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

[Delterius]

Creeping Doom is officially my favourite spell in Kingmaker. Bonkers that it works with superior summoning. Too bad it doesn't work against the game's most annoying enemy - mandroga swarms. It actually gets countered by them since creeping doom swarms get one-shot by them lol

There can be only one creeping doom swarm in these parts.

 

[Infinitron]

Do you remember the epic, the iconic Harrim's song? Now we present you the Christmas remix!

 

[Grunker]

Opted out of Stinking Cloud cheese. Ignoring the spell entirely. Guess I now gotta answer whether that means Creeping Doom is off limits also

 

[Grunker]

(Kind of highlights the problems with Unfair too - that fucker has 60 armor class meaning even ultra-pumped melees can't hit him on anything less than a 20 without Shatter Defenses or something to that effect. Meanwhile my Druid, who is also a decent melee'er, can take him out with a sinlge spell and still do tons of other shit. Buffing AC was definetely right with the way PF and 3.5 works, but a PotD-like mode with special adds and unique defenses would have been welcome.)

 

[Sonic Titan]

Just picked up the definitive edition because I’m slow as fuck on the uptake.

Never played Pathfinder in any capacity; should be fun.

 

[Yosharian]

If you're playing on Unfair you should check out the scaling mod

 

[Shadenuat]

creeping doom comes kinda late and losses its op window quickly.
dragons most ac is spells if it doesn't cast Seamantle its dead. don't remember if you can just dispel all that too.
abjuration really should be first school you design precisely in your d&d games one can hope in next game they pay attention to fucking thing.

 

[LannTheStupid]

If you're playing on Unfair you should check out the scaling mod

Or just play on Challenging.

 

[Desiderius]

(Kind of highlights the problems with Unfair too - that fucker has 60 armor class meaning even ultra-pumped melees can't hit him on anything less than a 20 without Shatter Defenses or something to that effect. Meanwhile my Druid, who is also a decent melee'er, can take him out with a sinlge spell and still do tons of other shit. Buffing AC was definetely right with the way PF and 3.5 works, but a PotD-like mode with special adds and unique defenses would have been welcome.)

You can’t be serious. The Seamantle can be dispelled, doesn’t effect creatures with Freedom of Movement, and you can get AB arbitrarily high in any case. Or you could just get out your loaded dice.

Git gud

 

[Grunker]

Git gud..? When my issue is that I haven’t reloaded a fight since level 8 even with half my characters being weirdo builds on Unfair?

I’m asking for other defenses to be raised to the level of the AC, not the other way around. That’s why I’m asking for something more PotD-like. And/or have better AI/more spell-like abjuration protections like Shadenuat suggests. Maybe even pre-buffing a la SCS (that would be glorious). 60AC doesn’t help much against 90% of the stuff in your toolbox.

After the early game, the game is simply too easy. With very few exceptions, like mandragora swarms (unless you cheese them).

 

[Yosharian]

Git gud..? When my issue is that I haven’t reloaded a fight since level 8 even with half my characters being weirdo builds on Unfair?

I’m asking for other defenses to be raised to the level of the AC, not the other way around. That’s why I’m asking for something more PotD-like. And/or have better AI/more spell-like abjuration protections like Shadenuat suggests. Maybe even pre-buffing a la SCS (that would be glorious). 60AC doesn’t help much against 90% of the stuff in your toolbox.

After the early game, the game is simply too easy.

Like I said use the scaling mod

 

[Grunker]

Git gud..? When my issue is that I haven’t reloaded a fight since level 8 even with half my characters being weirdo builds on Unfair?

I’m asking for other defenses to be raised to the level of the AC, not the other way around. That’s why I’m asking for something more PotD-like. And/or have better AI/more spell-like abjuration protections like Shadenuat suggests. Maybe even pre-buffing a la SCS (that would be glorious). 60AC doesn’t help much against 90% of the stuff in your toolbox.

After the early game, the game is simply too easy.

Like I said use the scaling mod

It literally does nothing of what I suggest? It’s just more stat-inflation. I want enemies in meaningful numbers with attacks that are hard to protect yourself against and defenses that must be whittled down.

 

[Yosharian]

Git gud..? When my issue is that I haven’t reloaded a fight since level 8 even with half my characters being weirdo builds on Unfair?

I’m asking for other defenses to be raised to the level of the AC, not the other way around. That’s why I’m asking for something more PotD-like. And/or have better AI/more spell-like abjuration protections like Shadenuat suggests. Maybe even pre-buffing a la SCS (that would be glorious). 60AC doesn’t help much against 90% of the stuff in your toolbox.

After the early game, the game is simply too easy.

Like I said use the scaling mod

It literally does nothing of what I suggest? It’s just more stat-inflation.

Doesn't it buff enemy saving throws too?

 

[Grunker]

Git gud..? When my issue is that I haven’t reloaded a fight since level 8 even with half my characters being weirdo builds on Unfair?

I’m asking for other defenses to be raised to the level of the AC, not the other way around. That’s why I’m asking for something more PotD-like. And/or have better AI/more spell-like abjuration protections like Shadenuat suggests. Maybe even pre-buffing a la SCS (that would be glorious). 60AC doesn’t help much against 90% of the stuff in your toolbox.

After the early game, the game is simply too easy.

Like I said use the scaling mod

It literally does nothing of what I suggest? It’s just more stat-inflation.

Doesn't it buff enemy saving throws too?

...which is stat-inflation. The more you create difficulty from simple stat-inflation, the more you incentivize automatically re-applied effects or effects that ignore those stats.

I realize proper SCS is too much too ask for when that mod has like 10 years of tireless development. I’m just saying that with the lack of defenses and encounter design to mess with the advanced toolkit you get past level 8-10, the game is not as good as it could be. Though still very fun.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah I don't disagree with that to be fair. I dislike stat inflation too.

 

[Grunker]

Yeah I don't disagree with that to be fair. I dislike stat inflation too.

I mean to some extend it’s fine. Pathfinder and 3.5 are legendary for being games where attacks just outright beat defense. So I fully support Unfair’s stat bumps. They’re just not enough. I think the optimal solution would be more enemy pre-buffing combined with more enemy spell-like protections combined with more enemy attacks that attack something else than you AC/HP.

 

[Yosharian]

It's the same story with every game these days, the AI is just underwhelming and shows no innovation

 

[Grunker]

I dunno, isn't that true for every game ever? The IE-games have way more basic AI than Kingmaker in my opinion, SCS is the result of 10 years of incessant iteration, of course a vanilla game can't compete with that. Even Path of the Damned only became great after patch upon patch upon patch, and it's still only great, not just good, in White March.

It's also why I love Blackguards because even though it's got pretty basic AI at least every encounter is hand-crafted to be challenging.

So it's not as much a criticism of Kingmaker I guess as it is of RPG design in general. But then, if the developers did focus more resources into better and more resilient enemies on higher difficulties, how many players would appreciate that? Aren't we a giant minority? Don't most Kingmaker-players play on core rules and don't care that they're rofl-stomping mobs past level 8?

Probably that's why we can't have nice things At least Kingmaker-devs tried in many ways. I bet there's a ton of people out there for whom the Mandrogora-swarms are wildly frustrating as opposed to finally an interesting enemy. Just like the fey-blinds which I like and would have enjoyed more of is probably something that infuriates some players ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would love an option for more enemy pre-buffing though (there's a bit of it in the game already), and I bet it wouldn't be that hard to code. Just coding 6-7 different behaviours and applying them to enemies as applicable would be a huge upgrade. That, or more annoying attacks like the golems that cast prismatic spray!

 

[Trashos]

At what point in the game are you now?

 

[Grunker]

At what point in the game are you now?

Finishing up War of the River Kings. But I played through nearly the entire game on rtwp unfair approx a year after release.

 

[Trashos]

All right, I thought it was your 1st playthrough.

Generally, I agree that BG2's system of mage defenses and the tools to take them down are largely missing here.
(Other than that, the system here is better though. The AI too, as compared to unmodded BG2- I haven't played the mods.)

 

[Grunker]

All right, I thought it was your 1st playthrough.

Generally, I agree that BG2's system of mage defenses and the tools to take them down are largely missing here.
(Other than that, the system here is better though. The AI too, as compared to unmodded BG2- I haven't played the mods.)

Yep, agree, like I said:

The IE-games have way more basic AI than Kingmaker in my opinion, SCS is the result of 10 years of incessant iteration, of course a vanilla game can't compete with that.

I'm not sure that it would be too hard to provide enemies with more pre-buffing though.

 

[Grunker]

Don't mistake my critcism as scathing; I think this is a great game and I was too harsh on it after my first playthrough. I just think its current, biggest problem is its lack of difficulty past a certain point. Much like the problem with PoE2.

 

[Yosharian]

How hard would it be to have certain enemies begin combat prebuffed with certain spells. Like this is elementary shit.

 

[Delterius]

Especially Vordakai.