Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

mkopec said:

The higher difficulties just become a game of chance with these dice games.

Click to expand...

Well I think its worse, in this case it becomes a game of way less builds work. If your tank isnt insanely high ac, and your hitters insanely high spell dc/hit, you wont touch anything and will get crit off the face of the earth. Core is fine for me. Unfair is for a reasonable level of difficulty with the ultra cheese min max builds.

Nirgon said:

Well I think its worse, in this case it becomes a game of way less builds work. If your tank isnt insanely high ac, and your hitters insanely high spell dc/hit, you wont touch anything and will get crit off the face of the earth. Core is fine for me. Unfair is for a reasonable level of difficulty with the ultra cheese min max builds.

Click to expand...

I play on core on my first play through, but on replays I cant help myself to min/max everything, so I crank it up to unfair. I'm currently playing melee lich and relying on way too many buffs, so I know I will hit a brick wall with Baphomet and his mass dispel.

I recently tried to kill the gold dragon guy at level 11 and he was 1 shoting half my party with AOE STR drain as his first move. Also, I didn't have a witch to debuff him, so no one could even hit him, if/when they had lived. After 20 or so wipes, I gave up...for now.

Gold dragon is a bad mother fucker

Yeah this is the absolute weakness of Pathfinder -- it is open-ended enough to allow for a myriad of character concepts, but some of the synergies are so strong (and so suited to a CRPG format) that you are effectively castrating yourself by not using them.

mkopec said:

So not being in the loop on all this tabletop bs is there different rule set for this war hammer 40k shit they are doing now? And if so what is the big differences?

Click to expand...

It's going to be at least loosely based on the Rogue Trader tabletop game, which I'm not familiar enough with to really say anything about. Aside from that, it's going to be a dedicated turnbased RPG, rather than the RtwP-with-option-of-turnbased that Pathfinder uses. It sounds like it'll also feel somewhat Xcom-y, with a cover system and the like.

Getting to this now. it was at 60% off the other day on steam. Enhanced Edition.

Doing core. def alot of save scumming needed. haha. lots of RNG, required knowledge.
Like, even when you know what you are doing.. prologue level 2 cambian archer with composite longbow, and human preferred target, 42 damage crit on Seelah. she had 20 hp at full life.

The game is designed for it though. its pretty clear. Crpgs and tabletop have some very different setups. Like, that shieldmaze prologue. 15 encounters iirc. 1 is a large water elemental,1 is two earth elems, etc. Tabletop you don't really fight 15 fights between rests.

People talk about casters becoming gods, but that is a huge problem with them, especially early. wizard has 3 spell slots.. sorc 4 at that point.
Casters are more buffbots then full casters. Even when using offensive spells, the smart money is on AOE and persistent effects, to get the most bang for your buck. Grease, bladebarrier, etc. Then mid to high level you need the dispels, and single target boss killers/cc. Cantrips not scaling in pathfinder is dumb.

I "mostly" kept myself from being spoiled too much. It was impossible to avoid Camilla spoilers on the kingmaker reddit.

Playing a neutral good Witch of the Veil. Intend to keep as a spellcaster. Although it took about 20 minutes to realize how potentially broken she could be with rogue sneak attack.
I prefer to "roleplay" optimize. meaning, play with companions, and keep their original builds within reason.

Party and build atm is going to be largely up for grabs. I like seelah, going to keep her as the front line. she starts with 1 feat in shield, I gave her focus in longswords, which might have been a mistake.. making her a 2h reach paladin probably would have been smarter.

Kingmaker I did the classic, Val as front line, Amari with reach glaive as the murder machine, with my enchanting wizard PC, buffing with enlarge/heroic/haste, etc.

lann. don't love lann as a character. do love lanns monk attacks/round, and ki extra attack. Lann is accounting for like 90% of the partys offense..

have camilla atm. shaman is discount witch. def going to ditch her asap. shes useless.

just got ember. another witch. stigmatized can cast any she knows. sorc progression. people apparently build her as a blaster. But, despite getting some fire spells learned, doesn't seem super well built for it. blackend debuff on attack rolls seems like some real bullshit. I was considering keeping her, but using her as buff/healer.

back to my witch. got to prepare spells. can write to spellbook. wizard progression. making work of sleep hex. The ability to swift action cast invis on self every round is nuts. Would pair crazy with rogue for sneak attack. But even just as a ray attack caster, allows targeting flat footed AC. I went with 14dex. so the +2 on ranged attacks is ok. the issues here are the spellslot issues again. whats the point, when you only have 4 spellslots? but 140 enemies per rest. Witch Cantrip is divine zap, targeting fort resist, not an attack.

Got the rogue guy too. woljif or something. but formed the party wrong, and left him back at the bar. dual wield rogue is not a reach 2h fighter/barb/ranger... Reach is so good in pathfinder.. So, im not sure on him. take him over camilla for sure. but, im not sure how melee dps will do. will need trickery though.

Balance in pathfinder is wack at times for sure. Witch of the veil. can cast sleep hex every round, infinitely. (but not on the same target twice). Can cast invis on self every round as a swift action, infinitely.
Paladin. smite evil once a day. lay on hands equal to charisma bonus.
or like the spell slots mentioned. Again, some of it is Crpg, you're not supposed to be fighting this many encounters per day. Also, significantly less spells used on roleplay or utility. jump, see invis, etc.
The crpg is clearly built more like a tactical puzzle. not a roleplay engine.

Caliane said:

I "mostly" kept myself from being spoiled too much. It was impossible to avoid Camilla spoilers on the kingmaker reddit.

Click to expand...

To be fair, it's impossible to avoid Camellia spoilers if you pay any attention to her combat barks in game. For all the effort she went to having the 'hide alignment' amulet, the girl was not subtle.

yeah, I suspect I would have caught on quick. But again, its hard to tell what is obvious in hindsight, with the hidden alignment, barks, and dexter like personality. Split personalities, and possession is common in these games.

I liked wendaug personality way more then lann at first. but balked at the evil in character sheet. wondered if you could redeem her... of course, end of prologue... ah... ok, nah. you're lucky you have plot armor to somehow not die instantly to both direct attacks, then again in "attack" dialogue options..

Caliane said:

just got ember. another witch. stigmatized can cast any she knows. sorc progression. people apparently build her as a blaster. But, despite getting some fire spells learned, doesn't seem super well built for it. blackend debuff on attack rolls seems like some real bullshit. I was considering keeping her, but using her as buff/healer.

Click to expand...

Fire Ember builds are based around specific items that you probably haven't gotten yet. She's actually really good on almost any difficulty, although at the high end she's going to spend 99.9% of her time cackling and the rest of it giving your tank luck buffs. Which is kind of boring, but the highest difficulty is not, in any way, fair or balanced and boring cheese is the order of the day ;p

ah.

Yeah, lvl 4 and got Nenio now. party is very wonky atm. pc witch, ember witch, camilla shaman., woljif magic rogue, nenio wizard.. all have far too incomplete spell lists.
only seelah/lann pure martial.

woljif is pretty solid. grease, mage armor, etc, and major sneak attacks which can overpower the DR with raw damage. Even cantrip sneak attacks. the big issue is needing flanking to do it. so if I ditch camilla, it leaves just seelah. Camilla is now frustratingly useful, since shes the only one with bears/cats, as well as lesser restoration, to buff. iirc woljif is the only one with haste... and, shes in melee giving flanking for woljifs sneak attacks.

can't really replace camilla with nenio, cuase nenio doesn't have camillas buffs, and can't provide flanking for woljif well.

PC and ember are practically healbots atm for spells. neither has a great spell list. witch hexes however are of course OP. probably can justify keeping both in party just spamming hexes.
Both started with slumber. which has proven to be just bonkers. again, insane balancing where I can cast slumber with my witch unlimited times a day. Lots of things you might expect to be immune... aren't. Then things you might assume to be immune to Coup de grace... aren't. Incorporeal shadow demon? nope. even if you deal 0 damage due to incorporeal, it still can die to the fort save.
second hex I took fortune on my witch, protective luck on ember. fortune was a mistake. I had seen someone mention protective luck being OP. Looked at the two, and thought, oh, I'd rather the offense luck reroll, so took fortune. still gave ember protective, to have both. in hindsight I now noticed there is a second difference. fortune can only be applied to a target once/day. protective luck can be applied unlimited times.

ah, mythic stuff. abundant casting and ascendant element fire. Can see how they just make Ember a fire blaster.


hex stuff is all kindof OP right from the get go. But also no feats/mythic stuff bolstering it.

Caliane said:

ah, mythic stuff. abundant casting and ascendant element fire. Can see how they just make Ember a fire blaster.


hex stuff is all kindof OP right from the get go. But also no feats/mythic stuff bolstering it.

Click to expand...

Hex + Cackle is the best debuff in the game, but it is exspensive, action wise. There are tabletop talent(s) to make it less expensive and there are mods that add in all the missing tabletop talents.

yeah, I was looking at a tabletop witch guide to get an idea for planning ahead, and was like. "man none of this is in the crpg". Although hexs in crpg aren't effected by spell resistance. looks like they are in tabletop.

I figured out why lann was so OP. I picked up rapid shot on him, and it didn't seem to do anything. and, looking back, that explains why he had a second attack that I didn't know where it was coming from, right from level 1. He was clearly getting rapid shot for free, at level 1 via a bug.

Caliane said:

yeah, I was looking at a tabletop witch guide to get an idea for planning ahead, and was like. "man none of this is in the crpg". Although hexs in crpg aren't effected by spell resistance. looks like they are in tabletop.

Witch Handbook: Pathfinder Class Guide - RPGBOT

The witch is, in many ways, very similar to a wizard. They're intelligence-based prepared arcane spellcasters with a potentially infinite pool of "known"

rpgbot.net

I figured out why lann was so OP. I picked up rapid shot on him, and it didn't seem to do anything. and, looking back, that explains why he had a second attack that I didn't know where it was coming from, right from level 1. He was clearly getting rapid shot for free, at level 1 via a bug.

Click to expand...

Zen Archers get extra shots that don't stack with talents. Basically flurry of blows at ranged is OP at low levels. Other archers can catch up around 10. Most archer builds with Zen just dip a few levels into it, but even pure Zen Lann is pretty OP due to his stats.

mkopec said:

So not being in the loop on all this tabletop bs is there different rule set for this war hammer 40k shit they are doing now? And if so what is the big differences?

Click to expand...

I'm in the alpha test. It is a completely different rule set from Pathfinder.

Zero experience with Rogue Trader but I'd compare it to a much more complicated Shadowrun.

Also the game is turn based only.

Burns said:

Zen Archers get extra shots that don't stack with talents. Basically flurry of blows at ranged is OP at low levels. Other archers can catch up around 10. Most archer builds with Zen just dip a few levels into it, but even pure Zen Lann is pretty OP due to his stats.

Click to expand...

ah. yeah. I think I figured it out early. but forgot about it later, and was confused when I took rapid shot.

I plan to stick with pure builds for all the characters. Although, saw a topic on reddit, which made me wonder. is there anyone "designed to multi-class"?
like, in kingmaker Octavia starts as 1 wizard, 1 rogue. shes CLEARLY set up to get arcane trickster when shes high enough level to do it. get her at level 2, but arcane trickster requires level 5min iirc?