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

[Yosharian]

And from level 3 onward you have vastly superior CC to Grease already. Glitterdust, Web and Pit being the 3 most note worthy ones. Also still works in most act 1 main story areas until you go to the Staglord's fortress.

Grease: Target has to save every round, if the succeed they still have to get up and take AoOs and can't take a full round action. Preventing full round actions for powerful melee characters gets huge the further you get in the game, and enemies basically have to save twice in a row to be able to get a full round action attacking you.
Glitterdust: Blindness gives 50% miss chance, -4 dex and str. Good, but not nearly as good as taking them out of the fight completely. Powerful enemies that would have huge AB and deal lots of damage per hit are still likely to fuck you up if they get past that miss chance. Furthermore the worst part is that it has a DC check every round and ends permanently on the first save the enemy makes. Main reason it's good though is that it targets Will saves which basically makes it a whole other class of debuff spell compared to Grease.
Web: Grapple condition still allows the enemy to attack at -2 even if they can't move. Only advantage is that the terrain is still difficult (=50% movement speed) even if they save.
Pit: Can't attack them while they are in it.

No way I'd consider any of these spells "vastly superior" to Grease. If anything Grease is vastly superior to them in the general combat environment. And in any case you should still be using all your level 1 slots at level 3 or 4. Are you going to rest 10 times in Tranquil River Bend fighting those Boggards with Web?

I mostly agree. One thing you're missing is that the Blind condition has significantly more impact. Can't attack or cast spells at distant targets. Be flat-footed = dead easy to hit, eat sneak attacks even without flanking (and even with Uncanny Dodge, I think).

Web is Transmutation and ain't nobody speccing into that. It is a useful spell though.

What you're missing about Glitterdust is that it is a WILL SAVE. That makes it tremendously useful against enemies that are either immune to trip or have high reflex saves but low Will. Furthermore, Glitterdust doesn't carpet the battlefield with an AOE effect which can hinder you or your allies.

Glitterdust isn't strictly better than Grease but it has a lot of advantages and it is an excellent spell. You should be using it if you're specced into Conjuration.

 

[Haplo]

It's also your first semi-reliable tool (at least versus weak-willed enemies... which are plenty) to make enemies flat-footed, while also crippling their offense.

 

[Desiderius]

I recall using grease up through Vordekai's Tomb. Once I cleared that chapter, I can't recall really using it anymore. I spammed the hell out of the Kineticist Grease when doing The Depths early. Kingmaker has bloated stats/saves, so the repeat saves is very valuable. Troll Troible, Bloom, and Varnhold are ride with mighty but reflex poor monsters. Grease stays relevant for a long time.

Kingmaker has bloated stats/saves

This is what people say who haven't read their abilities. BTW, Slick is in fact great in early Depths, I agree.



Kingmaker has a different scale compared to prior D&D games (although endgame BG got close) to allow for greater granularity. Player abilities use the same scale though.

"Bloated" implies too high for normal tactics to reach so you have to rely on things like persistent effects and kiting that I guess people are used to from desperately trying to add challenge to games designed for the postliterate. Grease being the first such effect available in P:K it's something to turn to in the few cases where you encounter something truly bloated like Vordokai-type Giants on third level of Depths or if you game the Athletics check to get to Swamp Owlbears early.

Most of the time that isn't necessary (only Hargulka would fit in that category and the optional Owlbear in Womb/super ZG in side area) and if it's an effect you need you get upgrades like Sirocco soon enough.

 

[Desiderius]

Web is Transmutation and ain't nobody speccing into that. It is a useful spell though.

What you're missing about Glitterdust is that it is a WILL SAVE. That makes it tremendously useful against enemies that are either immune to trip or have high reflex saves but low Will. Furthermore, Glitterdust doesn't carpet the battlefield with an AOE effect which can hinder you or your allies.

Glitterdust isn't strictly better than Grease but it has a lot of advantages and it is an excellent spell. You should be using it if you're specced into Conjuration.

Web is conjuration too.



EDIT: Web is Conj in Wrath and evidently in CotW. But the fact that it's in her school slot here suggests that Vanilla P:K had it as Transmutation.

I spec Wolj into Transmutation in Wrath and Octavia starts out specced into it in Vanilla P:K. Best spell in the game (Slow) is Transmutation so it's certainly a viable thing. The advantage of Conj is not having to worry about SR.

If big bads hitting you are giving you trouble (there are other ways around that than knocking them down) then Reflex is easier to attack than Will since Owlcat made them relatively willfull.

 

[Desiderius]

So don't be a standoff baby and switch to melee weapons like a real man.

You’re making the game too hard by restricting yourself to first level spells. You’re like the guy complaining that his Magic Missiles just weren’t doing enough damage in Armag’s Tomb.

No one is complaining about grease here but you. You can literally heighten grease and use it all game to good effect against enemies who have reflex as one of their weak saving throws.

Ranged lets you get full attacks without moving so by using ranged for most of my damage I kill things before the persistent part of persistent effects is relevant. You want to make things hard on yourself that's your decision.

You can literally blow a feat to let you use your crappy spells the whole game just like you can blow three feats to give your team -4 AC/Saves to get flat-footed mobs flat-footed.

It's just stupid to do so.

 

[Max Damage]

It's amazing how this guy rants on and on about how people don't want to learn the game and consider the options, yet still insists on being insufferable retard when same applies to him.

 

[Desiderius]

What is Old Stump?

 

[Average Manatee]

Curious how a few pages ago Desiderius was arguing that no one needs more AB because his AB already hits everything, now -4 AB is killing his cheesy ranged spam build.

 

[Desiderius]

During the narrow window where Grease is decent the -4 is pretty relevant. You don’t have Dirge/Shatter yet then anyway.

I’ve been annoyed enough by it after that to regret taking Leopard over Smilo a little, and to notice Ekun feeling a little missy because Okbo Trips so much, but that just makes Grease even worse since everything is already on its ass without wasting a Feat on Heighten and a high level slot on a low level spell. You've also got Bite Cloak Amiri tripping everything (or Haplo using his MC).

 

[Desiderius]

"Spammy ranged builds"



I just noticed Ekun filling up my combat logs and figured out that ranged toons were getting full attacks in while melee toons were still moving to the next target. So I made sure ranged hit hard.



Of course if you're not nerfing yourself with turn-based you can also zerg things with melee for a similar effect. Combine the two and I'm not needing much Grease.



"big tough mobs"

All of the above on Unfair

 

[Desiderius]

CotW has a lot of Entangle effects (and vanilla has Tanglefoot Bombs) which make Shatter less necessary, and with fixed Shatter it's only something I pick up if I already have Dazzling or can get it via Combat Style Feats without prereqs.

CotW also has Burning Invective to replace Dazzling.

 

[razvedchiki]

is there a way dismissed/never recruited companions to not appear in HATOET? never recruited the inquisitor elf/the goblin but they always pop up in the house.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Desiderius Your pride is showing by falling on this contrarian sword. Just because Grease isn't necessary doesn't mean its not effective, or even less effective than alternatives (to a point). In a vancian turn-based system, spells per day and actions per round are everything. Spells with repeated checks alleviate the former by providing for the later. If Grease, Stinking Cloud, and Sirroco had only one save, we wouldn't be discussing them. A powerful debilitation effect that the AI can't respond to with repeated saving throws is tremendous. Your (reach) warriors stand on its edge getting AoOs and bonuses while your ranged does DPS. All the while denying your opponent actions.

Its not complicated and works against most of the most imposing melee foes up through the end of Varnhold. Inelegant? Debatable. Wrong? No.

 

[Desiderius]

Lol. I used to use Grease a good bit. Now I don’t. Again, persistent effects are only good if fights persist long enough for them to be good.

My fights simply don’t past the very early game. There’s no reason anyone else’s need to either since the main reason they don’t is that I stopped overcomplicating the game - cutting out dips and splashes and things like heightening low level spells - and just went with the strengths of each class and let them progress.

* and took advantage of that progression *

I’m not bragging about what I’ve done because I haven’t done much but to simply follow the design of the game and use new abilities/spells as I get them. That’s more from Paizo than Owlcat but Owlcat did a good job preserving that spirit.

I’m beginning to suspect that I may have made KM too complicated too and should have gone with the flow there as well which emphasizes Community and Loyalty first (maybe after getting Econ high enough to lower tax rates).

Taking the loan is the only thing I’m doing that’s original there I think. Average Manatee is right to say selling all your junk for early BP is important too. I needed to do a better job of that.

And he’s probably right that you can do a good bit of exploration in chapter 2 before it’s practical to get rank-ups going. Maybe a couple weeks worth.

 

[Desiderius]

Obviously if you’re soloing that’s different but with full party fights just shouldn’t last long enough for persistent effects to be necessary and you can manage overwhelming numbers as needed with Difficult Terrain.

 

[Average Manatee]

It's not like you need to use Grease every fight. Like I've said, I basically try to stretch whole chapters and regions out without resting if possible, 1 or 2 rests max usually. Casting grease twice a map to make sort of difficult fights into trivial fights is a win. You can also pre-cast it and then lure mobs over it. An enemy on the ground is an enemy you can shoot at or hit *for free*, so even if shooting takes a -4 penalty that's a free round of shooting you wouldn't have otherwise. If 4 out of 5 enemies fall down then you can rape the one enemy still standing then take shots at the one on the ground. There's no instance in which Grease is hurting you as long as you avoid moving into it, it's giving you free turns of combat advantage and even level 1 Grease will regularly work on weak reflex save enemies for a long time, and heightened Grease absolutely remains effective until the end of the game.

I have not made a team of ranged characters (especially a team of sneak attack ranged characters which would certainly be incredibly OP and wipe most encounters in the first round). At most my ranged damage was Ekundayo + Jubilost or the Tiefling girls. In all my games I stick fairly closely to the pre-made NPC classes without multiclassing. Even then most of my fights by the midgame are trivial, with characters like Nok Nok taking out multiple enemies per round and bosses dying in 1 round or less. Obviously if you change NPC classes a lot or use mercs you could further trivialize the game with more OP classes. That doesn't make good spells bad. Otherwise we might as well say that 95% of classes and spells are bad because you could be running something absurd like 6 kineticists through the whole game.

 

[Desiderius]

Mercs are worse than the companions.

None of this is obvious or more people would be doing it. 90% of what people are doing is making themselves actively worse.

I don't have an all-ranged team nor would one trivialize the game - watch poor Ranger Tony's vids of people trying to do that. It is important to get the most out of what ranged characters you have (they don't get flanking bonuses so adding another -4 from Prone is not really trivial). If you do that Sneaks will be nice but it will only be a smallish part of the damage you can do, and that damage is more reliable than Sneaks, especially since I'm playing with Proper Flanking mod.

As you've observed, relative to the two weeks for rank-ups and region claims you probably don't have to be quite as stingy on the rests as I have been. I restarted with an MC better suited to the CotW companions and am almost to Stag Fort. Looking forward to taking another crack at the KM. I think the key move will be finishing Troll Trouble ASAP after second Bart quest (where you save him and he gives you the Whip Quest) to free up your General advisor, then getting the three regions ASAP to get artisans started. That's something I don't think I've been able to do before because I didn't focus on Community (also unlocks advisor) and Loyalty. And yeah probably hanging on to too many speculative magic items so short on BP even with the Loan.

I've been playing some turn-based to manage the Swifts and Move Actions and set up the flanking a little easier but it does feel significantly nerfed compared to RTwP.

 

[Yosharian]

Finally got around to killing Spawn of Rovagug. His improved AC (57) was a little troublesome for my other party members, but for my MC it was pretty easy to hit him, and just a matter of time till he bit the dust.

Now onto HATEOT...

 

[Nano]

Starting up this game again. This time I'm gonna finally finish it. Not bothering with the annoying companions this time around though - already started off by feeding Amiri to the tigers at the start.

 

[Desiderius]

They get less annoying. It’s kind of the point.

 

[Cael]

Finally got around to killing Spawn of Rovagug. His improved AC (57) was a little troublesome for my other party members, but for my MC it was pretty easy to hit him, and just a matter of time till he bit the dust.

Now onto HATEOT...

"It is so challenging!!!"
"Have you looked at what Tyrant does?"
"Err..."
"Eat un-save-able Destruction and Disintegrate, bitch!"

 

[Nano]

Is she going to be stuck here now? I'm at Oleg's and Amiri keeps haunting me from beyond the grave.

 

[EdgyRightWinger]

Is she going to be stuck here now? I'm at Oleg's and Amiri keeps haunting me from beyond the grave.

As far as I can tell, you can't kick out dead companions the way you can kick out dead mercs.

 

[Nano]

As far as I can tell, you can't kick out dead companions the way you can kick out dead mercs.

Holy fuck, that's retarded. Guess Owlcat couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't reload after one of their precious companions dies.

 

[EdgyRightWinger]

You can spend the 6k to res her and then kick her out... not a great option in Act 1.