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

[Average Manatee]

Sneak damage also isn't guaranteed. Lots of enemies with outright immunity, or true seeing and you aren't riding a pet to threaten them on your first turn when you're making your initial attack. The more optimized you are the more likely you're taking down enemies in 1 or 2 rounds so you might be sneak attacking only half the time.

Also, don't forget your mutagens. Str bonuses also apply both to AB and to damage. Obviously it's not easy to generically calculate how much +1 AB adds compared to +1 damage, but I'd argue it's at least equivalent (outside of meme screenshots where you self-select the round where you roll all 20s).

 

[ga♥]

6D6 is only 21 damage and it's situational - you have to expose the target to Sneak Attacks, and they must not be immune to precision damage

Spending a mythic feat on it is basically not relevant

Anyway I never said Sneak dice are bad, I'm just saying base damage scales better

Which it clearly does

6d6 but is akshualy 8d6, (10d6 if deliverer) if you factor in 1 feat and another mythic then if everything is relevant.
But still 21 dmg is already superior?
As a slayer you get a 1d6 sneak dice every 3 level.
Now compare with what you call "base dmg" and you say scales better.
+2 dmg after level 5.
Another +2 at level 12.
And roughly every 4 levels starting at level 5 you get +1 dmg through weapon training.
And assuming you get a mythic weapon specialization, you will have +3 dmg at the start of chapter V, so basically for most of the game, to finally reach +5 for the last 20 mins.

Fighter:
+4 weapon specialization feats
+5 mythic specialization
+4 weapon training

Slayer:
+5 studied target
+28 sneak attacks (8d6)

Obviously with a crit you get more damage from a fighter but overall sneak damage is more consistent, and scales better since it increases every few levels by itself, so you will do more damage for most of the game with a slayer, which is my main point.

Beside usually the enemies that are immune to sneak attacks are also immune to criticals, so your point that precision doesn't get multiplied is moot, and in the game is so easy to make enemies vulnerable to precision damage that it's harder to avoid it.

Sneak damage also isn't guaranteed. Lots of enemies with outright immunity, or true seeing and you aren't riding a pet to threaten them on your first turn when you're making your initial attack. The more optimized you are the more likely you're taking down enemies in 1 or 2 rounds so you might be sneak attacking only half the time.

Also, don't forget your mutagens. Str bonuses also apply both to AB and to damage. Obviously it's not easy to generically calculate how much +1 AB adds compared to +1 damage, but I'd argue it's at least equivalent (outside of meme screenshots where you self-select the round where you roll all 20s).

Enemies immune to sneak are usually immune to crits, but yeah as I said for most of the cases sneak is better, not all the time, hence slayer does more damage usually.
MW get more AB, I don't discuss it (especially because quarry is sadly insight so shouldn't stack with a lot of things), just talking about DPS.

 

[mediocrepoet]

6D6 is only 21 damage and it's situational - you have to expose the target to Sneak Attacks, and they must not be immune to precision damage

Spending a mythic feat on it is basically not relevant

Anyway I never said Sneak dice are bad, I'm just saying base damage scales better

Which it clearly does

6d6 but is akshualy 8d6, (10d6 if deliverer) if you factor in 1 feat and another mythic then if everything is relevant.
But still 21 dmg is already superior?
As a slayer you get a 1d6 sneak dice every 3 level.
Now compare with what you call "base dmg" and you say scales better.
+2 dmg after level 5.
Another +2 at level 12.
And roughly every 4 levels starting at level 5 you get +1 dmg through weapon training.
And assuming you get a mythic weapon specialization, you will have +3 dmg at the start of chapter V, so basically for most of the game, to finally reach +5 for the last 20 mins.

Fighter:
+4 weapon specialization feats
+5 mythic specialization
+4 weapon training

Slayer:
+5 studied target
+28 sneak attacks (8d6)

Obviously with a crit you get more damage from a fighter but overall sneak damage is more consistent, and scales better since it increases every few levels by itself, so you will do more damage for most of the game with a slayer, which is my main point.

Beside usually the enemies that are immune to sneak attacks are also immune to criticals, so your point that precision doesn't get multiplied is moot, and in the game is so easy to make enemies vulnerable to precision damage that it's harder to avoid it.

Sneak damage also isn't guaranteed. Lots of enemies with outright immunity, or true seeing and you aren't riding a pet to threaten them on your first turn when you're making your initial attack. The more optimized you are the more likely you're taking down enemies in 1 or 2 rounds so you might be sneak attacking only half the time.

Also, don't forget your mutagens. Str bonuses also apply both to AB and to damage. Obviously it's not easy to generically calculate how much +1 AB adds compared to +1 damage, but I'd argue it's at least equivalent (outside of meme screenshots where you self-select the round where you roll all 20s).

Enemies immune to sneak are usually immune to crits, but yeah as I said for most of the cases sneak is better, not all the time, hence slayer does more damage usually.
Fighters get more AB, I don't discuss it, just talking about DPS.

The discussion also gets blurred because many enemies have some form of DR that you may or may not be able to bypass, but a fighter can burn feats to stack either 5 or 10 DR pierce which is effectively a flat damage increase on every hit and will impact many enemies that are crit immune (e.g. golems).

The other thing that you're neglecting (though this may be moot, depending on buffing habits, etc.) is that slayer can get (mythic) weapon focus and studied target for attack bonus ((+2) +1 +5) while fighters can get (mythic) greater weapon focus and weapon training ((+4) +2 +4), so they're more likely to hit with their iteratives. They can also use their advanced weapon training to drop an additional -2 on dual wielding penalties that slayer isn't able to. Basically, a fighter's more likely to hit with more of their attacks for more baseline damage that will be multiplied on crit. Slayer's better at additional effects like rogue sneak attack debuffs and dispels that will blend squishier targets, but are impacted by the same problems rogue has just to a lesser extent than rogues.

 

[Lambach]

is mutation warrior/hellknight good build?

No, because Hellknight is a shit PrC. The only reason I'd go for a couple HK levels other than LARPing is because of the Fearsomeness Discipline if you have Cornugon Smash and high Intimidate.

Other than that, the benefits you get from going HK are simply sub-par compared to what you get by leveling Mutation Warrior or pretty much any other Fighter subclass. HK gets Smite Chaos, but that's just a lamer version of Smite Evil in this Campaign (95% of what you're fighting will be Evil, but not all of it is Chaotic e.g. Undead) and there's no Party-wide version of it like Mark of Justice. Bonuses to Saves are too low to be worth it compared to getting Fighter-exclusive Feats and more if them to boot, Weapon Training etc. At HK level 10, you can add certain Properties to your weapon that could be very useful for bypassing enemy DR (e.g. Axiomatic), but there are so many other easily available ways to do the same that investing 10 levels into a sub-par PrC just isn't worth it.

 

[ga♥]

The discussion also gets blurred because many enemies have some form of DR that you may or may not be able to bypass, but a fighter can burn feats to stack either 5 or 10 DR pierce which is effectively a flat damage increase on every hit and will impact many enemies that are crit immune (e.g. golems).

What feats? Also considering you get the covenant of the inheritor at the start of chapter II, DR is not an issue (usually).

The other thing that you're neglecting (though this may be moot, depending on buffing habits, etc.) is that slayer can get (mythic) weapon focus and studied target for attack bonus ((+2) +1 +5) while fighters can get (mythic) greater weapon focus and weapon training ((+4) +2 +4), so they're more likely to hit with their iteratives.

Fighters get more AB so technically they should be able to hit more frequently and so make more damage, but since you can easily stack enough AB to always hit everything even with a slayer, at all difficulties, I think as you said that's moot.

They can also use their advanced weapon training to drop an additional -2 on dual wielding penalties that slayer isn't able to. Basically, a fighter's more likely to hit with more of their attacks for more baseline damage that will be multiplied on crit. Slayer's better at additional effects like rogue sneak attack debuffs and dispels that will blend squishier targets, but are impacted by the same problems rogue has just to a lesser extent than rogues.

That's +2 on the offhand to AB, I would need to be shown that it's that impactful enough to make a difference because doesn't look like it to me.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The discussion also gets blurred because many enemies have some form of DR that you may or may not be able to bypass, but a fighter can burn feats to stack either 5 or 10 DR pierce which is effectively a flat damage increase on every hit and will impact many enemies that are crit immune (e.g. golems).

What feats? Also considering you get the covenant of the inheritor at the start of chapter II, DR is not an issue (usually).

The other thing that you're neglecting (though this may be moot, depending on buffing habits, etc.) is that slayer can get (mythic) weapon focus and studied target for attack bonus ((+2) +1 +5) while fighters can get (mythic) greater weapon focus and weapon training ((+4) +2 +4), so they're more likely to hit with their iteratives.

Fighters get more AB so technically they should be able to hit more frequently and so make more damage, but since you can easily stack enough AB to always hit everything even with a slayer, at all difficulties, I think as you said that's moot.

They can also use their advanced weapon training to drop an additional -2 on dual wielding penalties that slayer isn't able to. Basically, a fighter's more likely to hit with more of their attacks for more baseline damage that will be multiplied on crit. Slayer's better at additional effects like rogue sneak attack debuffs and dispels that will blend squishier targets, but are impacted by the same problems rogue has just to a lesser extent than rogues.

That's +2 on the offhand to AB, I would need to be shown that it's that impactful because doesn't look like it to me.

Well, not exactly re: dual wielding. You can take effortless dual wielding and mythic dual wielding if you wanted to and dual wield two normal sized weapons at no penalties for either hand if you wanted to.

Penetrating Strike and Greater Penetrating Strike. They're fighter only feats that cause all your attacks to ignore 5/10 DR, including DR X/-.

Either way, I'm glad that it's pretty well acknowledged all around that this is basically just about like... which blender is like 2% better in general cases vs. edge cases. It's all pretty moot imo.

 

[Yosharian]

6D6 is only 21 damage and it's situational - you have to expose the target to Sneak Attacks, and they must not be immune to precision damage

Spending a mythic feat on it is basically not relevant

Anyway I never said Sneak dice are bad, I'm just saying base damage scales better

Which it clearly does

6d6 but is akshualy 8d6, (10d6 if deliverer) if you factor in 1 feat and another mythic then if everything is relevant.
But still 21 dmg is already superior?
As a slayer you get a 1d6 sneak dice every 3 level.
Now compare with what you call "base dmg" and you say scales better.
+2 dmg after level 5.
Another +2 at level 12.
And roughly every 4 levels starting at level 5 you get +1 dmg through weapon training.
And assuming you get a mythic weapon specialization, you will have +3 dmg at the start of chapter V, so basically for most of the game, to finally reach +5 for the last 20 mins.

Fighter:
+4 weapon specialization feats
+5 mythic specialization
+4 weapon training

Slayer:
+5 studied target
+28 sneak attacks (8d6)

Obviously with a crit you get more damage from a fighter but overall sneak damage is more consistent, and scales better since it increases every few levels by itself, so you will do more damage for most of the game with a slayer, which is my main point.

Beside usually the enemies that are immune to sneak attacks are also immune to criticals, so your point that precision doesn't get multiplied is moot, and in the game is so easy to make enemies vulnerable to precision damage that it's harder to avoid it.

Sneak damage also isn't guaranteed. Lots of enemies with outright immunity, or true seeing and you aren't riding a pet to threaten them on your first turn when you're making your initial attack. The more optimized you are the more likely you're taking down enemies in 1 or 2 rounds so you might be sneak attacking only half the time.

Also, don't forget your mutagens. Str bonuses also apply both to AB and to damage. Obviously it's not easy to generically calculate how much +1 AB adds compared to +1 damage, but I'd argue it's at least equivalent (outside of meme screenshots where you self-select the round where you roll all 20s).

Enemies immune to sneak are usually immune to crits, but yeah as I said for most of the cases sneak is better, not all the time, hence slayer does more damage usually.
MW get more AB, I don't discuss it (especially because quarry is sadly insight so shouldn't stack with a lot of things), just talking about DPS.

Overall I agree that Sneak dice are pretty good. But you have to bear in mind that you can get most of what MW has to offer with just 5 levels, while getting a lot of Sneak dice requires significant investment.

Typically I'll get 5-7 MW levels and then go into something more useful like Magus for the rest. No amount of damage can compete with Prescient Attack.

 

[kris]

Is it even an RPG anymore if heavy armor is decent? It needs to be either insanely overpowered or useless entirely, that's the law.

Being insanely overpowered is the whole point, otherwise why even bother? Nobody would stomp around with 40 pounds of metal on his back if prancing in pajamas would have been a viable alternative.

3ed killed armor when it introduced dex penalties.

Swedish RPG "Drakar och demoner" (dragons and demon) has DR for their armour, it was very possible to get a armour so strong that no normal person could hurt the characters (DR much higher than weapon damage). Basically with the best armour one man could defeat an army. (Had no critical strikes either if I remember correctly)

 

[Yosharian]

DEX penalties are not the issue, the issue is that it's trivial, extremely trivial, to obtain insane amounts of DEX bonus in both KM and Wrath with little to no investment.

In 5E armour and DEX are completely balanced because ridiculous ability score stacking is gone

 

[Average Manatee]

The problem is really that the AB + d20 vs. AC system was balanced back in D&D 1st edition and both AB and AC in general have experienced significant power creep since. A mere d20 is not enough variation to handle the disparity now. Used to be that if you had an AC of 25 (translated from back when lower AC was better) you'd be considered well defended. You might only be hit 30% of the time by a high level monster. The system was not balanced for characters getting ACs to the point where enemy fighters had a 95% miss chance. It's a statistical problem that 1 AC can change the damage you take by 100%, and it wasn't supposed to be something that was relevant in real gameplay.

3rd edition sort of tried to address this with iterative attacks, having +20/+15/+10/+5, with maybe another +10 AB expected for a powerful character. With this the value of armor is more spread out and it was still assumed that next to no one would be getting near 50 AC in regular gameplay. But then you get into absurd late 3rd edition + pathfinder rules + videogame power creep + mythic setting power creep + unfair difficulty stat bloat and you suddenly need 50 AC to be considered minimally armored, otherwise you might as well have 0 AC.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

you suddenly need 50 AC to be considered minimally armored, otherwise you might as well have 0 AC

*Laughs in d12 hit dice and damage reduction*

 

[Yosharian]

Actually even 80 AC is worthless versus some endgame bosses on Unfair. Meph has like 90 AB or something

Luckily he rarely attacks using his physical weapon

PD has similarly absurd AB, Last Stand is the only way to tank him

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

ga3 Yosharian Another thing about fighters is that they get two feats which ignore up to a total of 10 DR. That's effectively another +10 damage. It was bugged in Kingmaker though, so it worked on things like skeletons but not on Fey or creatures with a material type related DR. (DR slashing vs DR Cold Iron). If those feats are fixed in WotR, that's significant. I do really like the Slayer class though. With how easy it is to land sneak attacks, and having access to (advanced) rogue talents is pretty awesome. It was a very tough choice for which to go with in Kingmaker on my martial MC.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

DEX penalties are not the issue, the issue is that it's trivial, extremely trivial, to obtain insane amounts of DEX bonus in both KM and Wrath with little to no investment.

Owlat design philosophy in a nutshell, shower the player with buckets of power creep all game, only to try and fix it by adding a difficulty slider that buffs NPCs with 5 trillion damage and ultramega crits.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I've cleared 2/3 of the Market Square. Thus far I am liking the game, but it's more difficult than Kingmaker. I suspect that's largely because of the NPCs available to me. It would be much easier if my MC was a martial. I will probably respec the companions--especially the mongrel, but for now I'm keeping them single class. The battle against the shadows and zombies was pretty good. I'm using consumables just like I had to early in Kingmaker, which is total incline.

 

[The_Mask]

New DLC.

 

[razvedchiki]

for a santified slayer/aeon what combination of weapons is best? was thinking of dual wielding to get the most out of bane/sneak attack but them feat tax is real.

 

[Yosharian]

Holy shit Owlcat go easy on all the details, I'm fucking overwhelmed here

 

[Dishonoredbr]

New DLC.

LET'S.FUCKING.GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Infinitron]

Finally some news!


https://af.gog.com/en/game/pathfinder_wrath_of_the_righteous_the_last_sarkorians?as=1649904300

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1184370/view/6394582118760224748

Meet the Last Sarkorians in the new DLC!

Greetings, Pathfinders!

It’s been over a year since the release of
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
, and we know a lot of you have now spent hundreds of hours fighting demons in the Worldwound. It may seem like all the mysteries have been solved and all the treasures found, and that this land has nothing left to surprise you with. But there’s still something we don’t know—what was Sarkoris like before the disaster turned it into a haunted wasteland? Our new DLC—
The Last Sarkorians
—will allow you to peer into the past of the fallen land, and give you the power to shape the future of its people!

Meet Ulbrig Olesk, a strange man with the unique ability to transform into a majestic griffon, who remembers Sarkoris as it was before Areelu Vorlesh opened the Worldwound. Take him into your party and experience the crusade through the eyes of the last surviving tribal chieftain of old Sarkoris. Here’s a sneak preview of the new areas you will get to visit:

Explore new places, unravel the mystery of your new companion, and, perhaps, win his heart?

And if you like Ulbrig’s abilities, you can select the new
Shifter
class for yourself as well! Choose from one of six available archetypes, fight as a humanoid armed with sharp claws, or transform into a mighty beast—or both! The choice is yours. We’ve also added a number of new spells to make shifting more fun for you.

The Last Sarkorians
DLC will be available
on March 7, 2023
. But you can wishlist and preorder it
right now
!

Or, if you already have Season Pass 2, it will unlock automatically on release day.

Happy shapeshifting!

 

[Yosharian]

So another human? Pffft how boring.

 

[Lacrymas]

Question - are any of the DLCs worth it? The "season pass" is 10 jewro on GOG atm. Judging from reviews, not really worth it ;d

 

[Delterius]

kinda hope Ulbrig has one or two things to say about what Trickster does to sarkoris, considering his backstory and also that more people should react to the bullshit that you end up pulling

Question - are any of the DLCs worth it? The "season pass" is 10 jewro on GOG atm. Judging from reviews, not really worth it ;d

let me put it this way

this is probably the second dlc with market appeal that owlcat made. the last one being kingmaker's companion dlc.

that said the roguelike dlc is fun enough in the main campaign

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm glad I'm getting to keep my 10 Euro ;d

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

When the quality of content takes a nose dive straight after chapter 1 of base game, it's not likely to go up with DLCs.