Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 5

[InsaneCommander]

Ok, that was not Unfair. I did change the difficulty to Unfair, but I decided to try again and this time PD had more HP and was immune to Shaken and Frightened. Not sure what happened. I managed to decrease its hp from 1064 to 1040 but it regenerated almost instantly.

[majestic]

Nothing a couple of Pillars of Life and Creeping Doom does not fix, now that it is easier than ever to have characters capable of casting it by that point, just let Ember pick it through Loremaster, or give Daeran Second Mystery: Nature, which is his go-to pick for Mythic 1 anyway. Having enough levels at that point should not be that big of an issue any more after the new DLC areas.

Getting better summons on Ember is the road less travelled, but it works well enough if you do not need her as a ray railgun blaster. Give her all the summoning bonus feats and mythic abilities. Loremaster can add Creeping Doom and Elemental Swarm, but you'd have to fit Skill Focus into her feat list early enough. Ember does not get a whole lot of feats to play with, and you lose at least one hex too, more if you go for three levels of Loremaster.

See, everything in this game is made easier by playing an Angel Oracle MC.

Edit: To make things even more ridiculous, Seekers get bonus feats at almost no cost (not like you really need those revelations).

Edited October 14, 2022 by majestic

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

See, everything in this game is made easier by playing an Angel Oracle MC.

less true after a recent patch.  spontaneous prepared non angel spells do not get the level advantage a prepared caster angel does, which is mostly beside the point as you will be casting near exclusively the angel spells. even so, is a significant change particular at the mid levels.

edit: @InsaneCommander playful darkness now has greater heroism on unfair, which means you need dispel it if you wanna succeed with fear effects. as an azata you should potential be able to get three rolls per check with favorable magic and fortune hex so have your court poet cast greater dispel magic with a quicken meta magic rod... and then reload if that don't work.

however, assuming you are level 15, you need at least 13 levels o' court poet to have access to greater dispel magic. am not sure what your current build entails. got at least one level for thug?

*shrug* 

HA! Good Fun!

ps am pretty sure playful always had greater heroism, the change is how intimidation works in wotr. more than a few players learned how the well-nigh irresistible vavakia vanguard's intimidation-based fear effect resulted in a couple o' the more shocking encounters in the game. paladins were immune, but virtual everybody else, regardless o' spell protections, had to beat the intimidation dc, which is so not the same as a will save. regardless, am thinking the greater heroism protection against fear effects resulting from intimidation has finally been fixed.

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Gromnir

[InsaneCommander]

Finished act 3. Galfrey’s reaction wasn’t that bad. The Hand defending me, however, pissed her off. In the end she fired me, sent me to the Abyss and had the gall to tell me: “Wish me luck as well.”

Minagho is gone for good. Will she be reborn as Abyss maggots?

Noticed some strange things going on, but I doubt they have any serious consequences: Woljif disappeared again, but I imagine they simply forgot to include him in the scene. Why did Ilkes (one of the Free Crusaders) cast Protection from Good? Gresilla said she wanted to go to the surface, but couldn’t and talked about a follower of Iomedae. Is that Hulrun? Wish I could see them together.

Oh, and the little time I played on Unfair bugged the game. I received three “Core” achievements, for defeating the demon in Drezen, a boss in Ivory Sanctum and the water elemental in the prologue. Maybe the game assumed I had been playing on Unfair since the beginning and gave me those achievements?

Since I’m on a new map, I’ll update to EE. No problem now with old dialogues being triggered again, since everything is new.

 

23 hours ago, Gromnir said:

edit: @InsaneCommander playful darkness now has greater heroism on unfair, which means you need dispel it if you wanna succeed with fear effects. as an azata you should potential be able to get three rolls per check with favorable magic and fortune hex so have your court poet cast greater dispel magic with a quicken meta magic rod... and then reload if that don't work.

however, assuming you are level 15, you need at least 13 levels o' court poet to have access to greater dispel magic. am not sure what your current build entails. got at least one level for thug?

*shrug* 

HA! Good Fun!

ps am pretty sure playful always had greater heroism, the change is how intimidation works in wotr. more than a few players learned how the well-nigh irresistible vavakia vanguard's intimidation-based fear effect resulted in a couple o' the more shocking encounters in the game. paladins were immune, but virtual everybody else, regardless o' spell protections, had to beat the intimidation dc, which is so not the same as a will save. regardless, am thinking the greater heroism protection against fear effects resulting from intimidation has finally been fixed.

I'm currently Court Poet 13/Thug 1/Oracle 1. I'll remember your tips and @majestic's when I replay the game on higher difficulties. I only tried Unfair out of curiosity, I'm back on normal now.

[majestic]

4 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I'm currently Court Poet 13/Thug 1/Oracle 1. I'll remember your tips and @majestic's when I replay the game on higher difficulties. I only tried Unfair out of curiosity, I'm back on normal now.

Caveat: Most of those were made before 2.0, and as you already noticed, a few things changed. Playful Darkness never before had an issue with being afraid, Boon Companion is probably still inconsistent and wonky, now Oracle merged spellbooks no longer enjoy the CL boost that a Cleric would get. Who knows what else is going to change until such a time you up the difficulty level.

[xzar_monty]

Dear all,

I suppose some of you may have an early save game still in existence. Like, maybe from the Shield Maze or anywhere very early in the game. I wonder if one of you could load it and see what happens. My bug from Thursday persists.

Here's the original comment on it, from earlier on in this thread:

There was a small new update today or yesterday, and it messed up my savegame: I'm still in Kenabres doing the early quests like Blackwing Library and so on, and immediately upon loading my save the game tells me that I've just completed the quest Banner Over the Citadel, having killed the giants. I even went back to my first surviving savegame where I'm still in the Shield Maze, and the same thing pops up there, too. I get the XP and everything (I know this because I gain a level upon loading my save), but clearly something is broken.

[bugarup]

Loaded up a couple of Chapter 1 saves, got the same message. The quest does not appear in the list though. I wonder what's this about? Maybe they deleted those giants from the game at all because they were obnoxious cheaters with pinpoint accuracy and ability to reach you indoors and now this stage of the quest autocompletes because it doesn't find them? Would be nice.

[xzar_monty]

3 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Loaded up a couple of Chapter 1 saves, got the same message. The quest does not appear in the list though. I wonder what's this about? Maybe they deleted those giants from the game at all because they were obnoxious cheaters with pinpoint accuracy and ability to reach you indoors and now this stage of the quest autocompletes because it doesn't find them? Would be nice.

Thanks! So it's not just my game, then.

The quest doesn't appear in my list, either, but I suppose that's because I'm not even in the part of the game where quests related to Drezen appear. The quest is far ahead of where I am.

[Gromnir]

8 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

 

There was a small new update today or yesterday, and it messed up my savegame: I'm still in Kenabres doing the early quests like Blackwing Library and so on, and immediately upon loading my save the game tells me that I've just completed the quest Banner Over the Citadel, having killed the giants. I even went back to my first surviving savegame where I'm still in the Shield Maze, and the same thing pops up there, too. I get the XP and everything (I know this because I gain a level upon loading my save), but clearly something is broken.

no xp gain for us, but we do get the Banner Over The Citadel completion message. am positive on the xp 'cause one such save is from immediate before the start o' act ii, after gaining mythic powha. we went through the whole becoming lord commander bit and xp did not increase in spite have having received the banner over the citadel completion message. we had a save immediate following galfrey's speech as well, so were ez to compare xp.

downside means while it ain't showing in the quest log, one suspects we wouldn't gain or be able to complete the quest in act ii.

could be a serious game breaker in drezen... or maybe not. who knows with owlcat. 

hopeful a few bugs would be addressed sooner rather than later, we instead did an unfair inevitable excess run. our clever girl velociraptor coulda' solo killed inevitable darkness as she had the blind fight feat (so no concealment misses) and a 30 charisma at the time which helped lead to an ab o' 111. scroll o' trnasformation and a few other personal buffs were useful. didn't even have visions of madness active or touch of good from sosiel. had the raptor attack after seelah got off her mark of justice, so she technical did not do all damage, but it were a near thing as seelah got horrible unlucky with the concealment misses as we only had true seeing on her and forgot to do echolocation in spite o' fact she had more than enough umd to read the appropriate scroll. couple o' crits and bonus damage from spells such as sun marked meant the dino damage output were overwhelming.

if we had a skald merc in the party (we did sans mercs,) the damage woulda' been even more extreme. court poet could push the raptor charisma to 36, which gets her 3 more ab. vanilla skald provides a bunch o' extra natural attacks plus lethal accuracy.

'course if owlcat ever fixes the unlimited smites bug for divine hunter...

HA! Good Fun!

Edited October 16, 2022 by Gromnir

[xzar_monty]

5 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

could be a serious game breaker in drezen... or maybe not. who knows with owlcat.

Indeed. No way am I going to continue my game before I can load my save and have that Banner message not appear.

[InsaneCommander]

I reloaded a game in Neathholm and got the same message, as if I had completed the "Kill the Giants" part of the quest.

The bugs in act 3 are gone though. There were some dialogues triggering again and visiting the Azata's court prompted the dialogue to give the place a name. Twice.

[xzar_monty]

Yep, it's the "Kill the Giants" message for me, too.

Given that it seems to appear in so many early-gave saves, I suppose it's going to be fixed soon. Ha! See what an optimist I am.

[InsaneCommander]

First day in the Abyss: Suture steals from the Hand, Nenio wants to copulate and Ember wants to meet Nocticula. That will be interesting.

And I met with the guy I saved in Leper’s Smile. Good riddance.

[Zoraptor]

I have run into the same bug Gorth had in the Midnight Isles. And, of course, that is despite checking that the patch notes where the first item is that issue being fixed... On the positive side that is the first out and out bug I've had (thought I had another, but that was just a quest with unclear instructions and not being flagged as needing to be done before the chapter end. Yes Owlcat I'll randomly chat to a generic Baphomet Cultist in a random room in the brothel to progress it despite 99.9% of generically named characters having nothing to say).

Finished Chapter 4. I think I liked the idea of the Abyss a lot more than the execution, it probably sounded pretty cool written down but tended towards annoyance after an hour or so.
 

Spoiler

Nocticula and Areelu seem overly... nice, and actually held up their end of the bargain. Not really a big reveal there given the amount of information already given in places like Vorlesh's Lab, though the Hand packing a sad as a result was funny. Yeah bro, all the good deeds were part of a plot to suck you in; aren't you supposed to believe in redemption and all that guff anyway? Especially funny given the utter hash of things 100% Iomedae approved Queen Snooty Britches was making on the surface.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was that I probably had a decent chance of killing Baphomet by myself before Nocticula intervened as he spent all his time firing off spells that mostly didn't work.

Hardest fight in the chapter was freeing the fleshmarkets, by far. Had to kill off all the individual vendors one at a time beforehand, madly charge around killing the Horrid Wilting guys and that fat beholder type dude was still an utter pain at the end. By contrast the only hard thing about the Umbral Dragon or Hepziwotsit was that they loved targeting the main character. Who'd picked up death's door after the most annoying fight(s) in the chapter, vs those obnoxious petrifying hit sponge crystals. Anyway, met 2 demon lords- and my inner 5 year old is considering promoting the poo demon to make it three- and a prince of hell. Moving, uh, up in the world.

 

[Gorth]

5 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

I have run into the same bug Gorth had in the Midnight Isles. And, of course, that is despite checking that the patch notes where the first item is that issue being fixed... On the positive side that is the first out and out bug I've had (thought I had another, but that was just a quest with unclear instructions and not being flagged as needing to be done before the chapter end. Yes Owlcat I'll randomly chat to a generic Baphomet Cultist in a random room in the brothel to progress it despite 99.9% of generically named characters having nothing to say).

Finished Chapter 4. I think I liked the idea of the Abyss a lot more than the execution, it probably sounded pretty cool written down but tended towards annoyance after an hour or so.
 

  Hide contents

Nocticula and Areelu seem overly... nice, and actually held up their end of the bargain. Not really a big reveal there given the amount of information already given in places like Vorlesh's Lab, though the Hand packing a sad as a result was funny. Yeah bro, all the good deeds were part of a plot to suck you in; aren't you supposed to believe in redemption and all that guff anyway? Especially funny given the utter hash of things 100% Iomedae approved Queen Snooty Britches was making on the surface.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was that I probably had a decent chance of killing Baphomet by myself before Nocticula intervened as he spent all his time firing off spells that mostly didn't work.

Hardest fight in the chapter was freeing the fleshmarkets, by far. Had to kill off all the individual vendors one at a time beforehand, madly charge around killing the Horrid Wilting guys and that fat beholder type dude was still an utter pain at the end. By contrast the only hard thing about the Umbral Dragon or Hepziwotsit was that they loved targeting the main character. Who'd picked up death's door after the most annoying fight(s) in the chapter, vs those obnoxious petrifying hit sponge crystals. Anyway, met 2 demon lords- and my inner 5 year old is considering promoting the poo demon to make it three- and a prince of hell. Moving, uh, up in the world.

 

If you're already in chapter v, you'll have noticed you can pick up the treasure island quest again from there (same place as you could start it in chapter iii, murky grotto)

Edit: More small missions, exploring the (?) (the little circles with question marks in them) and another companion mission completed (Seelah's). She started doing a very un-paladin-like thing afterwards and indulged in thinking.

[InsaneCommander]

Met a few cowards that didn't want to fight or ran away quickly, though the woman with the boy probably avoided a fight because she is not stupid. Soul Hunter couldn't run away in the rooftops after being Frightened. The rooftops seem like the perfect place for Dazzling Display, but I had to save before using Dimensional Door since sometimes the party would split.

Edit: funny that Mutasafen, who is immune to Fear, escaped so quickly.

Edited October 18, 2022 by InsaneCommander

[Gromnir]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

If you're already in chapter v, you'll have noticed you can pick up the treasure island quest again from there (same place as you could start it in chapter iii, murky grotto)

 

take it for what it is worth, but we noticed the following reddit post/exchange:

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

18 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

take it for what it is worth, but we noticed the following reddit post/exchange:

HA! Good Fun!

Sounds good. I won't have much time to play before the weekend anyway (work has a knack of getting in the way sometimes), so crossing fingers and hoping the remaining islands will be in a state where you can complete them.

[Zoraptor]

That is one hell of a lot of dialogue/ cut scenes to start chapter 5 proper.
 

Spoiler

I have to agree with the Targaryen cosplayer Daeran- Iomedae really, really is a self righteous blowhard. And not just because she ponced out of a stained glass window like god's gift to man, though obviously that's a major factor for being a blowhard at least. Guess there's a reason she likes Galfrey so much; Galfrey hated me having a succubus in the party, Iomedae hated me not slaughtering every demon I met just for being demons. Sanctimonious hypocritical crypto fascist- and frankly, not that much crypto to go with the fascism there. Seelah once again proved that she's a total bro and #1 MVP by disagreeing with her own god (and by extension, agreeing with, well, Nocticula instead. There's probably some sort of Paladin law against that). With the Bioware games we always used to have Chaotic Stupid instead of chaotic evil, seems Owlcat opts for Lawful Stupid instead of lawful good a fair bit of the time which personally I rather like. Having the LG god be less likeable than a demon lord and whatever Areelu is is pretty good for a change.

Picked Gold Dragon mythic path, but not sure I'll stick with it. Legend would be best thematically, but staying Azata would have the huge advantage of (presumably) annoying Iomedae most- while presumably she'd like the Legend pick. Plus while I couldn't care less about the court I genuinely felt bad for Aivu getting shrunk down again.

 

[xzar_monty]

@Zoraptor, seems to me that any Evil is nearly always Stupid in the Owlcat games I've played (P:K and WotR). I don't try to play evil and very rarely choose any evil options, but most of the time they seem to be along the lines of "Die!" or "Nonsense! Die!". If I wanted to play a Machiavellian manipulator and create subtle schemes for world domination, it seems I'd be out of options.

To be fair, much of the dialogue is silly, but the Evil options tend to seem the silliest.

[bugarup]

19 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

@Zoraptor, seems to me that any Evil is nearly always Stupid in the Owlcat games I've played (P:K and WotR). I don't try to play evil and very rarely choose any evil options, but most of the time they seem to be along the lines of "Die!" or "Nonsense! Die!". If I wanted to play a Machiavellian manipulator and create subtle schemes for world domination, it seems I'd be out of options.

Owlcat seem to support the axis where Evil is always Stupid, and Lawful is almost always Evil, so just stick to Lawful if you want to be slightly less moronic Evil. Still no Machiavellian choices, but those would require writing chops outside of Catowl's range. 

That said, I love to be evil, stupid as it may be, in Owlcat's games, probably because their characters do not feel like people (and mildly to severely annoy me) so it's like taking away ladders outta pools in Sims, funny instead of cruel. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[xzar_monty]

38 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Owlcat seem to support the axis where Evil is always Stupid, and Lawful is almost always Evil, so just stick to Lawful if you want to be slightly less moronic Evil. Still no Machiavellian choices, but those would require writing chops outside of Catowl's range. 

That said, I love to be evil, stupid as it may be, in Owlcat's games, probably because their characters do not feel like people (and mildly to severely annoy me) so it's like taking away ladders outta pools in Sims, funny instead of cruel. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree that many Lawful choices do indeed seem rather Evil in WotR, at least. Actually, my preferred way of playing is somewhere around Chaotic Neutral / Neutral / Chaotic Good, depending on the options I'm given.

As for the writing chops, they are indeed lacking and their characters certainly don't feel like people. It's really unfortunate that this side of their games is as bad as it is, because everything would be much more enjoyable if there was at least an attempt made to create more believable and "round" characters. I've said if before but I sometimes wonder whether everything is intended as a joke or parody, because the character writing really is something. But if there's one thing it most certainly does, it really makes you better appreciate this side of PoE and Deadfire -- or even BG2!

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I've said if before but I sometimes wonder whether everything is intended as a joke or parody,

keeping in mind owlcat must work w/i framework o' an existing paizo pathfinder adventure path and maintain some kinda paizo approval, am tending to agree with this observation. am having pointed out how the female romance options is, at first glance, designed to mock and ridicule those who like crpg romance. the fact owlcat romance fans aren't in on the joke and seem largely happy with owlcat's efforts makes the efforts at parody more amusing.

arguable all o' the mythic paths is indulging in mockery o' the player's choice. aivu's saccharine nature and cookie silliness, along with the complete haphazard approach to teh freedom integral to the azata path, looks to be tongue-in-cheek fodder. as such, how can we not take the comical depiction as commentary on the stoopid indulged by those embracing goodness untempered by practicality? azata is over-the-top cartoony. people understandable are repulsed by a few o' the lawful=a-hole choices in the game, but am thinking is easier to overlook or indulge the owlcat mockery o' do-gooder's who seem to thinks if we all held hands and danced in a meadow under the moonlight, all the world's problems would disappear as if by magic.

...

the thing is, there is nothing particular clever 'bout owlcat writing, so is tough to give the developer credit for a perverse level o' subtlety wherein they manage to constant mock their fan's desires and choices w/o the vast majority o' fans recognizing or caring that they is the victim o' a tens of hours long prank.

converse, is quite possible owlcat is as much victims o' their own efforts as is the rest o' us. in an effort to make sure players get it, perhaps owlcat consciously abandoned any pretense o' subtle and so we end up with exaggeration which feels like parody? is not that owlcat is indulging parody, but rather that their efforts is intentional blunt and crude to a comic degree, which is ordinarily what results in parody, yes? 

HA! Good Fun!

[xzar_monty]

10 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

arguable all o' the mythic paths is indulging in mockery o' the player's choice. aivu's saccharine nature and cookie silliness, along with the complete haphazard approach to teh freedom integral to the azata path, looks to be tongue-in-cheek fodder.

Interesting! All I know about is the azata, for which I agree with what you say. But if all the others are the same, then it does raise some eyebrows over here at least.

Btw, if the writing really is intended to mock the player, then I'd say that's a bit... mean. But of course we're still in the realm of games, so it's not that sinister.

(The Finnish poet Paavo Haavikko once wrote how "Parody has become impossible / They're doing it themselves". This is an extremely pithy observation, in my view, and I couldn't help but think about it when looking at someone like Boris Johnson, for example. You couldn't really make a parody of him, he himself was already a parody of a politician.)

[majestic]

Not really on topic, but we recently had our own version of The Onion sue a politician of one of our ruling parties over lost business and unfair competition due to him saying things so far out of touch with reality that there is no way for them to to keep up. Not unexpectedly, the case was summarily dismissed, but it made for funny (funny in the sense of 'neigbour rings your doorbell at 3 am to tell you to hold his salt for a bit because the fishes in the aquarium are after it' funny, not 'ha ha' funny, because they were right) headlines.

One of the things they said, publicy and at an official press conference no less, was that the state attorneys need not bother to send the police to raid their party's headquarter, because, to quote, "there is nothing left to find", a day or two before said raid happened.

Oh how I wish I would be making this up. Alas. Funny thing though, the police really did not find anything of note. Makes one wonder why, does it not?

Edited October 18, 2022 by majestic