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

[CthuluIsSpy]

If you aren't playing vs. swarms in turn based, do so. It's infinitely easier to manage them and spread your guys out while still focus firing.

Killing them isn't the problem. Its getting chain confused every round. For some unholy reason Gibbering has a fairly wide AoE and the swarm makes a beeline to my back line in their turn. If it weren't for the confusion it would be fine, but the game gives you very few tools to deal with that.

Edit : Managed to Kill the Queen. I took the left path instead of the right path this time, through the wreckage. The Queen was much easier than the swarms, because she didn't just move past everyone and confused the whole party.

Didn't even have to back track to get better equipment. Confusion is kind of weird. Sometimes it affects my units, but I can still control them. Sometimes they don't even take a test.

 

[LannTheStupid]

First, I think Gibber was fixed in one of the recent patches, so the 24-hour cooldown works now. Of course, it will not help you much, as every swarm has its own Gibber to proc. Is it correct or not? I do not know. I think it might be open to interpretation.
Second, I like how the same encounters are mentioned here again and again. Cudos to Owlcat Games for forcing players to think or at least ask.

Sometimes it affects my units, but I can still control them. Sometimes they don't even take a test.

Third, it is exactly how the status "Confused" is described, both on the Pathfinder SRD and in the game.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Huh, I guess that would explain it. There's no icon displayed though, but then again hexes don't tell you if an enemy is immune to it either after you hit it with one.
So if there's 5 swarms that's 5 gibber procs max? That would explain getting chain confused then.

 

[LannTheStupid]

There is an icon. It does not help, though, as there is no way to go from the "confused" status to its correct description, which in-game is given only in the "Confusion" spell:

Confusion Icon

Confusion Spell

As you can see, there is a 25% probability that the confused person will retain control.

So if there's 5 swarms that's 5 gibber procs max? That would explain getting chain confused then.

This is explicitly said in the description of the "Gibber" ability, which is available by pressing "Y" and then hovering over the monster:

Gibber

Also, the saves are constitution-based, which is unusual for mind-affecting statuses but logical in this case. Vescavor swarms do not command or say anything; they just buzz all the time, and that drives people insane.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah I was confused by that.
First it says take a DC 15 will save, and then it says the DC save is constitution based. What does that mean?

 

[LannTheStupid]

Yeah I was confused by that.
First it says take a DC 15 will save, and then it says the DC save is constitution based. What does that mean?

DC is the difficulty that needs to be overcome to save. "Constitution-based" means that to calculate the save the player has to use the Constitution modifier instead of Wisdom, but add it to the will save anyway.

 

[volklore]

Yeah I was confused by that.
First it says take a DC 15 will save, and then it says the DC save is constitution based. What does that mean?

DC is the difficulty that needs to be overcome to save. "Constitution-based" means that to calculate the save the player has to use the Constitution modifier instead of Wisdom, but add it to the will save anyway.

It's wrong. the words are ''The save DC is consitution based''. That means consitution is the casting mod used to determine the DC you have to save against.
It's just a copy paste from PnP, all it means is if a GM wanted to make a stronger mob, they'd use the constitution to calculate the DC of Gibber (or that damaging the CON of the mob would decrease the DC).
Your will save with normal wisdom modifier should apply unless owlcat implemented it differently - check the logs on your saving throws.

 

[Haplo]

Didn't even have to back track to get better equipment. Confusion is kind of weird. Sometimes it affects my units, but I can still control them. Sometimes they don't even take a test.

Well, I guess a Warpriest's Control Madness Blessing would be very useful for this (and having own casters use the Confusion spell).
With a Swift action he can decide the behaviour of all Confused creatures in 30 ft - even if he's Confused as well.
Could allow allies to keep control or force enemies to do nothing (and be flat-footed) or attack themselves.

 

[Average Manatee]

Second, I like how the same encounters are mentioned here again and again. Cudos to Owlcat Games for forcing players to think or at least ask.

Swarms are just stupidly implemented by the ruleset. Realistically a single fireball should deal e.g. 8d6 damage to every creature in the swarm and therefore massacre it. Instead the swarm somehow reflex saves and then applies resistance and takes 6 damage. Swarms being able to attack infinitely many creatures in its past also makes no sense, if there's 10 enemies in the way it should divide the damage and lower the save for all of them. They are supposed to be actual creatures that would have to divide their attention in what they attack, not a magical floating AoE of death.

It says a lot about the area when the easiest enemy in it is the "boss" enemy.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Average Manatee Well, IRL, you can consider a bee swarm — a true swarm, with the young future "queen" — as an infinite amount of bees, because no matter how many die, new bees will come. The only way to get rid of them is either to extract the queen and put it where her pheromones are not spread through the air or to burn (AoE) a huge amount of them and hope that the queen is dead.

Certainly, bees are useful and worth a lot, so no one tries to kill them; instead, people move the queen into a proper place and use the bees. However, I think it describes the swarm pretty well. Also, Vescavors are swarming insects, and they have queens. Also-also, remember which object was the reason for the whole Commander's adventure in the Leper's Smile.

Neither ticks nor spiders behave like that, though, and I seriously doubt about rats, so in general, I agree with you.

 

[Haplo]

Getting there...

 

[LannTheStupid]

Yeah I was confused by that.
First it says take a DC 15 will save, and then it says the DC save is constitution based. What does that mean?

DC is the difficulty that needs to be overcome to save. "Constitution-based" means that to calculate the save the player has to use the Constitution modifier instead of Wisdom, but add it to the will save anyway.

It's wrong. the words are ''The save DC is consitution based''. That means consitution is the casting mod used to determine the DC you have to save against.
It's just a copy paste from PnP, all it means is if a GM wanted to make a stronger mob, they'd use the constitution to calculate the DC of Gibber (or that damaging the CON of the mob would decrease the DC).
Your will save with normal wisdom modifier should apply unless owlcat implemented it differently - check the logs on your saving throws.

Yes, you are right. The Will save is straight from the character panel where it depends only on Wisdom, and Vescavors have 19 DC instead of 15 on Hard. And 20 CON.

 

[Desiderius]

Regill's default character build is weird.
He has finesse fighting, but gnome hammer specialization.
Gnome hammer is not a finesse weapon.
He has shield specialization and TWF, but Gnome hammer is a two handed weapon.

I don't know what to do with him.
Also, I should have given my character some points into charisma afterall, because glancing at Regill's hellknight traits you seem to want some charisma as a hellknight. I doubt Acolyte changes that.

Reg doesn't have Shield Specialization.

Play him straight Fighter/HK, take Domains for your HK abilities (I like Nobility, Travel, and Law), and make sure his Aura is up for big fights (it's really good). Make sure to fight Reduced since it's all upside and he should have enough AC not to worry about getting hit by anything but the worst bosses and will do decent damage with Mythic Finesse. Especially once you get Dimensional Hop + Domain Zealot for swift teleports to set up full attacks.



The 11 roll is from Touch of Law, you can see Dimensional Hop setting up the Full Attack vs Blademaster

Alternatively if Fearsomeness is working now you can give him Dazzling Display/Dreadful Carnage and send things scrambling with no save Fears. Make sure to bring good ranged damage to take advantage (or reach AoOs).



Here using Dimensional Hop to position Dazzling Display. No Fearsomeness on this playthrough.

 

[Desiderius]

Is it worth it for Lann to go 20 ZA, or should I multiclass. He's level 7 now.

It's generally good practice to run the companions straight in your first playthrough to give you a good feel for what you're giving up when you multi-class. This isn't Wizardry 8, but it's a lot closer (by design) than most think,

ZA weapon dice keep progressing with levels, as does the DC on your Standard Actions (like Ki Shout) that you can mix in on turns where you have to move. They also target touch AC instead of full. Cold Ice Strike is a Swift Action.

He picks up two more attacks at level 11 so it least taking him that far is good value. Trying to take advantage of his Combat Reflexes with Snap Shot is probably more trouble than it's worth. He makes a great sniper at 50 ft range since he often gets full attacks in earlier in the fight than those who always have to move into position.

 

[Desiderius]

the game gives you very few tools to deal with that.

Incorrect. Look more closely.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Can someone explain to me why the Kabriri cultists get two actions? The one at the door casts divine Fervor and then instant kills a party member with Harm. Even on a successful save it deals 55 damage. How are are you supposed to deal with that?

They were actually harder than Nabasu lol. I beat him first try with a depleted party.

 

[Desiderius]

Can someone explain to me why the Kabriri cultists get two actions? The one at the door casts divine Fervor and then instant kills a party member with Harm. Even on a successful save it deals 55 damage. How are are you supposed to deal with that?

They were actually harder than Nabasu lol. I beat him first try with a depleted party.

At minimum temporary HP. 55 shouldn't kill you at that point in any case.



Death Ward also works. I like interrupting casts in RTwP as well.

 

[Average Manatee]

Are there any mods that will let you hide common effect icons on characters so we can see the ones that actually matter? This was a thing BG1/2 mods did so that all your persistent buffs didn't clutter the screen and you could just look at important things. And its worse in Wrath since you can only see 5 at a time where in those games you could see like 20.

 

[Average Manatee]

btw CthuluIsSpy Ulbrig comes with this for Swarms. If you forgot about him then don't worry, so did I until the next event that throws him in your party lol.

Curious question for those who think Swarms are a good thing for these games, if so then why did Owlcat add a character with an item that is blatantly designed to hard counter them in their first character DLC?

 

[LannTheStupid]

Curious question for those who think Swarms are a good thing for these games, if so then why did Owlcat add a character with an item that is blatantly designed to hard counter them in their first character DLC?

Because Westerners.

Seriously, though. This is the same nerf as was done to the cave with Fangberries in Kingmaker. Western players can't deal with swarms; they raise a hue and cry, and Owlcat nerf the encounter.

Was it a good design? Yes. Players should suffer at critical junctions; this is the only way people learn. And side quests, by definition, should be torture; don't turn over stones if you are not ready. Can Owlcat withstand the assault? Apparently, not.

They should have taken a couple of pages from FromSoftware, who stayed strong during the Sekiro upheaval.

 

[Average Manatee]

They should have taken a couple of pages from FromSoftware, who stayed strong during the Sekiro upheaval.

Not really a good comparison because 1. Fromsoft games are trivially easy to anyone above journalist IQ level, and 2. Nothing in their games violates basic game principles and logic that the other 98% of the game is built around. Swarms would be more akin to Fromsoft adding an enemy that ignore your i-frames and blocking and instead just took 30% of your HP every few seconds you were around them along with randomly stunning your character (no, that save is not consistently saveable when you are being hit 3-4x a round with it and even a single party member going rogue can turn around and chunk your party members).

 

[Desiderius]

They should have taken a couple of pages from FromSoftware, who stayed strong during the Sekiro upheaval.

Not really a good comparison because 1. Fromsoft games are trivially easy to anyone above journalist IQ level, and 2. Nothing in their games violates basic game principles and logic that the other 98% of the game is built around. Swarms would be more akin to Fromsoft adding an enemy that ignore your i-frames and blocking and instead just took 30% of your HP every few seconds you were around them along with randomly stunning your character (no, that save is not consistently saveable when you are being hit 3-4x a round with it and even a single party member going rogue can turn around and chunk your party members).

There is any number of ways to own them, and the game already has a swarm bypass (the force damage relic ring) if you don't want to bother.

Main problem with swarms is that for some reason Owlcat thinks the bomb items/torches are a viable solution when they do piddly damage and even miss regularly at low levels. So the ones in the low-level DLC* and Fangberry cave are/were badly unbalanced with other threats at that level. Fangberry ones originally also caused disease that you didn't yet have the resources to deal with IIRC. The solution there was just to tell the junkie to piss off, but that was a little too far outside peoples ingrained expectations.

Wrath swarms are fine. Hit them with Lightning. I think Leper ones take full damage from bludgeoning. Heal through their attacks. Use immunity items/spells/abilities for their debuffs.

* - I played a Kinnie just to get around this.

 

[Desiderius]

Are there any mods that will let you hide common effect icons on characters so we can see the ones that actually matter? This was a thing BG1/2 mods did so that all your persistent buffs didn't clutter the screen and you could just look at important things. And its worse in Wrath since you can only see 5 at a time where in those games you could see like 20.

One of my Modfinder mods does but I forget which one.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Average Manatee To continue the example, I will draw your attention to the particular Fromsoft game I mentioned: Sekiro. The main game mechanic there is timed blocks, which are almost constant parries. Surely, there are items that can trivialize lots of combat, but the main fighting style was quite demanding in terms of timing and reaction. I think this broke the back of the Western audience.

As a result, I don't think my example is too far away. The encounter in the Leper's Smile has a reason and a payoff in the end, and the player can even trace the true story behind it. I am more annoyed by random ticks and mandragoras that suddenly appear and say, "You're dead now."

Anyway, I think both sides of the discussion are clear, so I see no reason to argue more.

 

[Average Manatee]

There is any number of ways to own them, and the game already has a swarm bypass (the force damage relic ring) if you don't want to bother.

Can't get that so early.

Main problem with swarms is that for some reason Owlcat thinks the bomb items/torches are a viable solution when they do piddly damage and even miss regularly at low levels. So the ones in the low-level DLC* and Fangberry cave are/were badly unbalanced with other threats at that level. Fangberry ones originally also caused disease that you didn't yet have the resources to deal with IIRC. The solution there was just to tell the junkie to piss off, but that was a little too far outside peoples ingrained expectations.

Yeah the absolute lack of capability of bombs vs. swarms is really awful and shows how they are badly implemented. The fact that you can MISS a swarm with a bomb in the first place is hilariously stupid. Swarms get to magically hit players with no AC check, anything AoE should do the same to them. And really their AC should be lower against everything, how do you swing a sword in a "swarm" and not hit something? DR also makes no sense, how does something as small as my fist have the same basic DR as a full 10' tall 500 lb demon? I get that the rules say "if its a demon it has 10 fire 10 electricity DR", but that's just dumb

Wrath swarms are fine. Hit them with Lightning. I think Leper ones take full damage from bludgeoning. Heal through their attacks. Use immunity items/spells/abilities for their debuffs.

I think there's only one item to gain immunity to their mind effects before Leper's? You can boost saves a little but you're still gonna take around 30% chance to fail saves against multiple checks per round. I don't think lightning works, Call lightning is 3d6 and vs. resistance 10 you're gonna suck. And only Camellia will get it by default. The way I handle Leper's is by spamming Fort save targetting spells like Sound Burst. Also they are low enough HD to be affectable by Scare.

Average Manatee To continue the example, I will draw your attention to the particular Fromsoft game I mentioned: Sekiro. The main game mechanic there is timed blocks, which are almost constant parries. Surely, there are items that can trivialize lots of combat, but the main fighting style was quite demanding in terms of timing and reaction. I think this broke the back of the Western audience.

Again, if that's the primary gameplay for 100% of the game, that's fine. There's no enemies that randomly break the rules and decide that you can no longer block. It's not specifically how hard swarms are, but that they both break basically every rule in the game and make no sense logically.

As a result, I don't think my example is too far away. The encounter in the Leper's Smile has a reason and a payoff in the end, and the player can even trace the true story behind it. I am more annoyed by random ticks and mandragoras that suddenly appear and say, "You're dead now."

I dunno. The fact that you only have to fight like 5 swarms to get to the end of Leper's kind of shows that even Owlcat knew that Swarms were stupid.