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

[Daidre]

Daidre, I am sure going to try a 2h Regongar at some point, but I would like to point out that the potential supremacy of 2 handers even for magi makes the design look bad.

Light one-handers work good enough on dual-wielding builds with heavy focus on Sneaks. Game also has assortment of Tower Shields and shields in general (for Val), lots of early +3 - +5 with great enchantments, so one-handers like Dueling, Long and Bastard Swords + Falcatas, Scimitars and Estocs all has their uses and good selection of endgame weapons. Beside classic tanks, I use sword&board often on melee divine casters, like cleric or inquisitor, who do not have Mirror Image as ultimate defense.

So, I would not have called it bad design. Reg could always switch off Spell Combat for 1.5 damage bonus from str and better Power Attack with a lot of one-handers.

 

[panda]

how much xp did you get for passing the intimidate check in armags tomb?(the difficult one with 50 roll)
i remember it was around 60k but in my current hard playthrough i got 380.000 xp!bug?im using some mods,turn based combat/bag of tools/advanced martial arts/closer to tabletop.

Yes, to get lvl 20 character only needs to pass ten 40+ DC skill checks(without XP sharing). And codex quest has like 5 or 6 of those.

 

[DavidBVal]

I want to have fun with a character that can do many different things depending of what I fancy for each battle, alternating spellcasting with melee and with good survivability (saves from Paladin DG should be a great bonus). I know I'll be 3 caster levels behind, hopefully it won't be too much of a penalty...

As long as you're prepared to be pretty bad at both spellcasting and melee compared to other options... The flexibility of EK is nice but don't expect to be anywhere near the level of pure spellcasters or more martial-focused builds

Well, I know 3.5 pretty well but I am ignorant regarding PF, so my apologies if I say something stupid.

People mention the Magus as a better alternative, so I read the class. It ends up with level 6 spells at level 20, and a BAB of 15, while my build will end up casting level 9 spells and with a BAB of 16. Looks like I'll be in trouble while I am at level 4-7, and probably not reap on benefits until I am 10, but it should be decent from there onwards... I hope :D

I see the Magus has tons of powers (which I didn't read in detail) while the EK only gains a few combat feats. But in exchange of that I'd get better BAB, high level spells and a huge bonus to saves (not sure how important this is in PF:K tho, but at level 20 and with a +6 item, a +10 to all saves sounds great).

 

[Haplo]

Better BAB is largely moot, when there is Transformation, Weapon enchants and on demand Int mod to AB/resolve attacks as touch.

Level 9 spells are nice, but you'll only be able to effectively mix sword and sorcery at EK level 10. A Magus with Spell Combat can do it all game.

 

[Efe]

weapon enchants magus has by itself makes it more versatile than your build.

 

[Ramnozack]

I want to have fun with a character that can do many different things depending of what I fancy for each battle, alternating spellcasting with melee and with good survivability (saves from Paladin DG should be a great bonus). I know I'll be 3 caster levels behind, hopefully it won't be too much of a penalty...

As long as you're prepared to be pretty bad at both spellcasting and melee compared to other options... The flexibility of EK is nice but don't expect to be anywhere near the level of pure spellcasters or more martial-focused builds

Well, I know 3.5 pretty well but I am ignorant regarding PF, so my apologies if I say something stupid.

People mention the Magus as a better alternative, so I read the class. It ends up with level 6 spells at level 20, and a BAB of 15, while my build will end up casting level 9 spells and with a BAB of 16. Looks like I'll be in trouble while I am at level 4-7, and probably not reap on benefits until I am 10, but it should be decent from there onwards... I hope :D

I see the Magus has tons of powers (which I didn't read in detail) while the EK only gains a few combat feats. But in exchange of that I'd get better BAB, high level spells and a huge bonus to saves (not sure how important this is in PF:K tho, but at level 20 and with a +6 item, a +10 to all saves sounds great).

Went through this on this thread before, EK is good with the right build. Level 7-9 spells are better than magus tricks IMO. Also depends on what mods you are using. I’d recommend eldritch arcana and craft magic items mod. Consider replacing one of your pally levels with a scaled fist monk level to get a lot of defensive goodies. Spell combat is a bit overrated, there are plenty of quicken rods out there to allow you to cast certain spells when you need to and still attack. Just finished this game yesterday with my EK and even HAEOT was mostly a breeze, wild hunt couldn’t even touch my guy.

Consider using the turn based mod as well, it’s pretty gud

 

[Trashos]

Light one-handers work good enough on dual-wielding builds with heavy focus on Sneaks. Game also has assortment of Tower Shields and shields in general (for Val), lots of early +3 - +5 with great enchantments, so one-handers like Dueling, Long and Bastard Swords + Falcatas, Scimitars and Estocs all has their uses and good selection of endgame weapons. Beside classic tanks, I use sword&board often on melee divine casters, like cleric or inquisitor, who do not have Mirror Image as ultimate defense.

So, I would not have called it bad design. Reg could always switch off Spell Combat for 1.5 damage bonus from str and better Power Attack with a lot of one-handers.

The ultimate question is whether 1-hander builds (without shields and without dual wielding) are any good or whether they are strictly inferior to 2-hander builds. I am not experienced in 2h to answer that question (I have turned Jaethal into a sword&board tank, and I only use Amiri for her quest), but I have not seen any veterans use 1-handers with the other hand free.

 

[Haplo]

Eh, it's okay-ish, but not great:

 

[Ramnozack]

Eh, it's okay-ish, but not great:

That’s cool. Tell me when magus can walk into the middle of a pack of wild hunt and kill all of them with a grandmaster rod storm bolts

 

[ERYFKRAD]

DavidBVal roll a barbarian

 

[Trashos]

Haplo, do you make 1-hander builds for your MC, with the other hand free? You are our biggest hope. Why do you prefer that over 2h?

(inb4 "not enough good 2h bastard swords to go around the party")

 

[kelkorkesis]

Daidre, I am sure going to try a 2h Regongar at some point, but I would like to point out that the potential supremacy of 2 handers even for magi makes the design look bad.

Spellcombat/Spellstrike works well in pnp environment when a standart adventuring day is 3 or 4 encounters and when a standart level appropriate encounter suppose to deplate 25% of the party's resources. You fight so much with so many things in Pathfinder, it turns spellcombat into a pointless micro. Also two handed weapons are superior choice for str characters almost always.

Haplo, do you make 1-hander builds for your MC, with the other hand free? You are our biggest hope. Why do you prefer that over 2h?

(inb4 "not enough good 2h bastard swords to go around the party")

Do you specifically want such build? Because I have one. It is somewhat braindead, I did for my brother who has no idea about rpgs. It is not a strictly focused on dealing damage but the build has high defenses and cc capability on top of consistent damage.

Paladin 3 (Paladin 2 is standart cutoff but I like stuff from third level)/Scaled Fist 2/Rogue(Thug if you want cc) 4/Fighter 1/Duelist 10 (not in this order)
Int to AC (Limited by duelist levels)
Cha to AC
Cha to Saves
Immunity to fear
Immunity to disease
19 bab which means four iterative
Uncanny dodge
With defensive fighting your AC skyrockets. My brother can right click his way to end of the game with this probably.

Ideally, you would use Lion's Claw Falcata (18-20/x3) (for both dex and str based versions of this build thanks to slashing grace) or if you want it distasteful you would go for estocs. Estocs have rather terrible progression but right before funhouse you get Blinding Light. This is also 18-20/x3.

If you want something less multiclass heavy we have

Monk (archetype depends you, do you want to focus cha or wis) 1/ Sword Saint 19
Much higher damage then previous build lower defenses. You will again use Lion's Claw or Blinding Light and thanks to Sword Saint your crits will be x4.

 

[Haplo]

Haplo, do you make 1-hander builds for your MC, with the other hand free? You are our biggest hope. Why do you prefer that over 2h?

(inb4 "not enough good 2h bastard swords to go around the party")

No, I just take best of both worlds - access to Spell Combat and still meanest, baddest large bastard swords come late game - all with same proficiencies.
But I've found I've rarely used the one handed stance late game :p

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

Well, I know 3.5 pretty well but I am ignorant regarding PF, so my apologies if I say something stupid.

People mention the Magus as a better alternative, so I read the class. It ends up with level 6 spells at level 20, and a BAB of 15, while my build will end up casting level 9 spells and with a BAB of 16. Looks like I'll be in trouble while I am at level 4-7, and probably not reap on benefits until I am 10, but it should be decent from there onwards... I hope :D

I see the Magus has tons of powers (which I didn't read in detail) while the EK only gains a few combat feats. But in exchange of that I'd get better BAB, high level spells and a huge bonus to saves (not sure how important this is in PF:K tho, but at level 20 and with a +6 item, a +10 to all saves sounds great).

Unless you're playing on unfair, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Big part of the enjoyment of the game is how well it lets you do different builds. Even if a magus does the gish thing well, an EK can do it too. You will probably be weaker in the middle part of the game and you'll never be as good in combat as a magus, but you'll be a better caster and won't need to do as much micro.

 

[Trashos]

Does the duelist gain any significant advantage from having 1 hand free? Why isn't the above build better when dual wielding, for example? kelkorkesis?

 

[kelkorkesis]

Does the duelist gain any significant advantage from having 1 hand free? Why isn't the above build better when dual wielding, for example? kelkorkesis?

Duelist is designed such way. It's damage boost (Precise Strike) requires you to not attack with your offhand or not carrying a shield. Also, if you want to use a slashing weapon as a duelist (which we do, Lion's Claw is a slashing weapon), you are going to take slashing grace feat, which does not work if you are dual wielding. Also, two weapon fighting is really feat intensive and if you are trying to do something other than more attacks you want some other feats.

I have somewhat smilar build which dual wields. This has considerably less AC (13 AC difference) and has no crit negation but I was pretty satisfied with it. It makes Nok Nok redundant though.
Paladin 3/ Scaled Fist 1/ Knife Master Rogue 4/ Slayer 12

 

[ga♥]

The meme is that neutral good lets you cherrypick certain story decisions, from mediations of neutral to being a good boi towards nyrissa but I agree that its not an 'objective' metric by any means.

You say it. It is a meme.

By not being evil you won't have Vordakai as an Advisor for example.

And the good dedicated quest is... ? because it didn't even trigger for me (I had some bullshit kingdom event called Mivon Crusaders or something, and then nothing). While by being evil you get the Darker than black, with a dedicated special building at the end.

Being good to romance Nyrissa is a big flaw though. I wonder why they wouldn't implement something like the Practical incarnation vs Deionarra instead.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Duelist is completely borked in Shitmaker. I wanted to make one before, but all the abilities suck major owlcat.

The parry mechanic I think is broken altogether, but the general design of it doesn't make any sense. You exchange one of your attacks to cancel an enemy's attack on a successful check, which barely makes any sense to begin with, and then with the kind of AC a typical duelist will have, your AC is a better defense than parry anyway. And in a game where everybody has like 4-5 attacks per round, a mechanic targeting one attack per round seems useless.

+ Duelist level to damage = meh. So you get up to +10 damage, not bad, but other classes get +crit multiplier or +bonuses to strength damage or power attack damage.

+ some random effects = bleh

the rest of abilities improve your AC, prepare to sleep.

 

[ga♥]

The problem is that with sneak attack being so OP, all other classes suck in comparison when they don't have it.

This includes Duelist, parry working or not.

 

[kelkorkesis]

The parry mechanic I think is broken altogether, but the general design of it doesn't make any sense. You exchange one of your attacks to cancel an enemy's attack on a successful check, which barely makes any sense to begin with, and then with the kind of AC a typical duelist will have, your AC is a better defense than parry anyway. And in a game where everybody has like 4-5 attacks per round, a mechanic targeting one attack per round seems useless.

Agreed, parry mechanic is a meme.

So you get up to +10 damage, not bad, but other classes get +crit multiplier or +bonuses to strength damage or power attack damage.

Duelist is a full BAB class with precision damage like Slayer. Slayer grants average 3.5 precision damage every 3 level. Their numbers are not that different. There is also nothing stops you from getting bonuses from +str (or dex depending on your build) or power attack. You are encouraged to use power attack actually since you are a full BAB class. You can afford to take to hit penalty.

+ some random effects = bleh

Here's the thing. Pathfinder martial classes suck hard but its prestige classes suck much much harder. Paizo was so afraid of printing good prestige classes I yearned for 3.5 anytime I started a pnp pathfinder game. My duelist build is something very inelegant, brute optimization of numbers. I simply looked ways to pump my AC, saves, attack and damage. Duelist isn't in this build for it is fancy parry mechanic, riposte or deflecting arrows. It is there to give me the numbers I want and it does that (aibeit it is tackled with bunch of mediocre stuff)

 

[Cael]

I want to have fun with a character that can do many different things depending of what I fancy for each battle, alternating spellcasting with melee and with good survivability (saves from Paladin DG should be a great bonus). I know I'll be 3 caster levels behind, hopefully it won't be too much of a penalty...

As long as you're prepared to be pretty bad at both spellcasting and melee compared to other options... The flexibility of EK is nice but don't expect to be anywhere near the level of pure spellcasters or more martial-focused builds

Well, I know 3.5 pretty well but I am ignorant regarding PF, so my apologies if I say something stupid.

People mention the Magus as a better alternative, so I read the class. It ends up with level 6 spells at level 20, and a BAB of 15, while my build will end up casting level 9 spells and with a BAB of 16. Looks like I'll be in trouble while I am at level 4-7, and probably not reap on benefits until I am 10, but it should be decent from there onwards... I hope :D

I see the Magus has tons of powers (which I didn't read in detail) while the EK only gains a few combat feats. But in exchange of that I'd get better BAB, high level spells and a huge bonus to saves (not sure how important this is in PF:K tho, but at level 20 and with a +6 item, a +10 to all saves sounds great).

EK loses a level of spellcasting. Pal 2/Sorc 8/EK10 nets you level 8 spells only.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Come to think of it, Fowlcat borked all the cool classes/kits in Shitmaker. Duelist as described above, they turned Sword Saint into some pseudo-mage, when it's supposed to be a technique dedicated fighter, Aldori Defender/Swordlord are sleep inducing AC behemoths with not a single interesting offensive/active ability, and wizards/sorcerers are cc-bots until the final levels when they get stuff like Finger o' Death/Wail o' Banshee, unless you cheese them with crap like sneak attack rays, and turn them into magic archer thiefs. Gj Fowlcat, you kill fun like no one's business.

 

[Trashos]

I do not know why you do not like wizards. I am playing a wizard right now, and he is a difference maker in tough fights, where he decisively steps in to take care of matters. In casual fighting he does jack shit due to the vancian system and the time limits, but he is not needed there.

 

[kelkorkesis]

ome to think of it, Fowlcat borked all the cool classes/kits in Shitmaker. Duelist as described above, they turned Sword Saint into some pseudo-mage, when it's supposed to be a technique dedicated fighter, Aldori Defender/Swordlord are sleep inducing AC behemoths with not a single interesting offensive/active ability

This has nothing to do with Owlcat. They didn't create any class or make any heavy modifications on them. It is all Paizo. For every single fun thing they publish there are 10 more things utterly boring. I am not satisfied with amount of spells and metamagics too but Eldritch Arcana mod somewhat fixes it.

 

[DavidBVal]

I want to have fun with a character that can do many different things depending of what I fancy for each battle, alternating spellcasting with melee and with good survivability (saves from Paladin DG should be a great bonus). I know I'll be 3 caster levels behind, hopefully it won't be too much of a penalty...

As long as you're prepared to be pretty bad at both spellcasting and melee compared to other options... The flexibility of EK is nice but don't expect to be anywhere near the level of pure spellcasters or more martial-focused builds

Well, I know 3.5 pretty well but I am ignorant regarding PF, so my apologies if I say something stupid.

People mention the Magus as a better alternative, so I read the class. It ends up with level 6 spells at level 20, and a BAB of 15, while my build will end up casting level 9 spells and with a BAB of 16. Looks like I'll be in trouble while I am at level 4-7, and probably not reap on benefits until I am 10, but it should be decent from there onwards... I hope :D

I see the Magus has tons of powers (which I didn't read in detail) while the EK only gains a few combat feats. But in exchange of that I'd get better BAB, high level spells and a huge bonus to saves (not sure how important this is in PF:K tho, but at level 20 and with a +6 item, a +10 to all saves sounds great).

EK loses a level of spellcasting. Pal 2/Sorc 8/EK10 nets you level 8 spells only.

Ahh you're of course right. I was considering Wizard casting levels, not Sorcs.

Well, I'm gonna go with it and see where it takes me, if it gets frustrating I'll try something new.