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

[Desiderius]

a well-prepared party on normal.

Normal difficulty is irrelevant because it's too easy and in the case of the House you can EASILY lose access to vital spells for multiple reasons. The Linzi situation is a perfect example.

By lvl 17 there are no vital spells.

I feel you man, I really do. Would love to take the Icewind Dale setup for another spin in a new game.

But that's not this game and that's not this ruleset. In Pathfinder there are a dozen ways to skin every cat. If you're so attached to one that you can't function otherwise you're playing an imaginary game in your head, not the game as it exists. That's not bad design, that's design that fleshes out a ruleset and the consequences of having more companions than slots.

 

[Desiderius]

Xelliren! It's a Trap!

 

[Ghulgothas]

Now you are ready for the next test:

 

[Fedora Master]

a well-prepared party on normal.

Normal difficulty is irrelevant because it's too easy and in the case of the House you can EASILY lose access to vital spells for multiple reasons. The Linzi situation is a perfect example.

By lvl 17 there are no vital spells.

I feel you man, I really do. Would love to take the Icewind Dale setup for another spin in a new game.

But that's not this game and that's not this ruleset. In Pathfinder there are a dozen ways to skin every cat. If you're so attached to one that you can't function otherwise you're playing an imaginary game in your head, not the game as it exists. That's not bad design, that's design that fleshes out a ruleset and the consequences of having more companions than slots.

All it takes is starting the House with no way to get Death Ward or Freedom of Movement and you were pretty much fucked.

Bad. Design.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Couple of questions:
Are there any round shields in this have, particularly in Varnhold's lot?
Trying to make a Viking dude, fighter to stalwart defender, just realised I don't have any round shields.

 

[Efe]

light shields and bucklers should be round but smallish.
in varnholds? no idea if there are any noteworthy drops

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Couple of questions:
Are there any round shields in this have, particularly in Varnhold's lot?
Trying to make a Viking dude, fighter to stalwart defender, just realised I don't have any round shields.

Light Shields are round. Yiu can get non magical one from Oleg I think?

Now the magical ones are rare. I think one of the Artisan give Northern's Light, a +1 magical Light Shield.

I think there is one medium shield that's also round but I am not sure where did I get it.

EDIT: didn't see you mentioning Varnhold. I am pretty sure there is no magical light shields at all in Varnhold. Not really sure about non magical one.

 

[Desiderius]

All it takes is starting the House with no way to get Death Ward or Freedom of Movement and you were pretty much fucked.

Bad. Design.

I have yet to cast the spell Freedom of Movement in 2,000 hrs of play and I blow out Wild Hunt Unfair without having to think anymore. For starters Blindfight is solid for ch. 3 then makes you immune to gaze as a side benefit, but there are other ways around it.

My first playthrough that got through House my MC was immune to Death with an Aura of +4 Saves vs and Resurrected Jae gets Death Ward at will. Make Kannerah a Sensei and you not only own Ghost Mages with Mass Disease Immunity you get Mass Restoration for a couple Ki. The unimaginative just buy a bunch of Mass Heal scrolls.

Your ignorance of 90% of the Pathfinder ruleset and stubborn unwillingness to learn any more than that has nothing to do with design, bad or otherwise.

GIT GUD

 

[Efe]

cant you just avoid most of house combat?

 

[Vorark]

Fiinally started Chapter 2 after replaying the first one so many times and I'm a bit lost with kingdom management.

I've completed the first curse-related quest, told Jhod to investigate the undead at the river you met during Chapter 1 as it was the only curse card I had. I annexed a new region afterwards, time jumped ahead and the quest showed up as successfully completed on my journal. So far, so good. However, a new one about how the curse gonna power up again in 190 days appeared, so my question is: should I assign Jhod to research it asap or can I faff about exploring and fighting? I don't want to complete Chapter 2 too soon.

I'm also low on BP, tried to add buildings to increase Economy and named the thiefling advisor but only have around 150 BP to spend. Is buying BP a better alternative or is it better to just wait?

 

[DalekFlay]

Finally finished the game. I didn't think Nyrissa's house was bad at all on current patch, but the actual final "dungeon" was annoying. Not hard, just annoying. Gave me flashbacks to Dragon Age's Deep Roads. The final boss was pretty hard on challenging for me, mainly due to him debuffing and then casting confusion/domination on the two people that could heal/scroll. I was very sick of playing the game at this point and didn't want to fuck around one minute longer, so I just lowered it to story mode and let it end. The book finale was pretty good, but nothing amazing.

All in all I think the game is great for 100 hours or so despite some minor flaws, but gets tiresome. For people focused on mechanics and character building (look above) it's probably a fountain of enjoyment, but for someone like me who likes a balance it gets tiresome. Still really good overall though, glad I played it. I'll write something up in the "sucks" thread shortly.

Fiinally started Chapter 2 after replaying the first one so many times and I'm a bit lost with kingdom management.

I've completed the first curse-related quest, told Jhod to investigate the undead at the river you met during Chapter 1 as it was the only curse card I had. I annexed a new region afterwards, time jumped ahead and the quest showed up as successfully completed on my journal. So far, so good. However, a new one about how the curse gonna power up again in 190 days appeared, so my question is: should I assign Jhod to research it asap or can I faff about exploring and fighting? I don't want to complete Chapter 2 too soon.

I'm also low on BP, tried to add buildings to increase Economy and named the thiefling advisor but only have around 150 BP to spend. Is buying BP a better alternative or is it better to just wait?

My main advice would be to put kingdom management on effortless because even then it's a pain in the ass and it just gets more and more time consuming and annoying over time. Secondly, you can BP with money in a pinch and otherwise I wouldn't worry about it until you get further in. Lastly the curses last forever so don't prioritize them, and they're only useful for one very minor story option in the late game that I didn't even do.

 

[Desiderius]

Fiinally started Chapter 2 after replaying the first one so many times and I'm a bit lost with kingdom management.

I've completed the first curse-related quest, told Jhod to investigate the undead at the river you met during Chapter 1 as it was the only curse card I had. I annexed a new region afterwards, time jumped ahead and the quest showed up as successfully completed on my journal. So far, so good. However, a new one about how the curse gonna power up again in 190 days appeared, so my question is: should I assign Jhod to research it asap or can I faff about exploring and fighting? I don't want to complete Chapter 2 too soon.

I'm also low on BP, tried to add buildings to increase Economy and named the thiefling advisor but only have around 150 BP to spend. Is buying BP a better alternative or is it better to just wait?

There was a lot of negativity about the KM when the game first came out so I think a lot of people just look at it as something to survive and don't get a very good idea of what they're trying to accomplish.

The not dying part of KM is maybe 5% of it and no problem to take care of once you understand the mechanics, which you can do through trial and error or just asking here (get to Bald Hilltop with exactly 14 days left on your Ancient Curse timer each chapter).

The rest is about unlocking the best in game items and region boosts in time for you to get a big edge in combat.

The gear is gated behind unlocking regions -> advancing artisans in each region -> kingdom ranks. Region upgrades and blanket immunities are also gated behind kingdom ranks. So the more time you're spending ranking up your kingdom relative to resting and traveling the better you're doing.

The key timesaver is getting Teleportation Circles up in each Village, which requires Divine 60 to unlock Arcane, then Arcane III. The main way to get Divine up is event cards, so you don't want your Priest locked up researching Curses until you get there.

 

[Desiderius]

You'll be spending 90% of your coin buying BP (I'd also take the 500 BP - buildings unfortunately don't end up being that important) up through Ch. 4 at which point you'll be swimming in coin, mostly from selling extra artisan items but also valuable loot you find.

 

[Desiderius]

cant you just avoid most of house combat?

I'm usually desperate for the EXP to get to 20.

 

[NJClaw]

cant you just avoid most of house combat?

How? Even if there's a way, I don't think it's something you can realistically do it in your first playthrough.

Fiinally started Chapter 2 after replaying the first one so many times and I'm a bit lost with kingdom management.

I've completed the first curse-related quest, told Jhod to investigate the undead at the river you met during Chapter 1 as it was the only curse card I had. I annexed a new region afterwards, time jumped ahead and the quest showed up as successfully completed on my journal. So far, so good. However, a new one about how the curse gonna power up again in 190 days appeared, so my question is: should I assign Jhod to research it asap or can I faff about exploring and fighting? I don't want to complete Chapter 2 too soon.

I'm also low on BP, tried to add buildings to increase Economy and named the thiefling advisor but only have around 150 BP to spend. Is buying BP a better alternative or is it better to just wait?

Usually I spend all my money on BP. I try to save up just what's necessary to buy rations and almost every metamagic rod I can. The only moment I want to have some coins to spend on merchant stuff is at the beginning of chapter 6.

 

[DalekFlay]

What happens with BP if you set the kingdom to auto? As in, if you're not spending so much fucking money buying BP for upgrades and such, do you just keep all that extra cash?

 

[Yosharian]

If you set Kingdom Management to auto then you miss out on Artisans AFAIK

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Well, my Last Azlanti Ironman run on challenging with turn-based mod, closer to tabletop and Call of the Wild just turned into a Tinman run. My level 5-6 party got ambushed by around 10 Alpha Wolves and a Venomous Direwolf in the Kamelands. Absolute bullshit encounter at that level with the way those things get free trip attacks.

I didn't even know that the Kamelands had higher level ambushes like that, so I felt kinda cheesed by the game. I considered letting it go, but I was having a ton of fun playing without constant quicksaving and reloads and I know I can't bring myself to clear that fucking Old Sycamore again, so I ALT+F4 and savescummed until I got out of it (a testament to how impossible this fight was, it took around 25 tries).

I think I'll keep the run going and hopefully not get into a losing situation like that again. If it happens, I'll just tally my would-be deaths up on a wall of shame.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Alternatively, I might drop this run and mess around with Beneath the Stolen Lands a bit. But the fact that it takes several runs to complete (supposedly?) is turning me off from it. Do I have to create a new party for each new run or do my characters carry over?

 

[NJClaw]

Alternatively, I might drop this run and mess around with Beneath the Stolen Lands a bit. But the fact that it takes several runs to complete (supposedly?) is turning me off from it. Do I have to create a new party for each new run or do my characters carry over?

Every new run starts with level 1 characters. Going down one dungeon floor gives an obscene amount of EXP, so you have to level up your characters constantly. During my playthroughs I think I spend more time leveling up than actually playing the game.

 

[Yosharian]

Trying to start a new character and the game is leveling me past level 1 at character creation??? What the fuck!

Edit: it was Bag of Tricks. Sigh.

 

[Desiderius]

a testament to how impossible this fight was, it took around 25 tries). I think I'll keep the run going and hopefully not get into a losing situation like that again. If it happens, I'll just tally my would-be deaths up on a wall of shame.

Very good idea. We all end up gravitating toward Tinman (hadn't heard that, but the perfect name for it).

Interesting divide between:

(1) Those raised on faceroll vs those raised on difficulty gating

(2) Those who've figured out how to attack Will Saves vs Porkys

(3) Those who've found the power of the Bard vs Tank and Spankers (similar to 2)

It's a big ruleset. If something feels impossible hate the player not the game. Voice of first hand experience.

TL;DR try Fascinate/Glitterdust.

 

[LannTheStupid]

The combination of Fascinate and Dirge of Doom (which is possible with Lingering Performance) is... fascinating!

 

[Desiderius]

Indeed. I've always had more luck combining an offensive song with a buff than two offensive songs though. Funny that P:K Bard gets three times the action economy as BG Bard. Makes it hard for me to go back to BG.

Maybe that's why there is such a gap between people saying it's too hard vs too easy?

The game is a much different experience if you're trying to get through it with your four casts of Web and Grease against mobs with high Reflex instead of using your sixteen performances of an ability that attacks their weak Save. Ch 2 is full of weak Will.

The rest spam required would be unbearably tedious apart from how it would tank your KM since you'd never have time for rank-ups.

 

[Desiderius]

Funny thing about that Wolf fight is that its pretty much the only place to use all the fancy Animal-control spells and abilities since most dangerous Animals are actually Magical Beasts.