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

[Chippy]

Ah yes, ignoring companions you don't like is "playing the game wrong".

No, but if you don't like those companions why would you bring them around?

All companions end up at the House no matter what.

I'm aware of that, but losing them is relevant for your playthrough only if you use them in your regular group. Why would you care about losing Valerie (or any other companion) if you don't care about her? And if you do care about her, why would you avoid her personal quest?

My first visit to the House went something like this:
- Ignored Amiri
- Linzi gets taken out anyway
- Ignored Jubilost
- Tried to get the goblin but apparently did the quest "wrong" so he died
- Regongar and Octavia simply vanished because of bugs
- Had Valerie which I had ignored most of the game because everything about her is terrible, fluff and mechanics both
- Picked up Harrim
- Found Ekun early on but couldn't fight the monster with just two people
- Jaethal and Tristian killed each other and Jeathal - which I had ignored - was the one to survive

Haven't got this far in the game yet. Anyone know what happens if you ignore all story characters and use hired party members?.

 

[Chippy]

No access to mercs for one, which meant you could create a no-win scenario for yourself if you didn't do companion quests.

Found the answr on the previous page.

 

[NJClaw]

No access to mercs for one, which meant you could create a no-win scenario for yourself if you didn't do companion quests.

Found the answr on the previous page.

You can bring your hired mercenaries to the house.

The difference is that now they also give you some pregenerated additional ones.

 

[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?

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.

That doesn't sound terribly fun to go through multiple times. If it was more of a continuous experience where you can meet all the bosses in a single run, I'd be a lot more interested. Guess I'll visit it on my main playthrough.

Totally unrelated: the feats in Call of the Wild allow you to build Regongar in a way that kind of makes him a beast. A lot of options to let his Shocking Grasp scale past 5d6 and specialize into it with metamagic. Probably still a lot worse than that broken ass POS Sword Saint, but very fun nevertheless.

It's still just damage, and ultimately not much of that as Hap has shown. You're better off with Frigid Touch no save Stagger and just having your way.

Straight Scion is fine on it's own in unmodded. STR-based melee + Casting in Heavy + Mirror Image and Shield + Best Cloak in game from Companion quest = he didn't need the help.

Well he didn't *need* the help because spells like Mirror Image and Shield are retarded, true, but this is common to any Magus. The specific build they were going for was undeniably held back by the lack of PnP feats such as Spontaneous Metafocus and Bloodline Mutations. With those in place you can actually build a Character who focuses his power on perfecting a lvl 1 spell, and I think that's pretty cool and fits the character, always going on about lightning on his fingertips. And again, no matter what you do with it, help needed or not, Dex based Sword Saint is just better by a wide margin.

 

[Desiderius]

Dex based Sword Saint is just better by a wide margin.

Lol. No.

I see you're new here.

Behold the silliness of STR-based nonsense. This is unmodded.

Too busy trying to get Call of the Wild to work to throw together something for Reg right now but he could do a good bit more than that. Hap can fill you in on the details.

Whether it's Grease or Shocking Grasp if you're trying to ride a first level spell for the whole game you're just scratching the surface.

 

[Yosharian]

Well he didn't *need* the help because spells like Mirror Image and Shield are retarded, true, but this is common to any Magus. The specific build they were going for was undeniably held back by the lack of PnP feats such as Spontaneous Metafocus and Bloodline Mutations. With those in place you can actually build a Character who focuses his power on perfecting a lvl 1 spell, and I think that's pretty cool and fits the character, always going on about lightning on his fingertips. And again, no matter what you do with it, help needed or not, Dex STRENGTH-based Sword Saint is just better by a wide margin.

 

[Haplo]

Well, for the end game it is not optimal.

But for a pretty a large part of the game, Shocking Grasp with mods isn't too shabby. With Intensified Spell Metamagic, it scales till level 10, when it does 10d6 - same as a fireball, BUT NO SAVE and can crit for double.
With Magical Lineage and/or Metamagic Master traits, Intensified is "free". Then you also Empower it to do 15d6 (makes it spell level 3 then - same as Fireball, but 50% more damage and NO SAVE). And then you use a Lesser Maximize Rod (or Robe of Leviathan) and fix the damage at 90 (180 on crit).
Considering that you also get a "bonus" weapon attack in addition to casting the spell and your regular attack sequence, it's not bad (unless you need to move ).

Sometimes I felt tempted to play a regular Magus with Improved Spell Recall for some serious Shocking Grasp spammage.

End game it starts to fall off on Strenght builds, but early and mid game it pretty much rocks.

Too bad an Eldritch Scion like Reg CANNOT reasonably do this, as spontaneuos casters have crippled metamagic and metamagick'ed spells take an entire round to cast for them....

 

[Haplo]

Stacking rules are simple once you learn about them: each bonus has a type (a single keyword like "armor", "shield", "enhancement", "sacred" and so on) and bonuses of the same type do not stack (you just use the highest value). The only exceptions (obviously it wouldn't be 3.x without exceptions) are "dodge", "circumstance" and "untyped" bonuses, which always stack. That's it.

The problem with Kingmaker is that sometimes they don't explain flawlessly what type of bonus you get with certain spells, items and abilities.

Think so?
Then would you be so kind to flawlessly explain to me the stacking rules for Natural Armor bonuses?

 

[Yosharian]

Stacking rules are simple once you learn about them: each bonus has a type (a single keyword like "armor", "shield", "enhancement", "sacred" and so on) and bonuses of the same type do not stack (you just use the highest value). The only exceptions (obviously it wouldn't be 3.x without exceptions) are "dodge", "circumstance" and "untyped" bonuses, which always stack. That's it.

The problem with Kingmaker is that sometimes they don't explain flawlessly what type of bonus you get with certain spells, items and abilities.

Think so?
Then would you be so kind to flawlessly explain to me the stacking rules for Natural Armor bonuses?

Natural Armor bonus (e.g. Wild Shape)
+
Increases to Natural Armor bonus (stacks with itself if it comes from different sources) (E.g. Dragon Disciple)
+
Size increase to Natural Armor bonus (e.g. Legendary Proportions)
+
Enhancement bonus to Natural Armor (e.g. Barkskin)

see, simple!

 

[Haplo]

So I can stack Natural Armor Bonuses as high as I want? Cool beans.

Guess this is how it does work in practice.

Don't think its "rules as intended", though.

 

[Yosharian]

It's pretty fucking bonkers

 

[NJClaw]

Stacking rules are simple once you learn about them: each bonus has a type (a single keyword like "armor", "shield", "enhancement", "sacred" and so on) and bonuses of the same type do not stack (you just use the highest value). The only exceptions (obviously it wouldn't be 3.x without exceptions) are "dodge", "circumstance" and "untyped" bonuses, which always stack. That's it.

The problem with Kingmaker is that sometimes they don't explain flawlessly what type of bonus you get with certain spells, items and abilities.

Think so?
Then would you be so kind to flawlessly explain to me the stacking rules for Natural Armor bonuses?

Natural armor bonuses follow the same exact stacking rules. There's nothing more to say

You have your Natural Armor base value and then you can add bonuses to that if each bonus is of a different type (or of a type that stacks with itself). So you have your base Natural Armor bonus (exactly as a normal armor has its base Armor bonus) and you can improve it with bonuses of different types (Enhancement and Size are the most common, but you can find some Sacred ones and nothing forbids a "Dodge" bonus to Natural Armor, even if it sounds meaningless), exactly how you do with your normal armor (which can improve its Armor bonus with stuff like an Enhancement bonus from enchanting or from spells like Magic Vestment).

The only thing slightly particular about Natural Armor is that certain features give a flat permanent bonus called an "increase" (stuff like the Improved Natural Armor feat or the Dragon Disciple class feature) and that "stacks" with everything simply because it's not a bonus, it is a flat and "semi-permanent" increase of your base value (if you pay attention to how these features are worded, the word "bonus" is never mentioned, because it's an increase).

 

[NJClaw]

So I can stack Natural Armor Bonuses as high as I want? Cool beans.

Guess this is how it does work in practice.

Don't think its "rules as intended", though.

No, you can't stack Natural Armor bonuses as high as you want. You are confusing Natural Armor bonuses with bonuses to Natural Armor ("to" being the key word).

"Natural Armor" is a type of bonus that applies only to AC: you can have only a single Natural Armor bonus applied to your AC because two Natural Armor bonus don't stack (being of the same type). However, you can stack bonuses to your Natural Armor (exactly as you can stack bonuses to everything), provided that they are of different types (or of types that stack with themselves). So you can have an Enhancement/Size/Sacred bonus to your Natural Armor, but these are bonuses to your Natural Armor, not to your AC: the bonus that gets applied to your AC is the Natural Armor (that you can obtain adding all your bonuses to Natural Armor to your Natural Armor base value). I'm using a lot of words, but it's extremely simple (common terms):

A natural armor bonus improves armor class resulting from a creature’s naturally tough hide. Natural armor bonuses stack with all other bonuses to armor class (even with armor bonuses) except other natural armor bonuses. Some magical effects (such as the barkskin spell) grant an enhancement bonus to the creature’s existing natural armor bonus, which has the effect of increasing the natural armor’s overall bonus to armor class. A natural armor bonus doesn’t apply against touch attacks.

Stretching things a bit (and this is obviously absurd, but that's what you get if you stick only to the rules as written), since Natural Armor is just a keyword for a bonus type, nothing forbids to create spells/items that give Natural Armor bonuses to other things and not only AC: you could create a magic item that gives a Natural Armor bonus to your Strength score and, why not, a Natural Armor bonus to your Natural Armor.

 

[Silly Germans]

Does Magical Vestment work properly ? I find its behavior strange. The shield and armor version
seem to follow different rules.

 

[NJClaw]

Does Magical Vestment work properly ? I find its behavior strange. The shield and armor version
seem to follow different rules.

It doesn't work on many different levels.

The Shield version does nothing, while the Armor version wrongly stacks with other Enhancement bonuses already present. This means you can wear a +4 armor (an armor that already has a +4 Enhancement bonus) and stack a +5 from Magical Vestment, while the two bonuses shouldn't stack.

EDIT: regarding the Shield version, it's strange. Usually (99% of the times) it did nothing for me, but sometimes I saw its bonus.

 

[LabRat]

 

[Efe]

i wonder what will people that helped him make this mod think.
would anyone be willing to reach out to Hsinyu, Spacehamster, Elmindra and Nolanoth?

 

[Desiderius]

i wonder what will people that helped him make this mod think.
would anyone be willing to reach out to Hsinyu, Spacehamster, Elmindra and Nolanoth?

Didn't he announce he was quitting last month then proceed on a massive dump of new content?

How hard is it just to sign up for his Patreon?

 

[Efe]

i never used his mod.
not planning on doing it either. why would i sign up to his patreon?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Goddamit

Honestly, it kinda pisses me off that people are being loud and obnoxious enough to get him to do that. There are reporting bugs and there are giving shit to people working for pretty much free to improve something. Doesn't like it? Delete it from your PC man.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Dex based Sword Saint is just better by a wide margin.

Lol. No.

I see you're new here.

Behold the silliness of STR-based nonsense. This is unmodded.

You're giving up one of your main class features (free spell every round + full attacks?) and a ton of AC in order to do alpha strikes. The tradeoff is not as clear as you're making it out to be here. You can use a Rapier on Sword Saint and do some pretty cool things with a Duelist prestige class. Not everything has to be a hurr durr strength based alpha striker.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

So I can stack Natural Armor Bonuses as high as I want? Cool beans.

Guess this is how it does work in practice.

Don't think its "rules as intended", though.

It is rules as intended, you can stack bonuses to natural armor as high as the moon so long as they're different types of bonuses, as Yosharian explained. By the way none of Natural Armor counts towards Touch AC, which is the really big hurdle in late game, so it's not as good as it may seem.

By the way, you mentioned Reg being cut off (sort of) from metamagic, with Call of the Wild you can just take Spontaneous Metafocus: Shocking Grasp and problem solved. One of the main reasons why I mention that the character concept is gimped with the limited selection of feats from the base game. (Even if he's still useful as a generic magus grunt with herpa derp two handed weapons.)

 

[LannTheStupid]

How hard is it just to sign up for his Patreon?

It means paying 1 euro to an enemy of the people.

Also, if the source code is available and updated, then what's the problem?

 

[Haplo]

Dex based Sword Saint is just better by a wide margin.

Lol. No.

I see you're new here.

Behold the silliness of STR-based nonsense. This is unmodded.

You're giving up one of your main class features (free spell every round + full attacks?) and a ton of AC in order to do alpha strikes. The tradeoff is not as clear as you're making it out to be here. You can use a Rapier on Sword Saint and do some pretty cool things with a Duelist prestige class. Not everything has to be a hurr durr strength based alpha striker.

Rapier? And Duelist? Oh please.

Will you please stop gimping your characters?

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Too many galaxy brain theroycrafters in the thread, no point saying anything at this point. Yes, two handed strength based builds are the only thing worth building in this game. 4 two handed sword saint herpa derpers 1 alchemist and 1 Bard with fascinate = literally the only thing even worth contemplating. If you guys are right, what a fantastic system Pathfinder is! :D

I'll show myself out so you guys can continue stroking your cocks with those screenshots of BIG DUMMUGE NUMBARS