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

[Desiderius]

I did Two-bladed Sword Vivi (you can buy a Flaming one at the beginning) and Divine Hunter1/BardX and was happy with those. Companions are melee heavy so ranged works reasonably well.

Thunderbard is a trap I think since you can just get that effect from a spell (and can up DC on spells) and you want to keep Inspire up. Admittedly haven’t tested it much.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I guess I don't care that much, as I assume that you have your companions with you for most combat, so I should probably just be the bard as it seems like these games always have parts where you need to pass persuasion skill checks all by yourself.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

 

[Average Manatee]

You don't do extra damage with it, you target enemy flatfooted AC rather than total AC (which may cause you to hit more often).

According to how the feat is written, anyone can shaken/frighten/panick enemies and then any other character who hits them (against their normal AC) then gets to target their flatfooted AC.

It is, however, bugged, and it simply allows you to always target flatfooted AC against enemies who are shaken/frightened/panicked. This does in fact make it quite overpowered.

 

[Desiderius]

I guess I don't care that much, as I assume that you have your companions with you for most combat, so I should probably just be the bard as it seems like these games always have parts where you need to pass persuasion skill checks all by yourself.

In Wrath there are a lot of ways to get those bonuses but in P:K it's hard to pass up the song + Good Hope.

 

[Desiderius]

You don't do extra damage with it, you target enemy flatfooted AC rather than total AC (which may cause you to hit more often).

According to how the feat is written, anyone can shaken/frighten/panick enemies and then any other character who hits them (against their normal AC) then gets to target their flatfooted AC.

It is, however, bugged, and it simply allows you to always target flatfooted AC against enemies who are shaken/frightened/panicked. This does in fact make it quite overpowered.

Not over, no. Three feats should give you something very powerful and for characters with martial prof* those are three feats they wouldn't otherwise need unless they were the party intimidator.

I only use it on things that need help landing iteratives (a big two-hander can rely on Cleaves and AoOs and Vitals for instances, which are all at full BAB so shld be able to land without flat-footed especially for full BAB classes) or that would otherwise be using at least Weapon Focus. A lot of things don't need to tho people assume they do since they're used to taking that kind of feat. +1 to hit out of 50 to 100 isn't good enough for a Feat.

Most things people talk about being broken aren't even especially good once you get an idea of the scale involved.

* - martial prof gives a much bigger benefit to using best available weapon as opposed to restricting yourself to one.

 

[Average Manatee]

Most enemies have at least 5 lower or worse flat footed AC than regular AC, with many of the tough to hit boss enemies having 10 or so lower flatfooted AC. That means it's effectively a permanent +5-10 AC for the cost of three feats (one of which is weapon focus which is commonly needed anyway) so long as you have someone applying the conditions. And considering there are spammable AoE condition application methods with no save, that's pretty overpowered. If it worked as intended it'd be a lot weaker and better balanced.

Incidentally what happens if you make an attack that combines hitting flat footed and hitting touch AC? Does one override the other or does the game actually calculate it with both types of AC removed from the to-hit equation?

 

[Nortar]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

All the info you need is in the description of Shatter Defenses feat.
There is no direct extra damage.
All it does is make the enemy you hit flat-footed to you.

It means he will not have Dex bonus to AC to your attacks and won't be making any AoO.
So in most cases (except for select enemies with extremely high Dex) for any melee character without sneak-attacks and CMs, Shatter Defenses is about as useful as an umbrella for a fish.

 

[Desiderius]

Most enemies have at least 5 lower or worse flat footed AC than regular AC, with many of the tough to hit boss enemies having 10 or so lower flatfooted AC. That means it's effectively a permanent +5-10 AC for the cost of three feats (one of which is weapon focus which is commonly needed anyway) so long as you have someone applying the conditions. And considering there are spammable AoE condition application methods with no save, that's pretty overpowered. If it worked as intended it'd be a lot weaker and better balanced.

Incidentally what happens if you make an attack that combines hitting flat footed and hitting touch AC? Does one override the other or does the game actually calculate it with both types of AC removed from the to-hit equation?

Weapon Focus is not commonly needed, that's the point. Dazzling definitely isn't even in your party necessarily since you've already got that effect for those rares bosses (some of which are fear-immune in any case) from the simple Demoralize ability.

Of course both types are removed. They're different things. Common occurrence. But there are other ways to get Flat-footed other than Shatter and many bosses have Uncanny Dodge in any case.

There are.. not spammable AoE condition applications with no save unless you want your Bard to turn of his main buff, which kind of defeats the purpose. Back when you could stack Dirge and Inspire (something I pointed out when I first joined the Codex) that became a common thing, but Owlcat fixed the stacking. You can get it on CotW with a rnd/lvl spell and three performance charges per round.

Frightful does it at lvl 15 for the fastest spell progression classes that don't splash, but then again that's a big investment and some things are immune in any case. Demoralize/Dazzling is a skill check (sometimes steep) for you, not a save for them.

 

[Desiderius]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

All the info you need is in the description of Shatter Defenses feat.
There is no direct extra damage.
All it does is make the enemy you hit flat-footed to you.

It means he will not have Dex bonus to AC to your attacks and won't be making any AoO.
So in most cases (except for select enemies with extremely high Dex) for any melee character without sneak-attacks and CMs, Shatter Defenses is about as useful as an umbrella for a fish.

On the highest difficulties any enemy you'd look into Shatter for is going to have extremely high DEX in addition to everything else. Extreme compared to PnP. But the scale is different on the player side too.

 

[Average Manatee]

So in most cases (except for select enemies with extremely high Dex) for any melee character without sneak-attacks and CMs, Shatter Defenses is about as useful as an umbrella for a fish.

Just checked HatEoT enemy list on the wiki. Aside from Golems (str bois) and Mage (no AC to begin with), basically everything will have AC lowered by at least 5 and the hardest to hit enemies will lose 8 at a minimum up to 14 for wild hunt monarchs.

Weapon Focus is not commonly needed, that's the point. Dazzling definitely isn't even in your party necessarily since you've already got that effect for those rares bosses (some of which are fear-immune in any case) from the simple Demoralize ability.

It's the prereq to like half a dozen things and there's not much else to take for a physical character that is not taking tons of combat maneouvers or the rogue-type specific stuff. I'm also ignoring gay shit like crane style which anyone should be ashamed for taking.

There are.. not spammable AoE condition applications with no save unless you want your Bard to turn of his main buff, which kind of defeats the purpose. Back when you could stack Dirge and Inspire (something I pointed out when I first joined the Codex) that became a common thing, but Owlcat fixed the stacking. You can get it on CotW with a rnd/lvl spell and three performance charges per round.

If you are fighting something that is hard to hit then +10 or more AB is vastly, vastly stronger than +3-4 AB and +3-4 damage,.

Frightful does it at lvl 15 for the fastest spell progression classes that don't splash, but then again that's a big investment and some things are immune in any case. Demoralize/Dazzling is a skill check (sometimes steep) for you, not a save for them.

Saying "some things are immune" doesn't automatically make something not overpowered. If there was a fireball spell that did 10,000 damage it'd be overpowered even if fire immune enemies existed. Your bard can get absurd persuasion levels to make the demoralize check basically assured but you are correct that its still technically checking something.

 

[Desiderius]

Just because you’re too lazy to read and test the different feats available to you it does not follow that there is nothing to take. There’s always something - too many things - good to take.

You don’t need Weapon Focus. People get locked into focusing on one weapon (totally negating all the work Owlcat did making Martial Proficiency matter, which is great design) then cry about weapon availability. Improved Crit is the main thing people want it for but there are other ways to get that. It’s a pretty common prereq in CotW but really isn’t in Vanilla.

 

[Sykar]

Icewind Dale 2 had a nice feat which let you deal max weapon damage for 2 rounds with the prerequisite having 2 weapon specialization. I think if there had been feats like this in PF:KM it would have encouraged players to specialize in more than one weapon. Fighter sure has the feats for it anyway.

 

[Desiderius]

Wild Hunt are comically easy to hit. The threat there is the gaze you need a plan for. Ghost Mages will Plague Storm you, Ghost Rogues can hit hard with Sneaks, and who knows what the fuck to do with Swarms. I figured something out but can’t remember what it was.

There’s nothing like Playful Darkness in P:K where Shatter is close to obligatory if you want to hit (and helps to have Brilliant Energy as well). Shatter is the Achilles heel of DEX Vivis like Playful since it doesn’t get Uncanny Dodge and he’s not immune since he’s not actually Undead.

Most of the hardest things to hit in P:K are.

In any case I’d find things randomly flat-footed in my combat logs anyway. Never could tell if it was just from zerging or flanking or what.

 

[Desiderius]

Icewind Dale 2 had a nice feat which let you deal max weapon damage for 2 rounds with the prerequisite having 2 weapon specialization. I think if there had been feats like this in PF:KM it would have encouraged players to specialize in more than one weapon. Fighter sure has the feats for it anyway.

Unless you’re a Sword Saint (which it seems like everyone wanted to be) there’s not much payoff for specializing at all. At least with Fighter you get good bonuses for your weapon group.

 

[Sykar]

Well sure, I am not saying it should be exactly like IWD 2, just the general idea of having more than one weapon focuses/specializations can open up interesting/strong feats could have been nice.
That being said, stumbled upon this funny meme on the Pathfinder reddit:

 

[Average Manatee]

Icewind Dale 2 had a nice feat which let you deal max weapon damage for 2 rounds with the prerequisite having 2 weapon specialization. I think if there had been feats like this in PF:KM it would have encouraged players to specialize in more than one weapon. Fighter sure has the feats for it anyway.

D&D should dump the whole specific weapon specialization thing entirely and just rely on proficiency. An experienced medieval fighter IRL would be expected to be able to use all their weapons ably. They'd be, like, level 2 or 3 max in D&D. An actual level 10+ fighter would be a a superhero-level character yet he's incapable of properly using a blade that is 2 inches longer than he's used to. Even worse when the games literally invent multiple sword classifications that are actually just different names for the same sword (e.g. rapiers vs. dueling swords).

Just because you’re too lazy to read and test the different feats available to you it does not follow that there is nothing to take. There’s always something - too many things - good to take.

Uhh, no? Not really, the amount of feats that are useful is pretty limited. And you definitely don't need Shatter Defenses early game, it's a mid to late game thing.

Wild Hunt are comically easy to hit. The threat there is the gaze you need a plan for. Ghost Mages will Plague Storm you, Ghost Rogues can hit hard with Sneaks, and who knows what the fuck to do with Swarms. I figured something out but can’t remember what it was.

Uhh, 45 base AC on core difficulty for those monarchs. Even if you can hit with your primary attack you probably have up to 3 iteratives that get a gigantic boost from cutting that AC down to 31. If you have 45 AB then 45/40/35/30 hits an average of 2.5 times a round while vs. 31 AC you hit 4 times, that's a 60% damage increase. If you have 40 AB then your hit rate goes from 1.55x to 3.75x, a 140% increase in damage. Killing things faster is always one of the best ways to lower the damage you take.

Wild Gaze is trivially beaten by Freedom of Movement, Echolocation, a number of other buffs I can't recall off the top of my head, or just boosting your saves through normally available means (not that this excuses the fact that Wild Gaze is an absurdly broken ability that shouldn't be in the game). According to the wiki the Rogues have an AB of +20/15/10, so as long as you aren't paralyzed they are pretty trivially defeated by simply having an AC above 45 or so. Swarms are bullshit though. Best way is fire AoEs, I eventually stopped giving a fuck about trying to play a fair, balanced game and just had the tieflings do a full kamehameha AoE.

In any case I’d find things randomly flat-footed in my combat logs anyway. Never could tell if it was just from zerging or flanking or what.

Flanking should just be flanking, unless you were using spells that blind/paralyze/etc which are another way to inflict flatfooted.

 

[Grunker]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

Shatter Defenses doesn’t deal extra damage (it doesn’t claim so anywhere in its description either). It makes the opponent flat-flooted which makes them easier to hit, since they lose a lot of bonuses to armor class.

It’s also not about Dazzling (a condition that has nothing to do with Shatter Defenses) - I presume you’re talking about using the feat Dazzling Display, which causes the Shaken condition. But any fear condition can proc Shatter Defenses (Shaken, Frightened, Panicked), no matter the source (Dazzling Display, Intimidate, a spell, whatever).

The fear can come from any source, but Shatter Defenses only works for the character using the feat. So this is it how it works:

1) An enemy gets Shaken, Frightened or Panicked from whatever thing

2) You, a character with Shatter Defences, hit that enemy with an attack

3) That enemy is now flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn, meaning it loses its Dex, Dodge bonus etc. to AC (and if you are a rogue, you can now sneak attack the target freely). This is only against your attacks, but if three party members have Shatter Defenses they can all proc Shatter Defenses for themselves.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it actually works in my experience is that if you have Shattered Defenses your attacks treat any Shaken, Frightened or Panicked enemy as flat-footed automatically, which is quite dumb but then that’s Owlcat for you. In order to put six billions feats in the game they compromised heavily on implementation, so things are still b0rked to this day.

 

[Cael]

On the topic of the different name for same item: Fauchard and Glaive.

Yet, one is Martial and the other is Exotic.

 

[Desiderius]

Icewind Dale 2 had a nice feat which let you deal max weapon damage for 2 rounds with the prerequisite having 2 weapon specialization. I think if there had been feats like this in PF:KM it would have encouraged players to specialize in more than one weapon. Fighter sure has the feats for it anyway.

D&D should dump the whole specific weapon specialization thing entirely and just rely on proficiency. An experienced medieval fighter IRL would be expected to be able to use all their weapons ably. They'd be, like, level 2 or 3 max in D&D. An actual level 10+ fighter would be a a superhero-level character yet he's incapable of properly using a blade that is 2 inches longer than he's used to. Even worse when the games literally invent multiple sword classifications that are actually just different names for the same sword (e.g. rapiers vs. dueling swords).

Just because you’re too lazy to read and test the different feats available to you it does not follow that there is nothing to take. There’s always something - too many things - good to take.

Uhh, no? Not really, the amount of feats that are useful is pretty limited. And you definitely don't need Shatter Defenses early game, it's a mid to late game thing.

Wild Hunt are comically easy to hit. The threat there is the gaze you need a plan for. Ghost Mages will Plague Storm you, Ghost Rogues can hit hard with Sneaks, and who knows what the fuck to do with Swarms. I figured something out but can’t remember what it was.

Uhh, 45 base AC on core difficulty for those monarchs. Even if you can hit with your primary attack you probably have up to 3 iteratives that get a gigantic boost from cutting that AC down to 31. If you have 45 AB then 45/40/35/30 hits an average of 2.5 times a round while vs. 31 AC you hit 4 times, that's a 60% damage increase. If you have 40 AB then your hit rate goes from 1.55x to 3.75x, a 140% increase in damage. Killing things faster is always one of the best ways to lower the damage you take.

Wild Gaze is trivially beaten by Freedom of Movement, Echolocation, a number of other buffs I can't recall off the top of my head, or just boosting your saves through normally available means (not that this excuses the fact that Wild Gaze is an absurdly broken ability that shouldn't be in the game). According to the wiki the Rogues have an AB of +20/15/10, so as long as you aren't paralyzed they are pretty trivially defeated by simply having an AC above 45 or so. Swarms are bullshit though. Best way is fire AoEs, I eventually stopped giving a fuck about trying to play a fair, balanced game and just had the tieflings do a full kamehameha AoE.

In any case I’d find things randomly flat-footed in my combat logs anyway. Never could tell if it was just from zerging or flanking or what.

Flanking should just be flanking, unless you were using spells that blind/paralyze/etc which are another way to inflict flatfooted.

Yes, 45 AC is trivial to hit by House. Darkness is 68 IIRC on Core and you hit it at lvl 14. Please suck less or listen to those who do. By House I’m using Inspire *Heroics* not Courage because don’t need it any more.

Ask Haplo for tips. Though he does use Shatter in most cases because he uses everything and likes to show off. Blowing three feats on an unreliable 6-8 AB that you don’t even need is pretty typical for what passes for overpowered on these threads I guess.

Give me underpowered shit that works any day.

 

[Desiderius]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

Shatter Defenses doesn’t deal extra damage (it doesn’t claim so anywhere in its description either). It makes the opponent flat-flooted which makes them easier to hit, since they lose a lot of bonuses to armor class.

It’s also not about Dazzling (a condition that has nothing to do with Shatter Defenses) - I presume you’re talking about using the feat Dazzling Display, which causes the Shaken condition. But any fear condition can proc Shatter Defenses (Shaken, Frightened, Panicked), no matter the source (Dazzling Display, Intimidate, a spell, whatever).

The fear can come from any source, but Shatter Defenses only works for the character using the feat. So this is it how it works:

1) An enemy gets Shaken, Frightened or Panicked from whatever thing

2) You, a character with Shatter Defences, hit that enemy with an attack

3) That enemy is now flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn, meaning it loses its Dex, Dodge bonus etc. to AC (and if you are a rogue, you can now sneak attack the target freely). This is only against your attacks, but if three party members have Shatter Defenses they can all proc Shatter Defenses for themselves.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it actually works in my experience is that if you have Shattered Defenses your attacks treat any Shaken, Frightened or Panicked enemy as flat-footed automatically, which is quite dumb but then that’s Owlcat for you. In order to put six billions feats in the game they compromised heavily on implementation, so things are still b0rked to this day.

It was a deliberate design decision.

It's a steep feat tax for an unreliable effect that there are other ways to get cheaper in the corner cases where you might need it. Worth it for some characters (and some can cheat the feat tax in any case), not for others. But hurr, durr, anything that works for some builds is broken and should be mandatory for all.

They saw that people were determined to get it and nerf themselves whether they needed it or not because one-weird-trick so as in many other cases gave into the mob and gave them some (optional) encounters in Wrath where you'd better have it or bei REALLY good at finding the alternatives.

That's not the case in P:K.

 

[Grunker]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

Shatter Defenses doesn’t deal extra damage (it doesn’t claim so anywhere in its description either). It makes the opponent flat-flooted which makes them easier to hit, since they lose a lot of bonuses to armor class.

It’s also not about Dazzling (a condition that has nothing to do with Shatter Defenses) - I presume you’re talking about using the feat Dazzling Display, which causes the Shaken condition. But any fear condition can proc Shatter Defenses (Shaken, Frightened, Panicked), no matter the source (Dazzling Display, Intimidate, a spell, whatever).

The fear can come from any source, but Shatter Defenses only works for the character using the feat. So this is it how it works:

1) An enemy gets Shaken, Frightened or Panicked from whatever thing

2) You, a character with Shatter Defences, hit that enemy with an attack

3) That enemy is now flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn, meaning it loses its Dex, Dodge bonus etc. to AC (and if you are a rogue, you can now sneak attack the target freely). This is only against your attacks, but if three party members have Shatter Defenses they can all proc Shatter Defenses for themselves.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it actually works in my experience is that if you have Shattered Defenses your attacks treat any Shaken, Frightened or Panicked enemy as flat-footed automatically, which is quite dumb but then that’s Owlcat for you. In order to put six billions feats in the game they compromised heavily on implementation, so things are still b0rked to this day.

It was a deliberate design decision.

M-hm.

 

[Desiderius]

This is a pic on Monarch before I even knew what I was doing. No Sacred bonus at all, lousy Luck bonus. Two or three other things missing. I think he was just Flat-footed from Stealth. But kinda yeah really don't need it.



This is Unfair, not Challenging/Core. This is a game about weighing trade-offs and exploring/testing your options and figuring out the niches where one thing is good and where another thing isn't needed. Very few things are broken and if you think something is it's much more likely you just aren't aware of the other things you can do and what works best against what challenge.

The easier flanking turns on Sneaks without needing Shatter. It's people who have talked themselves into 45AC being high because PnP who think they have to have it to land their ninth bite.

 

[Desiderius]

I can't find the answer to this anywhere. For shatter defenses, if another character in your party dazzles something, and other characters in your party have "shatter defenses," do they do the extra damage as well? Or does only the character who dazzles the enemy do the extra damage? It seems common to add shatter defenses to almost everything, but the game's descriptions aren't clear.

Shatter Defenses doesn’t deal extra damage (it doesn’t claim so anywhere in its description either). It makes the opponent flat-flooted which makes them easier to hit, since they lose a lot of bonuses to armor class.

It’s also not about Dazzling (a condition that has nothing to do with Shatter Defenses) - I presume you’re talking about using the feat Dazzling Display, which causes the Shaken condition. But any fear condition can proc Shatter Defenses (Shaken, Frightened, Panicked), no matter the source (Dazzling Display, Intimidate, a spell, whatever).

The fear can come from any source, but Shatter Defenses only works for the character using the feat. So this is it how it works:

1) An enemy gets Shaken, Frightened or Panicked from whatever thing

2) You, a character with Shatter Defences, hit that enemy with an attack

3) That enemy is now flat-footed against your attacks until the end of your next turn, meaning it loses its Dex, Dodge bonus etc. to AC (and if you are a rogue, you can now sneak attack the target freely). This is only against your attacks, but if three party members have Shatter Defenses they can all proc Shatter Defenses for themselves.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. How it actually works in my experience is that if you have Shattered Defenses your attacks treat any Shaken, Frightened or Panicked enemy as flat-footed automatically, which is quite dumb but then that’s Owlcat for you. In order to put six billions feats in the game they compromised heavily on implementation, so things are still b0rked to this day.

It was a deliberate design decision.

M-hm.

Yes, they copypasta PnP stuff and never get around to updating it. Many such cases.

CotW "fixes" it but since as Average Manatee points out it's main use is for landing iteratives it ends up being functionally equivalent. Where it does come in handy is in landing CMs against things that probably shouldn't be CMable where the Owlcat version is a big help getting there (though usually True Strike is enough without out).

 

[Sykar]

Any suggestions for a DW Eldritch scoundrel, for flavor I know it is not the strongest class, MC? Thinking of only having 16 intelligence to have access to the highest spell level but focusing on buffing and only using spells without saving throws like Vampiric Touch and utilizing dex DW with Piranha Strike, maybe.