Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 6

[InsaneCommander]

9 hours ago, 213374U said:

So then why would I not just play on casual from the start and save time?

 

7 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Yeah the massive pre-buffing needed for many encounters is what got me also choosing the 'drop difficulty all the way down' option instead.

And that is why I’m playing on normal.

Most of the time I only use some buffs, usually Death Ward and the AC bonus spells. Boss battles are a different matter, of course. Then I buff with everything and summon lots of elementals/azatas as cannon fodder, even though it ends up being overkill. Dazzling Display is basically cheating, even with the penalty for using it as a swift action. But sometimes I forget to use it or avoid it so that I won’t have to run after the enemies all over the map. Same with the overpowered Azata Crusade spell that heals and damages everyone. It’s almost like being an Isekai anime character that doesn’t need to fight at all. I leave it for when it will take too long to destroy an enemy’s doomstack.

Btw, my Persuasion is so high that I could probably frighten enemies even on higher difficulties, except when they become immune to fear, like Playful Darkness. My next games will be on higher difficulties though, just like I did with PoE, where I started on normal, went to hard and ended up with two pts in Path of the Damned.

2 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

If I had to hazard a guess I'd say that Pillars plays too slow for my tastes, the design overcorrecred too much away from tpks via fireballs to hew to close to wars of attrition via grazes.

I don't have that much problem with PoE, but I think you nailed it here. I enjoyed the game very much and could play it again, but now I’d rather play Deadfire. I love how it looks and lots of things that work much better than in Owlcat’s games (like being able to click beside a character without selecting it! Or not having to expand and scroll down an enemy's stats page) but I prefer Pathfinder/D&D’s setting and system far more, so I'm more interested in playing WotR a few times, maybe even replay Kingmaker before going back to Eora. Or maybe not, since I did start a second Deadfire pt and stopped halfway through, at level 9. Perhaps I will finish that one after BG3 and my Lich WotR character.

P.S.: I did the mandatory TB battle in the shrine of the three and Elemental Swarm was the last spell I should have cast. The battle took ages. It was past midnight and I was sleepy, which made me take more time to understand some things, making the battle last even longer. Also, it had no music so I had to play Baphomet's theme on youtube or I would have fallen asleep faster than Woljif getting angry when I suggest he should become a Crusader. Yes, my character did that. Her intelligence is only 10 so she thought it would work. Even as a Persuasion check it probably wouldn't, despite it being 89.

Edit: @Gromnir also makes lots of pretty good points about PoE. Muscled Wizards and Intellectual Barbarians definitely don't make sense.

Edited July 15, 2023 by InsaneCommander

[Gromnir]

1 minute ago, InsaneCommander said:

Btw, my Persuasion is so high that I could probably frighten enemies even on higher difficulties, except when they become immune to fear, like Playful Darkness. My next games will be on higher difficulties though, just like I did with PoE, where I started on normal, went to hard and ended up with two pts in Path of the Damned.

playful darkness is not immune to fear effects. however, playful darkness does have greater heroism active at the start o' battle. you need to dispel the critter's greater heroism if you wanna intimidate playful darkness.  

in pnp pathfinder there is actual disagreement as to whether immunity to magical fear effects should provide a defense to intimidation. am suspecting owlcat initial took the "bravery" approach to pathfinder intimidation for wotr, which explains why the wotr vavakia vanguards were functional world beaters in the early release o' the game with only mindless undead and paladins seeming able to resist their intimidation efforts. likewise, playful darkness was not resistant to intimidation for near a year after the initial release o' wotr.

unsolicited advice: if you wanna go the intimidation route, which remains highly effective, be sure to look for greater heroism and the like when fighting bosses. being able to see all opponent buffs is a HUGE player advantage in the crpg version o' wotr.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

With gestalt and datamining I have once again abandoned Lich. I was going to do an Alchemist/Wizard and Grenadier works just fine but....god damn if Reanimator hasn't been living in my head rent free. So I'll either be going to Hyrule engineering school or giving (true) Aeon or Gold Dragon a go while I wait for the new archetypes to drop in the next updates. Time to do some theory crafting to see how a Gold Dragon Shifter goes.

18 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

I don't have that much problem with PoE, but I think you nailed it here. I enjoyed the game very much and could play it again, but now I’d rather play Deadfire. I love how it looks and lots of things that work much better than in Owlcat’s games (like being able to click beside a character without selecting it! Or not having to expand and scroll down an enemy's stats page) but I prefer Pathfinder/D&D’s setting and system far more, so I'm more interested in playing WotR a few times, maybe even replay Kingmaker before going back to Eora. Or maybe not, since I did start a second Deadfire pt and stopped halfway through, at level 9. Perhaps I will finish that one after BG3 and my Lich WotR character.

One thing I will say is that WotR has effectively killed Kingmaker for me. Make of that what you will.

I'm a laughable centrist on PoE/Deadfire, it's a game that I don't despise (and sometimes enjoy) but long stretches playing it wear me out in a way that the Pathcat games don't. Aside from the armor system and double inversion, both of which can go die in a fire, I found Deadfire to be a competently designed game that looks and sounds incredible. However gameplay felt even slower than PoE for me, the storylines are a disjointed mess, and of course there aren't any sea monsters to fite despite that Monsters of the Deadfire book being pure hype. Everytime I go back I end up leaving after a few hours.

But dat armor tho, Deadfire breastplate hands down destroys any piece of armor in an Owlcat game.

[InsaneCommander]

I still wanna play Kingmaker once. Did a CG pt and I would like to see the opposite, a LE character roleplay and kingdom.

32 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

However gameplay felt even slower than PoE for me, the storylines are a disjointed mess, and of course there aren't any sea monsters to fite despite that Monsters of the Deadfire book being pure hype.

I agree with both. There could at least be a polpovir pet!

Edit: The Dismiss Spell in WotR ability is almost enough to bury Kingmaker imo. A pity Owlcat doesn't own the rights anymore, I imagine they would have been able to add lots to the game easily.

Edited July 15, 2023 by InsaneCommander

[HoonDing]

So during those CYOA story events that seemingly involve only the main character, are your party's skill levels applied anyway?

I've passed skill checks that I shouldn't be routinely passing unless by rolling very high everytime

[InsaneCommander]

47 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

So during those CYOA story events that seemingly involve only the main character, are your party's skill levels applied anyway?

I've passed skill checks that I shouldn't be routinely passing unless by rolling very high everytime

Companions take part and in some cases you can even choose who will do the task. But if I'm not crazy, there was at least one event where they checked my character's skill level only. I failed the check and the DC it wasn't that high.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, HoonDing said:

So during those CYOA story events that seemingly involve only the main character, are your party's skill levels applied anyway?

I've passed skill checks that I shouldn't be routinely passing unless by rolling very high everytime

as we noted earlier in the thread, "most" situations is gonna use party scores to check for skill checks. that ain't always the case. is a few outliers.

so spin the wheel to predict which checks is personal v. party.

HA! Good Fun!

[213374U]

25 minutes ago, InsaneCommander said:

Companions take part and in some cases you can even choose who will do the task. But if I'm not crazy, there was at least one event where they checked my character's skill level only. I failed the check and the DC it wasn't that high.

I may be mistaken, but I think companion bonuses sometimes apply even in KC's dreams. The implications are... interesting.

[InsaneCommander]

2 hours ago, 213374U said:

I may be mistaken, but I think companion bonuses sometimes apply even in KC's dreams. The implications are... interesting.

[Sarex]

12 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Well if you want a bad build in PoE 1 just pick Rogue. Trash tier class lmao.

But I don't know if I'd call the PiE gameplay sterile per se, in a lot of ways combat is more dynamic than in Pathcat. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say that Pillars plays too slow for my tastes, the design overcorrecred too much away from tpks via fireballs to hew to close to wars of attrition via grazes. When I think on it I rarely played the games outside of the fast mode, and Eder 1v1'd some stuff for like 2 minutes once.

Pathcat also has (sometimes limited) respec to get away from bad choices and way too many garbage choices. Part of the shortfalls is inheriting the system, but there's a lot of **** choices that I don't think add anything good to the game.

I mean it wasn't dynamic in a good way, at least as far as I can remember. One example of that would be the health system, it's complicated for the sake of being complex and a chore to manage.

As for it being sterile, I'll stand behind that statement. It may not be fair, as their plan was for it to be a low level adventure, but for me there was no dazzle and a feel of magic, or at least being powerful. The items were simple and uninteresting, the setting/world pulled towards low fantasy. All in all, as a package, it felt kind of sterile magic/fantasy wise. Compare that to Owlcat, who even in their first game (kingmaker), went all out, maybe even a little bit too much.

The biggest thing for me is that they leaned in so heavily in to the spiritual successor shtick when pitching the game, so I couldn't ever look at it on its own merit, but always through the prism of the IE games. To be fair to the game, on its own it's probably not bad overall, but when you go in expecting something else it's hard not to fail.

For garbage choices I still think there is something to being able to fail, it makes your success all the more rewarding. Now having said that I do not experiment that much with my builds so I haven't "failed" so far in any of the Owlcat games.

[213374U]

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

For garbage choices I still think there is something to being able to fail, it makes your success all the more rewarding. Now having said that I do not experiment that much with my builds so I haven't "failed" so far in any of the Owlcat games.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Fundamentally, if you want to have good combinations of choices, others need to be bad. That adds flavor and makes it interesting. I like that. However I like being given an option to correct my mistakes other than throwing 50h+ worth of play in the trash because it's where my build belongs and I cannot respec.

The game does have a large number of single choices that, by themselves, are bad. And when combined are downright terrible and will completely gimp your build. That's not so interesting to me and looks more like clutter. I don't think this is Owlcat's fault, though. It has been a long-standing problem -or feature, depending on who you ask- with D&D, but the tabletop experience is quite different.

[kanisatha]

20 hours ago, Sarex said:

Because the gameplay is sterile. There is something to a game having imperfections and being able to fail with your builds (having overpowered builds too). The gameplay doesn't need to be a Swiss watch, it needs to be fun.

More sterile and less fun than D&D gameplay? That's saying a lot to me because I consider D&D gameplay mechanics to be the worst. And by contrast I love the PoE mechanics, especially all the passive abilities, no pre-buffing, and the downgrading of random chance.

[Sarex]

13 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

More sterile and less fun than D&D gameplay?

Well yeah. In your own words:

13 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

the passive abilities, no pre-buffing, and the downgrading of random chance.

Add to that uninteresting items, the low fantasy setting and in my mind you get a more "sterile" gameplay experience.

But as @213374U said:

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

My issue is that the cover box was something else and I couldn't get over that, which is a me problem.

1 hour ago, 213374U said:

However I like being given an option to correct my mistakes other than throwing 50h+ worth of play in the trash because it's where my build belongs and I cannot respec.

But you can respec in WotR (unless you were trying to say something else), I would even say to install toybox as it improves the experience.

[Gorth]

30 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

 no pre-buffing

One thing this casual player miss, is a "macro" function to store a sequence of always used buffs for party members. Didn't BG1 or BG2 have something to that effect, where you could store several spells in a kind of trigger?

 

Simply because it gets tedious when you have to cast the same 25 spells at the beginning of every (they are frequent) encounter.... (slightly exaggerated for effect)

[213374U]

1 hour ago, Gorth said:

One thing this casual player miss, is a "macro" function to store a sequence of always used buffs for party members. Didn't BG1 or BG2 have something to that effect, where you could store several spells in a kind of trigger?

None of the IE games had this as a baked-in feature but, indeed, a number of mods included a component for keybinds to cast buffs by script. Unlike mods like the one linked by @PK htiw klaw eriF those mods were outright cheats as you didn't even need to have the spells prepared. You may be thinking of the Sequencer and Contingency spells in BG2, but those were very limited -so much so that enemies often ran illegal combinations by script- and best used to rapidly fire offensive spells with no casting time rather than buffing.

Edited July 16, 2023 by 213374U

[Gromnir]

5 hours ago, kanisatha said:

More sterile and less fun than D&D gameplay? 

people will twist selves in knots to avoid saying, i hate how my character feels less powerful. many gamers sneer at the munchkin label, so is understandable folks will go to comical lengths to not admit they want moar powhaz. example: poe is hardly low magic. robert e. howard's conan setting? sure. martin's game o' thrones? yup. poe is low magic compared to d&d forgotten realms, but no reasonable person is gonna list eora as low magic. and how many readers o' the hour of the dragon would ever describe the setting as sterile due to lack o' magic and groovy-kewl items? few? any? funny part is, compared to bg, iwd, and ps:t, the 1007 in poe were having more developed histories and more unique powers, in addition to a crafting system which meant you wouldn't need ditch a nifty item after a few levels 'cause it were no longer powerful enough to be worth equipping. poe were more dynamic by far insofar as magic gear compared to the ie games referenced in the kickstarter... which am gonna repeat again were only bg, iwd and ps:t. 

speaking o' dynamic, note how those qualities you see as positives in favor o' poe, features meant to exorcise mindless ritual and stoopid rng reloads, is reimagined by sarex as examples o' sterility... which makes perfect sense if you change definition o' sterile to mean that your character feels less powerful. can't prebuff making self immune to near any potential effect as well as raising hit chance/accuracy to levels is impossible to miss. can't reroll a few timez to get the ideal result from a dialogue or skill check. etc.

suggestion: reread "sterile" as a condemnation o' the relative poe character weakness compared to expectations one has when playing d&d or pathfinder titles. 

however, keep in mind we ain't saying there is anything wrong with players wanting to indulge their power fantasies through a crpg avatar. the most broken aspect o' wotr is the mythics, but am hardly surprised when we read or view online critiques o' wotr which opine that the mythics were the best part o' wotr, after all, the mythics make your knight commander a unique ÜBERMENSCH. wotr, ps:t and bg went all-in on making the protagonist unique and powerful... although edwin had serious advantages no bg mage could replicate, which predictable led to complaints. in poe and deadfire, the watcher were unlikely to be noticeable superior (heroic) compared to companions and a few o' the companions could be objective better at certain roles than could a watcher. example: pallegina had arguable the best paladin powha for those wishing to do damage. we read more than one post on the poe/deadfire boards which observed the existence o' pallegina made players not wanna play a paladin. regardless, without prebuffing and various degenerative gameplay exploits, poe characters arguable felt less powerful, particular as the system were new and often opaque which meant poe players didn't realize just how strongk they could be. didn't matter though 'cause for a poe protagonist it were only possible to have a couple buffs on a party and frequent a good outcome against a powerful opponent were reliable grazes... feel weak were the problem.

obsidian never claimed poe would be an idealized bg 2.5 or bg3, but such were what many expected. am suspecting for many the "can't quite articulate," dissatisfaction with poe is largely tied to an aspect few would ever wish to admit: player powha... and is nothing wrong with that, but few will admit. instead we get complaints o' sterility and swiss watches. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited July 16, 2023 by Gromnir

[Sarex]

11 hours ago, Sarex said:

but for me there was no dazzle and a feel of magic, or at least being powerful. The items were simple and uninteresting, the setting/world pulled towards low fantasy. All in all, as a package, it felt kind of sterile magic/fantasy wise. Compare that to Owlcat, who even in their first game (kingmaker), went all out, maybe even a little bit too much.

 

[Gromnir]

2 minutes ago, Sarex said:

 

so why wrap up in vague sterility and swiss watch observations? "towards" low fantasy? *chuckle* serious?

is not gonna emasculate you to admit the real issue is the powha gulf... though if this is your roundabout way o' doing so, then good enough. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Sarex]

I didn't, I feel all those things are true. Feeling powerful is one part of the equation and I thought I stated that pretty clearly. On its own it's not going to keep me playing the game.

I don't know why you take these statements as personal attacks. I think most of the people here, or at least the regulars, wanted to like the game and wanted Obs to succeed and make more games. But wanting something and it being so are not the same. No one here is attacking people who did like it, or trying to invalidate their opinions.

A question for you. Why do you always feel the need to belittle and offend anyone who you disagree with? Does that make you feel powerful?

[Gromnir]

35 minutes ago, Sarex said:

I don't know why you take these statements as personal attacks.

irony? we don't take personal, but you making the accusation is indeed trying to shift away from discussion o' game issues to personal. bad form mate.

wanna discuss how wotr or kingmaker, games which is so generic they could be set in greyhawk or forgotten realms with only minor adjustments, is somehow counter examples to the sterility o' eora and its take on zelazny's lord of light + animancy? am admitted baffled by the suggestion d&d/pathfinder repetitive prebuffing ritual, which may literal be eliminated via mods, is also evidence o' poe sterility. kinda bass ackwards, no? how 'bout explaining just what makes eora "towards" low fantasy or low magic? am not sure if there is an objective measure for what makes a magic item interesting, but we will discuss such and the aforementioned all day, even if you don't like when we call out obvious misstatements or obfuscation.

however, if all you wanna do is bemoan what a meanie is Gromnir, then...

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 16, 2023 by Gromnir

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

12 hours ago, Sarex said:

I mean it wasn't dynamic in a good way, at least as far as I can remember. One example of that would be the health system, it's complicated for the sake of being complex and a chore to manage.

As for it being sterile, I'll stand behind that statement. It may not be fair, as their plan was for it to be a low level adventure, but for me there was no dazzle and a feel of magic, or at least being powerful. The items were simple and uninteresting, the setting/world pulled towards low fantasy. All in all, as a package, it felt kind of sterile magic/fantasy wise. Compare that to Owlcat, who even in their first game (kingmaker), went all out, maybe even a little bit too much.

The biggest thing for me is that they leaned in so heavily in to the spiritual successor shtick when pitching the game, so I couldn't ever look at it on its own merit, but always through the prism of the IE games. To be fair to the game, on its own it's probably not bad overall, but when you go in expecting something else it's hard not to fail.

For garbage choices I still think there is something to being able to fail, it makes your success all the more rewarding. Now having said that I do not experiment that much with my builds so I haven't "failed" so far in any of the Owlcat games.

I don't think any of that on it's own makes the game sterile tbh. It's not like I didn't feel powerful as a Cipher (before the nerfs) and a Watcher....but I did feel a more than a little bored at many points throughout the game. I'm just going to say the combat mechanics and dry text bombs made the game feel like it dragged on, and there wasn't enough things that were funny or silly to kind of add texture. And the health/stamina in PoE sucked ass ngl.

As the numbersman wrote I think there's a difference between relatively worse choices and stuff that is just garbage on it's own terms, like Assassin. WotR has too much stuff like that in it and it does amount to clutter you have to navigate around in order to get to the stuff you're actually going to use.

21 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

There could at least be a polpovir pet!

"All the creatures you've read about in this book are nothing compared to the Polpovir. Barely the size of a man, what they lack in size and strength, they make up for in numbers and terrifying viciousness. Their lower halves are a mass of tentacles like an octopus or squid, but more numerous. The tentacles are long, black whips with suction cups on the underside and small thorny barbs on the top. The sheer number of tentacles gives them frightening speed when walking on land, pulling themselves forward almost as fast as a running horse. While they vaguely resemble a human from the waist up, any extended examination proves how wrong that assumption is. Long, stringy black hair falls from the top of their heads to cover a face taken directly from a nightmare. A wide, gaping mouth, cuts across the bottom of its head from ear to ear, full of wicked dagger-like teeth. Two large round eyes are sunken into its head, black as coal, shining with a malevolent fire. A small antenna protrudes from the middle of its forehead, ending in a small nodule that can glow with an eerie blue light. One can imagine a sailor on the deck of his ship at night, looking out across the black water, blood freezing as countless lights appear beneath the surface, rising toward him as the Polpovir swarm upward. Because they seem to be more octopus than man, they can collapse in on themselves, fitting into spaces no person should be able to. The smallest crack in a hull, the slightest separation between boards offers them entrance. It is not unknown for them to slaughter an entire crew from hold up to deck by infiltrating the ship from underneath. Fortunately they do not seem to have spread too far outside of the archipelago, but there may come a day when Polpovir attacks become commonplace."

Absolutely not, any polpovir is getting burned to ash just to be sure it's dead.

22 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

Time to do some theory crafting to see how a Gold Dragon Shifter goes.

Not as well as I thought. Shifter Aspects are solid and Shifter's Fury works but I didn't get that x3 crit multiplier that you get with Shifter polymorphing. It's a 10 attack per round (before haste or items) with monk AC that can hold it's own though.

[Gromnir]

9 minutes ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

As the numbersman wrote I think there's a difference between relatively worse choices and stuff that is just garbage on it's own terms, like Assassin. WotR has too much stuff like that in it and it does amount to clutter you have to navigate around in order to get to the stuff you're actually going to use.

rare agree with kp, but this observation is valid. pathfinder, and owlcat's particular take on pathfinder, has so much utter trash spells, feats and even classes that it is easy to see why players unfamiliar with pathfinder would/could become frustrated. how many times has people in this thread alone been cautioned that their announced weapon or feat choice were objective bad? more than a couple.  nevertheless, when the owlcat boards were still relative active the groupthink reflexive and beyond reason defended the existence o' trash as a feature o' wotr. unlike poe, wotr were not balanced into sterility, or somesuch.

as for health/stamina... we personal don't get most complaints other than the fact it were different, but sometimes different is enough to make it unpalatable. 

so, no, stamina/health were not added just to create a more complex alternative to d&d health... and you not need read very far in the linked thread to see the developers were genuine dismayed that people were confused by stamina/health. were multiple thematic reasons for health/stamina as well as a stated goal to eliminate the perceived need for a healbot in the party. 

however, it don't matter what were the goals o' the developers if such didn't work with players. for Gromnir, health/stamina didn't go far enough as we were o' the opinion magic casting shoulda' also had a stamina cost which would prevented constitution from being ignored by casters and woulda' helped balance the relative op status o' priests in the original game. converse, most folks just never embraced the notion that health were not ordinarily addressed by magic and mundane rest were the only way to replenish that derived attribute... too different from other crpgs even if it weren't genuine complex. regardless, few were the purchasers o' poe who were happy or even satisfied with health/stamina, so am thinking it is fair to call it a fail even if the reasons it were a fail were different from individual and regardless o' the fact obsidian were not implementing just to punish players with unnecessary complexity.

HA! Good Fun!

 

[InsaneCommander]

Meanwhile, in the Isekai mod:

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 minute ago, InsaneCommander said:

Meanwhile, in the Isekai mod:

"Summon Calamity"

[majestic]

1 hour ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

"All the creatures you've read about in this book are nothing compared to the Polpovir. Barely the size of a man, what they lack in size and strength, they make up for in numbers and terrifying viciousness. Their lower halves are a mass of tentacles like an octopus or squid, but more numerous. The tentacles are long, black whips with suction cups on the underside and small thorny barbs on the top. The sheer number of tentacles gives them frightening speed when walking on land, pulling themselves forward almost as fast as a running horse. While they vaguely resemble a human from the waist up, any extended examination proves how wrong that assumption is. Long, stringy black hair falls from the top of their heads to cover a face taken directly from a nightmare. A wide, gaping mouth, cuts across the bottom of its head from ear to ear, full of wicked dagger-like teeth. Two large round eyes are sunken into its head, black as coal, shining with a malevolent fire. A small antenna protrudes from the middle of its forehead, ending in a small nodule that can glow with an eerie blue light. One can imagine a sailor on the deck of his ship at night, looking out across the black water, blood freezing as countless lights appear beneath the surface, rising toward him as the Polpovir swarm upward. Because they seem to be more octopus than man, they can collapse in on themselves, fitting into spaces no person should be able to. The smallest crack in a hull, the slightest separation between boards offers them entrance. It is not unknown for them to slaughter an entire crew from hold up to deck by infiltrating the ship from underneath. Fortunately they do not seem to have spread too far outside of the archipelago, but there may come a day when Polpovir attacks become commonplace."

Bruno is in Deadfire?