Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 3

[Gromnir]

am having no problems, but we got no mods. is our understanding toybox all by its lonesome is causing all manner o' bugs and performance issues. if you got mods, we would uninstall 'em for a bit... at least until the most popular mods is updated a few times post patch release.

HA! Good Fun!

[Vaeliorin]

3 hours ago, Gromnir said:

did you remember to opt out o' the beta? as we noted previous, your earlier identified doorway issue were beta specific. am knowing the new patch is available, but is a shocking number o' folks who forget they need to revert to base game to enjoy the benefits o' the patch. am having personal not suffered impassible doorway problems for months and have only seen official board complaints o' such as relating to the beta, unless you simple are identifying you got your party bunched in doorways as 'posed to the bug you previous identified.

Yep.  It's just been in the Midnight Fane so far that this issue has been happening, and given that the enemies are stuck behind the doors as well, pretty sure it's not just me blocking the door.

Anyway, Midnight Fane completed, Playful Darkness dead (twice...I forgot to save afterward and reloaded a save as I managed to screw myself trying to open the secret path in Midnight Fane.)  I think I might have been able to tank Playful Darkness with my main character, but I didn't really try.  He apparently doesn't have true seeing, so spamming mirror image works pretty decent (never saw him miss to blur, though), and I can get my AC up high enough he doesn't always hit.  Mostly just made him chase me through pillars of life while spamming spells with the rest of the team.

[xzar_monty]

21 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

am having no problems, but we got no mods. is our understanding toybox all by its lonesome is causing all manner o' bugs and performance issues. if you got mods, we would uninstall 'em for a bit... at least until the most popular mods is updated a few times post patch release.

No mods, never had any. This is why I'm particularly puzzled.

[Gromnir]

42 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

No mods, never had any. This is why I'm particularly puzzled.

dunno. overall our performance has improved with the patch, albeit in limited ways. example: scrolling through party members via the ui were often laborious as there were unfortunate delays. got a party with a whole bunch o' animal companions and the slow scrolling issue could be a drag. thus far the patch has improved our ui scrolling issue. there were also a few hiccups we had which in our complete uneducated opinion felt like memory leak issues. most o' those problems is no longer noteworthy... so far.

we do have a few graphic issues with the game avatars not updating after changes is made vial the paper doll-- switch helmets, cloaks, boots or whatnot on the paper doll requires a reload to make the visuals respect the changes.

am recognizing how every computer config presents different performance issues, so am just happy that for once we ain't one o' the unlucky folks who is suffering worse performance following a major update. you got our sympathy, but we got no advice neither.

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Gromnir

[bugarup]

Had my second funniest* fight yesterday, some 300-firebombs-per-round asshat picked a fight, had to reload due not having fire protection on, then got lucky with initiative and positioning, and the dude committed suicide by attack of opportunity in two rounds. 

*The funniest still is me exploding my entire party to death with some sort of chain reaction virulent bomb lich spell. Twice in a row, because "I'll just make it selective then". Froze my PC for, like 3 minutes too. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by bugarup

[majestic]

Playful Darkness has 94 AC against regular attacks on Unfair. Good thing it can't do anything against Creeping Doom swarms but wait and sit until Ember is done Hellfire Raying his behind while the Angel MC nukes it with Bolts of Justice. Several Pillars of Life made the Shadows go boom after the ran into the fray. I don't see a way to defeat this thing in a non-cheese way on Unfair. Well, if you have a front-line with Last Stand, you can tank it for three turns, I guess. Not necessarily enough to nuke it dead, but it's doable. Still, bringing Creeping Doom along is probably the best way. Swarms suck, huh? Good thing when they suck on your side.

Ember got her Cross-Blooded Sorcerer level and spell focus Hellfire Ray, so she's pretty much one-shotting dangerous things that aren't bosses left and right now.

Pretty much over the hump now. Sure, ludicrous 300 damage crits can still randomly make any given mook battle an instant reload, but those are getting sparser.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Playful Darkness has 94 AC against regular attacks on Unfair.

With all the boosts and buffs that you can give, where do you think PD's AC becomes essentially "you can only hit on a natural 20"? Surely that point is a lot lower than 94, but I'm not sure where it is, so I'd like to know if you have an idea.

Edited March 10, 2022 by xzar_monty

[majestic]

43 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

With all the boosts and buffs that you can give, where do you think PD's AC becomes essentially "you can only hit on a natural 20"? Surely that point is a lot lower than 94, but I'm not sure where it is, so I'd like to know if you have an idea.

That depends an awful lot on the party you run and whether or not you add mercenaries and know how to game the system*. With a smite mercenary coupled with a Court Poet, you can easily get over 30 CHA, that does a lot with Mark of Justice, and you can just stack Smites too. With Guarded Hearth, every attack bonus buff in the book, plus some extra cheese on top (like an extended duration Fortune) and debuffs on PD, and it's not impossible to actually hit Playful Darkness with some regularity.

The problem is withstanding its attacks, and generally, even with a Last Stand tank, it's just much easier if you can use Creeping Doom, the summoned swarms can tank Playful Darkness for the entire duration of the spell with no real issues as they are immune to PD's attacks. The trick is to stack Pillars of Life so that the swarms don't accidentially go after the Shadows because they all die the moment they come into contact with the pillars. Oh, and use turn based mode for the fight, otherwise you'll probably not be able to control PD enough.

From there you just pelt it dead. It's also not immune to mind affecting spells, or at least it wasn't before 1.2, so in theory Gromnir's Thug approach could work too, but I don't really know if the roll works out all right on Unfair. I just blocked it with Creeping Swarm and used the smite mercenary's long spear from behind the swarms while Ember used her supercharged Hellfire Rays and the Oracle threw Bolts of Justice. That'll do a some 200+ damage per round, and that's enough.

Still managed to kill one of the animal companions, but that's just a minor setback. That's pretty much what they're there for anyway.

94 AC isn't enough for full immunity to physical attacks outside of natural 20ies, but it's not very far away from that either. For all intents and purposes though, that fight is very much designed to be cheesed. I have no idea if they hired Westley Weimar to design it, but Kuroisan the Acid Kensai felt pretty similar. Except that was a mod made to provide the player with a threat on the level of their own party (or rather, to make the player see how it feels to be on the receiving end of some fine cheese). The other is just questionable game design.

*Like casting all four Geniekind variants on your frontline with Elemental Barrage on the Brown-Fur Transmuter (that works and yields very funny results), then size buffs afterwards as it doesn't work the other way around. You can really roll some ludicrous numbers with that. By the time you reach Playful Darkness buffing 4x Geniekind + Legendary Proportions should be possible.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

25 minutes ago, majestic said:

That depends an awful lot on the party you run and whether or not you add mercenaries and know how to game the system*. With a smite mercenary coupled with a Court Poet, you can easily get over 30 CHA, that does a lot with Mark of Justice, and you can just stack Smites too. With Guarded Hearth, every attack bonus buff in the book, plus some extra cheese on top (like an extended duration Fortune) and debuffs on PD, and it's not impossible to actually hit Playful Darkness with some regularity.

The problem is withstanding its attacks, and generally, even with a Last Stand tank, it's just much easier if you can use Creeping Doom, the summoned swarms can tank Playful Darkness for the entire duration of the spell with no real issues as they are immune to PD's attacks. The trick is to stack Pillars of Life so that the swarms don't accidentially go after the Shadows because they all die the moment they come into contact with the pillars. Oh, and use turn based mode for the fight, otherwise you'll probably not be able to control PD enough.

From there you just pelt it dead. It's also not immune to mind affecting spells, or at least it wasn't before 1.2, so in theory Gromnir's Thug approach could work too, but I don't really know if the roll works out all right on Unfair. I just blocked it with Creeping Swarm and used the smite mercenary's long spear from behind the swarms while Ember used her supercharged Hellfire Rays and the Oracle threw Bolts of Justice. That'll do a some 200+ damage per round, and that's enough.

Still managed to kill one of the animal companions, but that's just a minor setback. That's pretty much what they're there for anyway.

94 AC isn't enough for full immunity to physical attacks outside of natural 20ies, but it's not very far away from that either. For all intents and purposes though, that fight is very much designed to be cheesed. I have no idea if they hired Westley Weimar to design it, but Kuroisan the Acid Kensai felt pretty similar. Except that was a mod made to provide the player with a threat on the level of their own party (or rather, to make the player see how it feels to be on the receiving end of some fine cheese). The other is just questionable game design.

*Like casting all four Geniekind variants on your frontline with Elemental Barrage on the Brown-Fur Transmuter (that works and yields very funny results), then size buffs afterwards as it doesn't work the other way around. You can really roll some ludicrous numbers with that. By the time you reach Playful Darkness buffing 4x Geniekind + Legendary Proportions should be possible.

I think the Tabletop Tweaks mod removes the Geniekind exploit and a few other things I see in a lot of builds. Kind of funny when you think about it, WotR gets harder when rules are properly implemented.

Regardless, yeah, a lot of the content feels designed around the assumption players are going to play specifically in regards to abusing the **** out of stacking rules and enough cheese to give everyone on Golarion cholesterol problems. It's not good design, yet here I am with one playthrough down and planning four more.

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

I think the Tabletop Tweaks mod removes the Geniekind exploit and a few other things I see in a lot of builds. Kind of funny when you think about it, WotR gets harder when rules are properly implemented.

Regardless, yeah, a lot of the content feels designed around the assumption players are going to play specifically in regards to abusing the **** out of stacking rules and enough cheese to give everyone on Golarion cholesterol problems. It's not good design, yet here I am with one playthrough down and planning four more.

Unfair is unfun enough without any nerfing tweaks applied to the game, so I'm good. I doubt I'll ever play the game on anything but normal afterwards. Not even Core.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, majestic said:

Unfair is unfun enough without any nerfing tweaks applied to the game, so I'm good. I doubt I'll ever play the game on anything but normal afterwards. Not even Core.

not even daring ? You naughty majestic  but their is fun in self-flagellation ?

[Gromnir]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Playful Darkness has 94 AC against regular attacks on Unfair. Good thing it can't do anything against Creeping Doom swarms but wait and sit until Ember is done Hellfire Raying his behind while the Angel MC nukes it with Bolts of Justice. Several Pillars of Life made the Shadows go boom after the ran into the fray. I don't see a way to defeat this thing in a non-cheese way on Unfair.

those same pillars of life work against playful darkness, and eight o' 'em will knock playful down to 'bout half hp. pillars offer no saves and no sr. can stack pillars on top of each other, and as the tunnel area ain't particular wide, chances are you are gonna hit playful with all your pillars in one go as soon as he moves to attack your party.

is a good chance we lose one animal companion or a summons when fighting playful, but am seeming to recollect we mentioned something 'bout the disproportionate value o' intimidation on higher difficulty levels? on unfair is only slight more difficult to fear lock playful darkness with a companion who took a level o' thug than is to do so core or unfair. arm your heaviest hitter with finnean (ideally as a reach weapon so you may position behind a summons or animal companion... jic) while taking advantage o' mark of justice and guarded hearth and chances are you ain't gonna need rely on crits to hit playful even on unfair. sosiel is your best intimidation option, but is others who is good enough to get the job done. the 96 ac drops precipitous when you bypass armour with finnean and rob playful of it's dexterity modifier. got a bunch o' dogs in your party and chances are one 'o 'em renders playful prone.

an azata mc or nenio with enchantment focus (or others) should also have dc kinda high by this point. when coupled with madness domain + fear working to reduce will saves, you have a better than fair shot o' landing a heightened hideous laughter or something similar on playful. 

am never using the creeping doom approach. is not 'cause is cheese (it is, but unfair kinda demands some level o' exploit/cheese) but we refuse to have camellia in a party after act 1 and we rare have daeran 'round to summon the swarms needed, so we had to find other options... and am not a fan o' the cave fangs exploit. heck, am quite willing to use ember to cackle protective luck and fortune for unfair boss battles, so am obvious not moral opposed to exploits and cheese.

HA! Good Fun!

ps am in full agreement regarding the lack o' fun o' unfair. we do the boss battles on unfair, just 'cause, but you couldn't pay us to slog through wotr on unfair... well, you would need pay us a whole helluva a bunch o' money. is a handful o' uber abilities and exploits you need indulge to get through unfair battles. doesn't require clever use o' tactics to do unfair. sometimes the rng gods is displeased and you will need reload, but unfair success is 'bout understanding the margin gameplay made possible by pathfinder and wotr loopholes and such necessary sh!te is the kinda thing no real dm/gm would ever allow in pnp. am current playing on hard.  core would probable be our difficulty option but for the fact our last couple parties were a bit too strong and prebuffing 'fore battles (again, we don't use mods) were taking more o' our gameplay time than just 'bout anything else. 

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Gromnir

[uuuhhii]

so arcanist can not cast level 10 lich spell because there are not slot for level 10

has anyone noticed this

[Gromnir]

we do have a personal chest bug. we never sell books and we hoard unique items, so our chest is filled with stuff we will never use but we nevertheless refuse to sell. the thing is, the personal chest is not showing all our stuff. everything is still there, but past the first three dozen or so items, the chest inventory is blank and truncated. if we wanna go through our entire personal chest inventory we need transfer to party inventory to actual view. minor annoyance at this point but annoying nevertheless.

also, elemental barrage acts peculiar with bonus damage sources such as aeon and inquisitor bane-- peculiar in the sense we is receiving such bonus damages tacked onto the barrage... but not always. am sometimes receiving mythic finesse damage on an elemental barrage "hit"... but not always. not sure what is all the triggers. we got treacherous flame gloves, the dragon familiar and resounding blows working so we are benefitting from considerable additional elemental barrage damage, but am not always understanding the triggers.

went hand axes with our dual wielding dex build 'cause we didn't wanna be yet another guy who went with kukris. a strength build is ultimate superior, but we wanted to try dex. for most o' the game we were using greybor's crushing cold as well as the grave singer relic hand axe-- not optimal but more than good enough for unfair battles. in fact. 'cause we wanted to keep the ascension option available for this aeon run, we had to replay the deskari battle in iz three times 'cause in tb mode we were killing the demon lord before our archer (lann) ever got a shot at using a midnight bolt. optimal ain't necessary to roll-stomp, but all too often am admitted confused by the game's math.

Spoiler

we did notice how saving terendelev in the past and using a midnight bolt on deskari in kenabres will add a purple stone knife to your inventory, so aeons may now do the full party ascension not-so-secret ending even if they chose the aeon option for the wardstone. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Vaeliorin]

On 3/10/2022 at 11:36 AM, KP the Torque Dork said:

I think the Tabletop Tweaks mod removes the Geniekind exploit and a few other things I see in a lot of builds. Kind of funny when you think about it, WotR gets harder when rules are properly implemented.

I haven't ever used the Geniekind exploit (I didn't know it existed until the other day, and Alushinyrra kind of killed my will to play at the moment) but Tabletop Tweaks makes Elemental Barrage only work with spells (which makes it somewhat more balanced.)  It also has a thing about size buffs not stacking, but I can't recall if Geniekind involved a size buff.

It also (I think...not entirely sure...one of the mods I'm using adds it) adds the undersized mount feat, which is pretty cool in that I can now cast Frightful Aspect and still ride my wolf.  I honestly can't, at this point, imagine playing a melee that doesn't have a mount...the added mobility and attacks/tripping is just so insane (especially since Beast Totem from a skald means that all my mounts have claw attacks too...and somehow Bismuth sometimes has the ability to trip.)

Bullying Thrill is bugged, though.  Instead of giving the pet +2 to attack and damage, it gives the enemies +2 to attack and damge (at least, that's what the combat log claims.)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

I haven't ever used the Geniekind exploit (I didn't know it existed until the other day, and Alushinyrra kind of killed my will to play at the moment) but Tabletop Tweaks makes Elemental Barrage only work with spells (which makes it somewhat more balanced.)  It also has a thing about size buffs not stacking, but I can't recall if Geniekind involved a size buff.

It also (I think...not entirely sure...one of the mods I'm using adds it) adds the undersized mount feat, which is pretty cool in that I can now cast Frightful Aspect and still ride my wolf.  I honestly can't, at this point, imagine playing a melee that doesn't have a mount...the added mobility and attacks/tripping is just so insane (especially since Beast Totem from a skald means that all my mounts have claw attacks too...and somehow Bismuth sometimes has the ability to trip.)

Bullying Thrill is bugged, though.  Instead of giving the pet +2 to attack and damage, it gives the enemies +2 to attack and damge (at least, that's what the combat log claims.)

TT adds Undersized Mount. It also nerf fixes mount by not allowing a full attack while with move by default and instead requires a feat with a 14 mobility prereq. Even still, mounted combat is such an absolutely yuge boon that I can't see me not giving it to everyone that has that option.

[Vaeliorin]

14 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

TT adds Undersized Mount. It also nerf fixes mount by not allowing a full attack while with move by default and instead requires a feat with a 14 mobility prereq. Even still, mounted combat is such an absolutely yuge boon that I can't see me not giving it to everyone that has that option.

True, but you can turn off any and all of the fixes...and I did for that one.

[Gromnir]

owlcat keeps managing to add new bugs to wotr mounted combat while not removing old ones. we cannot use dazzling display and a few other full-round actions while mounted in tb. is an old bug which recent returned. will need check to see if ranged weapons is working proper in tb mounted combat 'cause is a bug which were addressed at same time the dazzling display problem were fixed and while am not seeing how they could be related, is a number o' old bugs which has reappeared with the recent patch, although none is genuine game breaking for us.

quasi-related, animal companions still cannot take the tandem trip teamwork feat w/o the feat disappearing to be replaced by the dreaded question mark on the character tab. 

as have observed previous, am kinda annoyed by owlcat's notions o' aeon dedication to cosmic law. the whole mirror universe bit o' the aeon enforcing the laws o' the abyss necessarily has the aeon ignore the hypocrisy o' his/her own actions as one smites and smotes agents o' chaos in alushinyrra. how exact does that work? whatever. regardless, from a gameplay pov, the aeon has been kinda surprising for us in that we saw so many on the owlcat boards and elsewhere describe it as underpowered path. those observations is kinda legit as the aeon starts off uninspired compared to other mythics, albeit more than good enough to handle game challenges at any difficulty. however, late game the aeon has been devastating, particular 'gainst the toughest adversaries.  pathetic quasit is a good example 'cause what makes it particular tough as an opponent, other then the cheap resurrection mechanic, is all o' its spell buffs, and a melee aeon is gonna erase all such buffs w/i moments. the runemaster? *snort* make sure your aeon has high initiative, and chances are endgame battles, even on higher difficulties, become a bit underwhelming.

...

curious, deskari had relative few dispellable buffs.  'course the lord o' locusts still went down like a punk in part 'cause the aeon has a mythic spell which makes an entire party immune to physical damage for multiple rounds, and w/o his scythe doing insta-kill kinda damage on unfair, deskari is less than scary.

HA! Good Fun!

[Theonlygarby]

I'm still stuck on that first part where you choose class and race.  40 hours in I'm enjoying it so far

[Gromnir]

6 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

I'm still stuck on that first part where you choose class and race.  40 hours in I'm enjoying it so far

*chuckle*

the downside being there is far too many objective bad class and race choices. converse is more good options than the hardcore 1337 pathfinder/wotr sages will readily admit. 

HA! Good Fun!

[bugarup]

I just had that not-so-pathetic Quasit fight. He hit Lann with insanity (no big deal because Lann was away and two floors down, thanks to mass dimension door being not so mass) and made half a party tired, but other than that he was occupied putting back his buffs that my Lich kept peeling off him. Little bugger didn't let me loot his corpse too until much later and much bloated.  

Lich spells are...something else. Selective Domain of the Hungry Flesh is a legal cheat, and there's one buff that makes green skulls with orange eyes float around you. So pretty.  I think I'll make another Lich run sometime again, utilizing undead friends only.

Chapter 4 is starting to seriously annoy me, though, even after I said f♦ck it to the gimmick and started just teleporting everywhere via toybox. Loading times quadrupled and there are a lot of loading screens, framerate is prolly in single digits and everyone in the city is either an arsehole, a liar, or both. Random weird bugs started to manifest, like all my level 6 spells got nullified after rest once and Woljif acting like a summon after we solved his family problems, which I sincerely hope is temporary because I bought him new shiny daggers that deal STR damage with each hit and he now deletes things via attribute drain. 

I think I'll go back to Chapter 3 with another party while I wait for the new patch to be patched (I've read it improves Chapter 4 performance quite a bit). Chapter 3 was good. 

Edited March 15, 2022 by bugarup
why do you always notice spelling errors only after you post?

[majestic]

There's a bunch of bugs that keep happening for me, and some I don't even know if they're intentional maybe, or not, but I guess at least some of them are attributable to the game not working as written. My Angel Oracle got access to level 8 and 9 spells while unlocking Mythic levels 4 and 5. Not that I'm complaining, being in Chapter 4 and having access to Storm of Justice and Wrath of the Righteous makes clearing screens easy even on Unfair, it's just a little odd with my Oracle level being 14. I guess this has something to do with the game believing my caster level to be 18 (because Wrath deals 180 damage to Demons). I guess that's part of being Angel-overpowered.

The Brown-Fur Transmuter keeps losing Arcane Reservoir charges during map transitions, it looks like they're either set to the base value before any modifiers or vanish entirely without using them. Not a big deal since Abundant Casting provides enough fodder for him to restore it as needed before big fights, but annoying nonetheless, given that the entire reason for having this character is to use otherwise personal Transmutation spells on the frontliners.

Impassable doors in Turn Based mode were a problem too, but that disappeared for the time being. Turns sometimes spaz out during frame drops. Chapter 4 certainly doesn't get any less annoying when playing on Unfair, but it's fairly smooth now that I can pretty much spam room clearing spells that knock most enemies out of the fight in one cast. Also the first time I'm doing Camellia's quest stuff, and that girl ain't right in the head. I also probably should not do them as Angel, but eh... who cares, really.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

who cares, really

[bugarup]

He's easily manipulated. So far, anyway. My Lich has his high approval by, basically, not doing Stupid Evil things he wasn't planning to do in the first place and a wee bit of lying. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, bugarup said:

He's easily manipulated. So far, anyway. My Lich has his high approval by, basically, not doing Stupid Evil things he wasn't planning to do in the first place and a wee bit of lying. 

He doesn't like you doing Cami's abyssal adventure.

Even with the homonculous instead of a person.