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

[Grunker]

Starting on Core and kicking it up difficulty as you go is playing the game as designed. That's what higher difficulties are for and makes for the smoothest difficulty curve since you start out with so few abilities.

Eh, even if everyone isn't a masochist like me, I think Hard or even Unfair (depending on your build, of course) can be fairly enjoyable even from level 1-6. The main issue is the double damage. That's what pushes highest difficulties way over the reload-sperg top. TBH it was like that in Kingmaker as well, Kingmaker just had a bigger nosedive difficulty-wise.

One difference from Kingmaker is that after Kenabres, you have a ton of one-fight maps and without double damage those maps are very lenient on the highest difficulties, you might have to reload on a crit or whatever, but if you know what you're doing and you haven't nerfed your party too much, they should be doable even with the intense stat-bloat.

I'm in for a penny in for a pound here, but I'm definetely switching x2 damage off on subsequent playthroughs, and may even turn down the difficulty to hard during Kenabres.

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

Only thing that stands out to me as worse so far is itemization (900 copy-pasted items with slightly different on-crit abilities), but that seems to be changing now - the last couple of items I've found have been more unique and the sense of sandbox/openess. While exploring Kenabres was awesome and the dungeons have been much, much better than Kingmaker's so far, there's definetely less open world exploration. IDGAF about that though - I'll take quality dungeons over the false feeling of a sandbox ANY DAY. Dungeon design is a lost art, but assaulting the garrison was a real treat. I was disappointed about Drezen in comparison, and that's not because Drezen was bad, it was fairly good in fact. I was just very happy about Garrisson.

And of course, what we're all actually here for - the build sperging combat-fighting - is just turned to 11 with this one. The build variety is insane, mounted combat actually works as it should most of the time and the encounter design is WAY, WAY better. Even throwaway trash fights in Drezen have some thought put into them: three vrocks on a cluttered wall, multiple brims in a wide open area. The ghoul fight in the Citadel was just hugely fun - and I didn't even have the AoE-spells to presumably make it a real hoot.

 

[Humbaba]

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

The only people who think that Kingmaker was better are spergs, who want to play BG1 over and over again and walk through the woods and kill rats in every rpg they play.

Having said that, the endgame is fucking ass. Thankfully, it is also very short. Meanwhile, Kingmaker's endgame is also ass, has a huge difficulty spike and is not quite as short.

 

[Parabalus]

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

Later chapters are great sans the bugs.

 

[user]

FYI you can get this beauty as early as CH3. Not sure what the requirements are, I got it on my chaotic good Azata playthrough.

 

[Yosharian]

Made an interesting discovery while testing out this natural attack build. If you take Serpentine Bloodline to get the bite attack that activates during Bloodrage, then have an allied Skald place you under Inspire Rage, you get the bite attack as if you were in a Bloodrage. Only in combat, though.

 

[Yosharian]

Taking a stance power on the Bloodrager allows him to benefit from two stances simultaneously (e.g. his own Guarded Stance and the Skald's Lethal Stance), and his own stance uses the Skald's class level to determine its bonuses, rather than his own.

However, if he activates his own Bloodrage, he loses all the inherited bonuses from the Skald's Inspired Rage, such as the Lethal Stance in this example.

This is the only way to activate the Bloodrager's chosen Totem power - those powers aren't activated by allied Skalds.

So you can cheese multiple stances and Bloodline abilities, but not Totem powers.

 

[Daidre]

So you can cheese multiple stances and Bloodline abilities, but not Totem powers.

I think I've cheesed it with Barbarian, not Bloodrager, who had his rage permanently active with Cord of the Stubborn Fury belt and who was getting Skald Rage Powers on top of his own. I may have messed something in my testing, but it is also likely that Bloodrage has a different implementation, it does not work with Cord, for example.

Edit: I actually used Pack Rager in that party and since he got his own teamwork-sharing rage, I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be an only case where such stacking takes place.

 

[Yosharian]

Grunker You said that the Demon ability Deadly Natural Weapons makes all the Demon's natural weapons primary and thus would make them all use 1.5x STR modifier to damage, and 1.5x to the Power Attack bonus.

But this isn't the case. All natural attacks are losing their -5 to hit from being Secondary attacks, but they are not gaining the two other bonuses.

They are all over the place and quite buggy. The Dragon Disciple bite for example is naturally Primary so gets 1.5x to both modifiers. Close To The Abyss' Gore attack never gets +1.0x STR mod to damage - it's getting 0.5x, though it's getting 1.5x on the PA bonus. The Oracle curse bite gets +1.0x STR mod to damage and +1.0x PA mod - it doesn't receive the 1.5x bonuses.

So this whole deal is wayyyy less good than it appeared to be.

 

[Yosharian]

So you can cheese multiple stances and Bloodline abilities, but not Totem powers.

I think I've cheesed it with Barbarian, not Bloodrager, who had his rage permanently active with Cord of the Stubborn Fury belt and who was getting Skald Rage Powers on top of his own. I may have messed something in my testing, but it is also likely that Bloodrage has a different implementation, it does not work with Cord, for example.

Uhh isn't that a Kingmaker item?

 

[Daidre]

Uhh isn't that a Kingmaker item?

In the rogue-like you can either random-loot it or buy from the travelling merchant.

 

[Yosharian]

Does anyone know the name of Wenduag's ability that you get from her quest, the one that does negative levels on-hit when you attack? I want to add it via Toy Box and do some testing

 

[Daidre]

Does anyone know the name of Wenduag's ability that you get from her quest, the one that does negative levels on-hit when you attack? I want to add it via Toy Box and do some testing

I do not know for sure, but you could try "Mongrel's Blessing".

 

[Yosharian]

Basically I'm wondering if there is some catch in the code, for example maybe it only triggers on weapon hits. I'm hoping it works on everything, bites claws gores etc

 

[Daidre]

Basically I'm wondering if there is some catch in the code, for example maybe it only triggers on weapon hits. I'm hoping it works on everything, bites claws gores etc

It went through so many iterations of bugginess that it is impossible to say how it'll work until you try )

 

[user]

Uhh isn't that a Kingmaker item?

In the rogue-like you can either random-loot it or buy from the travelling merchant.

Are you talking about the robe? You get it from a campaign event "A gift from O".

 

[Grunker]

Grunker You said that the Demon ability Deadly Natural Weapons makes all the Demon's natural weapons primary and thus would make them all use 1.5x STR modifier to damage, and 1.5x to the Power Attack bonus.

But this isn't the case. All natural attacks are losing their -5 to hit from being Secondary attacks, but they are not gaining the two other bonuses.

They are all over the place and quite buggy. The Dragon Disciple bite for example is naturally Primary so gets 1.5x to both modifiers. Close To The Abyss' Gore attack never gets +1.0x STR mod to damage - it's getting 0.5x, though it's getting 1.5x on the PA bonus. The Oracle curse bite gets +1.0x STR mod to damage and +1.0x PA mod - it doesn't receive the 1.5x bonuses.

So this whole deal is wayyyy less good than it appeared to be.

Haven’t tested the mythics like I said, but man, that sucks!

Weird thing to be buggy as well - you’d think it’d be as simple as just changing a single tag.

 

[Yosharian]

Oh fuck me. This Mongrel's Blessing thing has a saving throw! And it has a maximum per target of 10 neg levels! Build just got dumpstered, forget it

 

[Daidre]

Are you talking about the robe? You get it from a campaign event "A gift from O".

I was talking about the belt, from what I heard about the robe - you need levels in Arcane Trickster to get it in the campaign event.

 

[Jaedar]

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

Is that actually true? if so, codexers are dumb. The only people I remember disliking wrathfinder were people who played it for 30 minutes and then decried it as sjw. Wrathfinder is better than kingmaker, even if fighting demons all the time feels like a downgrade.

Imo chapter 2 is the worst one, although chapter 4 has one REALLY annoying gimmick but is otherwise really solid with a great mix of combat, exploration and talking. Lots of people complain about act5 being short but imo it's slightly too long considering you'll hit level 20 like an hour or two into it. Chapter 3 is probably the best one, the overworld exploration is not quite as good as kingmaker (there's fewer nodes to find, and you always find demons or god forbid a puzzle) but it's still nice.

 

[Grunker]

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

Is that actually true? if so, codexers are dumb.

I mean I don't have like quantitative data on it or anything, but it's the distinct impression I've gotten from the total sum of Wrathfinder posts I've read (beyond like I said the good handful of people keeping this thread alive).

 

[Jaedar]

And yeah, I think I'm starting to expect that I will be going for another playthrough of this one unless the upcoming chapters get really bad. I've enjoyed my time more than I did with Kingmaker, which is surprising since Codex consensus (except for the few diehards in this thread) seems to be that this game is somehow worse than Kingmaker. Do the later chapters really get that bad?

Is that actually true? if so, codexers are dumb.

I mean I don't have like quantitative data on it or anything, but it's the distinct impression I've gotten from the total sum of Wrathfinder posts I've read (beyond like I said the good handful of people keeping this thread alive).

I do agree that outside this thread it feels that most people posting about wrathfinder are shitting on it (mainly for presumed sjwry), but I don't think those are legitimate opinions.
A lot of the people who would like it are probably too clever to play it so close to the (goty) release, better wait for the bugs to get solved.

 

[Grunker]

Yosharian actually re-reading the rules for natural attacks, I think I misunderstood on my initial reading of the rules. This is proper behavior:

1) If you only use 1 of your natural attacks, you get 1.5 Strength mod and 1.5 Power Attack mod - regardless of what the natural attack is (primary or secondary)

2) If you use multiple attacks, primary attacks are made at 1.0 Strength mod and 1.0 Power Attack mod, while secondaries are made at 0.5 Strength mod and 0.5 Power Attack mod.

Point one was what confused me, because this is weirdly stated in the rules. Also, it gets more complicated, because some Natural Attacks deviate from general behavior and specifically state something like "this is a primary attack that deals dX plus 1.5 strength modifier damage".

Now, even with that clarification (mea culpa on the misunderstanding - sovvy!), the behavior you are experiencing is wrong. It seems like Owlcat may have been dumb enough to code each individual attack with a set of rules - i.e. when they code the Bite from Wolfscarred it's a unique attack dealing so-and-so damage using that-and-that Strength and Power Attack modifier. Instead of just giving each case of a Natural Attack it's own unique damage dice increment and then tagging it with either Primary or Secondary for automatic resolution of the rest of the stats?

In either case - I was wrong! The tl;dr proper behavior, as far as I can see (unless I'm twice mistaken) is that after getting Demon, all attacks should get 1x Str multiplier and 1x Power Attack multiplier as well as lose the -5 penalty. A possible exception to this is that some attacks might keep a 1.5 multiplier for both. However NONE should have 0.5 multipliers in any case.

 

[Ghulgothas]

I mean, just take a look at the Cringefinder thread if you want to get an idea of what posters hold what priorities regarding this game.

I maintain that the worst of this game's writing is in it's first part, and that such turned a lot of posters off from the get-go compared to Kingmaker. But given what you can get up to in later parts of this game, I'm willing to chalk part of that up to adventure path original sin.

 

[mediocrepoet]

In either case - I was wrong!

Even though your build didn't work out the way you planned, I love that there are so many possibilities to experiment with and think about even after the game's been out this long.

 

[Delterius]

FYI you can get this beauty as early as CH3. Not sure what the requirements are, I got it on my chaotic good Azata playthrough.

it is 'have arcane trickster levels'