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

[Desiderius]

Your butthurt spam has convinced me...

You can play the hardest difficulty soon enough. But starting there warps your experience of the game and precludes your ability to develop the understanding and skills to thrive there. I'm sorry you grew up on shitty games where you had to play on the highest difficulty to give yourself any challenge at all. This one is a throwback to the time where we didn't have to do that.

I've never kited this game in my life, or any game. Never had to.

 

[Yosharian]

Spams butthurt on every post a guy makes, calls other people 'bitchy'

 

[Sykar]

Your butthurt spam has convinced me...

You can play the hardest difficulty soon enough. But starting there warps your experience of the game and precludes your ability to develop the understanding and skills to thrive there. I'm sorry you grew up on shitty games where you had to play on the highest difficulty to give yourself any challenge at all. This one is a throwback to the time where we didn't have to do that.

I've never kited this game in my life, or any game. Never had to.

But kiting is fun!

 

[NJClaw]

Guys, please. Correct_Carlo unironically added his pronouns to his profile on the Codex. You can't expect him to play games on any difficulty other than the highest one. He thrives on the challenge. He lives for it.

 

[Desiderius]

My pronouns are кто/кого

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I've done most of the chapter 1 areas. Everyone says that the companions are shit, and they kind of are:

-Amiri can't hit shit and she dies instantly. I tried different stuff with her, but ended up doing an Inquistor Huntsmaster, because she at least has an animal companion. Beyond that, whenever I take her on a mission, I often find that I just give her a bow and let her not hit shit at range, as she has a bad habit of perma-dying.

-Valerie's fine. She can at least tank shit almost infinitely, although she rarely hits anything. I feel like she might get better as I start building out her offensive skills.

-Regongar is shit. He gets hit once and he perma-dies. So basically useless.

-Linzi is shit for offense (save for daze, which she can spam infinitely on humans, which is awesome), but her support spells are fine. The bard spells make a big difference.

-I haven't used Octavia much yet, but her starting, vanilla, spells aren't terribly useful, so I haven't been using her much. She could maybe be good, but she's hasn't leveled for me yet so I don't know what spells come as options for her class.

-I've hired one Mercenary Sorcerer who's basically all Grease Casting, all the time. Grease is pretty insane as it's very OP, but all my melee people get caught in it, so it's very unpredictable. I've had some insane edge of the seat battles where my melee people took turns with the enemy repeatedly slipping in the grease.

-My player character has actually ended up being the main DPS on my team. Bows are pretty good once you get the rapid shot feat and the feat that increases your attack when enemies are engaged in melee.

-I just got the Cleric guy (Tristian?). That temple where you recruit him was insane. There was the bear, the warthog, and then the 3 massive wolves, which I thought I had no chance of beating, but then I parked all of my people on the upper left ledge of the temple, cast the vines and a bunch of grease spills on the steps, ran my leopard companion down to aggro them, and then my entire team sniped them as they got caught in the vines and slipped on the grease. It was awesome.

 

[The_Mask]

Carlo... if these are your thoughts now, you ain't gonna make it to Chapter 3. LOL

 

[Percy]

Bit stiff to be missing both Jaethal and Harrim that early in the game. Don't think I've ever had both go with that fucking gnome.

 

[Average Manatee]

NPCs and indeed most builds feeling kind of shit until level 4-6 or so is fairly normal, you just don't have enough numbers on your side to outweigh RNG and let you fight some of the higher level encounters you find.

Grease = god though. Only downside is pathing, real shame there's no mod that would allow you to forbid your characters from pathing into hostile AoEs. Check out spells like Hideous Laughter when you run into enemies with decent reflex but low will saves.

 

[Desiderius]

I've gotten killed by my own Grease more than any mob.

There are better options.

 

[Desiderius]

I've done most of the chapter 1 areas. Everyone says that the companions are shit, and they kind of are:

-Amiri can't hit shit and she dies instantly. I tried different stuff with her, but ended up doing an Inquistor Huntsmaster, because she at least has an animal companion. Beyond that, whenever I take her on a mission, I often find that I just give her a bow and let her not hit shit at range, as she has a bad habit of perma-dying.

-Valerie's fine. She can at least tank shit almost infinitely, although she rarely hits anything. I feel like she might get better as I start building out her offensive skills.

-Regongar is shit. He gets hit once and he perma-dies. So basically useless.

-Linzi is shit for offense (save for daze, which she can spam infinitely on humans, which is awesome), but her support spells are fine. The bard spells make a big difference.

-I haven't used Octavia much yet, but her starting, vanilla, spells aren't terribly useful, so I haven't been using her much. She could maybe be good, but she's hasn't leveled for me yet so I don't know what spells come as options for her class.

-I've hired one Mercenary Sorcerer who's basically all Grease Casting, all the time. Grease is pretty insane as it's very OP, but all my melee people get caught in it, so it's very unpredictable. I've had some insane edge of the seat battles where my melee people took turns with the enemy repeatedly slipping in the grease.

-My player character has actually ended up being the main DPS on my team. Bows are pretty good once you get the rapid shot feat and the feat that increases your attack when enemies are engaged in melee.

-I just got the Cleric guy (Tristian?). That temple where you recruit him was insane. There was the bear, the warthog, and then the 3 massive wolves, which I thought I had no chance of beating, but then I parked all of my people on the upper left ledge of the temple, cast the vines and a bunch of grease spills on the steps, ran my leopard companion down to aggro them, and then my entire team sniped them as they got caught in the vines and slipped on the grease. It was awesome.

The companions don't suck, you do. We all did. Some of us got better, though few with your attitude/approach. If you're looking for help this is the wrong way to do that too.

Amiri ended up my most dominant companion. Booter/Barb.

Valerie has four great builds, including one that makes Unfair from level one manageable.

The timing on Magi is tricky but worth the effort. Reg is a unique take on the class but CHR-based has it's uses. His eventual companion cloak is a nice one. He has defensive tools but you're mostly focusing on killing stuff before it attacks if you're playing him.

Linzi helps the whole team on offense though early on you're probably better off using Demoralize over Daze.

You don't need mercs. They have a lower point buy than Companions.

Glad you're having fun. Sounds like you've discovered about .3% of what's there. Don't get stuck on that.

 

[Desiderius]

This is what I was doing with Amiri on level 2 Unfair. Just gotta stack up those Bonuses and Maluses and give her a beat (Freebooter's Bane is good for this) before Charging in.



Then eventually she gets Pounce and you just kill stuff before it can do anything. Notice Linzi being shit on offense.

 

[Cael]

Linzi is all about support and control. If you made her into offense, you are pushing shit uphill.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Linzi is all about support and control. If you made her into offense, you are pushing shit uphill.

She can be a decent front liner and support, though didn't tried that in unfair tbh.

 

[Desiderius]

Linzi is all about support and control. If you made her into offense, you are pushing shit uphill.

Common misconception. This isn’t an MMO. Within the field of bonuses and maluses you can set up for your whole team/against the enemy any companion can be an offensive contributor with minimal investment.

That includes action economy since things like Songs and Auras don’t require Actions. And as you can see in the pic it pays off to do that since good offense snowballs into defense (the Cyclops never gets an attack/Linzi triggers two Outflank Crit chains).

Linzi wants to be in melee since she can cast with a Shield, has Image, and can Reduce to Tiny (as a Halfling you can even pick up Cautious Fighter and Fight Defensively). The only cost is picking up Finesse. Unlike Wrath, P:K has good early Agile Rapier.

Doesn’t stop you from also doing support (which is also low cost) and casting offensively as needed, which isn’t always practical on higher difficulties.

 

[Desiderius]

Fighting Ranged is high cost, as is butchering everything else she does to go EK like InEffective.

The point is that you don't have to do any of that. The costliest thing for offense is Shatter and if you're using her for Dazzling Display - which isn't a bad idea since Intimidate is a skill check for you rather than a save for them and you need somebody to apply Shaken* for Shatter on everyone else - then you're already two-thirds of the way there.

When I made Val a Bard I made Linzi into a Thug/Barb intimidator for kind of a joke and it ended up being really good (with the bonuses created by another Bard).

* - when songs stacked with Lingering she could do this with Dirge

 

[Yosharian]

Uhhh Bard spells like Cacophonous Call are offensive spells.

 

[Desiderius]

That's what Cael is referring to under control.

Call is better in P:K than in Wrath (where it's stupidly coded as poison so doesn't work on Demons) but as the game goes on it loses some luster and Bard has fewer tools than full casters do to power through high Will Saves.

It is ideal for Hargulka since it's unaffected by the Freedom he gets from his weapon. But even there beating the Will Save isn't trivial on Unfair.

She's good for AoE control or attacking weak saves on bosses with help from Harrim's Touch of Chaos. An underrated thing you can do is Dominate an add with a weak Will Save like an archer to open the fight from Stealth. Later on you can use Ki Shout to counter Ghost Mages in RTwP.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Desiderius I was wondering how you got +5 wisdom to AB. At first I figured it was Zen Archery, but saw unarmed attack. Did some digging, saw the Sensei archetype. Interesting class. Weird, but interesting. Looks feat starved. Not sure being able to lend out Monk features makes it a better bard though. Especially since they last only 1 round. Was this just a splash for an Insightful Strike build?

 

[Desiderius]

Desiderius I was wondering how you got +5 wisdom to AB. At first I figured it was Zen Archery, but saw unarmed attack. Did some digging, saw the Sensei archetype. Interesting class. Weird, but interesting. Looks feat starved. Not sure being able to lend out Monk features makes it a better bard though. Especially since they last only 1 round. Was this just a splash for an Insightful Strike build?

Nope, full Sensei.

Why would it be Feat starved? You’re not Cleaving.

Brother, when you’re zerging with True Strike, Mass one round is all you need. I think this one was built around the synergy between True Strike and Dirty Trick, which was really good in P:K.

 

[EdgyRightWinger]

And upon reaching level 3 Sacred Huntsmaster your animal companion will start leveling up at twice the normal rate. At level 12 (cleric 1/huntsmaster 11) the animal companion will cap at level 16 as if you were a level 20 character.

So what's happening here is that Sacred Huntsmaster advances both its animal companion and its one domain at every levelup, and that one domain isn't allowed to be the Animal domain. However, the exception comes when a character already has a deity and domains from Cleric (not from Druid), and takes a level in Sacred Cuntsmaster, it doesn't get to choose new ones; instead it uses its Cleric diety and first-chosen Cleric domain (the second cleric domain will languish).

This trick is a great find; I haven't seen it mentioned on 4chan or plebbit or any guides. Works with mercs too.

 

[Cael]

Desiderius I was wondering how you got +5 wisdom to AB. At first I figured it was Zen Archery, but saw unarmed attack. Did some digging, saw the Sensei archetype. Interesting class. Weird, but interesting. Looks feat starved. Not sure being able to lend out Monk features makes it a better bard though. Especially since they last only 1 round. Was this just a splash for an Insightful Strike build?

Nope, full Sensei.

Why would it be Feat starved? You’re not Cleaving.

Brother, when you’re zerging with True Strike, Mass one round is all you need. I think this one was built around the synergy between True Strike and Dirty Trick, which was really good in P:K.

Desi is correct. I play with 5 animal companions, and if weren't for the fact it is so hard to distinguish them (as they don't allow you to change the AC's names), I would be playing with 5 elks. I don't have Mass True Strike as I can't shoehorn in Sensei and still have a viable AC build, but even then, 5 of them charging at an enemy can take them out of a fight, reducing the enemies you actually have to deal with substantially. On Normal, the 5 of them plus the 6 humanoids in the party killed Ithuliak in one round before he could move.

 

[Yosharian]

RE: my bard having trouble beating high Will saves in KM

Enchantment Spell DC Breakdown:
+10 Base
+16 Charisma
+1 Racial ability (Spitespawn Tiefling)
+2 Spell Focus feats (Enchantment)
+1 Enchanter's Cape (Enchantment)
+2 Maya's Charm (Enchantment & Illusion)
+2 Ring of Reckless Courage (Mind-affecting)
+2 Fey Bloodline Arcana (Compulsion)
+1-6 Spell Level
DC 42 (Overwhelming Presence)

 

[Yosharian]

Ehhh I think she'll be ok

 

[Cael]

How did you get 42 Charisma?