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

[Desiderius]

It’s not miles better, people are just used to playing it in P:K.

 

[Sarathiour]

Come on, you loose access to light armor (non-issue when mage armor exist and is so abundant), lost a few spell slots (mostly irrelevant, given you don't really have anything interesting past spell level 3), and you in exchange weapon focus for free, a shitload of extra AC, extra initiative and extra crit.
It's a no-brainer.

 

[Desiderius]

Come on, you loose access to light armor (non-issue when mage armor exist and is so abundant), lost a few spell slots (mostly irrelevant, given you don't really have anything interesting past spell level 3), and you in exchange weapon focus for free, a shitload of extra AC, extra initiative and extra crit.
It's a no-brainer.

It's not a non-issue. Wrath has better Light armors, and some of the variants get more than Light (including Archer lol). Item slots are a valuable resource. Archmage Armor is a meme and DEX-based has a real cost in feats and missed opportunities to go large or, you know, mounted.

Spell slots are also very valuable if you're stacking metamagic like only Magi can (since they get an extra layer). If you don't think there's anything interesting past level 3 you've got a lot of the game left to discover. Spelldancer is happening when I get back and it will be glorious. Spell Combat and Spellstrike are distinctive features and don't have to be used together.

Saint is very good at what it does but what it does is very narrow and can already be handled by several companions.

 

[Sarathiour]

This is the kingmaker thread though.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah well let’s see Sword Saint try to go MT with Feyspeaker like Scion can. (did this with Regongar - see if you can figure out what makes it tricky).

Which is to say you’re right Saint is where it’s at in P:K, though Archer is still good even with (stupidly) no ranged spells or abilities.

 

[Sarathiour]

Yeah, never tried eldrithc archer, it's his own beast and it's one of the few archetype that really differ in playstyle from the base class.

 

[gurugeorge]

Yeah, never tried eldrithc archer, it's his own beast and it's one of the few archetype that really differ in playstyle from the base class.

Eldritch Archer was my favourite character to play in PF:K. It gets very powerful (once you get a full barrage of magic-charged and ordinary shots in one move) and versatile (because of the ability to re-use used spells per arcane pool points), but fair warning - it's pretty clunky and weak to start off with. It starts to take off at lvl 5 when you get +2 to the pool and can get rapid shot (which arcane accuracy - an earlier must-have - compensates for the malus of). As with the Magus it's a bit "fiddly" but I like fiddly Wand mastery (being able to charge shots with wands as well as spells) is a neat trick for it too, although it requires two picks. Reach rods (turning touch into ranged touch, making touch spells usable through the bow) are also handy.

 

[Desiderius]

Lol reaching melee touch spells doesn't work with EA in Wrath, or didn't last time I played. Would be pretty funny if it worked in P:K and they lost that functionality.

 

[tky]

Well, since I'm no longer able to play, here's my final creation:

I was trying to test how many attacks per turn was the maximum, and I think it could be up to 16. With the following build I'm sure of at least 13:

Race: Motherless Tiefling -> +1 Bite
10 Lv. Slayer
02 Lv. Invulnerable Rager (Animal Fury) -> +1 Bite
02 Lv. Vivisectionist (Feral Mutagem) -> +1 Bite
01 Lv. Archaeologist
02 Lv. Dragon Disciple -> +1 Bite
02 Lv. Stawart Defender (Smash) -> +1 Slam?***
01 Any.
= BAB 16+ -> +4 Main-hand
Two-Weapon Fighting Feats -> +3 Off-hand
Steelwind (Sai) -> +2 Haste
Triple-Fin Helmet -> +1 Gore?***

Some optional stuff:
Heart Piercer (Sai) for Bleed and Cloak of the Winter Wolf (Trip on bite).

Swap the 10 levels of Slayer and the Any for Monk and you have +1 from Flurry (I think)***.

Now the above image doesn't have the Stawart levels because I had forgotten to test it. I also forgot to test if the helmet works. So if anyone wants to give it a shot it would be nice to know whether the stacking is true or not.

And I know multiclassing is not the main thing about build craft in this game, but I played with this one for quite a while and it seemed decent enough in terms of viability as long as you're not playing on Unfair or likewise.

 

[Haplo]

That's a lot of attacks.
But also... that AB looks pretty bad for a martial character.
I understand that's without buffs, but still.
I guess you can always hope to roll some 20s.

 

[razvedchiki]

is it possible to kick permantly a companion? i regularly exile jeathal and beahead the goblin but they show up in HATOET and die.

 

[Nano]

i regularly exile jeathal

Why on Golarion would you do that? She's the best candidate for both the Culture and Espionage jobs.

 

[Desiderius]

i regularly exile jeathal

Why on Golarion would you do that? She's the best candidate for both the Culture and Espionage jobs.

I didn't find that to be the case. Evil counselors can get you into some hot water. I think I ended up with Jewb on Espionage? Culture Linzi? Or maybe Storyteller.

 

[Nano]

I didn't find that to be the case. Evil counselors can get you into some hot water. I think I ended up with Jewb on Espionage? Culture Linzi? Or maybe Storyteller.

Nah dude, someone did a guide for the rank-up events, Jaethal is definitely the best Culture advisor. And she's the best Espionage advisor if you want to terrorize your enemies.

 

[Wunderbar]

I thought the best espionage advisor was Ekun.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Yeah Ekkun is the best Espionage. His choices also more or less resulted in best Ending for Espionage.

 

[tky]

That's a lot of attacks.
But also... that AB looks pretty bad for a martial character.
I understand that's without buffs, but still.
I guess you can always hope to roll some 20s.

I, perhaps, should have mentioned it before, but I'm pretty sure the image is already factoring in the penalties from cbt. expertise (-5), pwr. atk. (-5), and def. instance (-4). So the real max AB is quite a bit higher.

And, as you mentioned, rolling 20s is a thing and, thankfully this being a party-based game, among all the AOOs from things like Trip, Outflank, Seize the Moment, and whatnot, from the sheer volume of attacks alone you can beat most encounters. A Bard on Fascinate can help a lot when it comes to controlling the battlefield.

Of course this is no Sword Saint with a dip on Monk, but, you know, not bad for a random ride.

 

[Haplo]

That's a lot of attacks.
But also... that AB looks pretty bad for a martial character.
I understand that's without buffs, but still.
I guess you can always hope to roll some 20s.

I, perhaps, should have mentioned it before, but I'm pretty sure the image is already factoring in the penalties from cbt. expertise (-5), pwr. atk. (-5), and def. instance (-4). So the real max AB is quite a bit higher.

And, as you mentioned, rolling 20s is a thing and, thankfully this being a party-based game, among all the AOOs from things like Trip, Outflank, Seize the Moment, and whatnot, from the sheer volume of attacks alone you can beat most encounters. A Bard on Fascinate can help a lot when it comes to controlling the battlefield.

Of course this is no Sword Saint with a dip on Monk, but, you know, not bad for a random ride.

Why the hell would you ever consider stacking so many AB penalties?

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's a lot of attacks.
But also... that AB looks pretty bad for a martial character.
I understand that's without buffs, but still.
I guess you can always hope to roll some 20s.

I, perhaps, should have mentioned it before, but I'm pretty sure the image is already factoring in the penalties from cbt. expertise (-5), pwr. atk. (-5), and def. instance (-4). So the real max AB is quite a bit higher.

And, as you mentioned, rolling 20s is a thing and, thankfully this being a party-based game, among all the AOOs from things like Trip, Outflank, Seize the Moment, and whatnot, from the sheer volume of attacks alone you can beat most encounters. A Bard on Fascinate can help a lot when it comes to controlling the battlefield.

Of course this is no Sword Saint with a dip on Monk, but, you know, not bad for a random ride.

Why the hell would you ever consider stacking so many AB penalties?

Well, if you can already only hit on a 20, you might as well shoot for the moon with it.

 

[Atlet]

Do you consider retraining your character and companions a sort of cheating?

 

[gurugeorge]

Do you consider retraining your character and companions a sort of cheating?

Nah. I mean, one gets the point "live with your choices" but these rulesets are so complex you can't expect someone to go into a game (that is after all not being marketed specifically at nerds but at a general gaming public) fresh without any prior understanding and not cock the build up. Also, broken features are a thing in every new game, it seems to be unavoidable.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if tutorials were better and/or people actually read that shit, you could lean more heavily on "live with your choices." But that's the thing, for most people a new game is fresh and exciting, they want to find out what happens next with the story (and let's face it most games are necessarily front-loaded and highly detailed with VO, making the first few levels quite dense story-wise), and it would require superhuman levels of patience to spend like an hour beforehand poring over the details of the rules.

ON THE OTHER, OTHER HAND, that's what we used to do in the age of printed manuals, so there's that.

I do think there's a case for limited respecs until you've finished the game once though. Maybe give the player 2 to start with - it would be a like saying, "OK, you feel like you've cocked up your build. We understand, these things happen, here's a respec. But we'd like you to to stick with the idea you started with and develop it properly, so here's 2 respecs, one so that in a fit of pique you can try something different and then decide later you don't like it and you preferred the overall feel of your original character, and another one to go back to your original plan, but with a better understanding of the game"

Then once you've finished the game and given due respect to the developers' work, it's fun time, you want to be able to fiddle around, so infinite changeability (but there's usually mods for that).

 

[Yosharian]

Why is Jaethal better than the Storyteller for Culture? I was under the impression he was the best

Jaethal also has pretty mediocre Charisma sooo

 

[Sarathiour]

Do you consider retraining your character and companions a sort of cheating?

Full retrained companion, sort of. I at least try to keep them thematically adjacent when leveling them.

Classical retrain through the pathfinder npc, certainly not. Too much broken feature and meta knowledge needed to make your first run without using the option.

 

[Nano]

Why is Jaethal better than the Storyteller for Culture? I was under the impression he was the best

Jaethal also has pretty mediocre Charisma sooo

See the page I linked. She's the only one who can give you the best outcome in the last rank up event.

Spoiler

Storyteller is actually the worst advisor here. If you listen to his advice then artists will leave your lands because you're not making them dependent on your support.

 

[Desiderius]

P:K has enough flexibility you don’t need a retrain mod. Retraining from early game build to lategame is cheating but other than that nah.