Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Owlcat's next Pathfinder RPG - now in ALPHA

When Wildcards first came out Ranger Tony got so excited he made a party of six Kineticists. Somehow though he forgot to include any Kinetic Knights so got reamed so badly he barely made it out of Old Sycamore.



Painful to watch.

The WIS-based one looks like the best one of all (since caster stats are hard to boost and you end up getting +6 WIS) but it doesn’t give you WIS to CMB like it’s supposed to.

 

Here's a silly Motherless Psychokineticist with five Trips at lvl 9:



Didn't get Crane Wing there since she was attacked from range.


The bonus Psychokineticist gets from Burn is coded as Alchemical, so doesn't stack with Cognatogen.


This was Water/Air straight Psychokineticist, where you can see he's getting his CMB from DEX instead of WIS. You can see his Greater Bull Rush triggering AoOs for everyone.



Slick is the infinite Grease from Water Element, which you can see is pretty good vs Trolls and Giants with it's nice fat DC. Make Harrim a Psychokineticist and go off.

 

Just finished the tavern-defense encounter in the alpha for the first time, quite a fun fight. I have been a big fan of the TB mod for Kingmaker, but I feel like having to play this encounter in RTWP made it feel very hectic in a good way, since I feel like that fight was designed to make me spread my party thin.
Definitely some encounter design from Owlcat as far as I'm concerned.

 

some details plox? are there more mobs on higher difficulties?

 

I believe mobs are bigger on higher difficulties, yes. It's an adjustable setting in the difficulty menu.
To keep it vague so as not to spoil anyone who doesn't have the alpha, the fight involves defending a courtyard from demons and cultists. You have NPC assistance from archers on the rooftops (which you can access yourself) and guards in the courtyard.
The buildings are destructible by enemy alchemists with fire bombs and the enemy mobs infiltrate the courtyard at multiple points including the rooftops so you have to run around all over the place plugging holes.
I felt like I was getting my ass kicked based on the number of NPC archers getting killed but the quest giver said we had "minimal losses" so either it's a bug or I did better than expected.

 

In general, there is difficulty option that increases the number of enemies, so up to a point yeah, increasing difficulty = more mob.

For the encounter: basically enemies having multiple entries points rushing you at the same time. Imagine a siege where the defender (you and some weak arse NPCs) are very very outnumbered. Suddenly instead of the walls protecting you, it becomes enemies' point of entry and you, in middle of the walls are in a fucking killbox from enemy archers firing you from above and their soldier coming down.

Then the gate blew up with alchemists and demons entering and smashing your face.

It is a good encounter which only works in RtwP. It will not have nearly half the urgencies in TB. I think there are fairly few of them in PfK (Stag Lord final battle, especially if you don't systematically decimate all the soldiers first; saving Barth from trolls with his retarded arse casting spells and trigger 4 AoO every round; sieging Iroveti last stand with the fucking archers coming and firing you from the wall while you are moving below (and maybe the fucking Troll general as well if you don't kill her); Codex quest with teleporting Devil archers). I certainly hope Owlcat makes more of these encounters in WoR. RtwP is at its best when a lot of things are happening in parallel and with the player having to split attention and resources to tackle them.

 

the additional mob types are more of the same or better versions?

 

I'm not sure, I've been playing on "Core" for the Alpha (the 2nd-hardest one, the settings are listed differently in the alpha than in KM). I've mostly been running into 2 tiers of cultists enemies ("Cultist" and "Neophyte") and 3 tiers of demon, with the occasional tougher demon thrown in.
So the extra mobs are at least thematically consistent with the original mobs, because Core has extra mobs enabled and nothing stuck out as being out of place to me.

 

, the devs are really not interested in reading buttmad rants about the difficulty from the great pnp warriors this time.

 

I'll be honest and say that I didn't try the lower difficulty yet to check on enemy compositions.

The "Core" difficulty option is 2nd hardest difficulty in the Alpha (the hardest being, well, "Hard") and it has the mob setting at "More enemies" or something like that. There is no enemy stats buff on that difficulty and it frankly feels and plays right (I am no Desiderius or Pink Eye who are good enough at the game to play Unfair consistently in PfK).

One of the simplest enemy strategy that's used in the Alpha is having some meatshields holding you off while their spellcaster are buffing themselves or spam debuff/damaging spells. I would reckon reducing enemy numbers would reduce the number of meatshields or something. Sometimes there are 2 Cleric or Spellcaster in the backline so maybe it will also reduce the number of backline enemies when appropriate. This is all assumptions tho.

 

do the enemy mages use dispell often? do they react to the buffs you have up with their debuffs?

 

I've been facing quite a few mobs with multiple Neophyte Archers and Sharpshooters, I feel like if I was on a lower setting it would make sense to drop some of those.

I'm only level 5 in the Alpha so nobody has really easy access to Dispel, I assume the same is true of most of the enemies I'm fighting right now. As I mentioned before though they do seem to try combat maneuvers more frequently, and the archers seem to shoot at my casters more once they get into range.

 

I'd also like to know what's up with the race poll. The foxes must not win.

 

It’s definitely more difficult, and the knob for more AI abilities hasn’t even been implemented yet. Enemy stealth/invis is far more of a thing so you’ll have rangers/slayers decloaking in your rear and summons mysteriously appearing.

For what it’s worth, I don’t play Unfair in P:K for lvls 1-11 either (I’ll turn it on for testing because that’s only fair). Core is plenty challenging (probably because you don’t have a Freebooter or Bard).

 

Can the foxes become humans with fox ears? Because if so, I may have to become a race traitor.

 

Cat girls are clearly the hotter furry race

 

Core seems pretty fair to me. I really got my ass kicked a few times when I wasn't on top of things (especially in the Market Square, but also at the house party and I believe the Pitaxian Wine Cellar).
I'm also playing a vanilla Magus (and a Cavalier but haven't gotten as far with him yet) and was late picking up Ember and Daeren so I was lacking some abilities that would've made the Market Square a bit easier.
Really not sure what to do buildwise with a lot of the companions but I think it'll be fun to figure out.

 

Since you get them all three levels in it’s going to be hard to beat just staying pure. Ward is a decent Hex since there aren’t so many +2 Rings and Capes floating around and it doesn’t have the 24 hr limitation. Looks like it’s going to be hard to beat spamming Slumber in Ember since it’s unaffected by Spell Resistance, which is unfortunate since her Curse makes you want to be nuking. Maybe they’ll fix it so that more mobs are immune.

Hampering Hex is like a bad Freebooter’s Bane, but it gets the job done. Camellia can end up with a decent AC and Enemy Bane is enough to make you want to be attacking with her (there will probably be an agile Rapier she can use).

Will probably use Second Mystery Nature to give Darren a Mount to overcome his stagger problem. Maybe spam Mythic Dazzling Display and Heal in combat? He doesn’t come with any ranged feats and his seven STR means he’d probably have to go DEX-based and you’re already flooded with companions doing that.

Will be interesting.

 

Did OwlCat added Void, Aeter and Wood to Kineticists?

 

This is the main horror of all anti-furry rat voters.

 

That's weeb shit though not furry shit. (i hope)

 

Dammit I am storming the Grey Garrison with a party that has no Communal Resist/Protection from Elements and there have been two fights so far that are completely handing my ass to me.

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It's awesome

 

Yeah, playing without a Bard was like missing a hand.

 

No Bard, no Cleric (Ember + Daeren + Seelah compensate in a lot of ways but I find the lack of prepared-casters a bit limiting), nobody with 3rd level spells in my party... compared to Chapter 2 in Kingmaker it's a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

 

Once the Sprigganknight showed up, Seelah hit the bench.