Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 5

[majestic]

Hey, some of us haven't seen that movie yet, thanks for nothing, you asshat!

Spoiler

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

25 minutes ago, majestic said:

Hey, some of us haven't seen that movie yet, thanks for nothing, you asshat!

  Reveal hidden contents

 

You make good points

But I don't like you ! Spoiler ?

[majestic]

3 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

You make good points

But I don't like you ! Spoiler ?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, majestic said:

You naughty

Edited November 3, 2022 by KP From Another World

[InsaneCommander]

1 hour ago, bugarup said:

I read KP's and Insane's posts on this page, there are words and sentences but I do not understand any of them 

Maybe you are ready to start your isekai anime journey?

[majestic]

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

[rjshae]

When pathfinder goes Annie May

[Gorth]

One of the few places I hadn't visited yet was the jail... not the one in Drezen, but the one Baphomet calls "home". Generally easy going (fight wise). Hated the puzzles, but once you could see the number sequences, it wasn't too bad. Just incredibly obnoxious. I don't know if I did the following in the right order or if it could have been done differently:

I killed The Hand of Iomedae (twice) just to later find his heart. No idea if the heart serves any purpose, say if I had found it before killing him, could I have saved him? Or is it just going to be a snack, cooking over the campfire one of those days food is scarce. Oh, what heavenly supper you made today Gorth

Helped the ghost of some Sarkorian woman who had made some mistakes in life. Also met a Lich. He asked me to help him and I agreed. Not sure what happened next, because text went by a bit fast and there was nothing in my quest log. I guess I either auto failed or auto succeeded due to past actions in the prison (i.e. already had what he was looking for or already destroyed it). Found the remaining mask for Nenio's quest and made the mistake of entering the portal. 45 minutes in and I hate the place (Enigma) passionately. I made a promise to myself, that unless there are some material reasons for ever doing this again, I'll tell Nenio to go get another "follower" in each subsequent play through (i.e. screw this, next time you do it yourself). I hope companion missions aren't required to complete the game.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

13 minutes ago, Gorth said:

One of the few places I hadn't visited yet was the jail... not the one in Drezen, but the one Baphomet calls "home". Generally easy going (fight wise). Hated the puzzles, but once you could see the number sequences, it wasn't too bad. Just incredibly obnoxious. I don't know if I did the following in the right order or if it could have been done differently:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I killed The Hand of Iomedae (twice) just to later find his heart. No idea if the heart serves any purpose, say if I had found it before killing him, could I have saved him? Or is it just going to be a snack, cooking over the campfire one of those days food is scarce. Oh, what heavenly supper you made today Gorth

 

Helped the ghost of some Sarkorian woman who had made some mistakes in life. Also met a Lich. He asked me to help him and I agreed. Not sure what happened next, because text went by a bit fast and there was nothing in my quest log. I guess I either auto failed or auto succeeded due to past actions in the prison (i.e. already had what he was looking for or already destroyed it). Found the remaining mask for Nenio's quest and made the mistake of entering the portal. 45 minutes in and I hate the place (Enigma) passionately. I made a promise to myself, that unless there are some material reasons for ever doing this again, I'll tell Nenio to go get another "follower" in each subsequent play through (i.e. screw this, next time you do it yourself). I hope companion missions aren't required to complete the game.

 

 

https://github.com/ArkiveDev/PuzzleSkip

[Gorth]

1 hour ago, KP From Another World said:

https://github.com/ArkiveDev/PuzzleSkip

Sad that I even think such a mod necessary, but I'm fairly sure it will be part of my next run!

(that or drop Nenio in a lava pit somewhere)

[majestic]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

I hope companion missions aren't required to complete the game.

It only affects ending slides for your companions but it is required for the full secret ending unless you're playing Trickster or Demon. If you want to do that, then keep that in mind, or suffer through Enigma. Again.

For most regular party setups, Nenio is hard to drop, there aren't many arcane casters in the companion lineup. Sure, Ember is a staple for virtually every party, no matter if you make her a Hellfire Raylgun (I am so not sorry for that pun), or an enchanter/summoner Ember. Some manner of arcane control and blasting is too good to pass up, so unless you're playing an arcane caster MC (so, in essence, a Lich making use of the merged spellbook) you might want to keep her around - or hire a merc.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

It only affects ending slides for your companions but it is required for the full secret ending unless you're playing Trickster or Demon. If you want to do that, then keep that in mind, or suffer through Enigma. Again.

For most regular party setups, Nenio is hard to drop, there aren't many arcane casters in the companion lineup. Sure, Ember is a staple for virtually every party, no matter if you make her a Hellfire Raylgun (I am so not sorry for that pun), or an enchanter/summoner Ember. Some manner of arcane control and blasting is too good to pass up, so unless you're playing an arcane caster MC (so, in essence, a Lich making use of the merged spellbook) you might want to keep her around - or hire a merc.

gotta admit am pleasant surprised with our enchantment focused azata skald. allows us to have ember devoted to evocation (am thinking we should use loremaster to add scirocco to her spell list) and hexes. with our skald am able to serious pump up the dc for hideous laughter and other enchantments while also spreading the wealth with reckless stance, inspired rage plus all the beast totem stuff. 'course the new dlc makes things go a bit smoother as am having access to demonslayer soup and conflagrant taco... in act iii. am current in the midnight fane and we got both taco and soup active simultaneous.  as such our current nenio-less party is viable on hard difficulty. 

once we get the incredible might super power, the skald is gonna be adding another useful contribution particular with the grave singer axe and the free pounce ability from beast totem, greater. 

no complaints.

angel casters, similar to lich, also kinda make nenio (and a few other must haves) superfluous as they destroy the ordinary difficulty considerations. if you really want all the groovy illusion spells, then go feyspeaker angel and take one level o' loremaster for weird... and if you really wanna play unfair, feyspeaker is a way to get a leopard at level 1.

...

gotta admit how if we didn't genuine loathe camellia, we would be more likely to have her in a party than ember... or nenio. given our gameplay style, we would say the top three most useful companions is sosiel, seelah and camellia, but if you focus on casters as 'posed to mounted weapon-havers, am suspecting best companions shift a bit.  

regardless, the one thing 'bout not having nenio in party whica we do miss is her ability to craft caster level scrolls which our raptor and other umd party members may exploit. is never a shortage o' transformation or legendary proportion scrolls with nenio in the house.

aside, the thing which bothers us most 'bout enigma is not so much enigma but rather owlcat reaction to fan frustration. owlcat appears no less committed to their questionable design philosophy (trial and error puzzles + filler combat + backtracking = win?) and their reaction to near universal fan complaint is a kinda weary amusement.  enigma inspired vitriol offers owlcat a teachable moment and so far the developer is failing.  

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 6, 2022 by Gromnir

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

For most regular party setups, Nenio is hard to drop, there aren't many arcane casters in the companion lineup.

Btw, I think it's interesting (but probably just a coincidence) that if you play both P:K and WotR using the companions designed by the developers, you're not going to get, in either game, a wizard capable of casting spells from the school of Necromancy. Both Octavia and Nenio have that as one of their prohibited schools.

My D&D experience has led me to like Horrid Wilting, and it's a bit of a shame that I haven't really been able to use it in either game.

[xzar_monty]

6 hours ago, Gorth said:

Hated the puzzles, but once you could see the number sequences, it wasn't too bad. Just incredibly obnoxious.

As an aside of sorts: There are two kinds of puzzles in the game. First, there are the ones where you obviously see that you're supposed to be able to do something, like use a series of levers on a wall in the right order. And then there are the ones that aren't immediately obvious that reward you if you (happen to) do the right thing, like make it so that all the doors on a given dungeon level are either open or closed, for example.

Your choice of words, "incredibly obnoxious", feels particularly apt. I tend to like puzzles. But I seriously wonder which percentage of players (a) takes the trouble to solve the puzzles of the first kind themselves, without consulting the net, and (b) even notices the hidden rewards of the second kind.

Full disclosure: despite my like of puzzles, I don't even try the ones in this game. Seems to me that Owlcat is not a very good sport when it comes to creating puzzles.

[bugarup]

Wrathfinder's "Horrid wilting" is more like "Skipped-watering-yesterday wilting" compared to same spell in D&D-based spell. Same with "Hum of the banshee" and "Finger of mild cardiac arrest", like, if game forgets to cheat for once and that peg-legged, sickly, Alzheimer-ridden minor demon you are trying to attack with it fails both saves, it still does kitten scratch damage because of some innate resistances or **** like that. That's probably what annoys me the most with Pathfinder - trillion gazillion spells and not a 10% of them are worthy to bother with.

Aaaaanyway. Dinged the Aeon level with the druid, completely forgot I have spell book merge mod so he'll be alright even if shapeshifting does not work out. Still feels kinda weak after Lich and Angel -> Legend. Have probably the nicest theme music though and cool visual effects (that unfortunately bug out constantly, making him leave his blue swirlies behind, and city streets are full of blue constellation clusters that do not belong to anyone.

 

[Gorth]

I went through the process of respeccing my barbarian at Hilor's sickbed, so I removed both the 1 level of vivisectionist and the 15 levels of bard I had ended up with. Now 20 levels barbarian (mad dog... it just seemed so apt) and 17 levels of warrior (of course, writing this now, I can't remember of it was bloodrager or instinctual warrior). Also replaced my triceratops with a wolf. Dropping str and armour, focusing on fast movement and some dex (I put in a point of int to get 3, to make some feats available because that's what the tooltip told me)

 

[xzar_monty]

11 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Wrathfinder's "Horrid wilting" is more like "Skipped-watering-yesterday wilting" compared to same spell in D&D-based spell. Same with "Hum of the banshee" and "Finger of mild cardiac arrest", like, if game forgets to cheat for once and that peg-legged, sickly, Alzheimer-ridden minor demon you are trying to attack with it fails both saves, it still does kitten scratch damage because of some innate resistances or **** like that. That's probably what annoys me the most with Pathfinder - trillion gazillion spells and not a 10% of them are worthy to bother with.

Interesting! Not having tried those spells, I have no idea.

On a general level, I agree that most spells tend to be less than useful. And some are really very useful. For instance, at a certain point in the game, the combo of Haste + Slow is just really very useful. I'm sure @Gromnir or someone can point to an even more useful combo at that point in the game, and fair enough, but in my games those two spells have been very useful indeed.

[Gorth]

31 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Interesting! Not having tried those spells, I have no idea.

On a general level, I agree that most spells tend to be less than useful. And some are really very useful. For instance, at a certain point in the game, the combo of Haste + Slow is just really very useful. I'm sure @Gromnir or someone can point to an even more useful combo at that point in the game, and fair enough, but in my games those two spells have been very useful indeed.

At lower levels, I found snowball to be the most effective offensive spell. Forget fire spells and the wimpy missile. Snowball ignores the recipients magic resistance

MR something I learned to prioritize my spell selections after. At least until Ember got elemental affinity fire, focus on evocation (and conjuration eventually) and greater spell penetration (plus its mythic variant). Nenio focusing on illusion and enchantment spells. But snowball will always have a special place in my spellbooks

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Btw, I think it's interesting (but probably just a coincidence) that if you play both P:K and WotR using the companions designed by the developers, you're not going to get, in either game, a wizard capable of casting spells from the school of Necromancy. Both Octavia and Nenio have that as one of their prohibited schools.

My D&D experience has led me to like Horrid Wilting, and it's a bit of a shame that I haven't really been able to use it in either game.

our first ember build were necromancy/evocation and it were highly effective. from our pov, the real issue for choosing an ideal caster is less a matter o' spell selection than it is o' gear. is good spells in most o' the spell schools and with the mythics you may focus on a select handful o' spells to achieve excellent results. however, there is a large gulf in the availability o' gear which enhances the effectiveness o' particular casters.

why does our sosiel often take a level o' crossblood sorc for water and either white or silver dragon... and then likely a second white or silver dragon bloodline through mythic? 'cause o' a relic shield which allows us to add 1 point per die o' cold damage. arcane casters typical cannot use shields, so along with the hide armour o' elemental carnage, am able to do serious extra cold damage on hellfire rays, stormbolts and the like. meta. 1 point per die don't sound like much until you add all those points from hellfire rays-- 45 at cl 15. an extra 4 points per die = 180 extra damage per cast o' hellfire ray and 80 points for the spells which cap at twenty dice.

is also a comical amount o' gear which boosts fire damage. is fantastic for ember, yes? is belts and gloves and rings which all enhance fire damage. 

if you wanna build a dc inflating caster, then enchantment and illusion is arguable your best options... 'cause o' gear. is no way you know 'bout such gear unless you use a guide or have already played the game. even so, is possible to build an extreme effective necromancy focused ember just so long as you ain't playing unfair. there ain't enough dc boosting gear to make necromancy anywhere near as good an option as enchantment.

meta.

HA! Good Fun!

ps 'cause o' curious owlcat implementation, there is a few disproportionate effective spells. among those op spells is creeping doom, scirocco, hellfire ray, grease and glitterdust. @Gorthmentions snowball, and for same reasons is grease and glitterdust on the list. conjuration spells ordinary ignore sr. the thing is, you should most assured not be able to selective spell grease. 

 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Gromnir

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 hours ago, Gorth said:

Sad that I even think such a mod necessary, but I'm fairly sure it will be part of my next run!

(that or drop Nenio in a lava pit somewhere)

It may not work with the new game versions unfortunately.

Nenio is probably the most unique companion as none of the others come with a full Wizard spell list by default, so it's either a mercenary, a worse Wolijif, or a respec mod if you're looking to have a caster who uses the full Wizard spell list in the party without the foxy lady. You manage without that on most difficulties but it's powerful amd versatile enough to be a benefit for most parties.

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Btw, I think it's interesting (but probably just a coincidence) that if you play both P:K and WotR using the companions designed by the developers, you're not going to get, in either game, a wizard capable of casting spells from the school of Necromancy. Both Octavia and Nenio have that as one of their prohibited schools.

Opposition school spells aren't prohibited, they take up two slots to get prepared.

[majestic]

2 hours ago, Gromnir said:

if you wanna build a dc inflating caster, then enchantment and illusion is arguable your best options... 'cause o' gear. is no way you know 'bout such gear unless you use a guide or have already played the game. even so, is possible to build an extreme effective necromancy focused ember just so long as you ain't playing unfair. there ain't enough dc boosting gear to make necromancy anywhere near as good an option as enchantment.

Then there is how Expanded Arsenal works - by summing up the highest available bonuses (so two greater spell foci and one regular spell focus will not be a +2 as one would reasonably expect, but a +5 boost to the Expanded Arsenal school). This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing in the game rules, if you want to make sure that your enchantment spells have the highest caster levels and DCs possible, take every single focus and mastery you come across, except for enchantment, and take Expanded Arsenal: Enchantment. You're going to take the feats anyway, might as well make the most use of them, and if you have any left over, pick up a Spell Focus or two (admittedly easier when you can dilute your regular class levels with Loremaster without losing too much in terms of class progression, or by picking caster classes which do come with bonus additional feats).

That way it is possible to get a decent enough boost to Conjuration and its great spells and have an enormous bonus to enchantment. Arguably makes for the easier start too, as Spell Focus on Conjuration makes the early game probably easier than going with Enchantment right away.

1 hour ago, KP From Another World said:

Opposition school spells aren't prohibited, they take up two slots to get prepared.

Unless you're playing a Thassilonian Specialist, but that does not apply to Nenio.

Edited November 6, 2022 by majestic

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, KP From Another World said:

Opposition school spells aren't prohibited, they take up two slots to get prepared.

Haha! Thanks.

I've never bothered to check the Pathfinder rules as such, so I'm essentially playing this as if it were DD. Which leads to foolishness like this. Mea culpa!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

12 minutes ago, majestic said:

Unless you're playing a Thassilonian Specialist, but that does not apply to Nenio.

Oh yeah, the Thassilonians have unique spell books specifically to prevent them from using opposition schools, so no...naughty exploits to get around it. When I think of it, the TS is a downgrade from the normal wizard. It's not Arcane Bomber bad, but losing that versatility for an extra spell is a poor trade off, especially with abundant casting.

Luckily Nenio is the best Wizard archetype so by level 10 she can use her scroll savant abilities and scribe scrolls to cast spells very often, including spells wizards couldn't normally cast without UMD and a check. Just make sure you have the money to burn.

[Gromnir]

we did the playful darkness encounter and it were anticlimactic.

thought we would need to rest before the battle but decided to give it a shot with a depleted spell arsenal available from having cleared near all o' the fane and in spite o' having no pillars of life slots memorized. 

we took a round to dispatch the spawned shadows and sacrifice bismuth to playful, 'cause w/o pillars we had to get rid o' the shadows the old fashioned route: brute force.

other than the trike there were no casualties and lann effective killed playful solo in one round as following greater dispel efforts by main character skald (effective) sosiel (effective) and ember (fail,) as well as a mark o' justice from seelah, a ki strike salvo from lann archery + his celestial velociraptor with 10 attacks downed playful w/o much fuss. had ab over 75 for the raptor and that were w/o any touch of good or true strike bonuses. didn't even do fortune hex + cackle exploit. 

nothing special. we invited all the usual suspects to the party including guarded hearth and the nobility domain insight boost as well as the skald rage bonuses.

actual mvps might be the rest bonuses from demon slayer soup and conflagrant taco as such resulted in an additional straight up +5 attack bonus in addition to resulting in a couple point bonus to both guarded hearth and mark of justice. as such we got an effective +9 bonus to ab (+11 for the raptor 'cause the dino's smite stacks with mark of justice) we ordinarily do not see when doing the playful darkness encounter. 

do not fall asleep on the benefits o' rest bonuses. having access to all recipes and the ingredients earlyish in act iii is kinda broken. 

...

downside: am serious gonna need consider alternatives to divine hunter for lann if owlcat ever gets around to fixing the unlimited smites for celestial animal companions. 

rip bismuth... rip.

HA! Good Fun!