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

[Delterius]

i'm almost scared of asking wether Loremaster into improved critical still bugs out the trickster critical feats. was 'forced' to go the EK route on my first playthrough because every other patch would fix and break this.

Loremaster is clearly too powerful and should have been a trickster only hidden class

 

[Average Manatee]

Extra iteratives is rarely more useful than stuff that mythic paths provide, that's the sad truth. You're either hitting the target, in which case it's probably dead soon, or you aren't because of things which extra BAB or APR aren't going to fix

Aggro a group->back away through a choke point on real time->turn on turn based when they are all clumped up and do your thing. It's how I'm basically OHKOing groups with my charge build. In general I agree though. Legend is for some theoretical DPS showoff build w/ trickster crits but it's not like there exists an enemy in the game who needs 5000 points of damage pumped into it from 10 crits, That said the fact that your party support abilities from Trickster are mostly maintained by Legend makes it still a very powerful path.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I feel similarly to King Crispy.
Re-building the party just for the final boss? What a bizzare idea!

Even moreso that you have some weird choices there.

My entire party was built around crits, which are completely useless on the final boss. I just want high to-hit and vanilla damage for the final part of the last dungeon. I do have existing melee companions I could try, but I thought I'd build stuff from scratch.

Also, by "rebuilding the party" I just bought 2 mercs and am replaying a tiny portion of the final dungeon because I had like 1 million to spend. Why is that such an outrageous concept, especially with these games, which often force you to replay a single dungeon because the final boss needs X, but you only brought Y and Z? I can think of at least 2 other times I had to do that this playthrough (i.e. start a dungeon, but redo it with different characters).

• Paladin (Seelah replacement): Longsword + Tower shield, mounted

Umm, why?!

It's all I have with me at this point. I'm not building these characters in Drezen. I guess I could make her 2H and use Finnean, but I'm not. She gets an ac bonus with the tower shield + the mounted shield feat, so it's not pointless, even if it's not power-gaming optimal.

• Sensei (Soseil Replacement): Unarmed, Vital Strike Focus, with Max WIS for Guarded Hearth. Will have blind fight when I get my final mythic.

A Sensei doesn't have access to Guarded Hearth. A cleric doesn't progress Unarmed damage. Have trouble understanding what was your intent here.

I have guarded hearth on her, but I honestly can't recall how I got it (possibly through a mythic feat), although she's not a pure sensei. Her unarmed doesn't deal out huge damage, but honestly, I've never really used it. I used her heavily until like level 11, then haven't really touched her since. All she'll do in this fight is guarded hearth + cast mass-true strike + Bard songs and use Mass Heal scrolls.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for an RPG, albeit one that I gave up personal interest in months ago, I can't help but cringe a little at the lengths you're going through to "tackle the final boss", which I can only interpret as a statement that you couldn't with your original party.

It's the nature of Owlcat and Unfair, for better or worse.

That causes me to cringe a little in two ways, actually; WotR suffers from ridiculous balancing issues at times, and thus encourages -- even requires -- absolute munchkinism as evidenced in your new party plans to deal with it as opposed to maintaining a healthy level of respect for a good yet *fair* challenge to the player.

This is true. I hate these games in many ways, but I've also greatly enjoyed playing them and I personally love it when games throw challenges at me that make me reconfigure my approach and try something else.

 

[Mauman]

Trickster is, ironically, the least "random" path and there an excellent synergy in his kit.

I never tried Leend, does BAB stack when you get Legend, or how does that work?

In addition you do not loose Trickster specific unique feats (or feats taken trough World 3).

Of course, you better be damn sure your build is what you want it to be, because the moment you respec, those feats are gone, gone, gone.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Anyone else constantly getting hit by bodies (and loot) completely disappearing when loading? It's made even "funnier" by the fact that the carnage is clearly visible on the save's screenshot.

 

[Desiderius]

It is the default class of the third companion you meet, so it is likely more than three.

Very strong class with solid flexibility as it picks up class levels.

It's a garbage class compared to Sohei. Because you can't fury with Rapid shot and Manyshot as a Zen Archer, while you can as a Sohei. Not to mention Sohei comes with a free horse to be a meatshield.

Which is two less Feats ZA needs and ZA Bonus Feats are actually good. It gets plenty of attacks and not having the -2 Rapid malus is better than +1 Sohei gets from Training or +2 from Dueling Gloves that burns an item slot.

Sohei Flurry/Rapid stacking is likely bugged but they didn't fix it because Sohei sux. It can't get Point Blank Master naturally so you can either use the Mount for mobility (which means it doesn't fight, which wastes the Mounted Bonus Feats) or go unmounted while the Mount fights (which also wastes the Bonus Feats). If you want to go melee there are a lot better Mounted melee classes. Sohei's dice don't progress like other Monks and it can't Flurry with a Bow until it gets Weapon Training at lvl six anyway. And then the Weapon Training itself doesn't progress like Fighter does.

ZA starts the game with Flurry so has twice as many attacks as rest of team at lvl 1. Precise Shot as Bonus Feat and Weapon Focus for free means getting to Shatter ASAP while giving it a lot more flexibility in picking up Feats from there. ZA gets Perfect Strike for free at lvl 1 as well with additional activations per level (TTT makes this super advantage at lvl 11 with three rolls) so you end up being able to give it to all your shots on hard fights in RTwP, which is huge with the crit multiplier on Longbows and growing Dice + Legendary Proportions. It can use Enlarge until then with no malus using Wisdom as attack stat. ZA also picks up Weapon Specialization (prereq for Mythic) and Snap Shot for free. It doesn't need the mobility of a Mount since Longbows have 50 ft range but if it does have to move it can use Scorching Ray/Ki Shout (Spit Venom is auto-Blind with no save against things that aren't Poison immune) as good Standard Actions, but so can Sohei.

The usual Pet/Mount analysis applies. You can fight with six pets of course but what's the point? There's not enough good items to go around and they eat buffs. If you want meat shields just summon them. Save your Pets/Mounts for a couple characters that make good use of them, like Daeran to overcome his curse.

Sohei is a nice Keshik RP class that can ride around and shoot then close to melee and be decent at both if you want to change things up, and it eventually will have the highest Initiative in the game which is REALLY good, but it's not trivial to take advantage of it.

ZA is an absolute hammer that can dominate the game if played well, and Lann's Skills line up with what my parties often need as well and he can spare a Feat for Skill Focus to really get them there. Learn to get the most out of the companions and you'll gain a much fuller appreciation and mastery of the game than merely settling for memes from people who've played the game for a week tops.

 

[Desiderius]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for an RPG, albeit one that I gave up personal interest in months ago, I can't help but cringe a little at the lengths you're going through to "tackle the final boss", which I can only interpret as a statement that you couldn't with your original party.

That causes me to cringe a little in two ways, actually; WotR suffers from ridiculous balancing issues at times, and thus encourages -- even requires -- absolute munchkinism as evidenced in your new party plans to deal with it as opposed to maintaining a healthy level of respect for a good yet *fair* challenge to the player.

In this case, 'meh' = my feelings for the game and what you're having to do to complete it.

Is that clear enough, Juan?

I used to think this was the case, although a lot of the munchkinism in P:K amounts to maxminning because evidently people can't read so chase highly suboptimal memes, but I'm now convinced that by midgame any party can tackle Unfair with skilled play.

If the game seems unbalanced to you in that direction you have a lot of improvement left to enjoy.

Once you go BubbleBuff you won’t want to go back.

But if I beat the game with mods does it really count?

BubbleBuff does have a cheat mode that lets you Buff in combat so if you're weak of will then yeah that could be a problem. Otherwise if you use it for convenience why not? I'm surprised they haven't integrated a buff manager into the game yet tbh.

 

[Desiderius]

What does EK do that HKS doesn't? Doesn't HKS give you a bunch of resistances and immunities?

Full BAB, bonus feats, access to fighter restricted feats, free Quickened spell (or spell effect proc, like Move trough Space to freely teleport) when you score a crit...
HKS has comparatively very low value - its only use is getting rid of Arcane Spell Failure from wearing armor.

C'mon man.

I did a full breakdown a couple weeks ago of everything HKS gives you. It is a lot. A Hellknight Order is nothing to sneeze at. EK is mostly a holdover from 3.5 and gets outclassed by other options aside from a few corner cases.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8479085/

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8475256/

Trickster is, ironically, the least "random" path and there is an excellent synergy in his kit.

I never tried Legend, does BAB stack when you get Legend, or how does that work?

Best part of Legend is letting you get full Prestige (two actually) without giving up base class progression. It's pretty great. Obv better for non-caster Prestiges since spell progression doesn't matter.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Only took a year and about 700+ hours, but I've finally completed both Pathfinders on Unfair. When I started this journey July 2022 I had never played a Pathfinder game before and didn't know shit about the ruleset:

Kingmaker:

Spoiler

Wrath:

Spoiler

That final Demonslayer + Skald + Sensei + Max CHA Paladin Merc + Nenio + Ulbrig party was insane. If I was using them earlier, it would have cut scores of hours off the game. I beat the boss in the first try, but missed the skill check to avoid round 2, so I had to do 2 more tries before I beat her. Over all, it took me just 3 tries.

As a note: You totally can crit her normally once you dispel ice body from her. However, for some strange reason, it only seems to work with melee. It didn't work with my archer, so it's possible that it might be an effect of either Mass True Shot, Skald Rage ability, Greater Blind Fight, or some other buff (which are the only things different from when I was playing before).

Anyhow, I feel like I just completed a fucking Pathfinder dissertation. Has anyone here completed the games on Unfair before? Who can say?

I will post more extended thoughts on the game a bit later, but for now, this is a list of the haters from this thread who can suck my ass, balls, dick and vagina:

Spoiler

King Crispy
Haplo

This is a list of previous haters who turned out to be kind of cool in the end because I eventually realized that they are just using this thread to express their autism:

Spoiler

Desiderius

That's all.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Zen Archer has a mega frontloaded power curve, which gets you faster through early game.

But it's even faster to just have generic save at the end for Act 1 and then respec later.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I found that even lategame lann can deal out silly amounts of damage if you go full ZA. Its just that his attack rolls aren't as high compared to Arue.

 

[Haplo]

I found that even lategame lann can deal out silly amounts of damage if you go full ZA. Its just that his attack rolls aren't as high compared to Arue.

... which is a big problem at higher difficulties.
I guess I'm real time you can try to partially compensate by frantically spamming Perfect Strike. But in Turn Based it only applies to 1 attack per round, so you're SOL.

 

[Haplo]

What does EK do that HKS doesn't? Doesn't HKS give you a bunch of resistances and immunities?

Full BAB, bonus feats, access to fighter restricted feats, free Quickened spell (or spell effect proc, like Move trough Space to freely teleport) when you score a crit...
HKS has comparatively very low value - its only use is getting rid of Arcane Spell Failure from wearing armor.

C'mon man.

I did a full breakdown a couple weeks ago of everything HKS gives you. It is a lot. A Hellknight Order is nothing to sneeze at. EK is mostly a holdover from 3.5 and gets outclassed by other options aside from a few corner cases.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8479085/

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8475256/

Its cool if you want to look scary, while casting spells, I guess. Or get some other small party bonuses, like the Godclaw aura.

But if you want to be a gish and mix swords & sorcery, there's no contest, really.

 

[Average Manatee]

I found that even lategame lann can deal out silly amounts of damage if you go full ZA. Its just that his attack rolls aren't as high compared to Arue.

... which is a big problem at higher difficulties.
I guess I'm real time you can try to partially compensate by frantically spamming Perfect Strike. But in Turn Based it only applies to 1 attack per round, so you're SOL.

Yeah, generally speaking low damage is rarely a significant problem with characters in WotR past like level 9/MR 2 assuming most of your party can consistently hit what they are attacking. At least if you are building them decently.

 

[Desiderius]

I found that even lategame lann can deal out silly amounts of damage if you go full ZA. Its just that his attack rolls aren't as high compared to Arue.

... which is a big problem at higher difficulties.
I guess I'm real time you can try to partially compensate by frantically spamming Perfect Strike. But in Turn Based it only applies to 1 attack per round, so you're SOL.

You of anyone should know that as the game progresses that you can get ABs arbitrarily high.

If you're not to that point yet you can use the Ki abilities or as you note crit fish with Perfect Strike especially with TTT that adds 3 rolls at lvl 11.

Flurry also gets another attack at 11 for five total, six with Haste.

 

[Delterius]

i feel that playing a ray build left me blissfully ignorant of half the game's buffing routine since i didn't really need bab and that makes me go

 

[Average Manatee]

i feel that playing a ray build left me blissfully ignorant of half the game's buffing routine since i didn't really need bab and that makes me go

Same for my current build with dimensional strike. Normally I'd notice when my min/level buffs run out but not when you hit touch AC.

Still you do notice it when other party members can't hit a bunch of things.

 

[Delterius]

i feel that playing a ray build left me blissfully ignorant of half the game's buffing routine since i didn't really need bab and that makes me go

Same for my current build with dimensional strike. Normally I'd notice when my min/level buffs run out but not when you hit touch AC.

Still you do notice it when other party members can't hit a bunch of things.

as a proper caster, i believe other party members are for trash fights

 

[Average Manatee]

Christ if you want to see overpowered, spec Incense Synthesizer for maximum save nerfing. Nenio casting weird against enemies with -8 to their saves is nuts (and another -2 from display of power). Just got weird in Alyushinyrra and her effective DC for weird with Woljif nerfing enemy saves is 53. With end game equipment she'd probably reach 60-65. Hell, I can have people without stacked save DC bonuses spam phantasmal killer and kill most non-miniboss mobs. This is ontop of the fact that enemies have to beat a DC 30 check to not be immediately hit by alchemical nausea from the incense anyway. I'm not sure if anything is immune to the alchemical nausea effect.

 

[Crispy]

this is a list of the haters from this thread who can suck my ass, balls, dick and vagina

I give you a single meh rating which you ask about, I reply with an honest answer, and this is the reaction I get.

Are you bipolar, Juan?

 

[Haplo]

i feel that playing a ray build left me blissfully ignorant of half the game's buffing routine since i didn't really need bab and that makes me go

Same for my current build with dimensional strike. Normally I'd notice when my min/level buffs run out but not when you hit touch AC.

Still you do notice it when other party members can't hit a bunch of things.

A Mobility trickster is another "cheat code", always targeting flat-footed AC, always getting Ever Ready bonus. Even better if SS and can also target Touch AC...

 

[Desiderius]

What does EK do that HKS doesn't? Doesn't HKS give you a bunch of resistances and immunities?

Full BAB, bonus feats, access to fighter restricted feats, free Quickened spell (or spell effect proc, like Move trough Space to freely teleport) when you score a crit...
HKS has comparatively very low value - its only use is getting rid of Arcane Spell Failure from wearing armor.

C'mon man.

I did a full breakdown a couple weeks ago of everything HKS gives you. It is a lot. A Hellknight Order is nothing to sneeze at. EK is mostly a holdover from 3.5 and gets outclassed by other options aside from a few corner cases.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8479085/

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8475256/

Its cool if you want to look scary, while casting spells, I guess. Or get some other small party bonuses, like the Godclaw aura.

But if you want to be a gish and mix swords & sorcery, there's no contest, really.

What’s small about them lol? I broke it all down and it’s not even close, especially since the “free” spell on crit for EK just makes the cast Swift unless I’m misremembering and there are a ton of other Swifts in Wrath.

Depending on the Order, HKS may set up better for casting than fighting (with the Heavy Armor + Armor Training allowing you to position yourself for Touch/Cones with lower risk) but there are a couple Orders that give bigger bonuses than EK does on their own, with the other abilities and full spell progression (which EK doesn’t get) as gravy.

Unless you really need the Combat Feats for some specific niche, in STR-based melee its HKS over EK hands down. Obv Magus can also be fun but that’s a different thing.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Can you still proc sneak attacks with two handed weapons? I saw a Great Axe wielding Sanctified Slayer build and it looked really badass.

So in Act 5 now, about to do the Trial to become a devil. Might go back in time in Kenebras and then save Galfrey first though, because the dumb twat decided to yolo my forces into enemy territory.

I don't think Hellknight synergizes that well with Inquisitor at all. Giving up spell progression isn't worth it. Getting domain progression from a bug is nice though. Furthermore, as a Hellknight you'll typically want to wear heavy armour, but Inquisitors want to use at most medium armour so they can use Stalwart. You do get a lot of nice resistances as Hellknight, but that unlocks at level 9 which means you won't have greater bane or level 6 spells. Smite isn't useful either because it scales with Charisma and as an Inquisitor you want to go Acolyte so you can get Wisdom Scaling for your charisma, thereby completely ignoring that stat.

HKS would suffer from similar issues; heavy armour access is pointless, you lose domain progression unless you pick godclaw, you lose greater bane if you level up HKS to access their resistances and as a divine caster you wouldn't benefit from arcane reduction.

HKS as a cleric might be funny though; With godclaw you would have like 3 domains at your disposal + impossible domain. Its just that whatever domains you picks at a cleric wouldn't progress past 10 if you decide to max out HKS.

 

[scytheavatar]

What does EK do that HKS doesn't? Doesn't HKS give you a bunch of resistances and immunities?

Full BAB, bonus feats, access to fighter restricted feats, free Quickened spell (or spell effect proc, like Move trough Space to freely teleport) when you score a crit...
HKS has comparatively very low value - its only use is getting rid of Arcane Spell Failure from wearing armor.

C'mon man.

I did a full breakdown a couple weeks ago of everything HKS gives you. It is a lot. A Hellknight Order is nothing to sneeze at. EK is mostly a holdover from 3.5 and gets outclassed by other options aside from a few corner cases.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8479085/

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/posts/8475256/

Its cool if you want to look scary, while casting spells, I guess. Or get some other small party bonuses, like the Godclaw aura.

But if you want to be a gish and mix swords & sorcery, there's no contest, really.

What’s small about them lol? I broke it all down and it’s not even close, especially since the “free” spell on crit for EK just makes the cast Swift unless I’m misremembering and there are a ton of other Swifts in Wrath.

Depending on the Order, HKS may set up better for casting than fighting (with the Heavy Armor + Armor Training allowing you to position yourself for Touch/Cones with lower risk) but there are a couple Orders that give bigger bonuses than EK does on their own, with the other abilities and full spell progression (which EK doesn’t get) as gravy.

Unless you really need the Combat Feats for some specific niche, in STR-based melee its HKS over EK hands down. Obv Magus can also be fun but that’s a different thing.

EK will be way better than HKS in fighting and it wouldn't even be close. You need to ask yourself why you want a melee sorcerer that is better for casting than fighting cause your sorcerer will never have the DC that a dedicated spell-caster build will have. You are also ignoring that EK has access to Weapon Specialization. It plus greater plus mythic is an extra 9 points of damage which is not a small difference. And good luck hitting anyone with a HKS without Transformation on, if you have Transformation on then there's no point in building a casty melee sorcerer. It seems to me that HKS has more tank options but what about attack and damage?