Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Outflank is just incredible. Really noticeable difference when I was able to get it for my melee chars.

Outflank should be on every melee fighter, it’s just that good. It’s basically a free +2 to hit unless they’re the only melee character you’re running or something crazy.

Keep in mind all the ranger sub-classes lose the pet. Which is huge.

Yeah, the best archer is the default ranger. Though there is a NPC one that is well built so one doesn’t need to make the MC one unless you really want to.

My gut feeling is that many that find the game too hard, undervalue + to hit. Not just feats like Weapon Focus and Outflank, but also classes with full base attack bonus progression.

I tend to never multiclass spellcasters to avoid losing spell progression, but I have built Linzi to take levels in Eldritch Knight for higher BaB and more feats at the expense of one caster level.

Got this on the winter sale and so far really enjoy it. I’ve played DnD since before there was even a Basic boxed set so the systems are familiar but new and surprising at the same time. So far the story is intriguing even if it’s an obvious setup to get your group adventuring. Very much feels like a continuation of the Infinity engine games but with nicer graphics.

It’s also balls hard! Got my dudes to level 2 and now have a few places to explore but am getting pummeled by the level 3 guys there. Still only a few hours in and I’m hoping all the bugs mentioned don’t bother me. But so far it’s exactly what I want in a crpg.

Odd are you’ll be fine till real late game and even that sounds mostly good for most people, but always get in the habit of making hard saves ever so often so that if some crippling bug does strike you can roll back to before it.

Yeah, this game makes a tremendous first impression. :) I’m only 90 minutes in, but that was a great time.

One thing that I found interesting. I’m a vet of the old skool Bioware and Black Isle isometric games. Played 'em all, finished a number of them. When I went to play PoE two years ago or whenever it was that it came out, though, it just didn’t stick with me. I forced myself to get through about 12 hours of it, then finally stopped playing for whatever reason and never found any desire to go back.

In P:K, though, what I’ve noticed is that the isometric perspective is just a tad more zoomed in by default. Not hugely so, but a bit. And its just enough that I feel like I connect and am in there with my party, moreso than the slightly zoomed out feel of PoE. It’s hard to explain, I guess (and I’m not doing it well…), but with PoE I felt like my party looked like smallish pixel smears on the screen, while in Pathfinder they look like “my team”.

You may want to wait until they release patch 1.2 before starting Chapter 2. It is supposed to be released mid-January. Hopefully this will clean up most of the major or plot-breaking bugs (Amiri/Octavia mostly).

Most of the end game bosses have such ridiculous AC that you need a natural 20 to hit them, anyway. I never used the +5 weapons because they didn’t matter. I stuck with the earlier +1 weapons with additional elemental damage. I required a natural 20 to hit whether I was using the +1 or the +5 weapon.

I’m not a fan of Weapon Focus in this game because the availability of weapons is so large. For rangers it’s fine, because they’ll always be using a long bow. For support NPCs like Linzi and Octavia, they switched back and forth between a light crossbow and a heavy crossbow too frequently. I gave Valerie WF for bastard sword, which was fine as she stuck with a bastard sword the whole game. But it didn’t matter much, as a tank I stacked her CON so she never had a large to hit bonus. Nok-Nok taking WF khukri is probably a good idea, as he gets a nice pair at the end of his personal quest. I ended up giving Amiri a glaive for the second half of the game. Which was great due to its reach. Big fan of pole arms in this game. I gave Amiri WF great sword, which I think was a mistake, though I did blow her personal quest so I never got to see how good her great sword becomes. Regongar is always going to want to use a scimitar. Harrim also switches weapons frequently.

You can hit them if you maximize to hit, but yeah, they’re a bit silly for the most part.

Also keep in mind that +3 and higher weapons will also penetrate DR.

DR Type Weapon Enhancement
Bonus Equivalent
Cold iron / silver +3
Adamantine* +4
Alignment-based +5

Which is pretty relevant, especially Cold Iron in this game and especially at the end where basically everyone has DR 10+/Cold Iron.

For Octavia I’ve used Weapon focus ray since it applies to the ranged touch spells I mostly have her autocast. (Possibly not that important since touch attacks ignore armor.)

And I used Weapon focus longbow for Linzi (even with her initial low str) since the Manyshot feat only works for bows and not for crossbows.

How is the kingdom management piece of the game these days? I paused right when I got to Chapter 2 because I had no idea what decisions to make. And then I read that it’s easy to mess up and go bankrupt. I like the idea of it, so I don’t want to put it on easy/automate if it’s been addressed.

First playthrough I had it on effortless for this reason. Haven’t decided how to do it this time, just yet. My understanding is that you miss important stuff on automatic.

Thanks. Maybe I’ll poke around Reddit or something to learn more about the state of this aspect of the game.

It’s a hell of a lot better than it was by all accounts, but it was fubar so that might not mean anything.

Picked this up in the steam sale.

I was looking for something to scratch the Icewind Dale itch and so far it’s delivering.

I picked up a mod to speed up the movement speed which makes the gameplay a lot snappier.

I also picked up the Bag of Tricks mod, or whatever it’s called and increased the zoom out distance, increased the encumbrance and fatigue threshold which makes things a lot more enjoyable and allows me to focus on the game a bit more.

Love it.

Terrible. There’s discussion earlier in the thread, but the TLDR is that the “interactivity” of building your kingdom (i.e. building stuff) is meaningless mechanically, and that the real mechanical impact comes from councillor juggling your RNG card events (also fixed card events), and furthermore, this only exists as an additional avenue for you to lose.

Well, that last thing was patched I think. I believe the later patches did fix things up so that getting kingdom stats high can allow your artisans to produces nice +5 items with cool extra effects. But that doesn’t solve the underlying mechanical problems.

This game is so brown. I mean, how much more brown could it possibly be? (The answer is “None. None more brown.”)

You mean when you are standing in a wooden fort on a dirt ground? Yes, funny how that works.

Otherwise, it’s green where it needs to be, and the spell effects and colors are on point. I suspect you see browns a lot thanks to the parchment UI, maybe?

Here is a section of my screenshots for the game, for example.