Knights of the Chalice Impressions @ Rampant Coyote

Jay Barnson has kicked up some impressions from the Knights of the Chalice demo:

The combats are challenging. You won't be hacking and slashing your way through 'em - at least not in the demo. Not only do you have to be pretty tactical with your positioning and spell use, but you also need to husband your resources a bit so that you not only survive this combat, but the next one you don't know anything about. In classic D&D style, you only recover spell points while resting (at a campfire, in this game), and so the whole resource-management between multiple combats thing is strongly in effect here.

Oh, and you'll have to deal with stuff like 5-foot moves (a free position adjustment you can take every round), attacks of opportunity, and so forth. The AI has to deal with it too. A nasty spider-like Aranachak has a number of spell-like abilities, and is constantly backing up a square each round to fireball, web, acid spray, and to heal itself. They know the tricks. It's not hard to imagine a devilish Dungeon Master on the other side of the screen, plotting out the moves to best screw over the players with otherwise "fair" fights.