Pathfinder: Kingmaker

It took 19 years but I've finally stumbled in to a conversation about how ridiculous level one wands are.

When I still played tabletop games, we used to always have 3-4 wands of cure light wounds on hand regardless of what level the party was. Truly absurd amount of healing for the cost, and it meant the healer only had to memorize a handful of emergency heals, which didn't matter as much if you were using a good-aligned cleric but was very useful if you were using anything else.

Yep, doing a tabletop run of the Emerald Spire right now and we always have wands of cure light on us. Taking average out of combat, it's 275 healing per wand.

I restarted, my low dex wizard felt busted. game does a shit job of telling you that.
Even shit like Point blank shot, says "weapons". but Rays and thrown spells like Acid splash all count as weapons. With Ray attacks being outright an option in weapon focus at least for a clue there. But, generally the game is pretty shit at telling you this..

Valerie's stats. I noticed this before. I saw the people here, talking about respecs, and fixing stats, etc. And, when I looked at Valerie's.. shes very obviously a paladin, who is not a paladin. Stats scream paladin. I was going to ask about that, and if she had some kind of questline to become one. but with this restart, I got her in the party, and was able to talk to her, and get her "not a paladin" backstory.

Which, man this is a real problem with how DnD handles attributes. Shes got this story of being fasttrack to be a paladin, but quitting and becoming a fighter. ok, great. But, her stats are locked in as a Paladin. (Even more silly, she has no paladin levels, despite having trained as one for a number of years..)

She starts as a level 1 Fighter, right? Just put all her future levels in Paladin and enjoy the bonus feat from her 1 level of Fighter, easy.

...that makes sense. I kept her as a Tower Shield Fighter the whole way through, anyways. On the standard difficulty, she was fine.

yeah, shes lawful neutral, aethist. So no go, unless a quest shifts it.
STR 14
DEX 13
CON 19
INT 9
WIS 10
CHA 15

and yeah, shes an unusually attractive noble woman, who has a fondness for armor, and martial prowess. She was ushered into the Church of Shelyn as a paladin. but she expressly finds the idea of beauty over pragmatism stupid. swords to defend the home, plows to feed your family is the only true pursuit.

The core problems then, are Atheist. As she, doesn't outright deny all gods, just Shelyn. This version of the system, not having Neutral paladins.
Pretty sure she'd love Torag. Iomedae, Abadar, or Erastil as well.
and the 19 con. Nothing in her back story mentions superhuman constitution. And it comes at the cost of her str and/or dex. Tower shield spec, requires dex to make use of its special feats.
Tower shield spec itself. Again, nothing in her back story mentions tower shields. She does mention preferring "raising a shield, then dodging a blow", when saying why she didnt become an aldori swordlord. But, then if that is the case, she should have the str to raise a shield.. General fighter with shield traits would be much better with those stats.

Actually with 15 CHA, she'd be good with Dazzling Display, Cornugan Smash, and Brutal Carnage. Not sure why I didn't do that in my playthrough...

Im not sure what you mean exactly.

Im doing challenging, and yeah, some of those early fights seem nearly impossible. Need some very specific cheese...
Like, I went to the bandit camp by the river, and dual axe chick +archers annihilated my party. stealth, sleep, etc, didn't matter. she just ran down everyone one by one with ease.
Going there at level 2 seems incorrect. esp with 4 man.

There is the hidden timer on the bandits+tort. so I am not 100% sure on the "correct" order.
I think you start off, get interrupted by reemus, the go to the tomb. Easy DC get your 5th party member, and win that fight, which shouldn't be that hard.

Leaving starts the event. not sure what happens if you fail, but I always followed him, and got the kobolds. easy fight.
new map location. old sycamore. here I again don't know the timer. do you go to the river bandit camp now? you have 5 people, but still level 2. and might need to rest.
Can Val tank these guys? harrim and amiri cant...

I went to the old sycamore. The fights here are all pretty easy for 5 man level 2. except a select few, special bosses. I might be able to take them, now I hit level 3, inside the sycamore caves.
Burning alot of time here though. resting. and that stupid nightmare shit, giving MC fatigue.

fang cave is easy.. just buy more alch or acid flasks, the 6 given free is not enough.. issue here is again race against the clock.

Edit: checked up on it. its more of a toggle then actual timer. going to rivals, ancient tomb, checks off an encounter at the riverbend, while going to the river, alters tomb encounter.
so, you are actually free to go to fangberry, and even explore other locations at your leisure.

so yeah, go to fangberry, and bring more flasks, then ancient tomb for 5th party member. should be very close to 3.

Love spotting enemies in the distance and having a few fireballs mid air before combat even begins

It's like the Jericho explosion

ooph. so, theres my part before Octavia, and my party after.. Shes making me consider dipping into rogue or viv on my main wizard for sneak attack... even linzi..
Man, thats a weird design quirk.
5e Cantrips actually scale with character level. (not class level). So, while they are never op, if you run out of primary spells, you aren't exactly dead in the water.
Flanking sneak attacks on cantrips here though.. Jeeze. Add sneak attack damage, attack vs touch AC, deal energy damage of attack type.

Space it out, take a break from it and definitely leave some damn notes where ur doin's left off.

I'll be coming back again after a few other things.

I hit a few quests, where I don't feel the alignments and dialogue/actions match at all.
Slaver lady. "Punishing your tormentor is the right thing to do.Kill her reg!" lawful neutral. Vengeance/retribution is not neutral. Justice is neutral. redemption is good.

Stag lord general.. "let me go, and Ill run away, never come back, and tell you of a stash of goods!"
"deal, but if you break your promise Ill make you regret it!" Lawful evil.
or, "I like you better dead" no alignment shift at all. as if a Lawful good character would say that.
first, those are the only two options. Second, how the hell is letting this guy go in exchange for loot LAWFUL? That's clearly a chaotic neutral action.

i've talked about it in the d&d thread but alignment is A LOT more nuanced than what people give it credit for. people think lawful means that you always follow every law, you never lie, and you never go back on your word. you respect law for law's sake. in some cases that can be true and that's a perfectly valid character choice but in reality, lawful just means you have a code and you stick with it. Dexter is lawful. even though he regularly breaks the law, he has a strict personal code that he doesn't budge on.

letting the stag lord go in exchange for loot isn't the lawful part. you as the baron (or expected baron at that point) can make whatever decision you want and it's the law. the "if you break your promise i'll come after you" part is where the lawful alignment focus is.

in my current tabletop game, i'm playing a lawful good dwarf. when it comes to his clan, his entire focus is the good of the clan. when it comes to dealing with anyone who's hurt the clan in someway, he'd probably come across as evil, and possibly even a little chaotic. rules don't apply to non-dwarf, non-clan members because they're just... they couldn't possibly be expected to meet dwarven standards so there's no use even asking them to.

i think alignment can be a really interesting concept in a good table game, but in pre-programmed conversations like video games, they always seem polarizing and misrepresentative

Doing second run through on Challenging. The Crane Style feat line is basically game changer for all melee. Both tanks have it, my 2-hand Fighter has it, and Nok Nok has it.

Basically its Crane Style >> Crane Wing >> Crane Riposte for +8 AC (!!!) while Fighting Defensively with only -1 to Hit and a free occasional Riposte.

Pretty much making my Challening run easier than my Normal run.