Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Game of the Year Edition

[Desiderius]

Azata despite her being heavily spec'd for melee

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

 

[Lambach]

Lambach That sounds like such a sad end for a great game. I was really hoping that the late-game would be better than Kingmaker, which was my worst favorite game ever to finish.

Well, I haven't done the last couple of final Main Quests, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Maybe we'll both get our shit pushed in by those, I dunno.

There was also this one completely optional location on the Area Map in Chapter 5 that made me sweat on both characters, despite bringing the most optimized Party comp I could've had + silly levels of pre-buffing, but other than that, yeah, Act 5 does feel mostly like a faceroll right now, a la the Pitax Chapter in Kingmaker.

 

[The_Mask]

Relatively minor bug, but dead enemy started T-posing. Is that common?

I've never had it be perpetual, but if you crit as a last hit, they do T-pose for me as well. But it's just for a 0.1s... then they die as normal. You ought to report that one. But I'm sure it's nothing serious.

 

[Lambach]

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

I feel pure Casters benefit a lot more from having a Merged Spellbook than anything an Azata can provide.

Favorable Magic and all the unique buffs to DC are nice, but being able to cast 8th or 9th level Spells fairly early into Chapter 3 is just stupid good.

 

[The_Mask]

Got to late Act 5 (or so I think, at least) with both the Lich and the Azata characters. Feels a bit boring now. With proper pre-combat preparation, I wipe everything out without breaking a sweat on both. Without it, enemy stat Bloat is a bit too heavy to deal with even on Core, specially with the Azata MC where my Party relies on pre-buffing much more (the Lich MC can get away with one or two unprepared fights due to things like Greater Rods + Blood Feast and similar stupidly powerful, broken Lich Spells). Anything in-between feels like using meta-knowledge to kinda-gimp-myself-intentionally-but-not-really, which is just stupid.

I don't see this getting better with an increase in Difficulty, Unfair would just make me stick to the same tactics all that much more and min-max them further. At least on Core I get to have some fun with Overwhelming Presence on the Azata despite her being heavily spec'd for melee instead of Spellcasting, or killing enemies through Ability Score damage with the Lich (+ the Repurpose stuff).

Guess that means it's time to wrap it up. I still have Nenio's quest and "The Secrets of Creation" to go through on both characters before Iz, but some good folk in this thread have recommended a couple of Mods to help with those. I will gladly cheat my way through that unbearable garbage, because the puzzles so far have been suicide-inducing, and from what I've seen online, the ones you have to solve during these two quests are orders of magnitude worse.

I kinda agree with your sentiment, but I also think you might want to experience, at some point in the future, some of the more unique paths, like Aeon and Swarm. Especially Swarm.

And Nenio's quest is pure cancer.

 

[ArchAngel]

I found Full +2 before Mythril and iirc you can buy Fulls from the vendor. Which is moot unless there’s Armor like Chain of Comradery with other bonuses which is the main thing (after Weapon Training) motivating me to look at Fighter. Likewise if there’s a good Tower since Fighter is only class with Tower Prof.

There is one niche I can think of where I’d want to look at Mut Warrior: Effortless Dual Wielding best available one-handers *without Shatter* to hit Mind Immune bosses, using the three Feats saved on a good CM or as you suggested Vital Strike with Two-hander (preferably Glaive/Bardiche) and the Cleaves for non-bosses. That’s where you’d really need all that AB.

With Shatter it’s probably going to have the highest CMB available so if you can manage the speed issues you could Move + CM bosses if you can offset the INT malus.

There's only one highly rated tower shield I've found. It's a +4, evil only that gives an additional -2 to hit vs evil. Think I'll probably give that one a miss.

I'm still definitely more likely to include a barbarian (particularly a Mad Dog), a paladin, a bloodrider, or a cavalier than I am any variety fighter. Cavalry are just faster, better able to readjust position to attack, and better protected than foot sloggers.

My opinion is that using animal companions is cheating as they are way more powerful than in PnP. I try to use as little as I can. I will try to never have more than one per party.

With the addition of Barding (and the easy availability of highly Enchanted Bardings) along with the pathing changes where you can pretty much just stack characters in the same space I’m finally ready to agree with this.

With the pathing and the buffs required in P:K they weren’t as OP as made out to be but now it’s hard to defend not just going with Pet/Mounted classes whenever you can.

Even in Kingmaker they were too powerful. They got a lot of passive buffs because you could not give them gear that was supposed to simulate gear but they got way more than what gear would realistically give them. Then in WotR they let you put gear on them but left the passive bonuses. They were never meant to be as strong as other party members but be a bit of a bonus. Not to mention in PnP you cannot command them like in this game. You basically tell them to attack targets or stay back and shit, not use them like a robot with super precise movement. Fuck you had to force your animal companions to enter dungeons with you or fight unnatural enemies in PnP. They completely fucked up their power level in this game.

 

[Lambach]

I kinda agree with your sentiment, but I also think you might want to experience, at some point in the future, some of the more unique paths, like Aeon and Swarm. Especially Swarm.

I had planned on Aeon next, in some not-so-near future after I've had a break and after Owlcat release some kind of a definitive version of the game.

I dunno about Swarm, it feels like something that's more fun to watch someone else play on YT for a while than play it yourself. It only unlocks after 80+ percent of the content is finished anyway and it seems like faithfully following that Path gets you the same "Retarded Psychotic Evil" experience most other RPGs provide when you want to play an evil character anyway.

And Nenio's quest is pure cancer.

I assumed as much, considering I have not seen a single Mod created specifically to help with any other Companion Quest, only hers.

 

[Lambach]

Even in Kingmaker they were too powerful. They got a lot of passive buffs because you could not give them gear that was supposed to simulate gear but they got way more than what gear would realistically give them. Then in WotR they let you put gear on them but left the passive bonuses. They were never meant to be as strong as other party members but be a bit of a bonus. Not to mention in PnP you cannot command them like in this game. You basically tell them to attack targets or stay back and shit, not use them like a robot with super precise movement. Fuck you had to force your animal companions to enter dungeons with you or fight unnatural enemies in PnP. They completely fucked up their power level in this game.

There's also the fact that, at least from what I can tell, simply resting resets them back to full capacity. Unlike other Party members, you don't have to bother casting some variant of Restoration, Raise Dead/Resurrection, Remove Curse or such on them. Just rest up and they're as good as new.

Pretty convenient all around, but specially so during those earlier parts of the game when you don't have 12 Greater Restorations ready to go at a moment notice.

 

[ArchAngel]

Fuck, Boogyman decided to cast death spell on my Cleric and insta kills him.. combat log didn't even show my that my character failed his saves.. and I don't have Raise Dead scroll, the plan was for that cleric to use his spell to raise others from the dead :D

Edit: and I found another one, again log shows no saves failed and one of my characters just dies.. this shit smells like a bug

 

[Daidre]

Are you should about this? Because I just read some stating otherwise on reddit.

Spoiler

See line on the left? Each time you change some option in that section, game just slaps "not eligible for difficulty-related achievs" flag on your save game. Whole reddit is filled with people who switched to the Core, killed water elemental in prologue and got nothing. And it does not matter if you moved some of them up, not down.

Btw, Crusade difficulty and more importantly, xp sharing method could be changed on the run without any effect on achievements.

 

[Desiderius]

TIL that Sohei doesn't get Monk Weapon Proficiencies despite being able to get Weapon Training in Monk Weapons. Weird class.

 

[Yosharian]

Lmao I forgot that MW even gets an extra skill point, too. What a ridiculous archetype.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Soooo, wanted to try the new(Midnigiht İsles) DLC but game's giving error at save points which stops my progression. It's giving the same error even when it tries to autosave.

Just "SavingError" ...

Good'ol Owlcat...

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah Kapao CMB bonus not showing up on Sensai. Also gets Style Strikes that don’t do anything because no Flurry.

What a mess.

 

[Stoned Ape]

They also seem to have broken mythic spellbook merging somehow. At combined caster level 16 my lich had access to 9th level spells, but not 8th level spells.

Also, they keep getting separate picks for with a mythic level up as if they only had a lich spellbook, rather than continuing their combined sorcerer progression (So I have loads of extra 1st-5th level spells that I shouldn't have).

The total caster level is still adding mythic and regular caster levels together as it should, though.

What a mess.

 

[Desiderius]

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

I feel pure Casters benefit a lot more from having a Merged Spellbook than anything an Azata can provide.

Favorable Magic and all the unique buffs to DC are nice, but being able to cast 8th or 9th level Spells fairly early into Chapter 3 is just stupid good.

Cast all you want if you can't beat saves what's it matter? Favorable Magic + Enchant Song can own a whole screen full of pirates.

The point is that Azata is for casters tho, not that all casters play Azata. Azata caster abilities >> Azata melee abilities

 

[Desiderius]

There's a tailwind that wants me to play Primal Druid but the main ability of the class is overwritten by Wild Shapes now (which it still has so is intended to be used). Here you've got a souped up infinite Enlarge... that does nothing with the main class feature.

 

[Delterius]

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

I feel pure Casters benefit a lot more from having a Merged Spellbook than anything an Azata can provide.

Favorable Magic and all the unique buffs to DC are nice, but being able to cast 8th or 9th level Spells fairly early into Chapter 3 is just stupid good.

Cast all you want if you can't beat saves what's it matter? Favorable Magic + Enchant Song can own a whole screen full of pirates.

The point is that Azata is for casters tho, not that all casters play Azata. Azata caster abilities >> Azata melee abilities

A lot of the angel exclusive spells just don't allow a save. So there's that.

 

[Desiderius]

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

I feel pure Casters benefit a lot more from having a Merged Spellbook than anything an Azata can provide.

Favorable Magic and all the unique buffs to DC are nice, but being able to cast 8th or 9th level Spells fairly early into Chapter 3 is just stupid good.

Cast all you want if you can't beat saves what's it matter? Favorable Magic + Enchant Song can own a whole screen full of pirates.

The point is that Azata is for casters tho, not that all casters play Azata. Azata caster abilities >> Azata melee abilities

A lot of the angel exclusive spells just don't allow a save. So there's that.

And Conj so no SR as well. Merged Angel is an exercise in making everything else you were doing obsolete (unlike Azata that supercharges it), tho it still does have some limitations.

I thought they fixed merging so you at least don’t get all your high level spells immediately but I could be wrong. It was kind of uninteresting before.

The other difference is that, unlike Azata, Angel on a Martial is also really good.

 

[Delterius]

I think I found your problem. Azata is for casters. The end.

I feel pure Casters benefit a lot more from having a Merged Spellbook than anything an Azata can provide.

Favorable Magic and all the unique buffs to DC are nice, but being able to cast 8th or 9th level Spells fairly early into Chapter 3 is just stupid good.

Cast all you want if you can't beat saves what's it matter? Favorable Magic + Enchant Song can own a whole screen full of pirates.

The point is that Azata is for casters tho, not that all casters play Azata. Azata caster abilities >> Azata melee abilities

A lot of the angel exclusive spells just don't allow a save. So there's that.

And Conj so no SR as well. Merged Angel is an exercise in making everything else you were doing obsolete (unlike Azata that supercharges it), tho it still does have some limitations.

I thought they fixed merging so you at least don’t get all your high level spells immediately but I could be wrong. It was kind of uninteresting before.

The other difference is that, unlike Azata, Angel on a Martial is also really good.

I hope the Enhanced Edition rebalance Azata and Trickster a bit. Thematically Azatas are all hyper active jocks with elemental powers and a super hero complex. Trickster is obviously a Rogue archetype, but their story consist of fucking around doing magic tricks and casting curses. There's no reason for Azata's martial powers to remain morale bonuses. And Trickster could use some early powers that synergize with spellcasting.

 

[Desiderius]

Phantasmal Mage (Arcanist Gnome Exclusive Subclass) fits with Azata like a glove since Favorable Magic really helps your Shadow Spells get there and Shadow Spells get around the Slot limitation of Arcanist.

You’ve got the equivalent of a whole spellbook you can cast Spontaneously souped up with Meta from Arcane Pool.

 

[Desiderius]

It’s a crime that you can’t Spellstrike with a Fish Missile.

 

[Stavrophore]

Is there any option to disable fee for hiring chars? I see yet again they didn't learn from PK experience, there should be a menu switch for free hiring. Im not talking about respecing your story followers.

 

[Lambach]

A lot of the angel exclusive spells just don't allow a save. So there's that.

A lot of Lich exclusive Spells still hit like an absolute motherfucker even if the enemy makes a Save. With Metamagic and Rods, Blood Feast trivializes mostly everything.

 

[Desiderius]

Is there any option to disable fee for hiring chars? I see yet again they didn't learn from PK experience, there should be a menu switch for free hiring. Im not talking about respecing your story followers.

Main game is designed to be played with companions. If you think they’re suboptimal as is or whatever you’re simply wrong.

If you want to play Icewind Dale you’ve got the DLC now, at least for the classes that aren’t broken.