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

[Average Manatee]

Skills and rogue utility. I mean, at least try to think first.

It has no rogue utility and you have 6 party members to cover skills. These are not benefits of AT. Wizard already has enough skill points to cover everything in their area and more while Sorc has charisma to cover persuasion which is by far the strongest MC skill.

Your full SA is added to each touch attack, so at Level 12 your Sorching Ray is 3(4d6+5d6). That's huge

It's really not that huge.

You, level 12: 94.5 average damage, doable 4 times per rest.
Amiri, level 5:

Level 5 Amiri vs. the Stag Lord boss fight w/ CotW

Spoiler

I count 566 damage there. Doable indefinitely. Granted this is including CotW changes and crits.

Doubling the damage of ray attacks is more a sign that ray attacks are a joke pre-hellfire.

 

[Haplo]

I'd never say AT is bad, but its far from optimal in most situations and taking advantage of it forces Octavia into side-chick territory when it comes to arcane casting because you do basically need a full dedicated arcane buffer in this game.

I strongly disagree here. Octavia AT is absolutely fine as the main party arcane caster. I was extremely happy with her performance as such.

 

[Haplo]

Surprise Spells apply to ALL HP damage spells, including Chain Lightning. Think about that for the second when you start fighting against trach mobs.

The thing about Arcane Trickster is that there is literally nothing stopping you from using Sorcerer instead of Wizard. Sure, you are 1 level behind, but having used a Lawful Evil Arcane Trickster (Arcana), I can say it is still a ton of fun.

7d6 is 24 expected damage. That’s fine but not game breaking.

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

 

[Desiderius]

For real tho, this game is not something you need OMEGA OPTIMIZE in. So long your build thematically make sense and you have fun playing it by all means. In Hard nearly anything can work still after you are Level 6/7 so long you don't do some stupid shit like having a Cleric 2/Fighter 2/Ranger 2 or some shit like that.

In the term of pure optimization sure AT might not all be that good but it works as a concept if you want. Sorcerer AT is awful due to losing levels of spell progression vs Wizard AT but it is a 6 men party game. You can very well have another arcane caster in the team for buffing/CC duties using their actually high level spells while your Sorc AT use metamagic and metamagic wands to blast shit out. You can treat Sorc AT more like a rogue (hell Octavia with all the Sneak Attack Dice and a bit of buffing + decent equipment can shoot trash mob to death with a decent bow, you don't always need to use your precious Ray Touch spells) than Arcane caster. You yourself can be a Wizard and do the high level shit.

There is a difference between "This build is utter garbage", "This is playable but not optimum", "This is some ultra good build that will make Desi and Haplo blush". You don't need to do the build always on the last one.

I am sure that the idiot solves all traps and stuff by throwing the animal companion at it as well. The guy is a joke and has been for years. he has no idea how to play games for fun. He only goes for what he believes to be optimum and if the rules doesn't support it, he demands that the rules be ignored or changed. What an utter joke of a waste of oxygen.

Why are you bringing InEffective into this?

 

[Desiderius]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

That’s a bug that’s been cleaned up in dribs and drabs.

 

[Max Damage]

It's been a long while since I finished Kingmaker, I just remember Octavia doing shitton of damage in last act while also stunning more reliably than Kalikke, I barely switched her out most of the game.

 

[Desiderius]

For real tho, this game is not something you need OMEGA OPTIMIZE in. So long your build thematically make sense and you have fun playing it by all means. In Hard nearly anything can work still after you are Level 6/7 so long you don't do some stupid shit like having a Cleric 2/Fighter 2/Ranger 2 or some shit like that.

In the term of pure optimization sure AT might not all be that good but it works as a concept if you want. Sorcerer AT is awful due to losing levels of spell progression vs Wizard AT but it is a 6 men party game. You can very well have another arcane caster in the team for buffing/CC duties using their actually high level spells while your Sorc AT use metamagic and metamagic wands to blast shit out. You can treat Sorc AT more like a rogue (hell Octavia with all the Sneak Attack Dice and a bit of buffing + decent equipment can shoot trash mob to death with a decent bow, you don't always need to use your precious Ray Touch spells) than Arcane caster. You yourself can be a Wizard and do the high level shit.

There is a difference between "This build is utter garbage", "This is playable but not optimum", "This is some ultra good build that will make Desi and Haplo blush". You don't need to do the build always on the last one.

Getting your abilities on time, especially game-changing abilities like Surprise Spells that reward patiently developing your character over long stretches of the game, is probably the most important factor in player enjoyment of the game.

That’s why I’m so down on things like extraneous dips that delay that. Sorc AT doubly delays spell levels and makes metamagic (the other factor in getting good nuke damage) harder to use. Rods aren’t as good in P:K where rest is at more of a premium and are at their best *combined* with metamagic.

 

[Average Manatee]

Correct. If you can survive levels 1-8 in this game then 12-20 are a cakewalk. If you have to argue that a build gets good past level 10 then you are admitting that it sucks for the part of the game that your build power most matters for. Especially for spellcasters, getting certain spells (especially haste) ASAP is so important that it almost overrides every other factor in consideration. The only reason sorcerers can be considered comparable to wizards in the early game is due to Sylvan getting a pet.

 

[Optimist]

I wanted to play Kingmaker since it was released, but combination of it being a fairly long game, releasing in a very buggy state nad most of my gaming being done on a laptop that I only recently upgraded made it so I only completed it yesterday. All in all, I had a lot of fun, and am very happy with what I got. The amount of content was amazing, and I was positively surprised with the quality of the writing and gameplay being on a fairly stable level throughout the story. I'm not saying that the writing was always amazing, and that the challenges remained fresh throughout, but combination of what was there gave me a comfort-food fantasy romp I've been itching for since... well, since playing the NWN 2 modules, I guess (D:OSes pale in comparison). Good stuff. I guess the game being based on PF helped a lot; I grew up on a steady diet of DnD 3.5 splatbooks, so the whole experience was very nostalgic.

Despite the timelines and the feeling of urgency being a bit annoying at times, I appreciated them being there. Honestly, there was no moment you'd actually be in danger of losing to timed events if you paid any attention to what you were doing, but being on a clock greatly added to the exploration layer where you had to manage your time to get everywhere you wanted to go. It also made playing non-CoDzilla casters a bit less trivial, I guess. I went with a very simple character of pure scion-Magus, due to early 00's cool factor of being able to shank a dude when you shock a dude, but slightly regretted not doing a Feyspeaker druid. I wanted to focus on Charisma for my MC, but initially assumed that the class that I pick will have some more impact on the kingdom management minigame, which quickly turned out to not be the case. While far from optimal, having an easy access to swappable weapon enhancements, Haste + a sprinkling of other (de)buffs made this a fun character to play with.

I think there was also quite a bit of content prepared for non-goody-two-shoes characters. I'm always happy to see that, despite usually pussying out and ending up with bog-standard LG carebear.

My main gripe would probably be something I saw mentioned by a few other esteemed Codexers, that being the kingdom management stuff having fairly little interaction with moment-to-moment gameplay. It was still nice to see the numbers go up and develop various upgrades, but other than some projects speeding up your travels and plopping a network of teleportation circles it was mostly a way to fasttrack time not spent on running around looting corpses.

As I took the game bite-by-bite in the last three months, I don't really feel burned out and will probably move to WotR soon-ish. Anything I should know before heading into it? Any builds/ playstyles the game lends itself to especially well?

 

[Average Manatee]

As I took the game bite-by-bite in the last three months, I don't really feel burned out and will probably move to WotR soon-ish. Anything I should know before heading into it? Any builds/ playstyles the game lends itself to especially well?

Check out the mythic paths ahead of one and plan around one you like. Either ask or consult a guide online to make sure your intended path synergizes with your class somehow. It's not a huge stumbling block, most mythic paths support like 80% of classes well.

Unlike Kingmaker global time isn't a big deal in Wrath so you can rest pretty much as often as you like. A few dungeons limit you but the limits are generous.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Have you heard the good word? Due to Accomplished Sneak Attacker cheese, AT doesn't need to wait to git gud. It is only slightly behind a pure wizard power curve, but has greater damage that it can output more consistently. It has basically all the same CC. If you do a Scroll Savant, you're DC casting with all the scrolls littered everywhere. A pure scroll savant could do the same, but it's not getting the damage boost from SA which make up for the lack of caster level scaling. All of this while giving you a skill monkey at practically no extra cost. My MC hit Level 6 at the gates of The Staglord Fort. Arcane Trickster is the beezneez. I'll make converts of you all yet.

 

[Cael]

The takeaway is that you gain a bunch of utility and flavour for 10 damage which is basically nothing.

The utility is... getting 25 damage cantrips? That's also basically nothing. What isn't nothing is getting 50% more casts per day though.

Skills and rogue utility. I mean, at least try to think first.

Not his strong suit, bub. This is the moron who claims that facing doesn't matter in the HBS game when I regularly abuse it for full salvage. His opinions can be discarded like the nattering of a retarded child.

 

[Cael]

Sorc AT is not good. The progession is too slow. The end. You don't get any base class feature progression benefits as a tradeoff, metmagic spells are slower to cast, you can do less metamagic because of the slowed progression, they don't have the INT synergy to capitalize on being a skill monkey, and sorc is even more feat starved than wizard. The damage increase from SA matters. Your full SA is added to each touch attack, so at Level 12 your Sorching Ray is 3(4d6+5d6). That's huge. Only 1 level behind a straight wizard but over doubled the damage. SA dice are not chump damage.

AT plays like a normal wizard in combat with nice removal and a few tricks. Out of combat it plays like a rogue. It's all about versatility, but it doesn't lose any power. I argue that it is more powerful than an ordinary wizard. Its biggest problem is being feat starved.

Mate, Sage sorcerer...

 

[Cael]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

Ah, right. So you admit you are only theorycrafting and are calling people who have actually played the game and the class morons because it doesn't match with your theory. I thought as much. You are really a waste of oxygen.

 

[Haplo]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

That’s a bug that’s been cleaned up in dribs and drabs.

Was it? That's a shame, as this feature was indeed a pretty big selling point for the AT.

 

[Serus]

...
Some people play for fun, some people play because they really love spreadsheets.

So for fun as well? To some men, supposedly, smashing their balls with a hammer is fun. Spreadsheets certainly can be fun to some. I even saw some games made in excel.

 

[DannyRope]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

That’s a bug that’s been cleaned up in dribs and drabs.

If only Owlcat was as diligent in fixing the bugs that make the character weaker as they are fixing the bugs that make the character stronger then perhaps we would have Double Debilitation working as intended.

 

[Average Manatee]

Have you heard the good word? Due to Accomplished Sneak Attacker cheese, AT doesn't need to wait to git gud. It is only slightly behind a pure wizard power curve, but has greater damage that it can output more consistently. It has basically all the same CC. If you do a Scroll Savant, you're DC casting with all the scrolls littered everywhere. A pure scroll savant could do the same, but it's not getting the damage boost from SA which make up for the lack of caster level scaling. All of this while giving you a skill monkey at practically no extra cost. My MC hit Level 6 at the gates of The Staglord Fort. Arcane Trickster is the beezneez. I'll make converts of you all yet.

Not really. Pre lvl 10 AT you only get SA on touch spells, which are shit, while the negatives of worse spell progression are magnified by missing out on spells like haste

 

[huskarls]

Have you heard the good word? Due to Accomplished Sneak Attacker cheese, AT doesn't need to wait to git gud. It is only slightly behind a pure wizard power curve, but has greater damage that it can output more consistently. It has basically all the same CC. If you do a Scroll Savant, you're DC casting with all the scrolls littered everywhere. A pure scroll savant could do the same, but it's not getting the damage boost from SA which make up for the lack of caster level scaling. All of this while giving you a skill monkey at practically no extra cost. My MC hit Level 6 at the gates of The Staglord Fort. Arcane Trickster is the beezneez. I'll make converts of you all yet.

Not really. Pre lvl 10 AT you only get SA on touch spells, which are shit, while the negatives of worse spell progression are magnified by missing out on spells like haste

have you been living under a rock : you take one (1) level of rogue and add sneak die (which king maker enemies woefully lack resistance too) to whatever pathfinder's fire arrow reskin is called, any other ray or touch spell with enhanced range that bypasses armor. players are so risk adverse to succeed or fail spells they were still running away from touch spells in wrotr with enemies made for them

 

[Desiderius]

No, they weren't.

The problem is that Sneaks end up being chip damage compared to what else you can do. Not as much as in Wrath, but still much weaker than it looks coming from 3.5.

That (zero BAB) level and feat end up being a major investment.

 

[Desiderius]

You're forgetting items and traits that boost elemental damage by +X per dice. Those get added for each sneak dice as well. And that can be a significant amount with this game's itemization.

Does it? That changes things a bit then. Curious how we've gone on for pages without someone pointing this out, I guess no one here but you is actually playing AT, everyone else is just theorycrafting.

That’s a bug that’s been cleaned up in dribs and drabs.

Was it? That's a shame, as this feature was indeed a pretty big selling point for the AT.

It's fine. Best build for Octavia and it does get there once Surprise Spells unlock and she's fine before that as utility caster that can attack with weapons with Sneaks on them to save casts. Here she's doing both:



Can even build her for melee while getting there on Surprise Spells for endgame if you want:



Jub just has better item support and fits better with what unique PF Bard brings to the table. Shield spell on Amiri and Okbo (and Nok-nok!) is pretty big game by itself (and Expeditious Retreat on Val/Harrim).

 

[Desiderius]

I wanted to play Kingmaker since it was released, but combination of it being a fairly long game, releasing in a very buggy state nad most of my gaming being done on a laptop that I only recently upgraded made it so I only completed it yesterday. All in all, I had a lot of fun, and am very happy with what I got. The amount of content was amazing, and I was positively surprised with the quality of the writing and gameplay being on a fairly stable level throughout the story. I'm not saying that the writing was always amazing, and that the challenges remained fresh throughout, but combination of what was there gave me a comfort-food fantasy romp I've been itching for since... well, since playing the NWN 2 modules, I guess (D:OSes pale in comparison). Good stuff. I guess the game being based on PF helped a lot; I grew up on a steady diet of DnD 3.5 splatbooks, so the whole experience was very nostalgic.

Despite the timelines and the feeling of urgency being a bit annoying at times, I appreciated them being there. Honestly, there was no moment you'd actually be in danger of losing to timed events if you paid any attention to what you were doing, but being on a clock greatly added to the exploration layer where you had to manage your time to get everywhere you wanted to go. It also made playing non-CoDzilla casters a bit less trivial, I guess. I went with a very simple character of pure scion-Magus, due to early 00's cool factor of being able to shank a dude when you shock a dude, but slightly regretted not doing a Feyspeaker druid. I wanted to focus on Charisma for my MC, but initially assumed that the class that I pick will have some more impact on the kingdom management minigame, which quickly turned out to not be the case. While far from optimal, having an easy access to swappable weapon enhancements, Haste + a sprinkling of other (de)buffs made this a fun character to play with.

I think there was also quite a bit of content prepared for non-goody-two-shoes characters. I'm always happy to see that, despite usually pussying out and ending up with bog-standard LG carebear.

My main gripe would probably be something I saw mentioned by a few other esteemed Codexers, that being the kingdom management stuff having fairly little interaction with moment-to-moment gameplay. It was still nice to see the numbers go up and develop various upgrades, but other than some projects speeding up your travels and plopping a network of teleportation circles it was mostly a way to fasttrack time not spent on running around looting corpses.

As I took the game bite-by-bite in the last three months, I don't really feel burned out and will probably move to WotR soon-ish. Anything I should know before heading into it? Any builds/ playstyles the game lends itself to especially well?

LG hasn't been bog-standard since Garriott went to the dark side in Black Gate.

 

[DannyRope]

In terms of Kingdom management the favored Alignment by Owlcat is Lawful Evil, it's the combo with the highest chance of solving barony's/kingdom's problems successfully thanks to the combination of unique buildings. Chaotic and Good on the other hand have disappointing unique buildings each.

 

[Desiderius]

In terms of Kingdom management the favored Alignment by Owlcat is Lawful Evil, it's the combo with the highest chance of solving barony's/kingdom's problems successfully thanks to the combination of unique buildings. Chaotic and Good on the other hand have disappointing unique buildings each.

It's more than buildings, and E building isn't even that good. Every alignment also gets unique events and projects.

These are all Neutral aligned: