You're good, they nerfed a lot of the stuff that was throwing people off in chapter one. Just keep an eye on the extensive difficulty options and tune it to your taste, there's a lot of flexibility.
I find flicking on the turn-based mod for big fights REALLY helps in the spell/positioning department.
Wait, what, there's a turn-based mode in P:Km? Are you talking about tweaking auto-pause? If there's a true turn-based mode in P:Km I never saw it. That would make me want to try it again with an entirely different point of view for the combat.
EDIT: Wait, did you mean "mod"? And "flicking on" is not the right verb for that. Try "installing".
So - I've decided to jump in and pick up a copy of this game (the BG3 announcement and some general good vibes from games in E3 kind of makes me want to sink my teeth into a game, and this one looks enjoyable).
Never played Pathfinder proper, but I did play a ton of 3.5e, so I'm hoping it wont be too jarring. I did have some questions I wanted to ask up front to the community:
I've read quite a bit that the encounters in this game can be absolutely brutal, and require deft understanding of Pathfinder and some solid min/maxing to get through. Is that really the case? For example, I've always been something of a Bard enthusiast. I'm well aware they had quite a few short comings as it pertains to 3.5 (They got a lot better in 4e and 5e, thankfully). Would I be severely handicapped by deciding to play one?
The idea of a Bard into Duelist build seemed interesting to me, but I couldnt find really ANYONE that recommended it. Seems like all the threads are split between Rogue or fighter into Duelist.
Anyone have any thoughts/opinions on the matter? Any information would be appreciated.
Edit, for clarity's sake: I play BG 1 and 2 on its normal difficulty with every component of SCS enabled. I do tend to cheese in some instances "Oh. That lich just chain-contingencied out 3 incendiary clouds. I think load into the next area for a few rounds".
A thundercaller can be really awesome. I'd really not recommend mixing it with duelist, since it'll gimp your songs and casting. Maybe a one level dip into another class is OK, but pulling too much away makes it pointless in playing a bard. You don't need a completely min/maxed build, but do need to put some thought into your attribute spread and what feats you need to get, and how you want to develop the character.
The turn based mod's not necessary, unless that's your thing. I got through a no-reload run without it.
I've barely started the run, but I've been tinkering with an aldori defender with a level or rogue that I'm going to evolve to Aldori sword lord (The new prestige class), and throw in some duelist levels. If you want a bit of magic in there for a duelist, go with the sword saint magus archetype over bard.
A thundercaller can be really awesome. I'd really not recommend mixing it with duelist, since it'll gimp your songs and casting. Maybe a one level dip into another class is OK, but pulling too much away makes it pointless in playing a bard. You don't need a completely min/maxed build, but do need to put some thought into your attribute spread and what feats you need to get, and how you want to develop the character.
Gotcha. So I'm guessing your post basically means it's challenging to mix the buffing ability of a Bard with a duelist since I cannot effectively do both at once, and if I want to combine the magic + swordplay, the Bard's not the best way to do it (In fairness, it never was. I was more going off the wiki that specifically cites Rogues and Bards opting into being a Duelist).
On the face of it, that makes sense. Bard's already kind of a jack-of-all-trades, Multi classing it never was a very effective way to use them.
In regards to your other suggestion - I saw the Magus. Is that supposed to replace the traditional F/M character? What's the difference between F/M and Magus?
I just finished the game and I can say Bard's can be great melee damage.
I played Piro as a gnome bard (no archetype), so small weapons, my rapier did a 1d4 instead of the normal 1d6.
Anyway, dual wielding an agile rapier (Dex to damage if you have weapon finesse) with an off hand and casting Sense Vitals (Gives you sneak attack) combined with haste, Good Hope, mirror image, and inspire courage for damage.
While not the most optimal damage dealer I could kill most things on my own (though I did always use a party).
I played the game on challenging with the exception of having enemy stat adjustment on normal and enemy difficulty on weak to make enemy stats more in line with PnP.
Edit: You can use rods of extend metamagic to give yourself lengthy sense vitals and improved invisibility buffs as well.
A thundercaller can be really awesome. I'd really not recommend mixing it with duelist, since it'll gimp your songs and casting. Maybe a one level dip into another class is OK, but pulling too much away makes it pointless in playing a bard. You don't need a completely min/maxed build, but do need to put some thought into your attribute spread and what feats you need to get, and how you want to develop the character.
Gotcha. So I'm guessing your post basically means it's challenging to mix the buffing ability of a Bard with a duelist since I cannot effectively do both at once, and if I want to combine the magic + swordplay, the Bard's not the best way to do it (In fairness, it never was. I was more going off the wiki that specifically cites Rogues and Bards opting into being a Duelist).
On the face of it, that makes sense. Bard's already kind of a jack-of-all-trades, Multi classing it never was a very effective way to use them.
In regards to your other suggestion - I saw the Magus. Is that supposed to replace the traditional F/M character? What's the difference between F/M and Magus?
Magus plays a lot like a fighter mage, but you can actually wear armor and cast. When you get to 7th level you can cast in medium armor and I think it was level 13 you can cast in heavy. The biggest thing, which may not sound as awesome as it actually is, is you can deliver spells that require a melee touch attack, through your weapon. Damage from the spell is doubled on a crit, too. You can deliver some crazy high damage shocking grasps, vampiric touch and frigid touches. I don't know if you ever saw the old bladesinger kit for elven fighter mages in 2nd Ed PNP, but they're kind of like that. There's spell combat which is a modal ability. It lets you take a -2 to hit, but can cast and attack in the same turn. I turn it on when I want to cast, but keep it off and wield my weapon 2 handed when not casting, and so as to not take the -2 penalty and do strength x 1.5 damage bonus for 2 handed. They do require a lot of micro management and buffs like shield and mirror image, to not die, but I personally find them fun as hell to play. There's always something to do with them. They do best with a weapon that has a high crit chance, like a rapier or scimitar. The eldritch scion is the sorcerer version, and you even get to pick a bloodline and can go dragon disciple if they pick a draconic bloodline. I did an eldritch scion with the abyssal bloodline for my no reload run. The first time I finished the game was with a sword saint duelist.
[
EDIT: Wait, did you mean "mod"? And "flicking on" is not the right verb for that. Try "installing".
Yes there's a TB mod, get on the Nexus and check it out. It's developing nicely and REALLY suits some of the more complicated mage battles.
I mean flicking on as in temporarily turning it on and off via CTRL-F10 in the mod manager. So you don't need to go TB for a lot of the more tedious minor fights. He's going to add a hotkey and a better UI for it in the future to turn and off.
Magus plays a lot like a fighter mage, but you can actually wear armor and cast. When you get to 7th level you can cast in medium armor and I think it was level 13 you can cast in heavy. The biggest thing, which may not sound as awesome as it actually is, is you can deliver spells that require a melee touch attack, through your weapon. Damage from the spell is doubled on a crit, too. You can deliver some crazy high damage shocking grasps, vampiric touch and frigid touches. I don't know if you ever saw the old bladesinger kit for elven fighter mages in 2nd Ed PNP, but they're kind of like that. There's spell combat which is a modal ability. It lets you take a -2 to hit, but can cast and attack in the same turn. I turn it on when I want to cast, but keep it off and wield my weapon 2 handed when not casting, and so as to not take the -2 penalty and do strength x 1.5 damage bonus for 2 handed. They do require a lot of micro management and buffs like shield and mirror image, to not die, but I personally find them fun as hell to play. There's always something to do with them. They do best with a weapon that has a high crit chance, like a rapier or scimitar. The eldritch scion is the sorcerer version, and you even get to pick a bloodline and can go dragon disciple if they pick a draconic bloodline. I did an eldritch scion with the abyssal bloodline for my no reload run. The first time I finished the game was with a sword saint duelist.
That sounds really powerful. I particularly like the idea of using touch-spells through the weapon.
My only other question is -what would be the point of Fighter-Mage multi class if Magus exists?
Kingmaker has a lot of classes so their is inevitably class redundancy. Not just the overlap with magus and eldritch knight, but also eldritch scion and dragon disciple, eldritch scoundrel and arcane trickster. They aren't identical, but they are pretty similar.
Magus plays a lot like a fighter mage, but you can actually wear armor and cast. When you get to 7th level you can cast in medium armor and I think it was level 13 you can cast in heavy. The biggest thing, which may not sound as awesome as it actually is, is you can deliver spells that require a melee touch attack, through your weapon. Damage from the spell is doubled on a crit, too. You can deliver some crazy high damage shocking grasps, vampiric touch and frigid touches. I don't know if you ever saw the old bladesinger kit for elven fighter mages in 2nd Ed PNP, but they're kind of like that. There's spell combat which is a modal ability. It lets you take a -2 to hit, but can cast and attack in the same turn. I turn it on when I want to cast, but keep it off and wield my weapon 2 handed when not casting, and so as to not take the -2 penalty and do strength x 1.5 damage bonus for 2 handed. They do require a lot of micro management and buffs like shield and mirror image, to not die, but I personally find them fun as hell to play. There's always something to do with them. They do best with a weapon that has a high crit chance, like a rapier or scimitar. The eldritch scion is the sorcerer version, and you even get to pick a bloodline and can go dragon disciple if they pick a draconic bloodline. I did an eldritch scion with the abyssal bloodline for my no reload run. The first time I finished the game was with a sword saint duelist.
That sounds really powerful. I particularly like the idea of using touch-spells through the weapon.
My only other question is -what would be the point of Fighter-Mage multi class if Magus exists?
Like Vallmyr said, Magus caps at level 6 spells. I personally wouldn't bother mixing fighter and mage, but a lot of people have liked taking martial proficiency on a wizard and then picking up eldritch knight, since it only costs you one caster level, so you can still hit those level 9 spells, and have some melee ability. That eldritch knight path would work a lot better than mixing fighter and mage. BTW, there's not really any gain for slapping eldritch knight levels on a magus, in fact you miss out on the magus arcana and some other special features of the class.
Did they lower the difficulty in anyway? I just utterly destroyed the Tech. League the first time you meet them which I didn’t think it was possible.
It might be because I am starting off as a new character (Divine Hunter) which is more combat focus than the last characters I s playing, but still.
Ya, the mage no longer has access to blindness in that encounter. Some of the other encounters wer modified, like fangberry cave is completely different, now.
Ya, the mage no longer has access to blindness in that encounter. Some of the other encounters wer modified, like fangberry cave is completely different, now.
They hit the devs pretty hard with the "You cannot hit swarms with your axe, the game is bad" thing; it seems
Nah, that was on them. The invulnerability of swarms was inadequately declared by the game; not brought up at all ingame as far as I know, and only brought up in a loading screen "protip" with only a random chance to get shown before the (very early game) battle. And even if you followed it's suggestion to use torches the swarms was originally very hp-bloated in comparison to the damage a torch does.
As for the belittling "what idiots think weapons can hit a swarm of insects" comment -- this is a game where common weapons can hit literal clouds of air and water. Where if you hit a moving heep of earth you do damage instead of just packing the dirt harder. Where if you stick your wooden fighting stick into a firey blaze it hurts the firey instead of feeding it. Assuming you can club a swarm to death isn't just keeping with standard game's logic, it's keeping with the internal logic of the game you're playing itself. I knew of swarms' impermeability to normal damage only because of my prior Pathfinder and DnD tabletop experience myself. It is not a thing that is pervasive in game culture to just assume the player knows. If it was a PnP session then Owlcat's design in this aspect would be the equivalent of the GM just telling the attacking player "Nope, you miss the swarm of spiders" without describing the weapon passing through the swarm or there just being too many spiders that the five you managed to squish makes no difference; or just plain not explaining the rules regarding swarms.
scriver, elementals are outsiders of their native plane and even on materiel plane, most of then has DR against weapons(IMO should be higher, mainly against non magical weapon). And note, this happened on an optional quest. So even if you fail, fail and fail, it will not prevent you from enjoying the rest of the game.
Nah, that was on them. The invulnerability of swarms was inadequately declared by the game; not brought up at all ingame as far as I know, and only brought up in a loading screen "protip" with only a random chance to get shown before the (very early game) battle. And even if you followed it's suggestion to use torches the swarms was originally very hp-bloated in comparison to the damage a torch does.
As for the belittling "what idiots think weapons can hit a swarm of insects" comment -- this is a game where common weapons can hit literal clouds of air and water. Where if you hit a moving heep of earth you do damage instead of just packing the dirt harder. Where if you stick your wooden fighting stick into a firey blaze it hurts the firey instead of feeding it. Assuming you can club a swarm to death isn't just keeping with standard game's logic, it's keeping with the internal logic of the game you're playing itself. I knew of swarms' impermeability to normal damage only because of my prior Pathfinder and DnD tabletop experience myself. It is not a thing that is pervasive in game culture to just assume the player knows. If it was a PnP session then Owlcat's design in this aspect would be the equivalent of the GM just telling the attacking player "Nope, you miss the swarm of spiders" without describing the weapon passing through the swarm or there just being too many spiders that the five you managed to squish makes no difference; or just plain not explaining the rules regarding swarms.
Nevermind that the guy that gives you the quest hands you a half dozen bottles of alchemist's fire and tells you you're going to need it. Not long after release, they even added a tutorial pop up outside the damn cave, specifically saying, swarms are not vulnerable to weapons and you need to use bombs or something else. These are the same people who get upset that slashing and piercing weapons don't work well on skeletons.
So I've started playing kingmaker, and in the process of the first 4 hours, decided to reroll 3 separate times : D
Things I like (so far) - Really enjoy some of the companions. I also really like some of the gameplay aspects (Such as the skill check sections that are given multiple choice in book format. Those are all really neat).
Things that have bothered me: SPIDER SWARMSSSS. I realize this is what just about everyone was annoyed about, but yiiiiiikes. I must've spent a few hours trying to get past that combat encounter. Torches do 1 dmg max. Alchemists fires werent doing enough damage to kill 4 swarms with the 6 the quest gives you.
There's also some interesting rules interpretations (I should say - as far as I can tell. Maybe they're in stock Pathfinder, but my memory of 3.5 was different). For example - Dex mod on weapon damage if you take the weapon finesse feat. Not a thing, unless you're a rogue. So my meticulously build Bard that was angling to go into Duelist was super weak.
My current build has settled on Scaled Fist (+1 level Sorc) into Dragon Disciple. Seems fun so far, although being honest - I dont know if I can keep it up long run. I find all the enjoyable dialogue options move me towards chaos on the alignment. I'm staring down a potential class shift unless I figure something out : P
I'm enjoying the experience. Thanks for the help from the last few days, everyone.
Things that have bothered me: SPIDER SWARMSSSS. I realize this is what just about everyone was annoyed about, but yiiiiiikes. I must've spent a few hours trying to get past that combat encounter. Torches do 1 dmg max. Alchemists fires werent doing enough damage to kill 4 swarms with the 6 the quest gives you.
.
I´ll just wait and use the kineticist companion to take them down, they tear upon those things.
The swarms were just indicative of the main problem overall, which is almost a NECESSITY of familiarity with the Pathfinder rule-set. This kind of thing used to be (such as the late-90s and early 2000s) handled with something called a manual, which, for some reason, don't exist anymore. Even if you didn't know anything about Advanced D&D, the Gold Box and Infinity Engine games basically had mini-source books in the boxes with them. This was true of ALL games with even moderately complicated mechanics. I used to spend hours reading game manuals before I ever even loaded the actual software up. In many cases, it was necessary. What do we have now?? At best, an in-game codex. Pathfinder is a game that decidedly wants to be like old games. Which is great. But old games all had hundred page manuals that were MEANT to be read before diving in, and most people did, because it was part of the experience. Pathfinder doesn't even have a PDF version of one. Why?? I understand the info is in an codex in-game, but I have never believed those are things that serve the same purpose, or do so as well as instruction manuals do.
So I've started playing kingmaker, and in the process of the first 4 hours, decided to reroll 3 separate times : D
Things I like (so far) - Really enjoy some of the companions. I also really like some of the gameplay aspects (Such as the skill check sections that are given multiple choice in book format. Those are all really neat).
Things that have bothered me: SPIDER SWARMSSSS. I realize this is what just about everyone was annoyed about, but yiiiiiikes. I must've spent a few hours trying to get past that combat encounter. Torches do 1 dmg max. Alchemists fires werent doing enough damage to kill 4 swarms with the 6 the quest gives you.
There's also some interesting rules interpretations (I should say - as far as I can tell. Maybe they're in stock Pathfinder, but my memory of 3.5 was different). For example - Dex mod on weapon damage if you take the weapon finesse feat. Not a thing, unless you're a rogue. So my meticulously build Bard that was angling to go into Duelist was super weak.
My current build has settled on Scaled Fist (+1 level Sorc) into Dragon Disciple. Seems fun so far, although being honest - I dont know if I can keep it up long run. I find all the enjoyable dialogue options move me towards chaos on the alignment. I'm staring down a potential class shift unless I figure something out : P
I'm enjoying the experience. Thanks for the help from the last few days, everyone.
Ya, I get bad cases of restartitis, too.
The weapon finesse just adds to your attack bonus. There's the slashing/fencing grace feats, that require weapon focus to take, and they let you add your dex bonus to damage rolls. Rogues also get weapon finesse at level 1 and at levels 3 and 11 they get to pick a weapon to add dex bonus to damage. The slashing/fencing grace feats only work if you wield the weapon 1 handed, with nothing in the other hand. The rogue bonuses work even while dual wielding.
I've been playing a bit with an aldori defender 4, thug 1 and aldori sword lord, and it's been fun. The first branded troll I bumped into ran from my dazzling display. Thug was an awesome class for me to dip into for one level, since if you use demoralize (which dazzling display counts as), and they're shaken for 4 or more turns, they get one turn of fear. I'll add some duelist levels to the build later on after I get the feats for it.
I'd played the BG and NWN games, so that was the limit I knew of pathfinder when I started playing the game. While I found the swarms tough my first time, and took me a few reloads, I just don't get the trouble people had with them. There's quite a few spells and abilities that completely trivialize the fight with them. In my no reload run, I had stone call from my tiefling bloodline and just killed 2 of the swarms before the fight even started. Burning hands (even if cast from a scroll) works fantastically well on them. I do like how they handled the area in the update, though. The area's actually harder than it was, but the swarm fights are out of the way and you don't have to get through them to complete the fangberry quest.
I'd played the BG and NWN games, so that was the limit I knew of pathfinder when I started playing the game. While I found the swarms tough my first time, and took me a few reloads, I just don't get the trouble people had with them. There's quite a few spells and abilities that completely trivialize the fight with them. In my no reload run, I had stone call from my tiefling bloodline and just killed 2 of the swarms before the fight even started. Burning hands (even if cast from a scroll) works fantastically well on them. I do like how they handled the area in the update, though. The area's actually harder than it was, but the swarm fights are out of the way and you don't have to get through them to complete the fangberry quest.
I have the same tiefling ability. It's really the only way I could deal with the final two swarms (Didnt kill them outright though). I ended up using all 6 alchemist's fire, my stonecall ability and probably 7 or so potions while wailing on them with torches to finally finish the area. It was pretty brutal (Wonder if I had a scroll that would have helped? I dont know).
I think my only complaint for it, if we're being honest - is that they only give you 6 alchemist's fire. I assumed that would be approximately enough to see me through the swarms, which it's actually not. I probably needed 10+ at a minimum. Maybe 12.
On top of that, if you go straight there and use the conventional "good" party, and didnt happen to roll a caster yourself - you'll end up with only the alchemist's fire and the torches to deal with them. That's kind of rough.
Anyways. I got through it. That said, I'm beginning to see a pattern of the hard fights requiring like... 5 tries a pop. See "Tartuk" in Sycamore (3 fireballs, any one of which can oneshot most of my party? Yiiikes) or the Giant Centipede (Finally beat him pretty effectively. Then I saw what his poison does. Save DC 27, lose 1d3 Dex every 6 seconds on a fail. Lasts for 30 seconds. I won the fight, and immediately had 3 characters go down from failing the saves. /reload)
Edit - also. Major props on a no-reload run. That's nuts to me, seeing how hard this game has been for me.
I'd played the BG and NWN games, so that was the limit I knew of pathfinder when I started playing the game. While I found the swarms tough my first time, and took me a few reloads, I just don't get the trouble people had with them. There's quite a few spells and abilities that completely trivialize the fight with them. In my no reload run, I had stone call from my tiefling bloodline and just killed 2 of the swarms before the fight even started. Burning hands (even if cast from a scroll) works fantastically well on them. I do like how they handled the area in the update, though. The area's actually harder than it was, but the swarm fights are out of the way and you don't have to get through them to complete the fangberry quest.
I have the same tiefling ability. It's really the only way I could deal with the final two swarms (Didnt kill them outright though). I ended up using all 6 alchemist's fire, my stonecall ability and probably 7 or so potions while wailing on them with torches to finally finish the area. It was pretty brutal (Wonder if I had a scroll that would have helped? I dont know).
I think my only complaint for it, if we're being honest - is that they only give you 6 alchemist's fire. I assumed that would be approximately enough to see me through the swarms, which it's actually not. I probably needed 10+ at a minimum. Maybe 12.
On top of that, if you go straight there and use the conventional "good" party, and didnt happen to roll a caster yourself - you'll end up with only the alchemist's fire and the torches to deal with them. That's kind of rough.
Anyways. I got through it. That said, I'm beginning to see a pattern of the hard fights requiring like... 5 tries a pop. See "Tartuk" in Sycamore (3 fireballs, any one of which can oneshot most of my party? Yiiikes) or the Giant Centipede (Finally beat him pretty effectively. Then I saw what his poison does. Save DC 27, lose 1d3 Dex every 6 seconds on a fail. Lasts for 30 seconds. I won the fight, and immediately had 3 characters go down from failing the saves. /reload)
Edit - also. Major props on a no-reload run. That's nuts to me, seeing how hard this game has been for me.
It's not that bad with the default good party. You just have to realize your to hit with the bombs is based off of dex. Don't have Val chuck the bombs, have Linzi chuck them while Val tanks with a torch. Hopefully she also has that belt with +2 con and +1 to fortitude saves. Now that there are more swarms than in the original release, it does help to pick up some extra alchemist's fire/acid bombs. It helps to save your stone call for the room with multiple swarms in it, in the new version of the encounter. The first swarm encounter only has one swarm, and three characters can kill it before the start of combat by chucking bombs.
The trick to Tartuccio is to have your high DPS characters rush him and leave your tanks behind with the main group. It's easier with Tristian, with his selective channelling, but don't be afraid to channel healing with Harrim during that fight if he's with you, you just might need to maneuver him so he doesn't heal Tartuccio. This last game, my Aldori Defender and Amiri rushed him and killed him before he got off a second fireball.
Part of the reason I did the no reload run, and documented it all, was to show people it's no worse than the Baldur's Gate games. Once you know the encounters and have a handle on how to build your characters, you can get through the game without reloading once. I think part of it is that no good full walkthrough exists for the game right now, whereas the BG games have been documented to hell. I guess my no reload run could help, though, it's about the easiest way to run through the game, asides from doing the optional last chapter.
The trick to Tartuccio is to have your high DPS characters rush him and leave your tanks behind with the main group. It's easier with Tristian, with his selective channelling, but don't be afraid to channel healing with Harrim during that fight if he's with you, you just might need to maneuver him so he doesn't heal Tartuccio. This last game, my Aldori Defender and Amiri rushed him and killed him before he got off a second fireball.
Part of the reason I did the no reload run, and documented it all, was to show people it's no worse than the Baldur's Gate games. Once you know the encounters and have a handle on how to build your characters, you can get through the game without reloading once. I think part of it is that no good full walkthrough exists for the game right now, whereas the BG games have been documented to hell. I guess my no reload run could help, though, it's about the easiest way to run through the game, asides from doing the optional last chapter.
How did you get to him? There's like... 11 kobolds in front of him, and he casts a fireball in under 6 seconds.
I ended up winning by reflex saving with my monk on the first one. Saccing the monk on the second one in melee, and then having another character sac herself on the third one. After THAT, I rushed him.
Anyways. I'm not saying it cannot be done. I just think it's a bit rougher than I expected since I dont have foresight on what to bring/use. Tartuccio would be much easier if I had a way to resist fire (I suspect I could get my hands on a scroll). Incidentally, is there spell failure in the game? Another idea I had was to see if peppering him at range would interrupt his fireballs.
Incidentally. Havent found Tristian yet. Havent found anyone that wasnt in the manor with me, yet.
In this game you really need a cleric/bard/inquisitor/druid with several copies of delay poison and neutralize poison ready at all times. Luckily the former buff lasts for a long time.
Many people think it is a design failure for whatever reason but I really like that Pathfinder:kingmaker has some fights that can only be won in hard mode if you know the trick and have a proper strategy, not just barging in and overpower the enemies. I am talking about the ones you mentioned, but also the Lindworm, the cursed tree, the werewolves, etc etc.
edit: Also, ¿anyone tried the "slayer" new base class? Looks like a hybrid melee ranger-stabbin´rogue to me. I made one for the new dungeon-crawling mod.
Nah, that was on them. The invulnerability of swarms was inadequately declared by the game; not brought up at all ingame as far as I know, and only brought up in a loading screen "protip" with only a random chance to get shown before the (very early game) battle. And even if you followed it's suggestion to use torches the swarms was originally very hp-bloated in comparison to the damage a torch does.
As for the belittling "what idiots think weapons can hit a swarm of insects" comment -- this is a game where common weapons can hit literal clouds of air and water. Where if you hit a moving heep of earth you do damage instead of just packing the dirt harder. Where if you stick your wooden fighting stick into a firey blaze it hurts the firey instead of feeding it. Assuming you can club a swarm to death isn't just keeping with standard game's logic, it's keeping with the internal logic of the game you're playing itself. I knew of swarms' impermeability to normal damage only because of my prior Pathfinder and DnD tabletop experience myself. It is not a thing that is pervasive in game culture to just assume the player knows. If it was a PnP session then Owlcat's design in this aspect would be the equivalent of the GM just telling the attacking player "Nope, you miss the swarm of spiders" without describing the weapon passing through the swarm or there just being too many spiders that the five you managed to squish makes no difference; or just plain not explaining the rules regarding swarms.
Nevermind that the guy that gives you the quest hands you a half dozen bottles of alchemist's fire and tells you you're going to need it. Not long after release, they even added a tutorial pop up outside the damn cave, specifically saying, swarms are not vulnerable to weapons and you need to use bombs or something else. These are the same people who get upset that slashing and piercing weapons don't work well on skeletons.
As I remember it he originally neither gave you any alchemist's fire or told you anything about it except to use torches.
And how they changed it isn't relevant - my post was about the original state of the game and how it was necessary to change it, how badly it was designed, and how people's ire over it shouldn't just be waved away with a belittling "git gud, scrub" attitude. It was a response to PsychoVic's disdainful remark about OwlCat being "hit hard by the swarms thing" for having the sense to implement the much needed changes.
Comments
Wait, what, there's a turn-based mode in P:Km? Are you talking about tweaking auto-pause? If there's a true turn-based mode in P:Km I never saw it. That would make me want to try it again with an entirely different point of view for the combat.
EDIT: Wait, did you mean "mod"? And "flicking on" is not the right verb for that. Try "installing".
A thundercaller can be really awesome. I'd really not recommend mixing it with duelist, since it'll gimp your songs and casting. Maybe a one level dip into another class is OK, but pulling too much away makes it pointless in playing a bard. You don't need a completely min/maxed build, but do need to put some thought into your attribute spread and what feats you need to get, and how you want to develop the character.
The turn based mod's not necessary, unless that's your thing. I got through a no-reload run without it.
I've barely started the run, but I've been tinkering with an aldori defender with a level or rogue that I'm going to evolve to Aldori sword lord (The new prestige class), and throw in some duelist levels. If you want a bit of magic in there for a duelist, go with the sword saint magus archetype over bard.
Gotcha. So I'm guessing your post basically means it's challenging to mix the buffing ability of a Bard with a duelist since I cannot effectively do both at once, and if I want to combine the magic + swordplay, the Bard's not the best way to do it (In fairness, it never was. I was more going off the wiki that specifically cites Rogues and Bards opting into being a Duelist).
On the face of it, that makes sense. Bard's already kind of a jack-of-all-trades, Multi classing it never was a very effective way to use them.
In regards to your other suggestion - I saw the Magus. Is that supposed to replace the traditional F/M character? What's the difference between F/M and Magus?
I played Piro as a gnome bard (no archetype), so small weapons, my rapier did a 1d4 instead of the normal 1d6.
Anyway, dual wielding an agile rapier (Dex to damage if you have weapon finesse) with an off hand and casting Sense Vitals (Gives you sneak attack) combined with haste, Good Hope, mirror image, and inspire courage for damage.
While not the most optimal damage dealer I could kill most things on my own (though I did always use a party).
I played the game on challenging with the exception of having enemy stat adjustment on normal and enemy difficulty on weak to make enemy stats more in line with PnP.
Edit: You can use rods of extend metamagic to give yourself lengthy sense vitals and improved invisibility buffs as well.
Magus plays a lot like a fighter mage, but you can actually wear armor and cast. When you get to 7th level you can cast in medium armor and I think it was level 13 you can cast in heavy. The biggest thing, which may not sound as awesome as it actually is, is you can deliver spells that require a melee touch attack, through your weapon. Damage from the spell is doubled on a crit, too. You can deliver some crazy high damage shocking grasps, vampiric touch and frigid touches. I don't know if you ever saw the old bladesinger kit for elven fighter mages in 2nd Ed PNP, but they're kind of like that. There's spell combat which is a modal ability. It lets you take a -2 to hit, but can cast and attack in the same turn. I turn it on when I want to cast, but keep it off and wield my weapon 2 handed when not casting, and so as to not take the -2 penalty and do strength x 1.5 damage bonus for 2 handed. They do require a lot of micro management and buffs like shield and mirror image, to not die, but I personally find them fun as hell to play. There's always something to do with them. They do best with a weapon that has a high crit chance, like a rapier or scimitar. The eldritch scion is the sorcerer version, and you even get to pick a bloodline and can go dragon disciple if they pick a draconic bloodline. I did an eldritch scion with the abyssal bloodline for my no reload run. The first time I finished the game was with a sword saint duelist.
Yes there's a TB mod, get on the Nexus and check it out. It's developing nicely and REALLY suits some of the more complicated mage battles.
I mean flicking on as in temporarily turning it on and off via CTRL-F10 in the mod manager. So you don't need to go TB for a lot of the more tedious minor fights. He's going to add a hotkey and a better UI for it in the future to turn and off.
That sounds really powerful. I particularly like the idea of using touch-spells through the weapon.
My only other question is -what would be the point of Fighter-Mage multi class if Magus exists?
Like Vallmyr said, Magus caps at level 6 spells. I personally wouldn't bother mixing fighter and mage, but a lot of people have liked taking martial proficiency on a wizard and then picking up eldritch knight, since it only costs you one caster level, so you can still hit those level 9 spells, and have some melee ability. That eldritch knight path would work a lot better than mixing fighter and mage. BTW, there's not really any gain for slapping eldritch knight levels on a magus, in fact you miss out on the magus arcana and some other special features of the class.
It might be because I am starting off as a new character (Divine Hunter) which is more combat focus than the last characters I s playing, but still.
Ya, the mage no longer has access to blindness in that encounter. Some of the other encounters wer modified, like fangberry cave is completely different, now.
They hit the devs pretty hard with the "You cannot hit swarms with your axe, the game is bad" thing; it seems
As for the belittling "what idiots think weapons can hit a swarm of insects" comment -- this is a game where common weapons can hit literal clouds of air and water. Where if you hit a moving heep of earth you do damage instead of just packing the dirt harder. Where if you stick your wooden fighting stick into a firey blaze it hurts the firey instead of feeding it. Assuming you can club a swarm to death isn't just keeping with standard game's logic, it's keeping with the internal logic of the game you're playing itself. I knew of swarms' impermeability to normal damage only because of my prior Pathfinder and DnD tabletop experience myself. It is not a thing that is pervasive in game culture to just assume the player knows. If it was a PnP session then Owlcat's design in this aspect would be the equivalent of the GM just telling the attacking player "Nope, you miss the swarm of spiders" without describing the weapon passing through the swarm or there just being too many spiders that the five you managed to squish makes no difference; or just plain not explaining the rules regarding swarms.
Nevermind that the guy that gives you the quest hands you a half dozen bottles of alchemist's fire and tells you you're going to need it. Not long after release, they even added a tutorial pop up outside the damn cave, specifically saying, swarms are not vulnerable to weapons and you need to use bombs or something else. These are the same people who get upset that slashing and piercing weapons don't work well on skeletons.
Things I like (so far) - Really enjoy some of the companions. I also really like some of the gameplay aspects (Such as the skill check sections that are given multiple choice in book format. Those are all really neat).
Things that have bothered me: SPIDER SWARMSSSS. I realize this is what just about everyone was annoyed about, but yiiiiiikes. I must've spent a few hours trying to get past that combat encounter. Torches do 1 dmg max. Alchemists fires werent doing enough damage to kill 4 swarms with the 6 the quest gives you.
There's also some interesting rules interpretations (I should say - as far as I can tell. Maybe they're in stock Pathfinder, but my memory of 3.5 was different). For example - Dex mod on weapon damage if you take the weapon finesse feat. Not a thing, unless you're a rogue. So my meticulously build Bard that was angling to go into Duelist was super weak.
My current build has settled on Scaled Fist (+1 level Sorc) into Dragon Disciple. Seems fun so far, although being honest - I dont know if I can keep it up long run. I find all the enjoyable dialogue options move me towards chaos on the alignment. I'm staring down a potential class shift unless I figure something out : P
I'm enjoying the experience. Thanks for the help from the last few days, everyone.
I´ll just wait and use the kineticist companion to take them down, they tear upon those things.
Ya, I get bad cases of restartitis, too.
The weapon finesse just adds to your attack bonus. There's the slashing/fencing grace feats, that require weapon focus to take, and they let you add your dex bonus to damage rolls. Rogues also get weapon finesse at level 1 and at levels 3 and 11 they get to pick a weapon to add dex bonus to damage. The slashing/fencing grace feats only work if you wield the weapon 1 handed, with nothing in the other hand. The rogue bonuses work even while dual wielding.
I've been playing a bit with an aldori defender 4, thug 1 and aldori sword lord, and it's been fun. The first branded troll I bumped into ran from my dazzling display. Thug was an awesome class for me to dip into for one level, since if you use demoralize (which dazzling display counts as), and they're shaken for 4 or more turns, they get one turn of fear. I'll add some duelist levels to the build later on after I get the feats for it.
I'd played the BG and NWN games, so that was the limit I knew of pathfinder when I started playing the game. While I found the swarms tough my first time, and took me a few reloads, I just don't get the trouble people had with them. There's quite a few spells and abilities that completely trivialize the fight with them. In my no reload run, I had stone call from my tiefling bloodline and just killed 2 of the swarms before the fight even started. Burning hands (even if cast from a scroll) works fantastically well on them. I do like how they handled the area in the update, though. The area's actually harder than it was, but the swarm fights are out of the way and you don't have to get through them to complete the fangberry quest.
I have the same tiefling ability. It's really the only way I could deal with the final two swarms (Didnt kill them outright though). I ended up using all 6 alchemist's fire, my stonecall ability and probably 7 or so potions while wailing on them with torches to finally finish the area. It was pretty brutal (Wonder if I had a scroll that would have helped? I dont know).
I think my only complaint for it, if we're being honest - is that they only give you 6 alchemist's fire. I assumed that would be approximately enough to see me through the swarms, which it's actually not. I probably needed 10+ at a minimum. Maybe 12.
On top of that, if you go straight there and use the conventional "good" party, and didnt happen to roll a caster yourself - you'll end up with only the alchemist's fire and the torches to deal with them. That's kind of rough.
Anyways. I got through it. That said, I'm beginning to see a pattern of the hard fights requiring like... 5 tries a pop. See "Tartuk" in Sycamore (3 fireballs, any one of which can oneshot most of my party? Yiiikes) or the Giant Centipede (Finally beat him pretty effectively. Then I saw what his poison does. Save DC 27, lose 1d3 Dex every 6 seconds on a fail. Lasts for 30 seconds. I won the fight, and immediately had 3 characters go down from failing the saves. /reload)
Edit - also. Major props on a no-reload run. That's nuts to me, seeing how hard this game has been for me.
It's not that bad with the default good party. You just have to realize your to hit with the bombs is based off of dex. Don't have Val chuck the bombs, have Linzi chuck them while Val tanks with a torch. Hopefully she also has that belt with +2 con and +1 to fortitude saves. Now that there are more swarms than in the original release, it does help to pick up some extra alchemist's fire/acid bombs. It helps to save your stone call for the room with multiple swarms in it, in the new version of the encounter. The first swarm encounter only has one swarm, and three characters can kill it before the start of combat by chucking bombs.
The trick to Tartuccio is to have your high DPS characters rush him and leave your tanks behind with the main group. It's easier with Tristian, with his selective channelling, but don't be afraid to channel healing with Harrim during that fight if he's with you, you just might need to maneuver him so he doesn't heal Tartuccio. This last game, my Aldori Defender and Amiri rushed him and killed him before he got off a second fireball.
Part of the reason I did the no reload run, and documented it all, was to show people it's no worse than the Baldur's Gate games. Once you know the encounters and have a handle on how to build your characters, you can get through the game without reloading once. I think part of it is that no good full walkthrough exists for the game right now, whereas the BG games have been documented to hell. I guess my no reload run could help, though, it's about the easiest way to run through the game, asides from doing the optional last chapter.
How did you get to him? There's like... 11 kobolds in front of him, and he casts a fireball in under 6 seconds.
I ended up winning by reflex saving with my monk on the first one. Saccing the monk on the second one in melee, and then having another character sac herself on the third one. After THAT, I rushed him.
Anyways. I'm not saying it cannot be done. I just think it's a bit rougher than I expected since I dont have foresight on what to bring/use. Tartuccio would be much easier if I had a way to resist fire (I suspect I could get my hands on a scroll). Incidentally, is there spell failure in the game? Another idea I had was to see if peppering him at range would interrupt his fireballs.
Incidentally. Havent found Tristian yet. Havent found anyone that wasnt in the manor with me, yet.
Yeahhh. Just got him : D
And definitely. The first Fireball was a benefit. I lost one game in which he fireball me and himself to death. Interesting times.
Many people think it is a design failure for whatever reason but I really like that Pathfinder:kingmaker has some fights that can only be won in hard mode if you know the trick and have a proper strategy, not just barging in and overpower the enemies. I am talking about the ones you mentioned, but also the Lindworm, the cursed tree, the werewolves, etc etc.
edit: Also, ¿anyone tried the "slayer" new base class? Looks like a hybrid melee ranger-stabbin´rogue to me. I made one for the new dungeon-crawling mod.
As I remember it he originally neither gave you any alchemist's fire or told you anything about it except to use torches.
And how they changed it isn't relevant - my post was about the original state of the game and how it was necessary to change it, how badly it was designed, and how people's ire over it shouldn't just be waved away with a belittling "git gud, scrub" attitude. It was a response to PsychoVic's disdainful remark about OwlCat being "hit hard by the swarms thing" for having the sense to implement the much needed changes.