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

[Average Manatee]

Aye, its unusual for fights to last that long. But in the early game before you get lots of buffs/mythic bonuses, or especially in TtA vs. that stupid kalavakus, it can last long enough for stacking them up to be worthwhile.

Especially when you've already got 2x fortune/1x protective luck for boss fights, further debuffing enemy AC and attack rolls magnifies your support to huge levels. I've never found misfortune that useful past core though, just too high saves for it to be reliable. There's not much support for hex DCs that I'm aware of?

I'm thinking:

Skald (starting character to take advantage of skill checks for more XP)
Rekarth (Rogue->Manticore since he starts with Precise Shot maybe?)
Witch 1/Wildland Shaman x merc (Horse mount will allow movement while still using standard action + move action on hexes, Orc Weapon familiarity makes up for a lost feat even if it takes an extra level to get all Witch hexes ready)
Arcane Rider merc
Sendri (nothing really to do except keep him as seeker unfortunately, but at least rekarth isn't doubling up trapfinding this way)

With 1 slot open for something else. I guess incense synthesizer to throw shield on frontline and buff AB/Dam more?

 

[Desiderius]

God I'm just finding more and more hex bullshit you can pull the more I look. Did anyone know that a single character can do this?

I didn't realize stacking multiple types of evil eye on the same target was possible. What's more, if you combine the classes you can also stack them. This actually takes a LOT of turns to do, because you need to go like:

Cast Shaman EE, Chant (12s left)
Cast Shaman EE, Chant (12s)
Cast Shaman EE, Chant (12s)
Chant, Chant (18s)
Cast Witch EE, cackle (12s/12s)
Cast Witch EE, cackle (6s/12s)
Cast Witch EE, chant (6s/6s)
Cackle + Chant for all future rounds.

Note that I found a curious trick: If you have 6s left on your EEs and they expire the next turn, you can actually wait till the next turn and cackle/chant will refresh them from 0s left to 6s. Despite them not appearing on the enemy inspect profile before you use cackle/chant, they will re-appear when you do.

You can make it quicker if you only want certain debuffs (e.g. if you want both AC you can just take 2 rounds) or if the enemy fails saving throws (making your debuffs last many rounds), but you're stuck with cackle + chant to keep them up for all future rounds unless you want to lose them. Kind of hilarious however you do it.

I did a playthrough with Ember doing this (and tossing in some Enervations and Wracking Rays). It was pretty good but annoying in RTwP, especially since Hex range is Medium while Rays are close which means needing to manually move into position where you could use your Move Action for the Cackle. Just activating the Hex would leave you too far away.

 

[Desiderius]

Average Manatee The Evil Eye can be applied in multiple ways, but it combat doesn't usually last long enough to get too carried away. On Ember, I would usually open combat with an Evil Eye vs Saves, cast a swift spell, then follow up with a Misfortune. That was typically enough for any BBEG. When I briefly had Ember and Camilla in the same party, it was nice to have them both spamming hexes. I think the Witch class is one of the things where Paizo did the ruleset a service. It provides a nice balance of giving dedicated casters something to do without breaking the game. It would have been a perfect fit for an attrition oriented campaign, like Kingmaker.

Ember's homebrew is a clusterfuck though.

 

[Grotesque]

how the fuck you respec in this game?

I am lvl 3 and the feat "shield wall" is bugged

the bonus appears as active when hovering the mouse over the AC value in character sheet. But if I add up all the bonuses in AC, it's the same as shield wall not being active,

same lower AC value appears in combat logs...


and this is the fucking enhanced ultimate & shit game edition.

 

[Efe]

IIRC you need to have it enabled on difficulty options and talk to hilor in tavern/drezen
Post screenshot of bonus list.

 

[Desiderius]

Shield Wall is a Teamwork Feat. Do you have another companion with the Feat adjacent to your character with it?

They fixed the TW Feat radius to bring it in line with Tabletop.

 

[Grotesque]

Shield Wall is a Teamwork Feat. Do you have another companion with the Feat adjacent to your character with it?

They fixed the TW Feat radius to bring it in line with Tabletop.

both have the feat as depicted

 

[Average Manatee]

Check what your AC is in the combat log when someone tries to hit you just to be sure.

 

[Grotesque]

Check what your AC is in the combat log when someone tries to hit you just to be sure.

the values in the combat log are the same as the ones in character sheet

character sheet and combat log

AC should've been 17

took the bracers, rings and amulets off

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, maybe they fucked up and forgot that the one shield bonus should stack with the other.

 

[Desiderius]

They're bad at types and stacking but they generally err on the side of too much not too little.

The ability reads as a shield bonus increase which is fraught with peril for programmers who don't play the game since coding it as just a shield bonus will not stack with the bonus provided by the Shield. Shield Focus for instance gets its own separate category. I'm pretty sure I've seen it work properly.

 

[Average Manatee]

Anyone know how to do this? Anyone else stuck?

Gone everywhere I can in the area and if I try to attack the giants guarding the one path available I just get cutscened back away from them.

 

[Average Manatee]

Reloaded and apparently if you attack giants manually in that area before finding a place to plant poison for them to eat it bugs the quest.

On the boss of the area and he has a cold aura which apparently ignores cold resistance, so you have to kill him in ~2 turns after he uses it on unfair. 514 health 42 AC. Sorry but that's just anti-player bullshit. We're in an ice area, we know we're fighting ice shard-buffed enemies. You take Resist cold, and the devs just decide fuck you it doesn't work? He's not even a mythic demon and he doesn't have the mythic ability to bypass resistances so it might be a bug. Think I'll need to drop down to Hard again (did so for the Kalavakus too, just had a bit too low AC and AB to really deal with him).

Also really annoying how they are handling mercs/NPCs. First they force out one of your mercs. Always kind of a bad idea. The companions all being rather crummy classes is also annoying, it's a bad sign when the Rogue is the most effective companion. Penta was a straight downgrade from my Incense Synthesizer and would have been catastrophic if my main was a bard. Then you can't give the shards to your mercs, only Rekarth/Sendri/Penta or your original main character. This means its pretty easy for a lot of shard abilities to be useless since you can't use them on decent characters (e.g. if your main isn't a melee). Thankfully there are obviously bonuses tuned specifically for Rekarth (sneak attack and ranged bonuses) and Sendri (free empower/maximize on cold spells), which I guess kind of compensate for weak builds.

Also, word of warning. You are not going to find or have the cash to buy many +stat items like in the main campaign. So if you're like me and make a Skald with 12 Charisma or Shaman with 12 Wis assuming you'd be able to get your hands on those items to cast spells... think again perhaps. Don't plan to specialize characters in multiple exotic weapons either.

 

[ga♥]

Unfair is not for everyone I am afraid, just lower the difficulty, you'll be ok and we will have less walls of text.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Unfair is not for everyone I am afraid, just lower the difficulty, you'll be ok and we will have less walls of text.

Seriously, unfair is kind of a gay difficulty (imo) because of the damage multiplier alone. You can play hard and get most of the "bullshit" difficulty scaling of unfair but without the damage multiplier. That makes it a far superior difficulty setting as far as I'm concerned.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah just play Hard dawg, at least on first run.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm abusing this stupidly OP double fortune + protective luck stacking trick, so not doing full unfair seems... unfair to the game. The crit rate of 18-20 crit weapons is absurd.

I do normally play most of the main game on Hard and do bosses on unfair though, and the DLC is just a lot harder due to lower levels and no mythic stacking. Plus having 3 party members who are really just not that great. But in this game, AoE pulsating cold damage that covers the whole area and is unresistable? Yeah 2x damage for that is literally just suicidal when you only have 2, maybe 3 turns to take him down. I can throw down 100 damage on a good charge crit but past that it's just begging the rest of my party to roll nat 20s to hit. It's unfortunate that my main damage dealers are mercs and can't get the shard boosts

EDIT: Interesting balancing decision when it comes to these items. Both sold by the same merchant

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'm abusing this stupidly OP double fortune + protective luck stacking trick, so not doing full unfair seems... unfair to the game. The crit rate of 18-20 crit weapons is absurd.

I do normally play most of the main game on Hard and do bosses on unfair though, and the DLC is just a lot harder due to lower levels and no mythic stacking. Plus having 3 party members who are really just not that great. But in this game, AoE pulsating cold damage that covers the whole area and is unresistable? Yeah 2x damage for that is literally just suicidal when you only have 2, maybe 3 turns to take him down. I can throw down 100 damage on a good charge crit but past that it's just begging the rest of my party to roll nat 20s to hit. It's unfortunate that my main damage dealers are mercs and can't get the shard boosts

EDIT: Interesting balancing decision when it comes to these items. Both sold by the same merchant

One has a lower but broader bonus and is therefore more expensive?

Reads to me like the first needs a weapon, bow/crossbow/etc. and the second could hit rays, kinetic blasts, etc.

 

[Desiderius]

They put those items in late DLC to help people who can’t figure how to hit anything without Outflank. The Precise Shot name is probably a joke at the expense of how many players never figured out the -4 malus from shooting into melee.

 

[Average Manatee]

Reads to me like the first needs a weapon, bow/crossbow/etc. and the second could hit rays, kinetic blasts, etc.

Nah, rays/kinetic blasts/ranged touch spells are still counted as ranged weapons. You'll notice that precise shot says it negates the -4 close combat for ranged weapons and it applies to those as well. As far as I can tell its a different wording for the same effect.

They put those items in late DLC to help people who can’t figure how to hit anything without Outflank. The Precise Shot name is probably a joke at the expense of how many players never figured out the -4 malus from shooting into melee.

It's just strange that there are two of them, sold by the same merchant, take up the same inventory slot, and the cheaper one is better. Like throw one of those in a dungeon somewhere.

That said given that both Rekarth and Penta are ranged characters its not like they serve no purpose. Though the amount of money you need to buy them both is... a bit beyond me at the moment. And Penta is pretty much just so trash at ranged combat even if she hits that I'm not sure why you would spend money gearing her for it.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished Lord of Nothing. Thoughts:

- This is really a departure from Through the Ashes. I was expecting slightly more combat focus but still a lot of puzzles. It's instead an almost complete dungeon crawl, with a few puzzles for optional items. Which is better.
- Ice dungeon was OK. A bit light on combat amount and short.
- Mage Tower was great. Lots of stuff, interesting area. Boss fight was notable tactically since there's stuff all around you.
- Nature area was OK but a bit simple compared to the mage tower. At this point tough enemies started dying in 2-3 turns from dimension strike charge w/ 2x fortune so I'm not really sure what the boss does.
- Shadow dungeon was awful. Couldn't see shit, map wasn't helpful, annoying to navigate, annoying enemies that aren't really deadly and can barely hit you but level drain/attribute damage you in an area with limited resting and no way to retreat for consumables. I guess I should have figured out to bring restoration items since it tells you you're going to the shadow realm but... ehh still annoying. Also, wtf no boss? Lame!
- Final boss was actually a joke because he deals cold damage that doesn't pierce resistances, so keeping protection from energy up meant a big fat 0 damage dealt every turn. Which leads me to think that the ice dungeon boss was definitely bugged because there's no reason he should pierce resistance but the final demon lord can't.
- Shard powers are actually fairly cool. They do kind of pidgeonhole you (there's roughly 3 for melee, 3 for ranged, 3 for spellcasters, and a bunch of kind of random crap). But since you have to choose who gets the shard its a lot more tactical than mythic levels where everyone just picks the same 2 or 3 things together. It's really annoying that the mercs can't take it though given how narrow the companions' builds are.

Overall, decent but I really don't think it has any replayability because of the last dungeon being so bad and 3 required companions which really kills playing with builds. Especially when shards can only go on 1 of your created characters.

Will have to see what this does to the main campaign but I don't think I'll have time to replay it for a while with the holidays coming up. It'd be cool if the shard powers also work there, although it'd be extremely overpowered (maybe it'd be fine if they could be taken instead of a mythic ability?). Will also be interesting to see if any of the new equipment makes its way there since there's some cool stuff:

Amulet with +2 alchemical bonus to intelligence and more bombs per day
+2 falchion that gets an extra attack if it crits (once per round)
Pearls of power.
Hat that increases necromancy DCs by 2 and makes you undead (HP dependent on charisma, healed by negative energy).
Leather armor that gives +2 luck bonus to dexterity
Greatsword that throws out 6d6 fireballs on every crit.
Neckless that prevents death once per day, restoring 50 HP and making all nearby enemies pass a will 26 DC check or be knocked prone
And a bunch of intteresting items at the merchants which I couldn't afford.

 

[Desiderius]

Sounds like another Varnhold's Lot.

Nah, rays/kinetic blasts/ranged touch spells are still counted as ranged weapons.

Nah, Molten Orb does (because it's coded as a Bomb I guess) but Rays don't, which is why Ember gets her Blackened malus on Molten Orbs but not Snowball or Scorching Rays.

I guess I should have figured out to bring restoration items since it tells you you're going to the shadow realm

Or you could figure out how to fight Shadows. I'll have to test whether Mage Armor works against them (it is supposed to) but the game does give you many tools to boost touch AC and/or own undead.

 

[Alienman]

Average Manatee How did you survive the final boss's aura? He completely wrecked me with his stun aura. Otherwise, he seemed to be an enjoyable boss, unlike the shadow dragon.

 

[Average Manatee]

Interesting finding: Mythic Inspiration (bard/skald songs give +1 +1 per 3 mythic levels) actually gives double that for Court Poets, so up to 6 + 8 = +14 to int and cha. That's... pretty damn impressive. Not just for the obvious Nenio/Ember spell spam, but also with Seelah able to convert that to +7 AB with mark of justice, Scaled Fist getting +7 AC, Friend to animals giving all pets +7 saves. And you can wear ring of triumphant advance to double that. Imagine Seelah with +28 Cha or Nenio with +28 Int lmao wtf. Glad I held out on my planned court poet-focused game till this update.

EDIT: Imagine sword saint 19/scaled fist 1. Court poet can give that a casual +28 AC

Nah, Molten Orb does (because it's coded as a Bomb I guess) but Rays don't, which is why Ember gets her blackened malus on Molten Orbs but not Snowball or Scorching Rays.

I can say that I specifically tested Snowball and it works with the item I posted. My *guess* is that ranged weapons = everything ranged, but all weapons = everything weapons but no non-weapons. I can't recall exactly where I noticed this before but I definitely recall a few things following this formula.

Or you could figure out how to fight Shadows. I'll have to test whether Mage Armor works against them (it is supposed to) but the game does give you many tools to boost touch AC and/or own undead.

It's not so much that they hit me often. But the dungeon is long without many rests to refresh buffs, and they either roll high eventually or spawn behind you and go for someone flimsy. The fact that you really can't see shit in this dungeon also makes it difficult.

Average Manatee How did you survive the final boss's aura? He completely wrecked me with his stun aura. Otherwise, he seemed to be an enjoyable boss, unlike the shadow dragon.

I'll be honest, I didn't even know he had that and I'm not getting stunned so I must be protected some how. Do you know exactly what the effect is called? I can't tell what it is on his stat card.

 

[Alienman]

I'll be honest, I didn't even know he had that and I'm not getting stunned so I must be protected some how. Do you know exactly what the effect is called? I can't tell what it is on his stat card.

Should be the Unholy nimbus aura.