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

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You know, I do recall that from Kingmaker. I must have gotten lucky since it hasn’t happened to me in Wrath until last night. But hoo boy is it happening a lot now, and just to that character. :)

I think I may have figured out something that triggers it. It’s every time she gets hit with a negative level type attack she gets bugged.

In terms of talking to NPCs in the field I swear I’ve been able to do it before on occasion but I can’t do it now. Maybe it’s something only available if there’s a quest trigger or something? I could easily be misremembering as well!

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In other news – remember when people were insisting on being wrong about Slumber, and Demoralize, and Evil Eye? Good times, good times. Anyway, the point is this, which I just realized:

  1. Shaken (from demoralize) and Evil Eye stack
  2. Evil Eye is not one of the “only get affected once per 24 hours” hexes
  3. Enemies making their saves is so 2014
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Correction: Shaken + Evil Eye don’t seem to stack. Boo.

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Finally made it through that fight in Drezen (though a lot of folks for some reason are miffed that I unfurled a Lich banner over the city, the wimps). After running errands and talking with folks, etc., I set out on some quests, and man, this game likes to throw battles at you that are almost entirely dependent on who gets the good rolls. Gettin’ kinda old.

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So I restarted out of paranoia and also not being as in love with my Sacred Huntmaster as I was originally. And hey, give Owlcat more time to fix some bugs (sorry @KevinC that sounds horrible :( ).

Noticed a couple little improvements early – I found not one but two resist cold potions in the Shield Maze, so that solved the water elemental problem nicely. Also the ruined tower in Kenabres that I had to look up a guide for to figure out that you can climb the rubble up out of the foyer now has a dude who calls to you from up there, and a whole scene to go along with it. Feels like he was always supposed to be there but scripting is hard apparently.

Anyway. Preparation and planning are everything, heh. Easily got to level 5 before the tavern assault (just don’t rest at the tavern – should be easy enough to clear at a good enough rate per rest once you get Ember, honestly), and just cleared it with like absurd ease. Turns out an enlarged Slayer with a glaive and Cleaving Finish can kill a lot of cultists without too much trouble if you can keep them from ganging up on her with Grease or offtanks or whatever.

Also. Wow does mounting Seelah up at level 5 seem awesome. Bonus attacks, big HP buffer, massively faster movement, what’s not to love?

e: all on Core, obviously

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That’s a good idea, Adam. I’ve been wanting to respec but held off due to paranoia about the “that might corrupt your save” bug. At the very least, it may give me a chance to dink around while they fix stuff. It’ll also be interesting to see if the game continues to be buggy for me or if a fresh start eliminates a lot of the bugs I’m dealing with (i.e. is it the hotfixes causes my problems or a bad state somewhere in my save).

Look how pathetic I am. An hour ago I’m stomping my feet and throwing a tantrum and an hour later you sucker me back in. :)

Re: Core difficulty, I’m really impressed that you’re able to manage. I’m not a complete moron or anything and typically excel at tweaking builds and getting mileage out of game mechanics but even on (Slightly tweaked up) Normal I find so many fights I’m half dead before I can even take an action. Do you tend to have to redo many of your battles in order to beat them on Core or do you smash through pretty well? If it’s the latter is it down to knowing the ins and outs of Pathfinder or am I just terrible at the game (no offense taken if so)?

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The secret is Animal Companions.

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I’m going to check this mod out which adds an Inventory search bar.

Omg it works so well. Everyone should download this immediately just to search for potions and spells. Can search by category a little easier too.

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I’m playing on I guess normal difficulty, and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t win a single fight. Every single thing I run into has an armor class of like 30+, spell resistance likewise, and pretty much takes a 20 to hit. Meanwhile, it seems that every swing they take at me lops off a quarter of my health. My part is incapacitated in some way right from the beginning of every fight–no matter what buffs I try to have up, they end up stunned, confused, feebleminded, paralyzed, held, whatever.

Up until right around Drezen, fights were going pretty nicely. Challenging, but not punishingly so. Drezen marked a huge spike in difficult, and now pretty much the only thing I can kill are random encounters with a handful of humans.

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Nope. I haven’t reloaded because of bad fight rolls since the Shield Maze (fuck you, Hosilla). I’m just about to hit up the Grey Garrison, and haven’t had any issues at all. No silly companion respecs or anything, just leaning into the witchiness.

Fun fact: Hexes are Supernatural abilities, so you don’t have to make a concentration check to cast them with something in your face.

(To be fair, this is my second time through so I have a pretty good idea what I’m going to run into and buff accordingly. I don’t tailor spell lists to encounters or rest constantly or anything; it’s just remembering what’s worth buffing for really.)

The key to succeeding at d20 combat remains knowing how to line up your strengths against their weaknesses, and not let their strengths blow you up. (Fuck Your Bullshit, Communal is definitely a thing if not quite as much as in Kingmaker.)

I inspect enemies a lot to look at AC, to-hit, and saves. You really don’t want to be wasting turns doing stupid shit that has a 10% chance to hit when you could be doing something else that won’t be as effective if it does land, but lands at 50 or 70 or whatever percent. You also don’t want to be wasting time disabling or killing things that just aren’t that threatening; trash mobs that are locked into melee with a tank they can barely hit are the lowest priority there is.

(This is all probably well-known to a lot of people in this thread, but hey, you asked! And I miss writing ;) )

Seelah - Tank tank tank! Tank! Tank on a horse! Horse that tanks! Woooo!

PC - Glaive Slayer (Deliverer, which is an objectively weaker subclass until level 10 then the lollercaust should begin). Constantly enlarged to the point I should probably call my doctor. Pretty stupid damage output with Cleave + Cleaving Finish + Power Attack, 20 base strength, and a two-hander.

Camellia - Hexbot. Also buffs - she gets a ton of good buffs, so she does that before combat and mostly hexes things during. Evil Eye is so good, I had absolutely been unfair to it upthread. Also she’s not incompetent at offtanking. Damage is laughable though.

Ember - Moar hexes! Also healing. But mostly hexes. And healing hexes!

Woljif - Sometimes murder, but mostly disabling spells. But also murder. Gets a lot of kills of things that got at the ladies.

Lann - Gatling bow goes brrrrr

This is all obviously in Kenebres, so things will change. Can’t speak to @TheWombat 's difficulty spikes post-Drezen. But really, this is an extremely strong party setup that can take advantage of something in just about any encounter.

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nice, thanks!

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sounds awesome! but … but… who is your charisma chatty time person? or do you not bother with that?

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Oh, my main has the Acolyte - Oblate background, which means she uses Wisdom for her Persuasion checks instead of Charisma. So she’s got a 14 WIS (lookit all that will save!) and a 7 CHA, and a Skill Focus - Persuasion feat, and some other stuff. (She will be spreading joy via Cornugon Smash, Dreadful Carnage, and Shattered Defenses when she grows up.)

Also Seelah and Ember are both not-incompetent persuaders/intimidators, which is a fine use of an action if you don’t have a lot else going on. Shaken is a seriously brutal debuff.

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Also, how do you compare mounted Seelah (very strong) to Seelah + Horsie (which also seems very strong)? what are their relative strengths and weaknesses? How do you level up the horse differently when it’s meant as a mount? I find it fights pretty well on it own, I kept on being dismounted and every new song and eventually stopped bothering to remount.

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Those are all good points, thanks. I’ve had very few issues after my first restart, until Drezen. I do suspect it has to do with my lack of patience for the super fiddly aspects of d20 systems like this. I mean, I look at the enemy, and try to cast something that will, say, knock down their resistance or armor class, but of course they resist that, and then murderize me. Some mobs I’ve run into, both random and story, literally burn down the strongest person in my party in one round before I get a chance to act.

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Mostly it’s about whether I want one super strong and mobile tank, or two pretty strong and mobile tanks. Also there’s a micromanagement component to it, where I honestly don’t need the extra beef and it’s easier to just have the one unit to control.

Protip for everyone with an animal buddy out there, btw: Mage Armor is amazing (until you get barding, anyway) and Barkskin is absolutely outstanding as well (Natural Armor Enhancement is a different bonus channel than Natural Armor itself, so you can have both).

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Make sense. My current main is a caster, so my tanks are his leopard, Seelah’s horse, and Seelah,

I’ve been using mage armor on both animals for a while but somehow didnt think of adding barkskin, thanks!

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That’s always been in the game, it just has a timer and is missable if you don’t go there soon enough.

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I found out that I missed a trigger in Act 3 that didn’t fire and will bork my run.

I’m like 14 hours into Act4.

Toy Box can force the trigger to fire, but I have to be in Act 3 for it. So now the plan is to do the quest, put all my characters on “only rolls crits” and all the enemies on “only rolls 1” and RTWP through all the stuff I recently did at warp speed. Still really, really annoying though.

Still, at least it’s an option for me, I guess. It’s this or start the whole game over basically, which honestly is kind of tempting given that I still might be screwed even after I do this, but I’ll give it a go.

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That sucks butts, @ShivaX .

In other news, man alive is the haste spell effect annoying when it’s up for an entire dungeon.