Pathfinder - Wrath of the Righteous; A Kingmaker follow-up that supports turn-based gameplay now!

I am at it! Typical. I rereoll alla time to optimize but hey thats an rpg.

Since I love the sheer wealth of options in this game when it comes to character buidling, Iā€™m curious about the legendary route, what build would really synergize all those 40 levels. Not obvious stuff like two melee builds for 40 pts of BAB.

Unless youā€™re building for Unfair it probably doesnā€™t matter as anything with 40 levels is going to be OP. +35 BAB with 10d6 sneak attack is certainly better than just +40 BAB, but, does it matter when everything dies in one round?

So far all my builds have been mostly melee, so I thought Iā€™d do a ranged attack build. Iā€™m thinking sohei monk, but I donā€™t want a horse, so maybe a hunter divine hound at 1st level, and then 10-11 levels of sohei for the flurry of blows and weapon training w/thrown weapons for extra throwing axes per round, especially with ki and haste. But Iā€™m also thinking 20 levels of mutant fighter for the BAB, the fighter feats since such a build would need weapon focus/specialization and all the ranged feats applicable to thrown weapons (and the mutagen wouldnā€™t hurt). Probably totally cheese the race again with kitsune and the mythic shapeshifter for that +4 boost to all physical attributes. That leaves about 8-9 levels and I was thinking either slayer, inquisitition, or battle scion skald (the latter gives expanded crit multiplier, but not sure if a lawful alignment is a no-go for skalds).

If Iā€™m doing the math right, by 11-12th level that should be 10-11 attacks per round.

Beat my second run and the only thing I really have to say is that the Crusade is just too much by the end.

Both times it just became unfun and took FOREVER. Like if this was at a table, youā€™d be talking several months of doing nothing but moving armies around. To do it honestly takes at least like 20 hours as far as I can tell. Most of which is spent doing nothing but running armies around to intercept demons and reinforcing your Big Stack to push into demon armies in an area, clearing it and then moving them to a new area. It just never ends. Even with the auto-win mod it takes literal hours.

This was on Casual for the Crusade mechanic even. Itā€™s just a waste of time that isnā€™t fun after a point.
I can handle it until Act 5, but once you clean up everything and get ready to push to the final Act itā€™s just pure time-wasting hell that makes you want to stop playing.

Otherwise I had fun though. Already thinking about a 3rd attempt and what I want to try out.

Yeah the Crusade stuff was ā€œcuteā€ on the first 1-1.5 playthroughs but now it has overstayed its welcome.

I use ToyBox to max out all the Crusade sliders and I can clear the map in about an hour. Still about 50 minutes longer than Iā€™d like.

My biggest problem with the crusade stuff is how the lines of travel are laid out on the world map. All the zig-zagging back 'n forth is unnecessary. I know theyā€™re running the roads between ravines and canyons, but while that makes a certain amount of sense it doesnā€™t make for a fun gameplay mechanic.

I also donā€™t care for how imbalanced the units and generals are. Why even bother having other general classes if theyā€™re going to be so ineffective compared to a mage? Why have shield bearer units when thereā€™s no good way to turtle? And why are marksmen so completely overpowered compared to other ranged units?

Yeah, itā€™s not compelling or fun. But my biggest issue is that there is so damned much of it and it takes so long.

The zig-zagging is a lot of it, but there are 2-3 times as many armies as there need to be. It exists to waste time in Act 5. Act 3 is fine. Your choices in meetings and whatnot actually kind of mean something, but by Act 5 youā€™re done with all that and itā€™s just ā€œwaste time building up to kill the 40 armies we shit out on the map.ā€

In my last run, I used shield bearers instead of champions and rangers instead of marksmen.

The main reason was that if a hero or enemy unit had a ranged attack, the first thing they would do is nuke the marksmen who have like no HP and then burn down any champions.

I did have some success with the shield bearers who I would send out first to engage an enemy who would proceed to waste all their attacks on it. It didnā€™t make any sense for the enemy to attack them, but they did in most cases. The rangers are not nearly as strong as the marksmen, but they have a lot more HP and can melee quite well.

But overall they units in were quite unbalanced and I do not understand their design decisions.

I plan to start this during my December break, are the major bugs all fixed? I donā€™t have to time to look for fixes and I definitely donā€™t want to randomly lose hours of progress.

Yes.

5

You can do some impressive cheese with dragon disciple & eldritch knight. If you take a handful of levels in whatever you can do a single level of sorcerer, then eight levels of dragon disciple, then ten levels of eldritch knight. You end up with with high level spells, a pile of stat boosts, a solid BAB and plenty of levels to do whatever you want with. In my case, I think I did 16 levels of inquisitor and a couple levels of mystic theurge.

Anything that scales with number of skill ranks becomes terrifying - I have a weapon that heals the number of ranks I have in Knowledge (Religion) to all my nearby allies on a crit. I crit a lot, and have almost 40 ranks in that skill.

LOL Thatā€™s awesome. I know at some point I want a spellcaster build so I can play around with the lich path, even though I struggle with playing evil characters and choosing those [evil] dialogue options. Maybe once some DLC is released.

Ok so Iā€™m only 5 hours in and this game is (the true) BG3. Kingmaker had a similar feel but Wrath takes everything to the next level. The builds diversity is amazing (self-buffing melee oracle atm), the gameplay mechanics are top notch and the story is decent too (I generally donā€™t care about the story much - shocking, I know). Both turn-based and real time work flawlessly, the visuals are perfect (not too cartoony and not depressing either). Looks like Iā€™ll easily see 100 hrs evaporate this Decemberā€¦

The Loremaster prestige class seems pretty bugged. It is supposed to have this ability:

At 1st level and every two levels higher than 1st (3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th), the Loremaster chooses one Secret from the following list.: Cleric Spell, Combat Feat, Druid Spell, Fortitude Secret, Reflex Secret, Rogue Secret, Will Secret, Wizard Feat, Wizard Spell.

However it seems like none of the Spell secrets are in the game. They are listed as possible selections in the class description, but doesnā€™t appear as options when selecting a secret during level up.

I spent several levels giving Ember the pre-requisites to become a Loremaster so that she could learn Haste. No such luck :-(

Irabeth looking so dapper on the cover.

But then, oh no!

Iā€™ve started this three times but keep having issues with getting paralyzed by too many choices, too much OCD/AP/min-maxery. Normally I love super-crunchy munchkin games but this game just passes some sort of threshold in my brain that induces paralysis.

So, Iā€™m looking for ideas for a main character and party selection that meets several goals. Iā€™m willing to play on fairly low to moderate difficulty to make life easy, so raw character power is not the only consideration. Iā€™m looking for ideas for main character and party selection that:

1)Requires as little micro-management as possible. This includes as low a reliance on buffs as can be managed, as well as no use of pets or mounts. I want to keep things as simple and micro-free as possible. My normally munchkin-brain canā€™t handle it in this game.

2)Will avoid any major ā€œself gimpingā€ or big holes in necessary abilities, etc. Will also avoid any big stupidities in character development, etc.

3)Has builds that are pretty simple to remember and follow so that I donā€™t have to go crazy with 47 classes and weird ā€œdump statā€ BS.

Basically Iā€™d like some tips for a straightforward low-to-no-micro, easy to build, ā€œfire and forgetā€ type of party. Iā€™m flexible on melee vs ranged, and spells vs attacking. Iā€™d prefer a Good alignment but am not 100% wedded to it.

Additionally, as I think about it, I also want a party that can take onboard the various story NPCs to do their quests, so maybe I want a 4-5 member ā€œCore Partyā€ with room for additional NPCs as the story demands. Is there a good selection of 4-5 Main Character + NPCs that would cover the main bases, satisfy my criteria above, and leave me to room to do the story quests for all (or at least most) of the NPCs?

Iā€™ll let others give the pointers on builds, since thatā€™s not my thing. But I will say that as soon as you said ā€˜low to moderate difficultyā€™ all I thought was that you will have no issue with any party, no need to micromanage them, you can pretty much level them up without too much thought and go with what feels good to you.

If you are thinking going with a normal or higher difficulty, thatā€™s when builds and party management become important.

Just on your last point about the companions that fit together and how to do their story quests, youā€™ll find it easy to manage if you choose them to match your alignment. I had a chaotic good Knife Master with Seelah, Nenio, Ember, Lann, and Camellia/Sosiel in my first game. Covers all the bases for classes and they feel good together. In my second game, I have a Neutral Evil Dragonheir Scion (fighter), with Regill, Wenduag, Daeran, Woljif, and Camellia again (because she didnā€™t make it through my first go due toā€¦story). Again, provides a balance of classes. But I play on a fairly low difficulty thatā€™s easily manageable, too. I didnā€™t change any of the companions from their primary classes, with Regill following the Hellknight line.

Sounds like a melee class would be best for what you want. So pick a fighter class, heavy armor, shield, one-handed weapon, charge into combat during turn-based mode, or real-time w/pause just let him charge in on his own. Lower difficulties should make tanking life fairly easy. Skills donā€™t matter, just spread them out among your party members a bit so all bases are covered, and go with feats like power attack, cleave, weapon focus, improved critical, blind fight, and some teamwork feats. Choose whichever mythic path bests suits your characterā€™s alignment and your approach to the crusade.

I went with Seelah, Lann, Ember, Arueshalae, Sosiel and a 2H dps paladin. All of them single-class, except for my failed Ember-Loremaster attempt mentioned above. So not complicated to build.

Anyone but Seelah could be swapped out for companion questing.

I took the Enduring Spells and Greater Enduring Spells mythic abilities as soon as possible for my buffing characters. With most buffs then lasting 24 hours, thereā€™s a lot less micro-management needed.

Both my paladins got mounts, but I could easily have not done that. However, the horses do surprisingly good damage and are two more melee characters that can have the fantastic Outflank talent. I seldom use them as mounts - I prefer to have them running around hitting back rank enemies.