Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 3

[Gromnir]

9 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

 

1) Is it sensible to play this game as an evil character? I don't see it. Even if you want to make evil choices, the storyline is so clearly a "good" one. I mean, surely you can't join the demon army or anything, can you? So how does evil work? It would seem very forced to me, but I must say I haven't even tried.

 

playing evil in wotr suffers from the same fundamental problems playing evil in any heroic crpg faces. each evil game choice/option is gonna be almost entirely insular. for a single act to be clear evil, is gonna need be demonstrably selfish or cruel, or something similar. 

regardless o' the character's personal moral compass, there is a couple demon lords who is looking to lay waste to a good portion o' golarion, which is presumably where the player character keeps all o' his stuff, so is kinda a built in motivation for not wanting to become a victim o' the forces o' the abyss, even if you is personal as demonic evil as the invaders. 

however, wotr does provide mythic paths which allow you to kinda choose a flavour o' evil and to possibly differentiate your brand o' evil. demon, devil, lich, and swarm is all offering traditional evil options. is tough to play a genuine benign trickster, so if you is looking to play a kinda amoral sadist kinda evil, then is possible to do so. aeon is also offering the possibility to play kinda dispassionate evil.

the players guide for the wotr pnp adventure path is available free from paizo. 

https://paizo.com/products/btpy919c?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-Wrath-of-the-Righteous-Players-Guide

third paragraph:

The theme of good versus evil is 
paramount throughout Wrath of the Righteous, more 
so than law versus chaos. Good-aligned characters make 
the most sense for this Adventure Path, be they lawful, 
neutral, or chaotic. Whether you play a lawful good hero 
or a character with more f lexible morals, it’s important 
that your character be easily motivated to go to the 
Worldwound and fight demons. It‘s also a good idea, 
as in any campaign, to make your choice in a way that 
won’t be disruptive to the party. The disruption caused 
by bringing different alignments into the party will vary 
from group to group, so the best way to make sure that 
your choice works is to talk with your group about what 
you’re planning.

...

evil is possible in wotr the crpg 'cause owlcat made such options available, but given the source material, is understandable if such fare feels a bit clumsy or ill-suited.

HA! Good Fun!

[Gromnir]

am at threshold with our azata sorc and have learned a few new things along the way. there remains a number o' azata spells which continue to function wrong. example: believe in your self should provide a morale bonus to a single ability-- +1 for each 4 caster levels. unfortunate, is providing +1 for each four azata levels. also, the dc generated for azata spells is wonky and while the spells ignore sr, they frequent provide a save so those dcs are important. unfortunate, feats and abilities which ordinarily raise dc o' spells do not appear to work proper when generating azata dcs, but more on that in a minute. there is also azata spells which do not appear on most on-line guides for mythic spells. the aforementioned believe in your self shows up infrequent in lists which perhaps do little more than replicate the following:

https://forum.owlcatgames.com/t/complete-mythic-spell-lists-beta/36196

if you have discovered ways to exploit skill checks and you didn't go the trickster route, then azata offers nice bonuses. is a rest bonus from sleeping at the azata "stronghold" which provides a +2 luck bonus for one hour, but is functional permanent. is also a spell, moral support, one o' the spells not showing on many guides for azata, which provides a significant skill and saving throw bonus which stacks with everything. at release moral support was lasting seconds per mythic level as 'posed to minutes, but it now works as described. 

waterfall sounds groovy, but in practice it is current a trap. when waterfall is cast, those who fail a fort save become vulnerable to cold damage for X minutes where X is the caster's mythic level. nice. waterfall is a conjuration spell and Gromnir took every mundane and mythic feat which impacted conjuration dcs, but those feats n' such do not impact azata spells as far as we can tell. nevertheless, we do not regret having sosiel taking one level of crossblood sorc for the cold spells. is a shield which provides +1 per die cold damage. is hide armour from wintersun which provides +1 per die elemental damage. take water and silver dragon for one level o' crossblood sorc and you benefit from conversion o' all energy spells to cold and another +1 cold damage per die. through mythic you may also add another bloodline, which should be another +1 per die cold damage. as such, sosiel's stormbolts is doing an additional +80 cold damage. sosiel doesn't have great dex, but is no reason you cannot boost his touch attacks so they hit even demon lords. hellfire rays, if such don't bother you too much from a rp pov, represent 45 hd o' damage, so that +4 per die mod becomes 180 bonus cold damage. 

no doubt the following is a "duh" kinda observation anybody who played azata deep into the game, but aivu becomes an incredible late game healer. is one reason am able to switch sosiel's focus to damage output. in the beta we had aivu through act iv and the dragon was great for dealing sonic damage, but the last few tiers o' spellcasting genuine transform aivu into a fantastic healer, which gives the dragon something useful to do while its breath weapon recharges. 

not an azata thing per se, but a divine hunter lann's velociraptor celestial animal companion is an absolute wrecker from midpoint o' the game onwards. the velociraptor is unique in that it gets a 14 charisma. why? *shrug* also, while the critter is 'posed to get one use of smite evil per day, the smite is actual usable once per encounter. with eagle splendor you are benefitting from a per encounter +4 smite ability, and is ways to raise further. the raptor gets a significant number o' attacks and on a charge attack is highly possible it functional renders a foe prone. we just completed the laughing caves encounter and lann's velociraptor dispatched the balor solo in one round, and only one attack were a successful critical. 

HA! Good Fun!

[xzar_monty]

Ok, thanks for all the answers re: evil!

Btw, Owlcat makes some really strange decisions in some of these boss fights. For instance, I just had a fairly difficult battle against three enemies, all of them definitely non-trivial. After several tries it turned out that I essentially had to beat just one of them for the story to proceed, and when the story did then proceed, another one of those enemies who I had managed to kill was alive again so that we were able to have a brief conversation. I don't know about people in general, but for me this is poor poor design.

However, the game is quite good, I do enjoy it a lot. Even if the writing is what it is and some of the design choices are just odd.

[majestic]

Spoiler

The fight against Staunton and Minhago (either with or without Nura) at the end of the siege?

One of these instances that might leave you wondering what the hell you're supposed to do if you don't beat him down before the buffs go off.

The optional fight where you interrupt the summoning ritual earlier in the dungeon is also pretty terrible. You either win without any issues at all if you have a copy of Stinking Cloud lying around, or you end up on the chopping block, at least on Core and above, and it's one instance where RTwP is far easier to handle than TB. Those sacrifices really pop off if your crowd control character has a bad initiative roll in turn based.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

The optional fight where you interrupt the summoning ritual earlier in the dungeon is also pretty terrible. You either win without any issues at all if you have a copy of Stinking Cloud lying around, or you end up on the chopping block, at least on Core and above, and it's one instance where RTwP is far easier to handle than TB. Those sacrifices really pop off if your crowd control character has a bad initiative roll in turn based.

You know, I had the most awesome luck in that one, and I was left wondering that if that hadn't been the case, I'd probably be saying the same thing: the fight is pretty terrible -- and it's also yet another example of how Owlcat blatantly cheats in its encounter design.

What I did was this: I was able to cast three controlled fireballs into the summoning circle, which took care of pretty much all the mages. Then the main mage appeared (and here's the blatant cheat: that character simply appears on the scene after the minions are dead, you have no way of knowing that it's coming up, and in my view this sort of thing is just not done, it's so cruel and dishonest towards the player) and I realized I wasn't going to be able to deal with it, it was just so awfully high-level and fast and buffed. So I figured what the heck, I'll throw in one of Camellia's slumber hexes. And it worked. Next up: coup de grace. I won.

[majestic]

She reminded me a bit of the Tactics mod encounters Weimar came up with back in the days of Baldur's Gate 2, but those, ridiculous as they were, stuck with the rules that the player played by, and they also were modifications, not something the game's designers added. This fight, on the other hand, puts you up against a level 16 neutral evil mage who transforms into a fighter, with permanent haste and true seeing just to make sure that pretty much all of your defensive options that otherwise would allow you to potentially withstand melee with such an enemy don't work, i.e. Mirror Image, Blur and Displacement.

With more than one stack of Dark Sacrifice (Rule of Cool #1: Everything is more evil when it's called DARK, right?) she has an armor class you can only hit with natural 20ies, saves so high you can't make anything stick and an attack bonus that will make her hit you even if she somehow could roll a negative 20 - and that's with powergamed and prebuffed characters a new player isn't very likely to have.

There aren't many enemies who are not immune to poison, but whenever you run into them - mostly humanoids - it really pays off to have a Stinking Cloud memorized. If you're making a conjuration and crowd control Ember, she's the perfect candidate. If not, sacrifice one of Nenio's spell slots. Without any Dark Sacrifice stacks, she still hits like a truck, but your characters are likely to survive more than half a round's worth of attacks.

I don't think I need to mention it, but the encounter design doesn't change, these ridiculous roadblock style battles keep happening. The game more or less expects you not only to know what you're doing with the rules, but also to abuse them as best you can, in order to stand a chance.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I recall a reddit post, possibly linking to the Owlcat forums, where a dev said that they balanced the game like they did (vs PnP) because 6 characters instead of 4, better tactics with one person controlling the party, and players picking optimized choices instead of rp appropriate ones. The first two are fine and would warrant an increase of encounter density, but the latter really makes me confused, because Owlcat not only included many suboptimal choices from PnP, but they built companions opposite of the justification for all the stat pumping.

And it gets worse when the rules aren't even what they say they are. Because what's the fun in trying to abuse the rules when you can rely on the text to tell you what it does?

[Gromnir]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

She reminded me a bit of the Tactics mod encounters Weimar came up with back in the days of Baldur's Gate 2,(etc.)

Spoiler

am always just fighting blightmaw instead o' chorussina, 'cause the ring drop is keen. blightmaw is subject to our favorite encounter leveling ability: intimidation.  is three wotr abilities we will never play w/o: paladin's mark of justice (not available to level 11 for a paladin, so kinda a non-factor for this fight;) the community domain's guarded hearth; and intimidation with a character who has one level of thug. blightmaw hits extreme hard and you may need summons or a wall of animal companions to survive this battle, but it is not difficult to effectively fearlock blightmaw. with a high sr, is all but impossible to damage blightmaw with spells, although grease is useful particular as blightmaw reflex saves is hardly insurmountable. 

a fully or even partial buffed chorussina, on the other hand, is an extreme difficult foe for reasons you identify, but curiously she has no sr, which is a BIG benefit in a fight. her will saves are difficult but manageable IF you have ember with you. however, chorussina is immune to shaken and fear and as such, for our parties, is actual easier to fight blightmaw than chorussina. 'course the key for chorussina is to kill as many cultists as possible before fighting her, and phantasmal web and a fireball were our default approach to wiping out the cultists, but is any number o' workable options for quickly clearing the cultists. 

oh, and in case is not obvious, is nothing from preventing you from doing this battle after you get your mythic level 3, which may make a significant difference depending on your party. 

playful darkness, on the other hand, were requiring more cheese from us to win. intimidation were once again our ace in the hole. were not so difficult our second run as our first as with stacked pillars of light and goof levels o' intimidation, we did not have a single party member take any damage, though one animal companion and a summons were mauled a bit. first run were not so smooth.

now that the vavakia vanguards has been patched, those battles is much easier. 

...

pathetic quasit were difficult the first time when we had no idea what to expect.

regardless, for anybody having difficulty with boss battles, consider creating a merc who specializes in intimidation. is a few party members who can fill such a role (sosiel being perhaps the best option) but chances are if you are deep in the game you won't wanna respec to create an intimidator.  

intimidator basic requirements:

high strength and either wisdom or charisma-- if high wisdom, then need acolyte background. 

intimidating presence feat-- adds your strength modifier to your intimidation checks. 

one level of thug-- results in a successful intimidation check becoming a fear condition. 

* not actual necessary, but am gonna highly recommend dazzling display feat-- applies shaken to observers who fail an intimidation check. if you are concerned with bosses, then you need only intimidate one foe, so dazzling display is superfluous, but is also extreme effective superfluous.

the reason why sosiel is such a dominating intimidator if you build him that way is 'cause he has access to spells such as righteous might and frightful presence on top o' fact he has high wisdom and the acolyte background. is thus possible to achieve extreme high wisdom and strength modifiers with sosiel. 

not required, but beneficial, the best classes for building an intimidator are inquisitors (with the exception of tactical leader) and dirge bards (dirge bards is actual best) 'cause half class level is added to intimidation checks. the dirge bard intimidation modifier is stacks with everything, so it is win. inquisitor stern gaze results in a morale bonus, which may be replicated with a few spells.

regardless o' mythic path, the following items and options is good choices for intimidation:

moss soup (act 2) and mulled wine (act 3) is camp recipes offering +3/+4 skill check bonuses respective

goggles of quick grasp (available act v through crusade) adds +15 competence to persuasion... which is nuts. 

goggles of piercing gaze provides +10 persuasion (act iv and act v... rando chest in alushinyrra and then dragon burial) 

signet of house vespertilio (sp?) +5 to a single skill for 1 hour (market square in act 1)

oppressor's gloves offers +2 to intimidation (chilly creek act 2)

scarlet allure boosts persuasion by 10 (act 4 alushinyrra brothel)

goggles of dreadful judgement, for inquisitors or those with judgement ability, provides +5 intimidation. (act 3 midnight fane)

*don't ignore low level spells such as bless, prayer and heroism as they provide skill check bonuses

am suspecting few reading this will consider building a dedicated intimidator, but if you are having difficulty with boss battles in wotr, and become frustrated, intimidation levels the playing field and then some. by end game, if you use sosiel as your intimidator, buffed with optimal gear and spells, you will be seeing intimidation check modifiers in the mid eighties or better, which results in guaranteed successful intimidation check o' even demon lords. a merc may achieve mid/high nineties modifiers. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 12, 2021 by Gromnir

[xzar_monty]

Here's another example of some things that are just badly designed in the game -- or, to be more precise, badly documented. There's a tutorial but it definitely leaves out some fairly important parts of the crusade management side of things.

For instance, I have now captured Drezen, and it seems that the tactical side of things is going to get more important. This, however, brings up a couple of questions. For instance: how many armies should I have? Up to this point, I have done all my battles with one single army, and I have never once used the other two that I have, because I haven't had any need for it. But now it definitely appears that demon armies are going to attack me at some point, which would suggest that I should have multiple armies at my disposal.

How many armies? Each one of them with a different general? Or not? The game gives me NO CLUE.

[Gromnir]

the only positive am gonna observe regarding the wotr crusade system is it is less punishing and opaque than kingmaker... less punishing by a longshot. kingdom building failure in kingmaker were extreme ez and often were a result o' event proximity to a calendar date.

you may succeed many different ways with wotr army building, but we kept simple:

add marksman (or other ranged)

choose a mage general

is nuances, but do these two things and chances are you win.

we didn't ever "need" more than one army, but if you are not confident in army management, perhaps make certain you have a citadel at any fort not extreme close to drezen and the center o' the map. citadel provides you a bit more time to reach a besieged fort with your rescue army. eventual in act v we have so many resources and is so many rando small armies attacking we usual create a second general and a second army to mop up small gangs o' attacking foes, but is more a quality o' life thing than a need.

once you have an army which is capable o' beating all comers (level 10 is likely more than enough) don't keep building army resources with merc hires and adding troops. instead consider long-term building strategies. am not gonna spoil save to observe there is no point in building a sooper army in act 3. however, building resources will carry over to later acts, so make sure you got loads of archery ranges and perhaps warehouses built adjacent to supply depots and sanctuaries. get as many marquee buildings erected by end o' act 3, even if you gotta recycle buildings to do so. 

but again, if you got a s-ton o' archers and a mage general, a single army will likely be enough and everything else just kinda gets ez. that said, we do like hedge knights as they is mobile, durable and do big damage.

HA! Good Fun!

ps in our most recent azata run, at the end o' act 3 we technical had seven armies, but the army strength for all save two armies were in the 1-3 range and were composed o' "free" troops we had no way o' functional using.

pps both times we did crusade through act 5, we had a brief period o' time when we were kinda wishing we had more material points, and that were in spite o' having supply centers and warehouses near everywhere possible.  in act 4 you should become extreme wealthy, and am admitting we used a considerable amount o' gold to pay for crusade supplies early in act 5, particular material points.

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Gromnir

[xzar_monty]

Thanks for that!

[Chairchucker]

IMO the biggest positive about the crusade system over Kingmaker's is that you can toggle it off.

[bugarup]

You can't? You can put it on auto just as that KM fluff, but you can miss out on some useful loot this way. Unless they sneaked that toggle in some patch or something? Anyway, there's a mod that makes all crusade fights auto-win, though.

[xzar_monty]

I am now in Drezen, and I must say I haven't been annoyed by the crusade fights so far. The only foolish thing (and let's be frank it was foolish indeed, just awful design) was one enemy general that had scorching ray as a weapon. It just one-shotted my troops, and I couldn't do anything about it. Amazing that something like that can go through quality control. I know the answer was and is increasing the size of your units, but still: awful design.

[Gromnir]

10 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I am now in Drezen, and I must say I haven't been annoyed by the crusade fights so far. The only foolish thing (and let's be frank it was foolish indeed, just awful design) was one enemy general that had scorching ray as a weapon. It just one-shotted my troops, and I couldn't do anything about it. Amazing that something like that can go through quality control. I know the answer was and is increasing the size of your units, but still: awful design.

am a smidge conflicted 'bout this 'cause is indeed an example o' poor wotr balance. however, just as soon as we started destroying armies with our mage general, before enemy units even had a chance to attack, it occurred to us that at some point we could be the victim o' such tactics. furthermore, we couldn't help but wonder if, as with ordinary wotr encounters, enemies had no resource management limits with which to contend, allowing 'em to spam army decimating spells with impunity.  am gonna admit we were more surprised by how few enemy generals delivered hurt in the way our generals did as a matter o' course.

mage generals is horribly unbalanced, which is a problem. however, am thinking the existence o' such on the demon side as well as crusade is at least presenting a veneer o' fairness to the scheme-- not balanced, but arguable fair. that said, if you don't have a mage general of your own and you is unaware o' their disparate impact, then the shock o' a demon mage general lightning striking your units into oblivion is gonna be disheartening and unanticipated. Gromnir has played embarrassing hours o' wotr and is aware o' mage general power.  is no reason the ordinary player should have such knowledge. bad balance is not good design... but am gonna refer you to the playful darkness thread at the official owlcat boards. the hardcore fans is animated in their defense o' poor balance and defend such as if it is a feature o' wotr. 

*shrug*

HA! Good Fun!

[xzar_monty]

I understand there's something called Playful Darkness in the game, and I also understand it's something that has bothered an awful lot of people an awful lot. I'm looking forward to it. I'm at level 10, right after capturing Drezen, and I have no idea how long I'll have to wait for that one (I also don't want to know).

[Gromnir]

as 'posed to playful darkness, the secret of secrets encounter were initially the most troublesome act 3 fight for us, but is unlikely you stumble on that one by accident.  

Spoiler

playing on hard difficulty, the gibber effect from the swarms were requiring a 40-something wil save to resist, so even with guarded hearth we were getting mass confused. we only had the capacity to mind blank one party member at the time we first attempted, so things did not go particular well. kinda unfortunate, but we had the wrong party with the wrong equipment to face a half dozen uber swarms which were each something along the lines o' level 40 outsiders. 

am s'posing the fight is a bit easier for lich with multiple undead party members.  

HA! Good Fun!

[ShadySands]

Was trying to hold off but this morning I downloaded some spellbook merging mod and started a new game. Finally can play a sorc without worrying about merging.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Was trying to hold off but this morning I downloaded some spellbook merging mod and started a new game. Finally can play a sorc without worrying about merging.

I saw that mod, but you can already merge with Toybox if you want to play one of the ones it doesn't work with.

[ShadySands]

I guess I'll just go reinstall Toybox then. Haven't used it in quite a while.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

It's kind of funky how it does it, after you get the 3rd tier mythic you need to go in and manually merge spellbooks. You may need to also add class spells for prepared, I believe that it happens the next level up for spontaneous casters. It also won't give 6th level casters access to more spell levels, which I think the merge mod does. All in all I'd recommend the merge over ToyBox outside of 9th level casters.

But just looking at the nexus....

https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/246

Now you can skip puzzles. 

[Gromnir]

not that it matters, but our less than optimized azata sorcerer who has primarily been used as a blaster has played anything but underpowered. yeah, many o' the most useful azata spells has not worked as described and remain broken even in the latest patches. am not 100% sure favourable magic is working correct either as the save for 75% damage aspect remains wrong as often as not. the thing is, sorcerers in wotr is, much as were the case in kingmaker, kinda powerful unless you purposeful handicap self. add zippy magic alone to our sorcerer build and is already kinda overkill on hard difficulty level. 

an angel oracle is just silly powerful in wotr and am suspecting at some point we may play such just for laughs, but am honest not certain we would want merged spellbooks for azata. with caster levels o' 40 possible, such would necessitate moving the difficulty slider up to unfair to pose any kinda challenge, and am personal finding that kinda gameplay not the least bit fun as is all 'bout finding and using some kinda exploitive strategy and tactics. 

HA! Good Fun!

[xzar_monty]

5 hours ago, Gromnir said:

yeah, many o' the most useful azata spells has not worked as described and remain broken even in the latest patches. am not 100% sure favourable magic is working correct either as the save for 75% damage aspect remains wrong as often as not.

It's astonishing how many things don't work, actually. I'm sure you know the dragon encounter after Drezen. The one where you have to take that slayer with you and where you can set up an ambush. Well, the ambush was supposed to give me a +8 circumstance bonus on saves against fear. It didn't work. Unbreakable heart, the spell, was supposed to give me a +4 morale bonus against fear. It didn't work. So was missing a legitimate +12 there. No wonder my group didn't do well initially. (My PC was at +6 on will, when it should have been +18. I checked the log, and it was +6.)

When I say "initially", I mean that after everything went wrong very quickly (i.e. everybody ran away), I reloaded my save. And I think at least some of that stuff did work, then. I don't get it.

[Agiel]

Something I've been working on and Owlcat just opened up a WotR Meme contest, so it has become my entry. As one reviewer put it, Ember is the most powerful being in all Golarion after the Commander of the Fifth Crusade. A fact of which her archetype and build are only partly to do with it

Edited December 19, 2021 by Agiel

[Gromnir]

On 12/19/2021 at 10:54 AM, Agiel said:

 As one reviewer put it

 

that was an extremely australian review, and we don't mean such as an insult.

am gonna admit to not being much o' an ember fan, but we do enjoy regill and am thinking the hat you gave him should be made part o' his standard kit.

haven't quite finished our azata run but am only having to do the final battle... kinda dragging our feet on the finish. will likely wait for a few dlc and maybe a patch or two (or maybe six) before we go with an aeon. 

HA! Good Fun!

ps ember does make for a fine late game blaster, and her hexes is useful from act i through vi. we got no complaints regarding her party utility. am realizing she is meant to be over-the-top, so is tough to complain 'bout the excessive nature o' her character.