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

[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?

 

[Yosharian]

HKS is medium BAB, case closed

 

[FreeKaner]

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.

EK is "outdated" but that is precisely why it works. Just giving you full BAB and access to fighter feats together with arcane self-buffs just makes you a better fighter really don't need bunch of gimmicks for it.

 

[scytheavatar]

HKS is medium BAB, case closed

Medium BAB classes are in a massive disadvantage in this game. For one enemies have far more AC here than in Kingmaker, so the extra attack is very important especially for iterative attacks. But also Power Attack + Mythic Power Attack is a very important source of damage and every melee character HAS to be built around it, which means even less attack for melee builds (and 10 less damage for medium BAB compared to full BAB). Some medium BAB classes has ways to boast their attack to make up for it, but you will struggle to do that with a HKS.

Also while HKS is medium BAB, Sorcerer is low BAB.

 

[FreeKaner]

HKS is only good if you would want to not use arcane armor and have more AC. That is useless in this game because of archmage armor mythic.

 

[Yosharian]

HKS is medium BAB, Sorcerer is low BAB.

It is? Goodness me!

 

[Average Manatee]

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

Of course. AFAIK anything that has an attack role can proc sneak attacks, including spells (Arcane Trickster having an ability that even lets them apply their sneak attack damage to non-attack spells, like fireball or chain lightning that just auto hit).

HKS is medium BAB, case closed

Yeah, combining a low BAB with a medium BAB class and expecting to hit anything in melee and then deal effective damage is a joke. At best all that HKS BAB gets you is a small attack boost if you are spamming hellfire ray.

Sure you can argue transformation/legend and stuff but that's so late that building for it is stupid. Are you going to be taking melee feats for 15 levels that you can't use only to start pulling your weight in midnight fane?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah BAB is extremely anti-fun.

 

[Desiderius]

Now you’re just trolling.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finally able to casually exceed 1k damage on a single non-crit attack.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh wait, forgot to set difficulty to unfair. I guess its not a legit kill since it was only hard difficulty.

 

[Desiderius]

Intransigent ignorance does hurt me for some reason, but not in my butt.

 

[Haplo]

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.

Sure, you can sneak attack with two-handers.

HKS doesn't get/progress domains in vanilla as far as I'm aware. Godclaw HK can pick Domains as his Disciplines. But HKS doesn't get those.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Droogs,
I can't get starting the 'Ashes' DLC to progress past selecting difficulty. I've verified the install. Any tips before I nuke from orbit to reinstall?

 

[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.

Sure, you can sneak attack with two-handers.

HKS doesn't get/progress domains in vanilla as far as I'm aware. Godclaw HK can pick Domains as his Disciplines. But HKS doesn't get those.

Really? I could have sworn was I able to pick a god claw domain for HKS when I was experimenting with that Hellknight Domain progression bug.

 

[FreeKaner]

I guess HKS is still value, because mythic abilities and feats are at quite the premium and you can save a couple by being HKS.

 

[Desiderius]

That's a part of it. There's two links last page with the different Orders and the various advantages. For beginners you've got the +4/+4 vs Demons or the scaling AoE Morale AC Aura, but the others have some play to them too.

The main thing about BAB in general is that the AB/AC scale in 3.5 goes from 1-30ish, while P:K it's 1-60 and Wrath 1-90, so +1 BAB is 1/3 the value in Wrath as in 3.5, outside of iteratives which aren't as relevant for melee.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Classes have other things to compensate for lower BAB, but once you get into upscaled enemies, Wojif isn't compensating by having more sneak than Gaybor, because Wojif isn't hitting things. This is not a complicated concept, but unfortunately it requires launching the game and playing it, instead of sperging on the forums about imaginary builds only ever tested on paper.

 

[Desiderius]

Wojif isn't hitting things

He is in my games, and it is easy to see in the screenshots I post ad infinitum.

Why is that?

it requires launching the game and playing it

When you're in a hole, stop condescending.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

OK my review of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, in bullet points because I'm lazy:

Pros:

• The gameplay (meaning combat and character build mechanics) is still top-notch and better than any other RPG I've played on the market. Some RPGs are simpler, which is fine as it would be exhausting if everything was as complicated as pathfinder, but very few are this involved. I still might like The Dark Eye's rule set more, but I prefer pathfinder to D&D.
• The addition of mythic paths are nice, mainly because it can be a long time between levels sometimes, so it gives additional dopamine hits in dry spots. They are also fun to play, and while certain powers are OP, these games are really fucking hard, so it doesn't matter.
• The combat overall felt more balanced than Kingmaker, in the sense that there weren't as many "must pick or you will lose" type feats or abilities.
• The story and companions are a big improvement over Kingmaker, which seemed like a grab-bag of quests rather than a single, coherent, narrative. I really liked some of the companions, enough that in rare instances where I had to kill them, it kind of sucked (RIP Wendaug who is a killing machine and probably the best martial damage dealer out of the box). A lot of the political intrigue with the demons was actually fun too, although, much of it is buried behind "secret ending" tasks that are so fucking convoluted that it will be unlikely to stumble on them without using a guide.
• I tend to measure RPG companions not by whether I liked them, but rather in terms of if I'll remember them in 5 years. These are the memorable companions from WRATH: Wendaug/Lann dynamic (although, Lann himself is boring), Camelia. Ulbrig isn't especially interesting, but his DLC is well-done and very involved, which makes him memorable. He's also a bro, so I wish it had been released when I started so I could romance him.

Meh:

• The new Crusade system is marginally better than Kingmaker's Kingdom Management. It's slightly more straightforward and way less of a time suck. That said, even on unfair, it's super easy, so it mostly felt like a time filler to me, which isn't really needed in a 200+ hour game.
• While I played most of Kingmaker in RTWP, I played most of WotR in turn based. Turn-based is fine, but it's clear the game wasn't designed or balanced for it given how much time it adds to the runtime and how certain fights make it a pain in the ass. A skip animation function to speed up moves would be nice.
• Some of the encounter design relies heavily on gimmicks, to the point that for a few bosses, if you don't have X, Y, or Z character or ability, you are basically fucked and need to back track. This only happened to me a few times, and comes with the territory to a degree, but it can be frustrating. Unlike Kingmaker, though, there weren't as many "point of no return" moments, so it was usually easier to go back to an earlier save game.
• I really, really, hated the final chapter 6 dungeons, but they are incredibly linear and short, so they ended up being semi-fun "get good" moments in the end.

Cons:

• Buffing is still a MASSIVE issue in this game, to the point that I think I'd hesitate to ever play another Owlcat Pathfinder again if they don't fucking do something about this. Again, I don't think it's an exaggeration that I probably spent at least 80+ hours of my 400 hours playtime fucking buffing before fights. It helps a little that you can get Enduring Spells as a mythic feat, but it takes 2 feats and is more of a luxury than a necessity, so it's not something most people will get early in the game. Modders have already figured this out. It shouldn't be a difficult fix to allow you to prep-program standard buffs you can apply to your party at the start of the battle.
• Loading Screens are still abysmal. I usually would not complain, but this game has so many different interfaces, and so many loading screens for each one, that probably at least another 80 hours of my 400 playtime was watching loading screens. I have a really fucking fast computer and solid state harddrive, but it made seemingly no difference compared to running the game on my (slower) laptop, so it's not hardware.
• Swarms are still a massive issue, to the point that I think Owlcat botched their implementation somehow. Rather than fix how they work, they seem to have just added necklaces that treat swarms like any other characters, rendering them basically pointless. They do dumb shit like this in their game design all the time, and while the new necklaces take the headache away, it's kind of puzzling why they designed them like that in the first place.
• The Treasure Island DLC is terrible. Dull, boring, enemies in square rooms on islands that all have incredibly annoying status effects. And there's really no story or anything other than, "Get the treasure!" The problem is, it has some really good items too, so it punishes you for not doing it. It'd be a basic, mediocre, DLC if they just did like 5 islands per chapter. But in typical Owlcat fashion, they did 13 shitty, horrible, copy-pasta'd islands for Chapter 3, 8 for Chapter 4, and 5 for Chapter 5, making what could be a fun, mediocre, trifle with awesome items into a horrible slog.
• I was mostly pleased with level design, up until I hit Nenio's final dungeon and Chapter 6. I gave up on Nenio's dungeon. Even with a guide, it probably would have taken me 10+ hours, which is just too fucking much at the end of a really long game. They should have found a way to break it up into parts, so you do different sections over a number of chapters. Honestly, her whole quest sucks. It's all "travel to tiny location on map to grab puzzle pieces, then travel to opposite end of the world to do a shitty puzzle."

 

[Average Manatee]

Mid vs. High BAB doesn't matter that much when it comes to actually hitting things. Where it matters is more/sooner iteratives and better power attack damage.

The problem with HKS vs. EK isn't just that it's mid BAB. It's that it's mid BAB with no real redeeming features.

 

[Delterius]

The problem with HKS vs. EK isn't just that it's mid BAB. It's that it's mid BAB with no real redeeming features.

isn't it less than mid? its 10 levels of low bab with 10 levels of mid bab. don't care about unfair but i'd think it would kinda suck there.

 

[Average Manatee]

The problem with HKS vs. EK isn't just that it's mid BAB. It's that it's mid BAB with no real redeeming features.

isn't it less than mid? its 10 levels of low bab with 10 levels of mid bab. don't care about unfair but i'd think it would kinda suck there.

True, I was just talking in general comparing the two classes.

It's still not that much, 3 AB difference. That's like a one buff gap. The bigger problem is missing out on outflank until like level 12 or something. You need something substantial to make it worth the trade, like sneak attack or some unique buffs like skald song or mutagen.