driven out of her village by grieving widows after abandoning her kinfolk at the battle.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Barbarian. An unrefined, less civilized fighter who dishes high damage but leaves herself vulnerable without any Protection or Dodge.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a battle-crazed berserker who thrills at the spilling of blood. The bloodier it gets, the better she fights. Her first Palette Swaps is a redhead.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Her Revel skill allows her to relieve her and her allies' stress during the middle of a dungeon, at the cost of all of them getting tipsy and becoming less effective in combat. In the sequel, the Hellion has the Raucous Revelry skill, which heals and stress heals her and her allies, though she also gets winded. She also has a unique Empty Stein trinket, which buffs her damage when she stands at the front.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Not herself, but her comic sees a fellow barbarian bisected at the waist with his own glaive from an enemy that struggled with him.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Her second Hero Shrine mission in Darkest Dungeon II has her up against four heavily armed soldiers. All of her attacks do Scratch Damage against them and attempting to summon more of her clanmates results in them swiftly getting cut down. The real solution is to cower behind a tree branch and escape, resulting in the shame and guilt the Hellion now carries with her.
• Intimate Healing: One of the ways she treats her allies' injuries is to lick the wound clean. The other is to stuff it with dung.
• Jack of All Stats: While she doesn't have as much raw attack power as the other frontline classes, she has the most versatile moveset that lets her attack nearly any point in the enemy formation, including sniping their back ranks. No other melee specialist does that. She also has a good HP, damage, crit, and speed base, letting her deliver solid raw damage numbers while still being capable of taking hits herself. Her drawback is that her skills are best used at the very forefront of the formation, and she doesn't have much mobility to recover from a shuffle.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Barbaric YAWP! has the Hellion shout at the two enemy front ranks so loudly she can stun them. In The Butcher's Circus, her screaming instead inflicts a lot of Stress and gives an accuracy debuff. In the sequel, it removes stealth and also weakens the enemy, and only stuns them if they have a "combo" mark.
• My Greatest Failure: The Hellion's backstory involves her having participated in a raid against a column of knights. However, she was frightened and hid behind a tree as one of her companions was killed and even called for her. Her tribe presumably caught on to that and exiled her. The second game softens this up a bit by showing that she did fight with her clansmen, but she ran away after dozens of her kin started dying around her and she started seeing the battle as a lost cause.
• Nay-Theist: Her Reject the Gods camping skill, which reduces her stress at the cost of stressing everyone else out. Religious Heroes get even more stressed out at this. Understandable, given that the Vestal, Crusader, and Occultist demonstrate that the powers she's rejecting are not to be trifled with. However, the same cannot be said for other Hellions with the exact same skill.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: "Barbaric YAWP!" stuns the closest two enemies for a turn, but decreases her damage and speed.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Adrenaline Rush in a nutshell. The Hellion clears blight and bleed, heals a bit, and buffs her damage to resume fighting efficiently. The sprites shows that she only needs to pump herself up to perform this.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Fur is a common trapping to her outfit — around her neck, belt, and as cuffs to her arm wrappings. Judging by her default name and blue face-paint, her brand of Barbarian is Celtic.
• Produce Pelting: She was on the receiving end of this when she returned in shame to her settlement and all the widows pelted her with rotten tomatoes, among other things, because of her cowardice. She keeps a Rotten Tomato as a trinket which grants her a crit token each turn.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: With her wild, expressive nature, along with the Flagellant, she is the red oni out of the two berserker-type characters (with the blue oni being the Leper). The Leper is a calm and collected Warrior Poet who exiled himself to protect his people from his condition, while the Hellion is a wrathful Screaming Warrior who was exiled when she failed to stay and try to fight alongside her tribe.
• Screw the War, We're Partying: Her Revel skill lets the party revel while they're leading an expedition into a dangerous dungeon. Such partying causes accuracy and speed penalties for the next few battles from the hangovers.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Her outfit is adorned with bones - you can see some dangling from her skirt around her hips, and in the second during certain skill animations game you may spot a spine with ribs running along her back.
• Standard Power-Up Pose: When using the Adrenaline Rush combat skill.
• This Means Warpaint: The blue facepaint on her face is hinted to be warpaint as her camping skill "Battle Chants"'s icon and her Trinket "Lioness Warpaint" show.
• Tribal Face Paint: There's a large streak of blue facepaint, possibly woad, along one side of her face. The exact colour and pattern of the facepaint varies with the Hellion's different colour sets. The related trinket Lioness Warpaint gives her a damage buff inversely proportional to her HP.

The Highwayman

"I never miss!"

^{Click here to see him in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"Elusive, evasive, persistent... Righteous traits for a rogue."

A rogue, a thug, and a thief, the Highwayman has honed his skills with dirk and flintlock to devastating effect. Whether at range or in a melee, he is equally effective at dispatching his foes. Be it a grapeshot area-of-effect, or single-target bleed, the Highwayman's skills focus solely on dealing damage in a variety of ways.

See the Highwayman's comic here◊.

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• Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Along with killing the child's mother when he reflexively shot at the moving stagecoach, this is what prompted the Highwayman to become The Atoner. Several quotes show that he lives with immense guilt over it, and one of his iconic trinkets in II is a locket from the robbery with the mother and child's photo inside.
• An Adventurer Is You: Pure DPS. Even the one status he's good at inflicting, Bleed, does more damage over time instead of any other utility purpose.
  • Like the Grave Robber, he has the skills to fight at any range, but doesn't quite have her mobility or high Dodge, so it's generally best to choose a specialization (mid-row ranged or melee or front-row hybrid) and stick with it.
  • His buffs increase his own damage and accuracy or allow him to deal further damage when attacked, his debuffs increase his chances of critting or inflicting Bleed. His only control effect, Point Blank Shot, actually works against him — it pushes him and the enemy back one square and only works from the front rank against the front rank enemy. The knockback is there to offset the fact that it deals +50%(!) damage with no cooldown other than the need to get the Highwayman back to the front rank.
• Anti-Hero: Considering he's a highwayman fighting for a fairly noble cause. His backstory comic shows he was not the Gentleman Thief type either and was a ruthless killer before his Heel–Face Turn. He is overall a mix between a Classical Anti-Hero and a Pragmatic Hero: he is consumed by self-doubts about ever being able to achive his redemption and he did not became any less brutal after stopping being The Highwayman as much as he redirects his violent efforts towards richly deserving parties, but he is ultimately fighting for a right cause for selfless reasons.
• The Atoner:
  • The name of the one who helps you reach the hamlet is Dismas.
  • His background comic implies that this is his reason for going into the dungeons after having killed a woman and child during a robbery.
  • Further implied by his Crimson Court trinkets, which greatly increase the odds of getting a virtue and whose flavor text is "A reflex… I didn't mean to…"
  • Finally, if you get him and Reynauld to the final dungeon, you get the achievement On the Old Road We Found Our Redemption, a callback to the final line of the intro ("The old road will take you to hell, but in that gaping abyss, we will find our redemption"), which implies that he and Reynauld had something to redeem.
• Badass Longcoat: He usually wears a gray pelted one.
• Blown Across the Room: Point Blank Shot can knock both him and an enemy back one rank.
• Charged Attack: In DD2, the Highwayman can charge his next or even next two attacks with Take Aim, which removes blind and gives a crit token (two if mastered) as well as a dodge token to protect him.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: After the first game it's implied that this is why he's throwing himself back into the fray, despite finally redemning himself. If you max out his Candles in the Wandering City, the Academic says that he will guard the very same highways he once robbed.
• Coup de Grâce: In the sequel, Wicked Slice and Double Tap can ignore a portion of an enemy's death resistance, making them two good options in melee or at range to finish off somebody on Death's Door.
• Connected All Along: In the first game, Dismas and Reynauld are nothing more than generic tutorial characters and don't interact at all. In the sequel, Dismas and Reynauld are explicitly friends.
• Counter-Attack: Duelist's Advance allows him to riposte, dealing some damage back if he is attacked.
• Critical Hit Class: His pistol can grant potential for this — the Pistol Shot ability starts with +9% to +13% critical chance, and his Clean Guns camping skill can give him another 6%. Additionally, Grapeshot can now make a bunch of enemies be more likely to receive critical hits. The sequel gives him a move that gives him one (later two) Crit tokens to outright guarantee critical hits out of him.
• Cursed with Awesome: His Shameful Locket trinket gives him a good accuracy and critical rate buff, but saddles him with a significant +15% Stress taken. This all comes to fruition with the complete Trinket set, as the tremendous (+45%) Virtue chance it grants means his increased Stress makes it a lot easier for him to trigger a very helpful Heroic Second Wind. If he's still unlucky enough to turn Afflicted despite these odds, though…
• Dash Attack: Duelist's Advance moves the Highwayman forward by one rank.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Or rather, divergent moves evolution: back in the Early Access of the first game, Highwayman had Take Aim as a skill to give himself a buff, that was later changed into a self-buffing attack called Tracking Shot that also had the utility of removing Stealth from an enemy. In the sequel, Take Aim and Tracking Shot are two completely different moves at his disposal with distinct effects.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He says that he will never harm a child. In the backstory comic, murdering an innocent woman and child in the middle of robbing a coach by murdering the guards in cold blood is what set him off to becoming The Atoner.
• Eyedscreen: Tracking Shot quickly zooms in on a strip across his eyes and grays out everything else, accompanied by a somewhat Morricone-esque rattle. Then he takes the shot.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: His final words if chosen to tank the hit of the Heart of Darkness are surprisingly composed, as opposed to party members who will beg for their lives.
  No way out, huh? Hmph, let's do this.
• Fantasy Character Classes: A hybrid of Rogue and Gunslinger. The Highwayman has a higher-than-average dodge, but his role is to dish out damage from any rank to any enemy rank. He can be kitted out only to use ranged attacks.
• Foil: The Highwayman and The Crusader contrasted each other since they were introduced in the first game, with the former being a thug for hire, while the latter a holy knight on a mission to purge evil, but their differences go much deeper than their initial appearance. Dismas feels guilty about his past as a criminal and is implied to have joined the Heir as a kind of Redemption Quest to make up for his past misdeeds, while Reynauld is not as morally infallible as he appears to be, having his own share of personality issues and skeletons in the closet that haunt him to this day, even if that doesn't make him any less heroic, meaning ironically the two are much more similiar than what they seem at first glance, being both flawed, but ultimately good people. In-gameplay, both the Highwayman and Crusader are prime damage-dealers, but have otherwise different secondary functions: the Crusader, on top of its high damage output, has a lots of support and heals options for the team, and pays for his high tanking capabilities by being one of the slowest heroes; while the Highwayman completely specialise in damage dealing, buffing himself and hindering his foes with debuffs to leave them even more vulnerable to harm and pays for his high damage potential and decent speed by being rather fragile.
• Gallows Humor: A camp ability, shared with the Grave Robber. As mentioned, it reduces a lot of stress for the Highwayman, but it's a gamble whether it reduces the rest of the party's stress or increases it.
  • Also maintained with his unique Inn Item in II, Morbid Joke. It has an 80% chance to significantly increase his relationship with the chosen hero (by 6 positive pips, the highest in the game), but a 20% that it backfires horribly and severely damages their relationship with him instead (by 4 negative pips, also the highest in the game).
• Glass Cannon: He cannot take much damage, but he can dish it out, particularly once he's used his Clean Guns camping skill.
• Good Luck Charm: His use of Encourage has a chance for him to "pull out a coin" he had on hand that he's "been told" is lucky and give it to the party member he is encouraging. It's unknown if he holds the coin to be a Good Luck Charm or says that to bolster his ally's mental stability.
  • The Journal of Darius the Highwayman recounts the thoughts of another Highwayman trusting in his lucky coin to keep his cool in his trying times. The loss of his lucky coin coincides with his party getting ambushed, forcing him to make a Heroic Sacrifice to help his companions get to safety.
  • In the sequel, one of the Highwayman's unique trinkets is the ironically named Cursed Coin which give a crit bonus. He also has a Rat Skull for a trinket, giving a crit token on miss.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: In the "Freedom" minigame of his Shrine of Reflection, Dismas fights his way past wardens during a Prison Riot using his fists and a stone he can pick up and toss, since he is without his flintlock and dirk.
• The Gunslinger: Proud owner of one of the two heroic firearms in the game, the other being the Musketeer. Four of his combat skills are linked to it. Pistol Shot is a standard attack buffed if the target is marked, Point Blank Shot is a single powerful short-ranged attack, Grapeshot is a weaker AoE attack with a chance to debuff, and Tracking Shot can bypass Stealth and gives the Highwayman buffs to accuracy, crit chance, and base damage.
• Gun Stripping: Clean Guns during camping will greatly improve the stats of his ranged skills.
• Heel–Face Turn: A remorseless thug turned heroic on a Redemption Quest. By the time he becomes a champion or legend Highwayman with his two Crimson Court trinkets, he has a base virtue chance of 70%, before quirks. This is a man who has overcome his past and become a hero, devoted to his mission of slaying the monsters infesting the Hamlet and his devotion to protecting the heroes he's accepted as friends.
• Heroic Wannabe: Due to him being The Atoner for his days as a criminal, he's trying very hard to help those in need, but it's clear that he still harbors self-doubt that he'll ever be able to absolve himself of his actions.
  The Highwayman[having a Meltdown]: Who was I kidding, playin' at heroics...
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Reynauld, the Crusader. He and Dismas are the starting characters in every playthrough of the first game and in the second game the Highwayman specifically refers him as his friend when looking for him. Subverted if they end up developing a negative relationship, or become Amorous.
• Heroic Willpower: With the right trinkets, he will have a very high chance to turn Virtuous on a Stress test.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The Highwayman was an apprentice to a candle-maker, and may mention this when Irrational or Hopeless.
  • The unused Hobby camp skill, and later some curio comments in Darkest Dungeon II, show he's something of a poetry aficionado.
• The Highwayman: What more needs to be said? He's abandoned his job now to work as a mercenary.
• I Will Find You: When doing the sidequest to unlock the Crusader in II, most adventurers simply refer to him as "a knight". The Highwayman, however, outright calls him his friend, implying a deeper investment than his companions.
  "I'm looking for my friend— big guy, armor. Seen him?"
• Jack of All Trades: His skills are very versatile, with a good mix of melee, AoE, range, bleed, and burst damage. While he may not have the sustained damage or utility of other classes, he's reliable and will get you through the day. And while he is the only class in the game who only deals damage, with little in the way of skills to help support his team in a fight, he's got some out-of-combat utility, with decent chances to scout and disarm traps and some camping skills that help avoid being surprised.
• Losing Your Head: Among the trinkets you can find are various severed heads, one of which is Dismas' Head, which you can pick up while starting hero Dismas is still alive. You can even equip it on him. It grants a 25% bonus to damage, at the cost of +25% extra Stress and a 10% penalty to HP.
• Meaningful Name: See the main page entry on Dismas, the second starting hero.
• The Musketeer: The Highwayman has two Paths in II that cater to this combat style. Sharpshot allows him to rely primarily on his pistol to do massive crowd-control damage and finish off weak enemies, while Yellowhand has him fall back on his knife and use primarily melee skills to act as a support damage-dealer and buff-remover. In either case, he sacrifices one of his normal weapons to become stronger with the other.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His backstory comic delves into his past as a robber and murderer. It ends with him visibly shaken to realize that he's murdered a woman and child rather than another stagecoach guard.
  • Several affliction dialogues show that their deaths still haunt him, and when he undergoes Sanity Slippage, he sometimes sees enemies adopting their faces.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: His aptly named Point Blank Shot skill consists of shooting an enemy at point-blank range, and requires him to be at the front. It deals massive damage and both he and the target will be Blown Across the Room in opposite directions. It synergizes nicely with Duelist's Advance.
• One Last Job: His shrine in the second game reveals that the stagecoach ambush was supposed to be this: take the job, get paid, and hope to survive. Instead, he remains traumatized from what happened that night, and lives his life as a mercenary, albeit after pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
• The One That Got Away: Mentions an unnamed woman quite a lot when distressed. It's not obvious what happened with her, but it clearly didn't end well. When reading from a songbook of amorous ballads in II, he'll mention that love spurned him once, but he can forget for a night.
• Redemption Equals Life: While "life" is not guaranteed, his Crimson Court trinket set invokes the idea where the Highwayman has his Virtuous chance increased to 70% when undergoing a resolve check.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: His shrines in the second game reveal that after escaping prison he had to subsist on gutter rats in order to survive as a fugitive. He also references it himself in some of his negative barks to other characters.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Worm tightly around his mouth, rather than the "flowing behind you" variant. One of his trinkets is the Bloodied Neckerchief which gives him a slight buff in accuracy, dodge and speed. Humorously, he also wore one back in his time in prison, fashioned out of his own torn shirt sleeves.
• Status-Buff Dispel: With Highway Robbery, the Highwayman can negate two positive tokens of an enemy, and even steal them if mastered. It is rather useful when enemies spam the dodge token or the crit token.
• Sword and Gun: Well, knife and gun, but it's a big knife. He carries them at all times, and two of his most popular skills, Duelist's Advance and Point Blank Shot, work best when used together. His Rogue Path in II is designed to make full use of these skills, with him doing extra damage in rank 1 and gaining Riposte when using Point Blank Shot.
• Tragic Keepsake: One of the Highwayman's unique trinkets is a locket containing a picture of the woman and child that he killed by mistake, which he keeps as a way to remind himself of his most shameful moment. It is present in both games under the "Shameful Locket" and "Tormenting Locket" names, and it gives him buffs depending on the game.
• Working on the Chain Gang: It's implied that he was in one of these back when he was imprisoned, since he mentions that he recognizes the songs in the Songbook of Touching Dirges as ones they would sing while working if given one.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: It's implied that the guilt of killing a child is what drove him to the hamlet in the first place. He has a rather backhanded way of putting it if he has an Abusive affliction.
  Lucky for you, I've sworn never to kill children.
  • He does make an exception for the Harvest Child, but given what an abomination it is, you could make an argument he is performing a Mercy Kill.

The Houndmaster

"For Justice!"

"A lawman and his faithful beast, a bond forged by battle and bloodshed."

A tough and uncommonly compassionate ex-lawman, the Houndmaster and his faithful Wolfhound work in tandem to bring down their enemies and protect the innocent. Together they stalk the back ranks, bursting fourth in a flurry of harrying bleeds, gnashing teeth, and stunning blows. Should the tide of battle turn, the pair can support the ailing party by protecting the weak and rallying the stressed.

See the Houndmaster's comic here◊.

---

• An Adventurer Is You:
  • Invokes The Beast Master by having his faithful Wolfhound companion either attack enemies or comfort allies, but those abilities are thematic and don’t have any unique mechanics attached to them. Though he does start out a dungeon run with two free Dog Treats, which greatly increases the damage of his Wolfhound’s attacks for a few turns.
  • Functions mainly as a Jack of All Trades, and can swap his ability load-out outside of battle to fill a new role when required, though many of these roles aren’t as good as some of his other allies.
    • A combination of the “Guard Dog” and “Lick Wounds” abilities helps him serve as a Dodge Tank with a dash of Regenerator. He can protect allies using “Guard Dog” and make use of his above-average Dodge stat that is further increased by the ability, then use Lick Wounds for self-preservation when greatly damaged. However, Guard Dog only lasts for one turn, thus using Lick Wounds will disable that protection, and he doesn’t have great health himself.
    • The “Hound’s Rush,” “Hound’s Harry,” and “Target Whistle” abilities allows him to function as a Ranged DPS, being able to target any enemy not using stealth, inflict bleed damage, and greatly reducing the target’s PROT stat to make them more vulnerable to direct damage from his entire team (which can stack if used multiple times on the same opponent). Notably he can use these abilities from almost every position (only Hound’s Rush cannot be used from the first frontline position) and Hound’s Rush does even more damage against a marked opponent (which Target Whistle can do) as well as beast type enemies. The catch is that Hound’s Harry does greatly reduced damage with less CRIT chance in exchanging for hitting all opponents, Hound’s Rush requires an enemy be marked to do large amounts of damage, and all bleed damage done is much weaker than most of his teammates. Though he can also use one of his dog treats he starts off with to greatly increase his hound’s damage, which can help mitigate some of these issues when used, but he only has two for the entire dungeon and it takes up inventory space.
    • The “Cry Havoc” ability provides rare stress heal support, and it works on all teammates plus himself, albeit it has a chance of not working and the ability can only be used in the back two ranks.
    • The “Blackjack” ability allows him to stun an opponent placed in any position except the furthest, which when combined with his Dodge Tank choices allows him to function somewhere between that and Melee DPS. The damage isn’t strong and can only target one enemy at a time, but it deals damage and allows a melee combatant that can hit as far as the third rank. Albeit he must be placed in either the first or second rank in order to use this ability.
    • Alternatively, if you’re worried about enemies or bosses who can shuffle your teammate’s positions around, you can choose a mixture of abilities that allows the Houndmaster to be useful no matter what he’s sent, such as “Target Whistle” to shred enemy PROT and mark them.
• Attack Animal: The Houndmaster calls upon his Wolfhound in two of his skills to attack enemies.
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: Not him. He's an honest (more or less) cop with his trusty Wolfhound, but he left (or was forced to leave) after he discovered evidence of corruption so severe it went all the way to the top. His backstory comic reveals that it wasn't mundane corruption, for his fellow lawmen were hip-deep in the "Flesh Cult". The quote for his trinket set nails this home
  “Even the Chief was in on it.”
• Canine Companion: The Wolfhound is grouped with the Houndmaster as a hero.
• Canon Name: The default name in the game files for Houndmaster and his dog are William and Fergus, respectively.
• Carry a Big Stick: He carries a cudgel that he uses with the Blackjack ability to damage and stun an enemy.
• Death by Newbery Medal: Averted with the Wolfhound, who is never seen dying or dead, even in The Butcher's Circus DLC where she is instead shown looking down remorsefully at her master’s corpse. Apparently the devs believed that even in a Cosmic Horror Story it would cross a line to kill the Wolfhound as well.
• The Dividual: The Wolfhound and her Houndmaster are never separated, and are treated as a single character for all purposes.
• Face Death with Dignity: If chosen to take the Heart of Darkness' One-Hit Kill, he steels himself quite resolutely.

  "Steady, girl. If we're called, we answer."

• Fantasy Character Classes: Invokes The Beastmaster. The Houndmaster fights and supports his party alongside his faithful Wolfhound (who does most of the attacks and unique camping skills), but there are no unique mechanics involved other than having a few dog treats to increase the Wolfhound’s damage during battle for a few turns.
• Fragile Speedster: A bit of a hybrid — fitting, since he's technically two characters. The Houndmaster doesn't have exceptionally high damage output or health, but he takes all the hits in place of his dog, and he has a high dodge chance — the dog, in turn, can hit multiple characters from the back row, and inflict bleed, which allows them to bypass armor.
• Fuzz Therapy: Two of his camping skills are called Man's Best Friend and Therapy Dog, which naturally involve petting the Houndmaster's good girl. His Cry Havoc skill also has the party randomly get a stress reduction from the wolfhound letting out a loud howl.
• Heroes Love Dogs: The Houndmaster happens to be the most moral and one of the nicest heroes one can get. It's worth noting that even if the Houndmaster becomes Selfish, he still puts his wolfhound's interests above him. He truly and unconditionally loves his dog.
  "The hound comes first. Then me. Then you…"
• Hyper-Awareness: A party with a Houndmaster in it is more likely to surprise enemies, presumably thanks to the Wolfhound's dog senses.
• Jack of All Trades: Like the Crusader, the Hound Master's strength is his flexibility. He can mark targets for himself or others, shred armor to make enemies with high PROT vulnerable to direct damage, stress heal, guard allies, and stun enemies, in addition to having decent damage and attack that affects all enemies — plus many of his abilities work in both the front and back lines of positioning, making him versatile against enemies who can shuffle your teammate’s positions like the Shambler. Outside combat, he's also excellent at scouting, stress healing, and trap disarming.
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: After discovering the corruption in his constabulary, he's taken the law into his own hands.
  "Mercy is for the courts!"
• The Last DJ: His constabulary was filled with Dirty Cops, and in his origin comic he's shown tracking them down and catching the chief in the middle of a ritual involving the Flesh Cult. It's not clear what was done afterward, but what is clear is that it ended with the Bounty Hunter coming to collect.
• Nice Guy: He's one of the most noble party members. When he takes damage, he shields the dog from harm. Even a Selfish Houndmaster puts his dog above himself.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: "Target Whistle" inflicts the Mark status and reduces the target's defense.
• Power-Up Food: A party with a Houndmaster in it starts with two Dog Treats that greatly increases the Wolfhound's damage potential when used. And while in the Cove, giving a giant Oyster a dog treat will grant the a large Dodge boost until the next time you camp.
• Squishy Wizard: Of a sort. He can work in the back rows and has notably weak stats, with the lowest base damage in the game on top of only slightly better HP than the likes of the Jester or Occultist. To make up for it, he can shred PROT apart, apply enemy team-wide bleed, and guard his allies from danger. He also brings two dog treats that dramatically increase his damage output for a short time.
• Taking the Bullet: Their damage animation is for the Houndmaster to shield his dog with his own body. He can also take one for an ally, buffing his Dodge even higher, although there's a certain amount of risk to that, especially if you're not using his Lick Wounds ability for self-healing.
• Tap on the Head: Downplayed, the Houndmaster's Blackjack ability can stun an enemy.
• Token Good Cop: His Wolfhound and himself were the only uncorrupt constables in his old jurisdiction, and having become fed up with the system he's turned to vigilantism to help those in need.
• Token Good Teammate: One of the most selfless and noble heroes in the entire game. Even when afflicted with the Selfishness debuff, "the hound's needs come first."
• Too Awesome to Use: The Dog Treats provide a strong but short-lived buff, and there's also no way to replenish them during an expedition, which makes it tricky to know which battles they should be used, and thus sometimes don’t get used at all. Can be averted if you’re specifically saving one to deal with a dangerous boss, such as the Fanatic or The Thing From The Stars.

The Jester

"HA-HAA-HAHAHAHAHA!"

^{Click here to see him in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"He'll be laughing still… At the end."

Combat is a power-ballad — a slow build up, and a grand finale! On offense, the Jester leaps to and fro in a bloody cacophony, positioning himself for a glorious end in the front ranks! Alternatively, he can hang back, delivering chilling melodies and unsettling riffs that terrorize his foes, and give strength to his allies.

See the Jester's comic here.◊

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• Alpha Strike:
  • Finale can only be used at the front ranks and once per battle, leaving the Jester vulnerable afterwards. However it can make a staggering amount of damage and crits easily. Moreover using your other skills first will considerably buff Finale so it's best to save it for a big monster with lots of hit points once you've gotten rid of the lesser ones. With the right setup, Finale can one-shot a boss, up to and including the Heart of Darkness itself.
  • In The Butcher's Circus, some strategies involve quickly focusing down a priority target so that Finale can land the killing blow right away and leave the opposition with one less combatant.
  • II downplays this aspect by retooling how Finale works. Instead of having it get progressively stronger through the use of other skills, it now simply does more damage to enemies with Combo applied. Instead of giving a permanent battle debuff after being used, it just dazes the Jester and puts an Exposed token on him, meaning it's now possible to repeatedly use Finale to dispatch enemies throughout a fight, especially since Solo applies Combo instead of buffing Finale itself.
• Ambiguous Situation: The second game's second hero shrine for him doesn't make it explicit if he actually killed the Violinist somehow or if the DEATHBLOW! is just the game's basic mechanics showing its head again.
• The Bard:
  • The Jester's main tool is his lute. However, he has elements of The Rock Star, and one of his skills is a power slide (that maneuver wherein the performer slides on their knees for a bit after a running start) with a lute solo included. He can also have a random town event where he busks and somehow gains a level. As for battles, his songs either buff the party's accuracy and crit rate with Battle Ballad, relieve a single unit of some of its stress with Inspiring Tune, or debuff enemies with Solo.
  • His Intermezzo Path in II makes him lean more heavily into this trope, turning him into a buffer and Support Party Member rather than an outright damage-dealer. The Soloist path goes in the opposite direction, giving him better Bleed-causing skills but ignoring his musical abilities. The Virtuoso path strikes a balance between the two, bringing back his old role as a stress healer..
• Beware the Silly Ones: A former court jester among the ranks of hardened mercenaries and warriors, the Jester tends to have some of the more comedic lines in the game, with witty insults and colorful commentary to lighten the mood. He also has access to what can potentially be the most damaging move in the entire game, and slaughtered the entire court of nobles that abused him with the help of an eldritch song. Laugh at him at your own peril.
• Brown Note: A Violinist knew a hell of a song he learned, which would later cause the Jester to murder an entire Decadent Court while playing it after they abused him. Clearly understanding the gravity of what he just did (despite his peals of mirth), he cut his finger with his blade to stop him from playing it ever again.
• Call-and-Response Song: His musical duel with the Violinist played out like this, as well as being a Puzzle Boss for the player. A verse requires a chorus, a chorus requires a verse. Eventually, the Jester manages to win by performing a killer finale on the Violinist while he was performing a solo.
• Canon Name: His predetermined name is "Sarmenti", after the jester Sarmentus in Horace's Satires.
• Charged Attack: Finale, as the name implies, is meant for finishing off the last enemy quickly. Most of the Jester's other skills will buff Finale's damage.
• Court Jester: His previous occupation, although the court abused and tortured him until he eventually snapped and killed them all. As a mercenary, he entertains the party members with jokes and music.
• Creepy Souvenir: One of the Jester's trinkets is the Tyrant's Fingerbone. His origin comic reveals the man he likely took it from.
• Critical Hit Class: Downplayed. Slice Off has a good crit modifier and his Battle Ballad will buff your party's crit chance. His Finishing Move, Finale, receives a crit buff from using his other skills, meaning that he'll be almost guaranteed to crit with it after a prolonged battle. However, he's built to support first and foremost, given how fragile he is.
• Cry Laughing: When Afflicted, sometimes his Laughing Mad spurts will be inter-cut with weeping.
• Dance Battler: The Jester dabbled with this style in the first game, but embodies it in II. In addition to the back-and-forth of his Solo & Finale combo, he now moves while executing his basic attacks, causing him to constantly engage in motion as he fights. He also has abilities to move his allies backwards and forwards, allowing your other heroes to become dance battlers as well.
• Dash Attack: Dirk Stab moves the Jester one rank forward as he leaps to stab an enemy with his dagger. The skill is renamed Razor's Wit in the sequel.
• Draw Aggro: Solo has the Jester slide all the way to the front of the formation, giving himself a Mark but also bestowing a tremendous speed, dodge, and Finale buff. This is clearly designed to set up for Finale while minimizing danger done to him and his party.
• Death Seeker:
  • It can be seen in his attacks and in his dialogue when afflicted. He has "Dirk Stab", an attack that slowly moves him forward; Solo, an AoE debuff that moves him to the very front, and Finale, an attack that can only be used on the front lines and comes with a serious debuff, although it deals 50% more damage than his other attacks and gains even more power as his other skills are used.
  • As for his personality, it is clear that he is a Sad Clown and some of his lines have him make Self-Deprecation jokes on himself constantly, musing apparent disappointment that he will get to see another day in one virtuous quote, and calls death "at last, the greatest joke of all" when on Death's Door. His campfire skills have him say that if he is going to die while dungeon crawling, he should at least enjoy it. When scrolled over for Come Unto Your Maker, he doesn't even sound offended as he asks if it will be him.
• Decadent Court: If what he says is true, he came from one of these, gaining an Acquired Poison Immunity as a result. If what the flavor text for his unique Crimson Court trinket says is true, he left after killing its tyrannical ruler. Confirmed in the comic, which features sights such as the nobles hurling knives and spitting wine at the Jester for their own entertainment.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: When afflicted, he turns into one for the Plucky Comic Relief by either dropping the act completely by becoming a Jerkass who straight-up abuses the other members and asking if they seriously thought that it would go well, becoming so caught up in Laughing Mad that all he does is cackle endlessly, or his jokes become so dark that they dive into Dude, Not Funny! territory and start to cause stress instead of relieving it.
• Dissonant Laughter: As expected for a Laughing Mad fellow, his laughter is rarely ever appropriate.
• Dual Wielding: His weapons are a dirk in one hand and a sickle in the other.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe, the recipient of his Mockery skill won't think it is. If the Jester is afflicted, the little jokes he still makes take on a depressing and spiteful tone that his companions won't appreciate.
• Escape Battle Technique: In the sequel, the Play Out skill enables the Jester to move backward while applying a protection token to himself and removing any combo token, which allows him to escape the frontline in which he's the most uncomfortable.
• Expressive Mask: In the comic the eye-holes of his mask change to match his emotion. Likewise, the perpetually angry eyeholes can change to sad when he becomes Afflicted. At the end of II, after the apocalypse passes, his eyes are much more gentle as he plays his lute for children.
• Expy: The Jester is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's Hop-Frog. Like the titular character, the Jester is a mischievous clown who is mistreated by a Decadent Court and takes his revenge by slaughtering them, though he is noticeably more repentant and regretful of his actions than Hop-Frog.
• Extra Turn: In II, the Jester can use the Encore skill, playing a tune that gives an extra action to an ally at the cost of dazing and weakening himself. In addition, the Busker's Haul trinket allows him a potential extra action on kill.
• Face Death with Dignity: Encourages this with his camping skills, telling the party member that if they should die, they should at least enjoy their life while it lasts. Although his advice falls apart when he crosses the Despair Event Horizon, and he seems to be a bit of a Death Seeker even when not.
• The Faceless: Played straight in the first game, but subverted in the second. His Hero Shrines reveal his face and that he has long dark hair under the jester outfit. He might have passed off as Tall, Dark, and Snarky in the present if he didn't dress flamboyantly and was The Hyena.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Bard, with a little Assassin thrown in. The Jester can use his lute to buff, stress heal, and heavily debuff the enemy, while Finale can deal absolutely ludicrous damage if built up for long enough.
• Fingore: In II, the Jester is missing the tip of his left pinkie finger. As his backstory reveals, that was how he severed the connection to an eldritch melody, and can never play it again.
• Finishing Move:
  • Finale is intended as a high-damage move meant to finish off the last opponent during a fight. It is better to use it toward the end of a fight, as it inflicts a heavy dodge debuff on the Jester, it can be only used once per battle, and its damage is buffed when performing other skills.
  • Given that the Finale move bypasses Death's Door if the amount of damage is higher than the enemy hero's health in the Butcher's Circus, it is encouraged and usually used to secure one kill on the enemy team. Dirk Stab also has a bonus Deathblow chance and goes through guard, making the Jester one of the best overall choices for a finisher character in the game mode.
• Fragile Speedster: He is very fast, able to switch to any rank in a single move, has the greatest Dodge stat of all characters, and his chance of inflicting critical hits is the highest among the other classes, but his toughness is identical to the Occultist's.
• The Gambler: The Jester's unique trinkets are mostly dice, implying that this is the case.
• Glass Cannon: His Soloist path in II makes him into this, capable of putting out ungodly amounts of Bleed with a high crit rate, but with a lot less max HP and less Speed, meaning he's susceptible to Damage Over Time and getting Crit himself.
• Happy Harlequin Hat: He's got one, but it's gone through a considerable amount of wear and tear, and has gotten so droopy that one might mistake it for dyed dreadlocks at first.
  • In his comic, it's shown to look like the typical example of this trope — at least before the Decadent Court wears him out.
• Heal It with Booze: A Heroic Jester will sometimes pass around a whiskey flask to disinfect wounds as a free action. It doesn't actually heal anything, but it provides some welcome stress relief.
• The Hyena: See Laughing Mad.
• Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: His Finale skill summons a bloody spear out of nowhere, impaling him from behind as he bows and does the same to his target symmetrically. On his end, it's just a flamboyant trick - on his target's end, it can be one of the most damaging skills in the game.
• Jerkass to One: His Mockery skill will single out a target to insult in front of everyone else. While it gives them more stress, it heals the stress of the other characters.
  Look at this fool, this imbecile! Playing the hero, are you?! Ha-HAA.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Is mainly this in both dialogue and gameplay. The Jester's job is to balance out and help the party's stress, and while he makes snide remarks at them, he honestly wishes the best for them.
• Laughing Mad: He's already mad in some ways and tends to laugh even when not afflicted. He'll often start to laugh maniacally whenever he gets a critical hit. If he becomes irrational, he'll laugh like this non-stop. Being hit in the second game will have him cover his mouth while having a fit of laughter. Apparently, this all started after he played a eldritch melody to a Decadent Court that abused him which caused him to slaughter them in a rage, leaving him laughing uncontrollably at the end of it even while he cut his finger to prevent himself from playing the melody again.
• Lazy Bum: The second game reveals that he was this before stumbling across the Violinist, described as having no ambitions and was content to loiter from place to place aimlessly. He even stole a song from a street musician to claim as his own to earn easy respect and renown, but it came at a heavy price.
• Magic Music: The sequel reveals he used to know an eldritch melody that originally inspired him from being a layabout to a musician — but when the Decadent Court pushed him too far, seeing him only as a disposable brunt of the abuse, he grew so angry that he poured his rage into the song, massacring them — and damaging his sanity severely, to the point where he doesn't want to remember the song.
• Misanthrope Supreme: He generally seems to have a pretty low opinion of humanity after encountering the worst side of it at his old job. A good number of his afflicted barks have him either expressing his contempt for his fellow man or straight-up lamenting that he doesn't get to kill everyone.
  Hopeless Jester: (refusing a buff) Like the rest of this world, I deserve nothing.
  Abusive Jester: (stressing out his teammates at camp) Gods. The stink of humanity does truly cling.
• Monster Clown: The rare heroic variant, at least appearance-wise with his White Mask of Doom, Laughing Mad tendencies, and weaponry. Personality-wise, he's pretty far from it… at least until he snaps. If he ends up Virtuous, he'll maintain his snarky heroism.
• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: The Jester can heal the party's stress by playing his lute. While this skill works on every hero, it's no coincidence that this makes him an indispensable teammate to the Abomination, who gains stress for every turn he remains in his monstrous form.
• Musical Assassin: Although his music doesn't damage enemies, its true strength lies in debuffing them. Though the second hero shrine doesn't make it completely explicit about what happened to the Violinist after their musical duel, so perhaps he actually has killed with music.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction after massacring the court. While the court certainly deserved it, he was horrified at the destruction wrought from the dark song. Henceforth, he cut his own finger to prevent himself from playing the song that inspired his massacring ever again.
• Non-Ironic Clown: Despite his appearance, when not afflicted, he is this. He's on the side of the heroes, and he keeps the banter light with tame jokes, serving as the game's Plucky Comic Relief. He just happens to be skilled in combat and has an eccentric personality. However, see Deconstructed Character Archetype above.
• No Saving Throw: The Jester's Finale skill in The Butcher's Circus game mode bypasses Death's Door checks, so it's an immediate Deathblow once it puts its target to negative HP. Anyone pushed to exact zero will still hit Death's Door normally.
• Noodle Incident: If his quotes while with the Fearful affliction are to be trusted, he used to perform at children's birthday parties. Given it is a Decadent Court, chances are the children were just as bad as the Tyrant.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: The Jester's main features when introduced was his multi-target bleed skills, buffs, and his stress heal ability. The Houndmaster now does bleed better (being able to hit all four ranks instead of the Jester's second and third rank only) and has a not-as-reliable but all-party stress heal, and the Man-At-Arms' resting skills and Bolster makes him superior at party buffing in any dungeon where you can rest. The Jester is also more fragile than either. He remains a useful party member, but his lack of specialization makes him a bit more cornercase. With the official release, he's managed to fill a niche of powerful and consistent (albeit single-target) stress heals, stronger bleeds than the Houndmaster and Hellion, superior mobility, and that wicked-ass powerful Finale.
• One-Liner: In the sequel, he has a snappy quip lined up for anything you happen to give him at an inn.
  What will grow old and die quicker - us, or this bread?
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Perhaps the most noteworthy when he's afflicted, where he drops most of his jester act and starts to question how serious the other party members are and glumly mocking them for it.
  We think we have purpose here? A noble venture? HA!
• Plucky Comic Relief: In gameplay, he quite literally serves this purpose — relieving stress for himself and his companions by playing music and telling jokes. He also tends to speak out some of the game's funnier lines, even when Afflicted.
• Quirky Bard: …Pun not intended. He was originally a Master of None, as shown in the Overshadowed by Awesome example above, but with his bleeds and stress heals being buffed, he no longer plays this trope straight.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His outfit is pink, although the dirt and the dark makes his clothes look more reddish than they really are.
• Sanity Slippage: His unhinged behavior seems to be the result of serving as the jester for the Decadent Court in his comic — you can pretty much see his decline though the pages.
• Sad Clown: Even when he's not afflicted, he seems a lot more somber than a jester ought to be (and naturally, it gets exaggerated when he is afflicted). Coming from a Decadent Court might have something to do with it.
• Self-Deprecation: Seems to be one of his favorite kinds of jokes, although it turns bitter (if sometimes still trying to be darkly humorous) when afflicted.
  They take me for a fool… Fair, I suppose.
• Self-Harm: Seen in the fifth hero shrine in II, he cuts his finger after playing an eldritch melody that drove him to massacre the Decadent Court which abused him, so as to prevent himself from playing it ever again.
• Sinister Scythe: Wields a sickle in his left hand. Harvest and Slice Off make use of it to inflict Bleed to the middle ranks.
• The Dog Bites Back: His comic reveals he had been the jester of a court that presumably tortured and humiliated him. During one party, he lopped off the hand of the king and killed everyone present. Not coincidentally, one of his trinkets is called the Tyrant's Fingerbone.
• Warrior Therapist: Most of his camping abilities are related to stress management… except for the hero he's making fun of, that one's taking on more stress.
• White Mask of Doom: Which makes him look less like a jester and more like a serial killer.
• You Will Not Evade Me: In the sequel, the Jester can pull an enemy forward with Echoing March, playing a confusing tune that pulls some from the backline.

The Leper

"The tide rises. And the tide falls."

^{Click here to see him in the first Darkest Dungeon.}

"This man understands that adversity and existence... are one and the same."

The Leper is a hybrid tank/damage dealer whose swings are powerful, if lacking in accuracy. He has a high health pool but low speed and has several skills that emphasize either his tankiness or his damage.

See the Leper's comic here◊.

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• 11th-Hour Superpower: The Monarch path is designed to be this, giving the Leper less max HP and making his Chop skill do terrible, piddling damage, forcing him to use a worse primary damage-dealing ability like Break, Hew or Bash and adopt a kind of a tanky support character role who can apply Exposed tokens with Purge and Intimidate. However, when he's fighting Cosmic enemies he does double his normal Chop damage and gains a massive Health and Speed buff for the entire battle. Most of the Cosmic Horror enemies in the game are either Cultists, which appear in mandatory fights at the end of the region, and Confession bosses at the very end of a run. Clearly the idea with this Path is to get the Leper to the Oblivion's Rampart/end of the Confession and give him Chop again, and he will start going absolutely ham on the boss and be a huge table-turner.
• 24-Hour Armor: Justified. He's a leper bent on covering most of his body, begging his comrades to hand over any found clothes in his Selfish barks. One of his camping abilities has him remove the mask, reducing his stress levels significantly. Unfortunately, the sight of it also increases his teammates' stress levels.
• Achilles' Heel: He's a very powerful frontline hero, but he lacks any moves that move him forward. Attacks that move him to the back row will keep him from dealing damage.
• Ambiguously Brown: His Hero Shrines reveal him to have once had a much darker complexion than his current lesioned skin would suggest, as well as having dressed in vaguely North African regal garments◊. His advisors also wear vaguely Middle Eastern clothing, possibly implying that he was the king of an "Arabian Nights" Days-style kingdom and potentially giving him a skin color similar to the Arbalest. However, because of the Hero Shrines'(and by extension the games' artstyle) having deliberately poor lighting and shading, it's still hard to tell.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Even after everything that happened to him, he's still grateful to be alive and be able to experience the world, as revealed in his final Hero Shrine. This is in marked contrast to a lot of the other heroes in their backstories, who experienced a Despair Event Horizon and became The Atoner. The Leper has nothing to atone for; he was punished for it, but in the end he did the right thing.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: II introduces the Break skill. It doesn't have the raw damage of Chop, but it can ignore an enemy's blocks as well as destroy them.
• Assassin Outclassin': After he was infected and it became obvious he had leprosy, his Decadent Court tried to murder him to install a Puppet King on the throne. Not only was he aware of this, he actually deliberately avoided abdicating to find anyone who was planning on it and then kill them when they tried — he reasonably felt that anyone willing to murder a dying man to get into power quicker had more ambition than sense.
• Bandage Mummy: The Leper is covered in bandages to mend his condition. The Bloody Shroud camping skill has him change them to give himself an all-encompassing resistance buff.
• The Berserker: Downplayed. Like the Hellion, he cannot willingly move back from the front of your formation (but given that he can't do much in the back, he has absolutely no reason to). Additionally, he has the Berserk Mask trinket and Revenge skill, which raises his offensive ability at the cost of self-preservation.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He taught his treacherous advisors this lesson when they tried to kill and overthrow him, easily dispatching them. Even if one might describe his tending to his sickly subjects as foolish, he is by no means a pushover and caught wind of their plans and prepared himself in advance.
  He had shown his compassion. Now... he would show his fury!
• BFS: Wields a battered executioner's sword that is larger and heavier than the Crusader's longsword, even though it's seen better days. Chop and Hew will deal massive damage but are inaccurate; alternatively, he can slash upward with Purge to knock away a foe and clear corpses. 2, with its more realistic proportions, show that the blade is a lot larger than it has any reason to be.
• Canon Name: His default name is "Baldwin", a direct reference to Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who was famously called "The Leper King".^note The mask that the Leper wears is based on the film Kingdom of Heaven and there is no historical evidence suggesting Baldwin IV wore such a mask.
• Characterization Marches On: Until the game was patched to allow "religious heroes" being able to travel with the Abomination, the Leper was openly opposed to traveling with the werewolf. In II, he serves as the Token Good Teammate of the band of mercenaries and focus is given to how open and kind he is treating to his subjects, which caused him to catch leprosy in the first place.
• Charged Attack: Revenge makes the Leper pray and invest one turn to deal better damage with better accuracy, at the cost of receiving more damage himself. However, his large HP pool alleviates this.
• Cool Mask: A metal mask used to hide his disfigured face. He takes it off only when you Let The Mask Down (stressing out the party for de-stressing the Leper) or when failing a resolve check.
• Close-Range Combatant: Once he's out of the first two rows, his only option — no matter his skills chosen — is to move around.
• Companion Cube: The Leper seems to appreciate his sword greatly and almost considers it a friend. His Reflection Camping Skill has him admiring it, stress healing him and giving him a buff.
  My sword, my trusted ally, unphased by my aspect.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Most classes have at least two positions where they are effective, but the Leper's stats and his poor range make him useless for anything but frontline combat. This is a problem if your formation is messed up or if you need him to switch from the front two ranks for any reason. His is the only class in the game that has no skills that work outside those front ranks. In addition, the Leper has no stun skills or damage-over-time skills, and his buffs only affect himself, leaving him with very little to do against enemies with high protection without a party that can maneuver other foes into his range or debuff that protection.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Downplayed. He doesn't need an actual critical hit to deal decent damage unlike other heroes, and his default critical hit rate is terrible. While his Revenge ability can buff his critical chance, he needs certain trinkets that, when obtained, the Leper's sword swings can easily exceed a 50% chance to crit.
  • II gives a mastered Revenge a chance to grant the Leper a Crit token. However, this is not a reliable way of guaranteeing a crit, and even then, a critical hit in this game does not circumvent poor accuracy; his Blind tokens will still cause him to miss regardless.
• Death Seeker: Confirmed by his dialogue when afflicted. In addition, while the other characters cower, block, or attempt to dodge during their hit animations, he stands with his arms outstretched, taking the attack.^note Well, that, or his leprosy and heavy sword make parrying unfeasible for him, instead using his armor to take the blow.
  • A fearful Leper may say the following:
  You take advantage of my death wish. For shame.
  • When he reaches Death's Door:
  An end to my suffering, at last?
  • He's also by far the most accepting when being chosen as a target for the Heart of Darkness' One-Hit Kill.
  Spare the others, I am ready.
• Decadent Court: While he was still a king, he was surrounded by scheming advisors who immediately tried to make a power grab when the symptoms of leprosy began to manifest in him. The Leper made certain to clean house before departing, though.
• Determinator: Capable of withstanding disgusting amounts of abuse and still sounding eloquent when it happens, even as a diseased leper. His lines and his past imply that he's just so used to hardship that it doesn't faze him anymore.
• Draw Aggro: Withstand will mark him in exchange for better defense, and as of the Color of Madness update, it is Intimidate that now marks him. In the sequel, both skills now give him Taunt token meaning enemies will attack him whenever possible.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Knight. The Leper excels in close combat but cannot do anything outside the front ranks. He is strong and sturdy but also slow.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: In Darkest Dungeon, he wore a pair of large gloves. In II, he removes the glove on his left hand, revealing the bandaged handwrap and horribly mottled skin underneath. It doesn't make him look any less badass.
• Flowery Insults: An abusive Leper will put all of his wordsmithing skills into belittling your party, even if he noticeably dumbs it down for them to get.
  "The human race is a litter; these, the runts."
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Leper is explicitly one of the few heroes not to be haunted by regrets from his past, nor any particularly mistake they want to atone for, but The Body of Work can still manifest a Spectre from the Past to torment the Leper, probably to avoid giving him an unfair advantage, being the only hero not to face one. However it should be noted said Spectre takes form of one of his Advisers, so the Leper may have one small regret: allowing those snakes in his court in the first place.
• The Good King: Considering his self-exile clearly hit his people pretty hard, he was revered. II expands on this by showing that the reason he contracted leprosy was because he was trying to show support for the sick of his kingdom by comforting them personally, against the judgement of his crooked advisors.
• Glass Cannon: In II, the Leper has a Tempest path that buffs his Chop skill, but lowers his health pool, requiring a dedicated tank like the Man-at-Arms to defend him or Draw Aggro away.
• Handicapped Badass: Being ridden with leprosy doesn't stop him from being one of the powerhouses. It does affect his accuracy, though. II all but confirms his leprosy symptoms are making him hard to see, with him having a good chance of starting combat with the Blind tokens and getting a Blind token after using the Chop, Hew, and Break skills.
• I Regret Nothing: In II, the Leper is the only hero whose portrait is facing the light in the Shrine backstory, instead of looking away from it like the other heroes. This implies that the Leper never regretted comforting the sick, even if his life is cut short because of it.
• Ice-Cream Koan: His irrational quotes sound profound but are clearly non-sensical in their content.
  "Fish oil wasted on the ramparts. Sliding down the abbey."
• King Incognito: His backstory reveals that he was a beloved and popular ruler who left his people and estate after contracting the disease to become a Knight Errant, to their sorrow.
  The Leper[while using a Mop and Bucket]: There are no kings aboard this coach.
• Knight Errant: After developing leprosy, he traveled outside his land to find work helping others elsewhere, leading him to the Estate.
• Made of Iron: The Leper can use Withstand to temporarily raise his protection stat and status resistance once per battle. It makes him even more durable.
• Magikarp Power:
  • The Leper, while powerful, lacks accuracy and makes him unreliable at lower levels. A fully upgraded Leper can deal massive damage; his buffs and debuffs help with that.
• Masking the Deformity: The Leper wears a metal mask to hide his face, disfigured by leprosy. When camping, he can remove it to heal stress, at the cost of stressing the rest of the party.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The Leper is a premiere tank and damage hybrid. He possesses the highest non-critical damage out of all the heroes and the highest health. However, this is hampered by his slow speed, making him likely to act last in Action Initiative, and being wildly inaccurate otherwise.
  • In II, when it comes to melee damage, his Chop skill naturally has a minimum damage of six, nerfed from the first game's eight. Everyone else who can reach six needs to have it mastered first. The only other hero with higher minimum damage at base than him is the Bounty Hunter's Collect Bounty skill at eight. But he's also a Guest-Star Party Member and never a permanent addition. Even then, the Leper's maximum Chop damage of twelve matches the Bounty Hunter's, and can go even further to sixteen when mastered. He also possesses the highest health pool at 52 when mastered. However, this is hampered by his glaring accuracy issues without a Combo token or a way to remove his Blind token in other ways, along with him potentially rolling low when he does hit, means he needs the help of the rest of the party to get the most out of him.
• Modest Royalty: He doesn't wear a crown or any other trappings of being a king beyond his countenance and behavior being that of a learned scholar and poet. He is also surprisingly humble for a king: in the town event where you get two extra Lepers in your recruitment pool, the Leper is shown willingly dragging a cart full of sick refugees behind him.◊
• Nice Guy: He was well-loved by his people for his compassion. One could say he was too nice for his own good, as his condition is a result of him hugging his more unfortunate subjects. He continues to be one of the most righteous and selfless heroes in the series, with even his quotes when afflicted being (mostly) polite.
• Nightmare Face: The Leper's face is so disfigured that his taking his mask off at camp causes stress damage to the rest of the party. It can be seen briefly when he becomes afflicted, as he tears off his mask.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: How'd he get leprosy to begin with? As shown in Darkest Dungeon II, he was offering some comfort to beggars by embracing them, over the objections of his Deadly Decadent Court, and was exposed to the disease.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: He's basically Baldwin IV of Jerusalem if he were born in a Cosmic Horror setting and went Knight-Errant.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: Downplayed. While he does hold it in two hands during neutral poses, most of his attacks show him swinging the sword with only one.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: As his description says, he can deal very heavy damage… provided that his lowered accuracy doesn't cause him to miss. His basic skills like Chop begin at 75% accuracy, and the enemies' dodge will easily prevent him from being useful if the player doesn't alleviate the weakness. In II, the Leper's basic melee skills Chop and Hew and Break have a high chance of giving him the Blind token instead. And unlike in the first game, Chop has a minimum damage of six, compared to eight, meaning it's possible to do less than half his maximum damage without a way to guarantee a good hit.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: He delivers a poetic one right before mopping the floor with his cabinet of advisors, who conspired to try and kill him after he contracted leprosy.
  The Leper: A kingdom cannot be ruled by snakes!
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Of the damage dealers, he's the cool, collected, civilized blue oni to the Hellion and Flagellant's red oni.
  • He's also a slow, methodical fighter who specializes in massive single-target damage, sacrificing any degree of versatility or reach, while the Hellion's wild fighting style tends to wear her out over time.
  • Unlike the Flagellant, the Leper didn't choose his particular cross to bear, and his wounds are not self-inflicted. The Leper is a wise, thoughtful Gentle Giant and Warrior Poet; the Flagellant is a maniacal, delusional Blood Knight Combat Sadomasochist. While the Leper specializes in practically tearing enemies in half with a single strike, the Flagellant specializes in generous amounts of Damage Over Time through bleed damage.
• Religious Bruiser: Less obvious than the Crusader, but the Leper also counts as religious and gains bonuses from the Vestal's resting skills (and refused to party up with the Abomination until the Color of Madness patch). This alludes to Baldwin IV, as he was a Crusader King.
• Riches to Rags: His comic continues the Baldwin IV references, implying that he was a royal who voluntarily exiled himself due to his disease. This is outright confirmed in the sequel, where he's shown to have been a just and kind king in an unknown kingdom who was infected after comforting beggars with the disease and exiled himself for the safety of his people.
• Sense Freak: Downplayed, but he does find the air on his face intoxicating. This is implied because he wears his mask so much that he rarely gets to feel it. Many of his quotes while masochistic, involve him begging to be attacked just so he can feel anything again, even pain, since leprosy causes a loss of feeling in the afflicted areas, and permanent nerve damage is a very real possibility for the afflicted.
• The Stoic: Having lived and fought while being scarred from his disease, it is harder for him to gain stress. Also, while the other characters talk more rashly and aggressively when their resolve is broken, the Leper is considerably calmer, if depressed.
• Stone Wall: Played With. The Leper's Poet path in II puts an emphasis on the Leper's survivability at the cost of his overall damage. His self-healing is massively improved, and becomes immune to Stun and Move skills, but needs Strength tokens to deal similar damage as his default self.
• Sword Plant: He does this in II for most of his Tank-related moves, such as Withstand and Solemnity.
• Token Good Teammate: The Leper sticks out due to his past as a good king. He notably has nothing he regrets compared to the other Heroes, and despite his stoicism, he's a kind, noble man underneath. II reinforces this with the Leper being the only hero looking at light steadfastly while the rest turned away from it in shame.
• Warrior Poet: In the description and in the quotes proper — he is rather eloquent even when on the verge of death or a complete mental breakdown. His Tin Flute trinket also suggests that he can play music.
• The World Is Just Awesome: As his final hero shrine in II puts it as he left his lands:
  ...As he walked beyond the city gates, he marveled at the beauty of the world, and was grateful for his many blessings.
• Wrecked Weapon: The tip of his sword broke off while he was killing his would-be assassins.