Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

[mediocrepoet]

I think it is Accomplished Sneak Attacker.

Yeah I took that, still had to level Vivi up to like 3 to meet that criteria for AT.

Why in the nine hells are you mixing Vivisectionist and Arcane Trickster?

Because if you just keep it straight vivi, you end up with a good character.

 

[Desiderius]

Accomplished Sneak Attacker is bad.

Chip damage compared to nukes, Vitals, etc.

 

[Desiderius]

Arcane Bombs do scale with levels.

Gives solid action econ to save casts I guess. Never played it but made sense when he explained it IIRC.

 

[Haplo]

Accomplished Sneak Attacker is bad.

Chip damage compared to nukes, Vitals, etc.

It is good to access AT with just 1 level of a sneak attack class.

You seem dead set on trying the most exotic class variants.
Trouble is, many of those don't work like you think / hope.

 

[Haplo]

Kinnie needs Spell Pen for Energy Blasts (that target Touch AC) but not Physical Blasts (that target regular AC).

I wouldn't recommend Kinnie until you get a better feel for the game.

I dunno, she seems to be doing good work on challenging in the roguelike mode, so I guess I'm doing something right? Its the dark elementalist subtype too.

Oh boy, another brilliant archetype choice...

 

[Haplo]

Oh maybe. Don't you need dazzling display first? Throwing dazzling display on bowmen and mages feel weird for me.

No, you don't. Its an 8th level class ability, does not have prerequisites.

After the Dazzling Display Full Round fix/nerf, bard's Dirge of Doom is vastly better.

 

[Yosharian]

How do you survive challenging? I'm trying to do roguelike mode on that difficulty (after successfully killing the Captor on normal) and I found that there's a ridiculous difficulty increase. Not only do enemies hit harder they have higher AC too, and level 1 adventurers can't hit worth of shit. It took my paladin and druid like 20 seconds to kill a single goblin once, and this is with buffs on.

Look, I played on Hard mode (anyway, the one just before Unfair) and did it. Nothing was impossible.

And if I managed to do it, you can too. I'm weak and shit at games. SO you can do it. Use more buffs and things like these. At the beginning I hated Linzi but, to be honest, her spells and chants are the most buffing thing in the game. They are game changing.

Anyway, generally speaking, on Hard/challenging mode, you need to level up before you can do some quests. You cannot just run here and there and do whatever you want to do as you can in other games/difficulty mode. But it's absolutely doable, trust me

I don't like Linzi either, but that's what mercs are for. It's probably better to take a sensei merc anyway as opposed to a bard, because he is pretty ridiculous with what he can provide.
In my last Roguelike run I had a sensei in my party and here's a brief list of the shit he can get up to :
- Give everyone barkskin
- Give everyone immediately to reflex partial effects
- Give everyone Disease immunity
- Give everyone poison immunity
- Give everyone spell resistance that scales with his level + 10
- Bard buff song

Sensei's are basically better bards who can melee. It's pretty ridiculous.

Bards have access to Dirge of Doom. You want Bards for that cause Shatter Defense is king in Kingmaker. And something every character needs to have ASAP. Having it makes your characters actually able to hit people.

Bards also have access to heroism and haste which will help you a lot.

If hitting things is a challenge for you during that period, sure, but well-built characters don't usually have this issue

A lot of the midgame enemies are not harder to hit, rather they're chunky and hit hard themselves

So it's debatable whether it's really optimal to take a bard over a sensei just to get that midgame power spike

Furthermore, Dirge of Doom is not usable alongside the standard Bard song, you have to choose one, so using DoD implies the loss of the attack bonus from that song. So you're losing AB to gain AB from another source, AND you have to invest a lot of feats to gain access to Shatter Defences on all your melee characters, which you WILL do eventually but doing it early on can have a significant opportunity cost.

The net gains can be minimal. Another aspect is that the amount of AC enemies lose from being flat-footed isn't as significant early on compared to post-level 15. And at level 15 onwards you get auto-shaken anyway from Frightful Aspect.

The real reason to bring a bard is to destroy early- to midgame enemies with Enchantment spells, but that advantage evaporates once you start hitting a lot of Undead or other enemies that ignore those spells.

There's also the issue that Sensei brings Mass Extra Attack, which increases the amount of attacks everyone does and that's effectively similar to having a higher AB. There's also other unique things that a Sensei can do which others have already highlighted.

So no, it isn't as clear-cut as you say.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh maybe. Don't you need dazzling display first? Throwing dazzling display on bowmen and mages feel weird for me.

No, you don't. Its an 8th level class ability, does not have prerequisites.

After the Dazzling Display Full Round fix/nerf, bard's Dirge of Doom is vastly better.

I meant for shattered defenses. I know DoD is a class ability.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I think it is Accomplished Sneak Attacker.

Yeah I took that, still had to level Vivi up to like 3 to meet that criteria for AT.

Why in the nine hells are you mixing Vivisectionist and Arcane Trickster?

To experiment and see how cognatogen works as a spell buffer. As I wrote earlier, the rogue like mode is for experimentation.

 

[Cael]

Sensei has the Mass version of Restoration without the requirement for material components, IIRC. Mid-late game, you'll really want that.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Kinnie needs Spell Pen for Energy Blasts (that target Touch AC) but not Physical Blasts (that target regular AC).

I wouldn't recommend Kinnie until you get a better feel for the game.

I dunno, she seems to be doing good work on challenging in the roguelike mode, so I guess I'm doing something right? Its the dark elementalist subtype too.

Oh boy, another brilliant archetype choice...

It's not bad though? I'd argue that it's a good introduction to kine because DE doesn't suffer from that burn self-damage mechanic. That said, that soul power ability doesn't seem to be working properly; I can only ever heal one point of burn per cast, even if I'm standing on a pile of corpses.

 

[Haplo]

Kinnie needs Spell Pen for Energy Blasts (that target Touch AC) but not Physical Blasts (that target regular AC).

I wouldn't recommend Kinnie until you get a better feel for the game.

I dunno, she seems to be doing good work on challenging in the roguelike mode, so I guess I'm doing something right? Its the dark elementalist subtype too.

Oh boy, another brilliant archetype choice...

It's not bad though? I'd argue that it's a good introduction to kine because DE doesn't suffer from that burn self-damage mechanic. That said, that soul power ability doesn't seem to be working properly; I can only ever heal one point of burn per cast, even if I'm standing on a pile of corpses.

Yeah, except you can't unload as much as a regular Kine.
In addition, the Burn is actually a double-sided sword.

On one hand, it does increase the risk. On the other hand, it also superbuffs you via Elemental Overflow bonuses. And a Dark Elementalist is neutered in this aspect. Particularly for combats that matter more, where you'd often want to rest before a boss encounter.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Hmm, so it's safer, but also a lot weaker. Seems like a fair trade off for an introduction.
I am liking kines overall. I think it's a cool class. I want to try a knight next, which seem more melee focused.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Dark Elementalist never worked for me in Kingmaker, but its soulburn ability worked in WotR. I think it's because it has an HD requirement for corpses.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Maybe they fixed the code for it in WoTR.
In Kingmaker you're supposed to heal as much burn as the total number of HD from corpses, if I understand right, but it only ever recovers one for me.
I'll try casting it in combat because maybe there's a certain time window to use it, but it's pretty awkward.

So it turns out Freedom of Movement and Featherstep does not protect again Mud Golem's knockdown aura. I have no idea why.

 

[Average Manatee]

The only kineticist you should play in kingmaker is the no-archetype one. All the others are some level of nerf to the class (not that this prevents everything that gets deadly earth from being OP).

Cognatogen requires level 2 IIRC? You can take it I guess for +2 DC but you should be taking that for levels 19 and 20 once you have all your spells unlocked, otherwise delaying spell progression is an awful, awful idea. And your 19th and 20th levels are incredibly irrelevant to your build since all the difficulty is around levels 1-8.

Arcane trickster is alright, 1 lost level of progression isn't build killing, but damage spells are still kinda not the thing you want to focus on unless you have another full arcane caster covering buffs and CCs.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, alchemist gets cog at level 2. What's interesting is that it stacks with Fox's Cunning, as they are different bonuses. So cog + cunning gives you a +4 bonus to your spells for like nothing.

 

[Desiderius]

Kinnie needs Spell Pen for Energy Blasts (that target Touch AC) but not Physical Blasts (that target regular AC).

I wouldn't recommend Kinnie until you get a better feel for the game.

I dunno, she seems to be doing good work on challenging in the roguelike mode, so I guess I'm doing something right? Its the dark elementalist subtype too.

Oh boy, another brilliant archetype choice...

It's not bad though? I'd argue that it's a good introduction to kine because DE doesn't suffer from that burn self-damage mechanic. That said, that soul power ability doesn't seem to be working properly; I can only ever heal one point of burn per cast, even if I'm standing on a pile of corpses.

Yeah, except you can't unload as much as a regular Kine.
In addition, the Burn is actually a double-sided sword.

On one hand, it does increase the risk. On the other hand, it also superbuffs you via Elemental Overflow bonuses. And a Dark Elementalist is neutered in this aspect. Particularly for combats that matter more, where you'd often want to rest before a boss encounter.

Dark Elementalist has (a lot) more staying power. Once it’s charged up with the soul sucks it’s always on in a way that other Kinnies aren’t IIRC.

Maybe I have that backwards lol. Been a long time since I played Kanerah.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah, alchemist gets cog at level 2. What's interesting is that it stacks with Fox's Cunning, as they are different bonuses. So cog + cunning gives you a +4 bonus to your spells for like nothing.

Except playing the whole game drained of two levels in your casting class.

 

[Average Manatee]

Dark Elementalist has (a lot) more staying power. Once it’s charged up with the soul sucks it’s always on in a way that other Kinnies aren’t IIRC.

Maybe I have that backwards lol. Been a long time since I played Kanerah.

Dark Elementalist fully charged up has the same power blasts as regular kineticist with full burn. The advantage is that you don't lose the HP from burn (which doesn't matter in 99% of circumstances since you should be a ranged character). The disadvantage is that its only active after the first few fights each day. Additionally the DE stats you need are DEX/INT while base kineticist is DEX/CON. INT is better for skill points (and Kanerah can take very nicely take advantage of both her skills and the other girl's skills by swapping constantly, so they can cover almost everything), but the problem is that most INT boosters are helms and wearing one of those means you can't also wear the kineticist diadem.

Yeah, alchemist gets cog at level 2. What's interesting is that it stacks with Fox's Cunning, as they are different bonuses. So cog + cunning gives you a +4 bonus to your spells for like nothing.

Yeah, that's how all different type bonuses work. The problem is all the spells you lost, you're effectively a level -2 caster, losing a whole level of spells, spells on all previous levels, and power from those spells based on your caster level.

 

[Haplo]

The only kineticist you should play in kingmaker is the no-archetype one. All the others are some level of nerf to the class (not that this prevents everything that gets deadly earth from being OP).

The Wis Kine is kind of good for a melee Kine with a monk dip AFAIK.

Kinetic Knight in principle is a downgrade, however it can be a decent tank, including a good class for Valerie.

Arcane trickster is alright, 1 lost level of progression isn't build killing, but damage spells are still kinda not the thing you want to focus on unless you have another full arcane caster covering buffs and CCs.

Arcane Trickster is a pretty great class, like Octavia can attest. Gets a lot of value from low level spells and even Cantrips.

 

[Average Manatee]

The Wis Kine is kind of good for a melee Kine with a monk dip AFAIK.

A melee kine (i.e. a bad kine), to be fair.

Arcane Trickster is a pretty great class, like Octavia can attest.

For at least the first 10 levels of the game I would rather have +1 caster level on her by far. Past that the difficulty drops off a cliff, and even then there's just too many enemies with too much HP for damage spells to be utilized constantly in battles.

 

[Haplo]

Arcane Trickster is a pretty great class, like Octavia can attest.
For at least the first 10 levels of the game I would rather have +1 caster level on her by far. Past that the difficulty drops off a cliff, and even then there's just too many enemies with too much HP for damage spells to be utilized constantly in battles.

Well, there were times I wished she had maxed caster level. Mainly when I was waiting for CL 13 and Legendary Proportions.
But in general I strongly believe that having her meaningfully contribute in pretty much every fight, including trash mob fights, far outweights that.

 

[Average Manatee]

Better, more, and longer buffs don't do that?

Dealing like 15 damage per turn with cantrips is kind of a joke compared to the rest of the party

 

[Haplo]

Better, more, and longer buffs don't do that?

Dealing like 15 damage per turn with cantrips is kind of a joke compared to the rest of the party

Its more then 15 damage, unless she rolls poorly (depending on level, of course). Gives her an active role, at least. And makes spells like Scorching Ray or Battering Blast actually effective.
And eventually Impromptu Surprise Ice Storm is very neat. Or Surprise Stormbolts.