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

[Yosharian]

Just finished Leper's Smile and the attached cave on hard. I forgot how much I disliked Vescavors and their bloody hum.

Party is:
Seelah (Paladin 8) Horse. Heavy Armor & Bardiche. (Substitute: Regill (Armiger 5, Hell Knight 3 (Nobility Domain).)
Wenduag (Fighter 1/Mad Dog 7) Dog. Heavy Armor & Glaive.
PC (Oni-Spawn Crusader of Calistria 8) Heavy Armor, Longsword+Shield. (He can't use a reach weapon as when I tried he got destroyed by surprise mobs aggressively targeting him. Stays conscious far longer when using a shield.)
Ember (Stig. Witch 8 (Salamander Ring for Fireball was pretty useful against the insect bastards). (Substitute: Nenio (Scroll Spammer 8).)
Camellia (Shaman 8) Heavy Crossbow. (Substitute: Woljif (Eldritch Trickster 8) Shortbow + Rays.)
Daeran (Oracle 8 Life+Nature) Wolf. Rapier+Shield.

Going to drop Seelah after I recruit Greybor. He's going to be a Slayer/Freebooter because I want more +AB buffs if I'm losing Mark of Justice.

Wait so enemies aggressively target characters using reach weapons and then cease targeting the exact same character when they switch to a standard melee weapon?

 

[perfectslumbers]

My experience with unfair is trying to figure out what buffs to drop and what buffs to keep since I kept running up against the buff limit.

I downloaded the respec mod and the spellbook merge mod and both are great. Spellbook merge means that all the different mythic spells that were useless before are useable now, adds a ton of variety to the game. And respec mod means I can make Greybor vaguely useable :D

 

[Haplo]

Mobility Trickster.

ok hear me out

mounted druid mobility trickster

the mount has to do the mobility checks too

so the question is, can you jack up their skill hard enough to make it

Well, I suppose it probably can be done with a Dex pet - they get high stats, can be buffed with Mythic Beast. No Reduce Person for them. I wonder if you can cast Microscopic Proportions on a pet. Then you'd need to spend their feats on Skill Focus, Stealthy and what not. Equip with the Mobility belt and so on. The pretty won't get Creative Approach, Grand Owl or such. Also only one Signet of House Vesperillo and no Ronneck's Sacrifice boots for the pet.

Probably can be done for lower difficulties. Certainly would not advise this for Unfair.

But I think you're making it needlessly complicated :p
As you'll be essentially rolling at a disadvantage - you and your pet both roll Mobility, you get the worse result.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Just finished Leper's Smile and the attached cave on hard. I forgot how much I disliked Vescavors and their bloody hum.

Party is:
Seelah (Paladin 8) Horse. Heavy Armor & Bardiche. (Substitute: Regill (Armiger 5, Hell Knight 3 (Nobility Domain).)
Wenduag (Fighter 1/Mad Dog 7) Dog. Heavy Armor & Glaive.
PC (Oni-Spawn Crusader of Calistria 8) Heavy Armor, Longsword+Shield. (He can't use a reach weapon as when I tried he got destroyed by surprise mobs aggressively targeting him. Stays conscious far longer when using a shield.)
Ember (Stig. Witch 8 (Salamander Ring for Fireball was pretty useful against the insect bastards). (Substitute: Nenio (Scroll Spammer 8).)
Camellia (Shaman 8) Heavy Crossbow. (Substitute: Woljif (Eldritch Trickster 8) Shortbow + Rays.)
Daeran (Oracle 8 Life+Nature) Wolf. Rapier+Shield.

Going to drop Seelah after I recruit Greybor. He's going to be a Slayer/Freebooter because I want more +AB buffs if I'm losing Mark of Justice.

Wait so enemies aggressively target characters using reach weapons and then cease targeting the exact same character when they switch to a standard melee weapon?

No, they mob the PC regardless, he just lives a bit longer when he has a shield equipped vs not having one at this point in the game. +5 AC (including shield focus from crusader) means he gets hit quite a bit less often than he would otherwise (particularly when flat-footed in a surprise round).

Since the last patch, the AI has been mobbing the PC regardless of which position in the party he's standing in, they'll all just wade through AOOs if not directly engaged in order to reach him.

 

[Stoned Ape]

AI targeting priority now seems to be:

1) opponent directly next to current AI controlled mob
2) Spellcaster/Archer who attacked to trigger surprise round
3) The MC.

 

[Haplo]

AI targeting priority now seems to be:

1) opponent directly next to current AI controlled mob
2) Spellcaster/Archer who attacked to trigger surprise round
3) The MC.

Yeah, they also frequently go after my Arushalae.

 

[Yosharian]

So, I finally finished rebuilding my planned Wrath party. Did some preliminary testing in Threshold versus the Gallu/Succubus there

https://i.ibb.co/VJbScP9/knights-challenge-mount-crit.jpg

Spoiler

Nearly 2000 damage on a mounted charge crit with Knight's Challenge active. I think I can squeeze past 2k if I use every last inch of damage that's available. Probably not realistic, though. This is just Knights Challenge -> charge, nothing more complex. 8 attacks per round, any AOOs that trigger is a bonus on top of that but it appears they lose many of the bonuses, well mainly its Mounted Mastery, which reduces the damage to around 1650-1700 (they still receive the damage bonuses from Transfixing Charge, so they inhabit this weird space where they are getting some charge damage bonuses but not all of them).

On top of these primary hits, Boots of Stampede produce a separate damage instance:

https://i.ibb.co/nBdTLht/knights-challenge-mount-boots.jpg

Spoiler

Which doesn't inherit the DR bypass of your weapon but oh well. I would rather this item actually added a bonus to my normal attacks instead of being a separate instance, since it would help give me BEEG NUMBAZ, but oh well, extra damage is nice.

Then there's the extra attack that you get from Transfixing Charge:

https://i.ibb.co/t2r4G31/knights-challenge-mount-transfixing.jpg

Spoiler

The multipliers on this one are weird but what the hell, I'll take the extra 500 damage.

So in total for one iterative charge attack, the target receives:

1950 + 264 + 489 = 2703 damage. This is just one example, I haven't worked out averages or anything. And of course Gallus and the like have a chance to ignore your crit damage so there is that to consider. And lastly, Knight's Challenge is a 1x per day ability so its not like I'll be doing this damage versus every trash mob.

Still, it's fun to see the damage numbers.

Edit: finished crunching the average damage numbers:

Maximum Average Damage Calculation:

• Primary Attack Critical Hit: (4D6 + 164(4))3 + 2D6 Holy = 2017
• Boots of Stampede Critical Hit: ((44)2)3 - 15 = 249
• Transfixing Charge Bonus Attack Critical Hit: (1D6 + 152)3 + 2D6 Holy = 474
• Total Damage Per Attack: 2740
• Attacks Per Round: 8 (not including Attacks of Opportunity)
• Critical Hit Rate: 50% (not including lost crit damage from e.g. Fortification)
• I'm not going to bother calculating average DPR because there are too many variables at play.

Of course, charges are not always easy to set up so its worth noting that without the crazy charge multipliers, the MC is critting for about 550, probably will be around 350-400 without Knight's Challenge. Still, with 8 APR that's a decent chunk of damage, so it's not like he's putting out shit damage when not charging.

 

[Yosharian]

Regill who is running Sohei 11/Mutation Warrior 5/Gendarme 2/Hunter 1/Demonslayer 1 is critting on mounted charges for about 350 damage, not bad for a mere peon. If he manages to crit on the first mounted charge hit, Spirited Charge kicks in and you can get around 750-800 damage:

https://i.ibb.co/W3TZ1vb/regill-spirited-charge-crit.jpg

Spoiler

Which is pretty fucking good for a companion build IMO.

Maximum Average Damage Calculation:

• Primary Attack Critical Hit: (5D10 + 73(5))2 = 785
• Total Damage Per Attack: 785
• Attacks Per Round: 7 (not including Attacks of Opportunity)
• Critical Hit Rate: 50% (not including lost crit damage from e.g. Fortification)

 

[Yosharian]

Chainmail of Comradery has an interesting bug, if the enemy has some way to avoid getting flanked, which both the Gallus and Succubi seem to have, they still suffer the +4 damage from the Chainmail despite not actually being flanked. Weird.

 

[Grunker]

Gotta say I'm finding completing the entirety of Chap 1 with limited resting harder than Shield Maze. Health is not really an issue as you can solve that with potions or scrolls, but there are a gazillionterabillion fights and you can't do all of them without expending per rest resources

 

[Tsubutai]

Gotta say I'm finding completing the entirety of Chap 1 with limited resting harder than Shield Maze. Health is not really an issue as you can solve that with potions or scrolls, but there are a gazillionterabillion fights and you can't do all of them without expending per rest resources

You don't have to clear it all with limited rests, the only important things to do before the tavern defence are recruiting woljif and ember, resolving the feud between hulrun and ramien, and clearing the library and tower of estrod iirc. After that and the tavern defence, you can rest all you want without losing content.

 

[Grunker]

Gotta say I'm finding completing the entirety of Chap 1 with limited resting harder than Shield Maze. Health is not really an issue as you can solve that with potions or scrolls, but there are a gazillionterabillion fights and you can't do all of them without expending per rest resources

You don't have to clear it all with limited rests, the only important things to do before the tavern defence are recruiting woljif and ember, resolving the feud between hulrun and ramien, and clearing the library and tower of estrod iirc. After that and the tavern defence, you can rest all you want without losing content.

Really? Lol. I don't use guides or stuff like that so I just assumed it would do a video game and change all maps after the defence

 

[Tsubutai]

Oh yeah, if you're trying to be a completionist, there's also a necromancer in the north-eastern area of the market square that you should kill before doing the tavern defence so you can fight a nabasu afterwards.

 

[Average Manatee]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Well I hopped on the EE bandwagon, playing on Core. So far it's a lot more appealing than P:K which I found insufferable, this one has a darker vibe and crusade stuff is much prefered to kingdom stuff.

 

[The_Mask]

Chainmail of Comradery has an interesting bug, if the enemy has some way to avoid getting flanked, which both the Gallus and Succubi seem to have, they still suffer the +4 damage from the Chainmail despite not actually being flanked. Weird.

Best armour in the game on a mounted person, imo.

 

[LannTheStupid]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

For a build that uses dueling swords the reward for establishing the barony in less than 30 days is not bad.

 

[Dhaze]

Well I hopped on the EE bandwagon, playing on Core. So far it's a lot more appealing than P:K which I found insufferable, this one has a darker vibe and crusade stuff is much prefered to kingdom stuff.

The crusade management is still beyond dreadful though.

Chapter 1 has a nice pacing. Chapter 2 introduces the mandatory crusade aspect, and already that starts to slow the overall pace a bit. Then in Chapter 3 the crusade stuff can grind the game to a screeching halt with how much time it takes to do anything: battles that can drag for dozens of turns while units on both sides whittle each other to slivers; moving armies slooooowly across the map; building uninteresting settlements like in Kingmaker's kingdom management; waiting for more troops otherwise you can't properly assault enemy forts and actually progress further into the map with your character and party.

Then there's the fact your general(s) somehow do not exist outside of crusade mode, which is arguably the strangest fucking decision Owlcat has taken in both Pathfinder games.
Here is my main general, an extremely powerful mage who can reduce entire legions to cinders and is, with his troops, almost single-handedly responsible for re-conquering much of the Worldwound... yet I can't so much as talk to him, congratulate him? No, he's this entirely abstract entity with which no interaction is possible.

Recruiting soldiers and assigning generals and choosing where and when to attack could all have been done entirely via good, interesting conversations with your advisors, Galfrey, and various other characters. Let me hear what Regill thinks of pushing into this particular region right now, and have the general report to me in person at a later stage—and let me clap him firmly on the shoulder because he sure as hell is more useful than half my entourage of nitwits.
And if there's a big battle, why can't I be a part of it? After all, I defended the tavern when it was our headquarters, and was an integral part of the Gray Garrison assault, then I hacked my way through Drezen shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the troops. But suddenly, when Chapter 3 begins, enemy forts and key points in the region become these abstract dots on a map, guarded by major demons who don't really exist, these being defeated by my general who doesn't really exist either.

The whole thing is so bizarre. As it is, playing with your party and playing crusade mode feel like two separate games, with the former being feature-complete but the latter being no more than a sketchy first draft; and only the vaguest semblance was made at an attempt to merge the two together.

And I don't think it would have required that much effort to create something better. Possibly no more effort than was sunk into the crusade mode as we know it.

For a small army barring the westward road? Give the player a well-written storybook event, in which the player character is directly involved in some fashion. Think of the approach to Leper's Smile. Anything really would be better than spam-clicking a stack of gargoyles for 45 turns because my mage general had no mana left prior to the fight but I still wanted to push, to progress, instead of dully waiting for days or weeks to pass so his mana could regenerate.

For an enemy stronghold or strongly-held position, those being few and far between? Well, something like the Battle Of Flintrock Grassland in Kingmaker springs to mind. There would be an important engagement raging between my forces and the demons' and this could well be somewhat removed from gameplay, i.e. happening to the side, in my head, only established via dialogues earlier; but also there's a little map, a little setpiece, a little part of this big battle in which I can actively participate. Then a short scene when my general and I meet, jubilant with gory victory—and together we mock Nenio and call her a dweeb.

I've read and heard many people dub the crusade mode HoMM-lite, but that's akin to calling water whisky-lite.

 

[Daidre]

I am still in chapter 2, but from what I saw - Owlcat added auto-win against much smaller armies and recalibrated losses for auto-combat results for closer-to-you in power enemies, greatly reducing losses to the point they are almost always recoverable by Infirmary now. With Crusade difficulty down to Effortless, that boosts number of your recruits, I've only needed to do manually like one fight from 12.

So Crusade had not become "better" per se, but it is much more skippable that it was pre-EE, just drop its difficulty - it only affects one achievement anyway and have no effect on game's "generic" difficulty level.

 

[Haplo]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

Well, the main bonus is not having to do the lenghty tavern defense.

Spoiler

After you report success and readiness to assault Grey Garrison to Irabeth, you can still withdraw from party selection screen and complete everything in Act 1 at your leisure.

 

[Haplo]

Gotta say I'm finding completing the entirety of Chap 1 with limited resting harder than Shield Maze. Health is not really an issue as you can solve that with potions or scrolls, but there are a gazillionterabillion fights and you can't do all of them without expending per rest resources

You don't have to clear it all with limited rests, the only important things to do before the tavern defence are recruiting woljif and ember, resolving the feud between hulrun and ramien, and clearing the library and tower of estrod iirc. After that and the tavern defence, you can rest all you want without losing content.

I think its maybe also important to recruit the tieflings, mongrels and crusaders in the marketplace. Particularly the dialogue with the tieflings might be important (if you want to skip tavern defense, that is).

 

[Grunker]

and on the eighth day, god invented modders, and he saw that it was

 

[ArchAngel]

I am still in chapter 2, but from what I saw - Owlcat added auto-win against much smaller armies and recalibrated losses for auto-combat results for closer-to-you in power enemies, greatly reducing losses to the point they are almost always recoverable by Infirmary now. With Crusade difficulty down to Effortless, that boosts number of your recruits, I've only needed to do manually like one fight from 12.

So Crusade had not become "better" per se, but it is much more skippable that it was pre-EE, just drop its difficulty - it only affects one achievement anyway and have no effect on game's "generic" difficulty level.

Interesting but I want a much harder version of crusade mode where Infirmary is not ultimate return all units to you no matter how bad you play mode and instead it would turn it into a limited resource that takes days to recovery its healing ability instead of per battle like it is now. Crusade mode is way too easy atm and that is why it is pointless. Also all the timed shit that game has is pointless when Crusade mode is so easy.

 

[Tsubutai]

There's a small bonus for completing it all quickly and ending the chapter before that battle can start, similar to the small bonus for completing the first open section of Kingmaker quickly. And by similar I mean "so small and irrelevant you shouldn't even begin to care about it".

It does punish you if you thought you could rest a ton and are underleveled somehow. Which is an odd expectation to set for players considering the rest of the game doesn't really do this. I guess you could theoretically be level 2 still.

Well, the main bonus is not having to do the lenghty tavern defense.

Spoiler

After you report success and readiness to assault Grey Garrison to Irabeth, you can still withdraw from party selection screen and complete everything in Act 1 at your leisure.

Skipping the tavern defence isn't great IMO since it gives less xp and means you miss out on the fights in the updated market square, notably the nabasu - when I tried it, the maps don't update after clicking out of the party selection screen.

 

[Grunker]

Gotta say I'm finding completing the entirety of Chap 1 with limited resting harder than Shield Maze. Health is not really an issue as you can solve that with potions or scrolls, but there are a gazillionterabillion fights and you can't do all of them without expending per rest resources

You don't have to clear it all with limited rests, the only important things to do before the tavern defence are recruiting woljif and ember, resolving the feud between hulrun and ramien, and clearing the library and tower of estrod iirc. After that and the tavern defence, you can rest all you want without losing content.

I think its maybe also important to recruit the tieflings, mongrels and crusaders in the marketplace. Particularly the dialogue with the tieflings might be important (if you want to skip tavern defense, that is).

Once I learned I didn't have to complete literally all content it kindda became more managable. I think I completed half of all Act 1 content in 1 rest, I was sweating there at the end lol