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

[ga♥]

Level up and come back when you have scirocco. ez.

 

[Sjukob]

Any Unfair players here who know of an easier way to do Ancient Tomb? Hardest part of the game in early unfair. Without hiring mercs.

I’ve learned how to get through Unfair early game pretty consistently without too many reloads. But it just means spamming rest, True Strike, Fan of Flames, Stone Call, etc. You do it once, and it feels like a shackle on how to play instead of a clever discovery. Doing anything else in the early game is just submitting yourself to insane RNG.

The increase in difficulty was always the wrong kind.

 

[Pink Eye]

Cool. Thanks mate. Now to get off my ass and get to writing an easier way of doing ancient tomb in my walkthrough thingy.

 

[Sjukob]

I think that even hard difficulty turns early game into bullshit RNG or at least makes it way more tedious than fun. In fact, I don't really know how can somebody make a proper difficulty in pathfinder, the nature of the system is very hit or miss (lol, don't know how to put it better), either stuff connects and whoever gets hit is fucked, or it misses/gets resisted and there's no effect. It is further complemented by two issues.

Firstly, the damage of martial classes is obscene, especially with crit fishing weapons (15-20 threat range) and feats like outflank/seize the moment, add somebody who trips the opponents for even more lolz, and enemies just have very high damage to compensate for the lack of such shenanigans. Secondly, spells are stupid strong, you either save or get killed/completely shut down.

Thanks to this the fights can go 2 ways: your party is able to successfully land their attacks and spells, while somebody with high enough AC and resists soaks every hostile attack and takes no damage (in other words you bypass RNG element) or your party can't crack enemy defenses and tanks don't have enough mitigation and you lose (not enough numbers to bypass RNG). So you know in advance that you either win or lose, there's no reactivity in fights (and that's why they are largely braindead), because that would require significant reduction of RNG involved. And like I've said you either have all or nothing, if enemy is able to land their attacks you're going down, HP and DR do not matter, the damage is just way too high. If enemy is able to land their CC or debuffs you're going down, because of how strong and long the effects are. It works both ways for player's party and hostiles.

In my opinion it would've been better to make the system more deterministic, with more advanced enemies, easier to apply effects, but also much more durable characters and more accessible solutions to various effects (for example, taking damage removes confusion effect). Because now you're either unreacble for enemies and just drown them in damage and CC or they have some stuff in their arsenal that requires very specific things to deal with it (like wild hunt gaze), but shifting it to something like "enemy does A, do either B,C or D to counter" would've been more fun. Of course, that would require a complete revision of the system and getting rid of trash encounters, but a man can dream.

 

[Pink Eye]

Anon shares timers. I thought some of you might appreciate this:

 

[Efe]

only time limit i abhor is the last one.
you should be free to explore the world, take your time with obelisk puzzle etc before committing to ending

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Time limits are antithetical to RPGs. I can only think of three off the top of my head; Fallout (which was patched out), Challenge of the Five Realms, and The Magic Candle (where the time limit can be extended indefinitely).

The Kingmaker adventure path doesn't have a time limit either. This is typical inexperienced developer hubris. Tearing down fences without thinking it through, or believing they're the first ones to ever have an idea.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Time limits are antithetical to RPGs.

Which is abhorrent.
The time is always there, and no one can expect to spend 100 years saving that Mario princess without the spell Animate Dead. I think that patching out time limit in Fallout was pondering to uneducated masses, and I surely hope that the "War of the Righteous" will not stop for 50 years while the protagonist is picking berries in the wild.

 

[Yosharian]

Hmm I'm not sure I buy that time limits are 'antithetical' to RPGs

 

[DalekFlay]

There's a strong tendency to fart about in RPGs improving your character, and to choose which quest you want to do and when. So I do think time limits in general are antithetical to... if not RPGs, then perhaps to how most play RPGs.

However my understanding is they're so loose in this game they barely matter. I haven't played it yet though.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I haven't played it yet though.

You can burn time up easily on the world map (need to rest every day, lots of travelling) and through "adviser upgrade" which take 2 weeks each and you'll do dozens of them over the game.

The main limit of 1600 days is pretty hard to hit but the chapter limits can creep up on you easily, especially if you are exploring the game world and resting frequently to recover between the difficult fights.

Hmm I'm not sure I buy that time limits are 'antithetical' to RPGs

When you hear RPG you don't think "time limits" otherwise they'd be more common. They are super rare in the genre though.

I'm sure you could make a fun football game where players who go out of bounds fall into a moat of piranhas, but that wouldn't really be football anymore.

spend 100 years saving that Mario princess

Not an RPG. Mario RPG, however, has no time limits.

As for "great level design," I've actually posted this before:

How on earth could you ever expect full grown adults with skills and stats to ever overcome such an insurmountable obstacle?!?!?

 

[Pink Eye]

Nice portraits!

 

[DalekFlay]

The one on the far right is... yummy.

 

[LannTheStupid]

As for "great level design," I've actually posted this before:

I have no idea what this picture even means. However, I would like to ask you to share the set of portraits you were using.

 

[Pink Eye]

Grampy_Bone Yes. What are the portraits being used here?

 

[Yosharian]

If your goal is to simulate worlds then 'time limits' naturally form a part of that. The reason we don't see them in CRPGs is because the game can usually only offer binary choices 'do it by this day or die' whereas a PnP DM can mould the story around such things

 

[Grampy_Bone]

As for "great level design," I've actually posted this before:

I have no idea what this picture even means. However, I would like to ask you to share the set of portraits you were using.

It's a picture of the impassable rocks (well, rock, singular) which prevents the player from approaching the Stag Lord's fort from any other direction than the front, which is insanely heavily guarded. As you can see, there's even an empty field on the other side of it. Silliness.

The portraits are from the Nexus mods, idk which, I downloaded like a bajillion portraits. They are all smoking hot chicks though.

PnP DM can mould the story around such things

True enough, PnP usually assumes urgency and players don't tend to dick around in the woods forever while the main quest ticks down. HOWEVER--

-PnP campaigns have to be balanced for player level, because "grinding" doesn't exist.

-I have been repeatedly told PnP examples are invalid in this debate.

 

[Yosharian]

Well the point made was that time limits are antithetical to RPGs, if we're solely talking about CRPGs then... I'll buy that they're relatively rare and probably impractical most of the time, but not that they're antithetical

 

[Tigranes]

I don't get it, I've spent large chunks of the middle cahpters sitting around with nothing to do

So I just sit there upgrading kingdom for months until something happens

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Wow, the turn based mod makes this game 100x better.

 

[user]

If your goal is to simulate worlds then 'time limits' naturally form a part of that.

This is extremely important imo. While they could be closer to PnP in that regard, allowing you to modify them more with events and player actions, time limits made the game far more enjoyable for me. My instictive reaction to them was negative, but in the end they didn't prevent me from exploring as much I wanted, they added to the RP, and created this sense of immersion that a living world would have.

 

[Incendax]

Nice portraits!

I loved the portraits.
Then I realized it was a harem.

I dislike time limits in general, because I want to infinitely fart around, but I found the time limits in the game to be really generous if I attended to the main quest ASAP and then farted around. It reminded me of Tyranny, where there was a much maligned time limit that you really had to make an effort to reach. The only one that was irritating was finishing Vanishing then immediately jumping into Betrayer/Hour.

Of course, the first time you play you have no idea there is time to fart around after each Main Quest segment.

 

[Yosharian]

If your goal is to simulate worlds then 'time limits' naturally form a part of that.

This is extremely important imo. While they could be closer to PnP in that regard, allowing you to modify them more with events and player actions, time limits made the game far more enjoyable for me. My instictive reaction to them was negative, but in the end they didn't prevent me from exploring as much I wanted, they added to the RP, and created this sense of immersion that a living world would have.

Yeah I think it's a fine line between annoying and immersive. Just got to find it.

Also there's no harm in having time limits be optional for those that dislike them I guess

 

[Yosharian]

Nice portraits!

I loved the portraits.
Then I realized it was a harem.

I dislike time limits in general, because I want to infinitely fart around, but I found the time limits in the game to be really generous if I attended to the main quest ASAP and then farted around. It reminded me of Tyranny, where there was a much maligned time limit that you really had to make an effort to reach. The only one that was irritating was finishing Vanishing then immediately jumping into Betrayer/Hour.

Of course, the first time you play you have no idea there is time to fart around after each Main Quest segment.

Yes and this is a fail in my opinion, the game needs to inform you that you're against the clock if this is the case

 

[Pink Eye]

Nice portraits!

I loved the portraits.
Then I realized it was a harem.

I dislike time limits in general, because I want to infinitely fart around, but I found the time limits in the game to be really generous if I attended to the main quest ASAP and then farted around. It reminded me of Tyranny, where there was a much maligned time limit that you really had to make an effort to reach. The only one that was irritating was finishing Vanishing then immediately jumping into Betrayer/Hour.

Of course, the first time you play you have no idea there is time to fart around after each Main Quest segment.

Yes and this is a fail in my opinion, the game needs to inform you that you're against the clock if this is the case

>game needs to inform you that you're against the clock
Pathfinder does. Kesten will remind you to deal with the main quest troubles, when you start running out of time. The game also spams you with problem cards if you take too long of a time.