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

[Cael]

Can somebody provide me a quick TL;DR summary for Kingdom Management? Or any decent quick guide that's not 30 pages long? What I mean: how to get the important stuff (like artisans?) while spending the absolute minimum amount of time on kingdom management? I actually enjoy the game when it lets me play it (eg. really liked Swap Witch Hut area / quests), but the moment I come back and need to deal with this management crap I just want to put the game away for few days. I know I can set it to Auto, but I think this will make me miss on some important stuff, right?

The game is called Kingmaker. The KM *is* the important stuff. It’s where you get all your best items and universal buffs for some of the toughest fights. Obv also drives the plot.

90% of people bitching about it is a direct result of this garbage attitude and never even trying to figure it out or what the benefits are or how it works. Even if you only care about combat your success there hinges on the items generated by managing your kingdom well.

The Curse is the overall game timer for each Chapter, but once you get the hang of the KM time will go fast.

I wouldn't really call it 'garbage attitude', it's more about the whole management being not fun / annoying / tedious. The whole adventure aspect is derailed by constant noise - I wouldn't really call it the fun of my life to click 'assign advisor' and wait 14 days for the result. Even more fun if the advisor is already assigned to a different project, and - before the end of the month - you suddenly get another 'problem' to deal with, and have no way of solving it before the timer. Those events should have X days to solve, not 'expire on 1 Erastus' for all of them, like this was a magical date or something. Same thing with being forced to visit the Barony to see what's happening - even it's something as simple as 'weeds spotted'. Mail pigeons exist for 2000 years or so, this is just another way for this game to make the whole experience more annoying (out of many). Damn, whenever I force myself and start playing this, they will do something that makes me want to drop all of this and never come back.

If the motherfuckers at Owlcat wanted only specific advisors to be able to do certain events, they shouldn't make it so that advisors are locked away for 90 days at a time, which is more than enough for an event to come and go TWICE over if you have a bad RNG. Incompetent retards.

 

[Average Manatee]

There's also events that come up half way through the month after you've already sent out all your advisors. Kingdom management is mostly brain dead RNG.

 

[Cael]

There's also events that come up half way through the month after you've already sent out all your advisors. Kingdom management is mostly brain dead RNG.

If the useless hacks didn't tie kingdom management into an automatic game over, a lot of people would have ignored that shit. So, they had to do it.

 

[Desiderius]

I redid my party. I went back to the ranger for my MC, a Cleric with a pet, a sword saint, and I wanted a bard, but I also wanted outflank for melee, so I'm doing that monk/bard hybrid class. I had no idea it existed at all until I googled melee bard builds. It's a strange class in that it uses Wisdom for dodge and attack ratings. It has most of the bard songs, but it doesn't have heroism or bravery, which kind of sucks. It has mass bark skin and mass true strike, though. It also seems pretty survivable without armor thus far.

Sensai is pretty great, but Bard can get Outflank fine. Maybe try the companions eventually. They’re really good.

I'm doing the Varnhold DLC. However, when I get back to the main campaign, I might buy a Sensei merc. It's amazing how OP no armor is in this game. When fully buffed, she's way better at not getting hit than my sword saint with Mirror Image turned on.

Sword Saint doesn't wear armor either, genius. You're speed-running all the fallacies I see. Better than getting stuck on one I guess.

I know, but he's not as durable. Also, thanks for reminding me why I should ignore you.

*Your* Sword Saint isn’t as durable. That’s because you just started playing and don’t know what you don’t know yet. No reason a Saint can’t be just as durable as Sensai, or not have to worry about durability at all.

Unarmored isn’t OP. It isn’t even necessarily very good.

 

[Sykar]

Has anyone ever tried to make Linzi work as a DC caster? Does that work even at higher levels? I usually just make her buffbot + archery.

View attachment 26439View attachment 26440View attachment 26441View attachment 26442View attachment 26444View attachment 26445View attachment 26446View attachment 26447View attachment 26448View attachment 26449View attachment 26450View attachment 26451

One of these pics is... not like the others.

(all P:K pics were Unfair, tho I preferred to start on Challenging and go up every five levels. The ones with the Grenadier MC was Unfair all the way).

Nice, I want to try that too for my current playthroughs. Did you get Greater Spellfocus feats for both schools? Me I always start on challenging because I find early Hard/Unfair to be just obnoxious and you are prone to reloading since the AI has a semi hard on for your MC even the dumbest animals who should just attack the nearest target usually.
I only crank up the difficulty if it gets too easy. Otherwise I stay at my current difficulty.

 

[Desiderius]

They only go for your MC if they can see it. You have control over that, and you can punish them for that behavior if you do let them see you.

 

[Desiderius]

Spell Focus is a little underwhelming in P:K. In Wrath you could double the bonuses with one Mythic and use another to share them between schools. I think once they got rid of song stacking I focused more on using her for Dazzling Display then maybe picked up the Focus Feats once that was established. Not sure it was worth it.

 

[Desiderius]

You’d want Enchantment and Evocation (Sonic Spells). Depends on what the party needs but she’s probably strongest just gumming up melee and Dazzling with some decent damage, then using AoE spells against weak saves on adds where she beats like half of them.

I think I’d just let her Demoralize bosses instead of trying to land spells on them. Sound Burst early and Ki Shout late are good Counterspells since casters have weak Fort and the damage can sometimes cause a failed Concentration check even on made save. Have to be RTwP to do that.

 

[Sykar]

They only go for your MC if they can see it. You have control over that, and you can punish them for that behavior if you do let them see you.

Not in the Tartucio fight and neither against those slavers in that forced encounter in chapter 1. Also not much you can do early to punish because your melees won't hit their AoOs since even with Bless spell and Linzi bard song their to hit chance even against just Challenge upgraded opponents is less than stellar.

 

[Max Damage]

For me, Kingdom Management overstays its welcome by Armag's chapter tops, shit's boring and repetitive, with same cards popping again and again. If it wasn't for artisans, I'd turn that noise off. You don't make any meaningful decisions most of time, this wouldn't fly even as mobile game. You don't have to manually tell Regongar to attack yet another spider, so why can't it be automated for spider cards too? It's not like you have much choice for those events anyway.

 

[Desiderius]

They only go for your MC if they can see it. You have control over that, and you can punish them for that behavior if you do let them see you.

Not in the Tartucio fight and neither against those slavers in that forced encounter in chapter 1. Also not much you can do early to punish because your melees won't hit their AoOs since even with Bless spell and Linzi bard song their to hit chance even against just Challenge upgraded opponents is less than stellar.

Maybe this is what the Vanish wand is for.

 

[Desiderius]

Don’t forget to turn on Amiri’s Rage. Give her Reckless Stance and Inspire Ferocity. Keep an Enlarge potion in her inventory and have her wear a STR belt. She’ll one shot anything that tries to run by her.

 

[Arthandas]

How busted is Grease on Unfair?

 

[Max Damage]

All conjuration spells are powerful as long as you're targeting weak saves, Grease imposes multiple checks and basically denies doing anything if you keep DC high. It also bypasses spell resistance, like other conjurations. Once they finally succeed a check and attempt to stand up, you hit them with attack of opportunity. Cast Enlarge Person or other size increasing spells on your melee characters to make the most out of Grease, of course just shooting arrows/bolts/bombs/spells while they're down works too. If you really need to, you can stack more than 1 Grease for extra cheese.

 

[Yosharian]

How busted is Grease on Unfair?

Grease isn't even the most powerful spell. Glitterdust and Chains of Light are absolutely beastly spells that can trivialise a lot of tough monsters/encounters

Glitterdust is a Will save that blinds btw

 

[Desiderius]

Reflex is weak save on several early bad things (including Trolls) but c’mon Grease is a first level spell that hits your own team and debuffs Ranged AB severely.

I really think that people just don’t read.

 

[Desiderius]

RTwP lets you:

(1) Move while waiting for your action (so do bad guys but you're making better moves)

(2) Interrupt spells/abilities with damage (you can see the enemy timer and if yours is lower you can target the enemy spell/ability and force a Concentration check that gets harder the higher the damage)

(3) Zerg (to benefit from Outflank on Charges, including crit chains, and hit flat-footed mobs with whole team)

TB is significantly nerfing yourself.

 

[Max Damage]

With Combat Reflexes, there's no reason to play TB, yeah. You can Charge and do AoOs even if you fail initiative, pretty good deal for -2 AC.

 

[Average Manatee]

Grease is absolutely one of the best spells for the early game, even working long into the midgame. Not getting hit by it yourself is trivial in TB and pretty easy in RT and enemies basically need to save successfully twice in a row to be able to get up and attack you properly (vs. spells like Glitterdust where the target gets to save each round and the effect ends permanently when they make their first save). Even against enemies with fairly high reflex saves it will do good work on groups. Making yourself immune to the effects is also easy by the midgame.

 

[Desiderius]

You're a caster. The whole point is that you get to cast higher level spells faster than anyone else.

If you're spamming first level spells you're doing it wrong. Badly wrong.

 

[Average Manatee]

Higher level spells are not inherently stronger than lower level spells. Especially a heightened lower level spell.

Also, for most of the game you should be trying to stretch out your progress between rests, This means using up your lower level spells effectively.

 

[Desiderius]

They work fine for buffs. By midgame you've got enough high level casts for every fight that matters, although if your fights are going ten-twenty rounds (which is what all this enthusiasm for persistent area effects suggests) I could see where you might want more.

If you were using your better spells you wouldn't have to.

You can also do solid damage with weapons on casters in PF if you want.

 

[Desiderius]

Higher level spells are not inherently stronger than lower level spells

No, that's exactly what they are. What are you even doing?

We get it - you liked the spell in Icewind Dale or whatever. You can do so much more here.

 

[Average Manatee]

No, that's exactly what they are. What are you even doing?

We get it - you liked the spell in Icewind Dale or whatever. You can do so much more here.

Desiderius confirmed for never playing Icewind dale, cause it sucks there.

 

[Nano]

Desiderius confirmed for never playing Icewind dale, cause it sucks there.

Nah. Grease actually saved me a few times in IWD.