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

[Daidre]

Can't kill a corpse, and if your target isn't already dead by the time the iteratives come around that usually means you're missing, which iteratives just make worse.

If you have a reach weapon and/or Enlarge that means it is not just current target to spend all your iteratives on but everyone in like 15 foot radius - and Wrath was never stingy with amount of hostile bodies on battlefield (even funnier with Long Arm and Lunge from TTT mod). Vital Strike does similar thing but feats could be costly, price of one miss in the chain is higher and it will underperform for anyone who wants many attacks for per hit dices, like Sneaks, Bane or Elemental Barrage.

And it is not like there is many options if you want melee Lich with merged spellbook - all arcane spellcasting classes are low-bab, and among prestiges we have Dragon Disciple (medium bab, medium spell progression and that hurts), EK (full bab, 9/10 spell progression) and Hellknight Signifier (medium bab, full spell progression, no hellknight disciplines, trash abilities). For my eye, Elfritch Knight looks like the best deal here, with some 4 DD/Signifier on top depending on main class.

 

[Haplo]

Why not?

Too powerful, stifling build options?

Sounds like my kind of build!

... well personally I'm not too keen on the lich mythic path, but it should be a fun build!

You don't like it mechanically or storywise? I haven't tried it yet.

Mechanically it sounds cool.
But story-wise, from what I've read, it's not my cup of tea, really.

 

[Desiderius]

BAB has a lot more impact when mob AC ranges from 10-35 than it does 10-100.

You can just fight Wiz20 or Sorc20 with the help you get from Lich (I think, I don’t do Liches) and lose maybe 10% of your offense from EK while keeping your cool class progression from the interesting archetypes. Or just Sylvan full Mount.

If I were doing Lich I’d go Arcanist to learn all the ins and outs of a new class. Seems like Wooden Flesh and the teleport would be good for melee. TTT let’s you use Exploits for Meta Feats and a couple other things I’m forgetting.

 

[Parabalus]

I watch my combat logs - iteratives rarely show up on melee compared to all the full BAB attax (two from haste + all the AoOs). Most turns for melee are move + standard action, which is why Vital Strike is so good.

Does Vital Strike still cleave if you pop an enemy, leading to chain pops?

 

[Desiderius]

How did the merged fix affect Lich?

I did non-merged Angel with QStaff Master and was very happy with it. You still start out with 3rd level spells. You could use Lich to add spellcasting to a martial and still be very good.

 

[Seari]

Does Vital Strike still cleave if you pop an enemy, leading to chain pops?

So I tested this out for my future Demon playthrough and Vital Strike does work with Improved Cleaving Finish. It does not work with Wide Sweep, that was nerfed a couple patches ago. But it does work with Jinx, which is really cool.

 

[Seari]

The thing about Wide Sweep is that it procs from Improved Cleaving Finish. And Vital Strike procs with Improved Cleaving Finish. So they do synergize still.

Spoiler

This is a single Vital Strike. I leveled a test Fighter to 7 with no items, versus weakest enemies to test the procs.

 

[Parabalus]

The thing about Wide Sweep is that it procs from Improved Cleaving Finish. And Vital Strike procs with Improved Cleaving Finish. So they do synergize still.

Spoiler

This is a single Vital Strike. I leveled a test Fighter to 7 with no items, versus weakest enemies to test the procs.

I found reach weapons with enlarge to be the most effective, since if you hit a >1k crit you can clear the screen.

Wide Sweep needs enemies bunched up tightly, very useful early when you get it though.

 

[Desiderius]

There are no adjacent bosses.

 

[Seari]

Just noticed by accident that Protective Luck from Shaman and Witch stacks. Well that's just fucking dumb, I refuse to abuse that.

Spoiler

 

[Desiderius]

It’s not abuse. You’re tying up 1/3 of your team doing that.

 

[Daidre]

You can just fight Wiz20 or Sorc20 with the help you get from Lich (I think, I don’t do Liches) and lose maybe 10% of your offense from EK while keeping your cool class progression from the interesting archetypes.

We probably have different standards for melee. When I say melee, for me it usually means:
- Power Attack with Mythic Feat, and it scales from BAB, +5 damage from each step for two handers
- Cleaving Finish
- Improved Crit
- Outflank
- Shatter Defenses Line
- spend 95% of his combat time hitting things with huge club
This kind of build is kinda pointless on Wiz20 or Sorc20, but fits well with EK.
I really wanted to do melee Lich for some time, just hadn't got to it yet, mainly because I've checked Lich special powers and really liked some of them meant for martials, like:

Fear Control
Lich gains a +4 profane bonus to attack and a +1 profane bonus per mythic rank to damage against frightened creatures, or ones under any mind-affecting effects. Additionally, all enemies within 10 feet of the Lich must make a Will saving throw (DC = 10 + double the mythic rank) or become shaken until the end of combat. A successful save gives immunity to this ability for 24 hours.

Weapon of Death
Lich can enchant items he wears with bane living and nullifying special abilities. If a creature is killed with the weapon of death, all creatures in a 15 feet radius suffer a penalty on caster level checks made to overcome spell resistance equal to twice the Lich's mythic rank until the end of combat.

4 level spell
Vampiric Blade
Your weapon becomes bloodthirsty. It deals (1d6 + caster level) additional damage, healing the wielder for the same amount.

From what I saw from the Lich spells, most of them, like Angel's, ignore SR and still hit for respectable damage even after successful save, so building a gish with max STR and medium INT/CHA is very attractive.

 

[Sarathiour]

EK seems pretty good with legend ,probably doing a lich into legend wizard/EK/sometthing at some point in one or two years when the game will hopefully be in a better state.

Spell progression stops at 20 either way, so you've got the same problem EK already has.

Prestige on melee classes with Legend on the other hand is great.

Apparently the Cl goes up to 28 via prestige class.

 

[Desiderius]

CL but not progression.

 

[Sarathiour]

Well, you're not gaining any new slot, and a lot of damage spell won't go further than level 20. I also forgot that you will be lacking abundant casting, so your ressource are indeed a bit more limited. Still 6 spell slots per level should be enough.

 

[Desiderius]

You can just fight Wiz20 or Sorc20 with the help you get from Lich (I think, I don’t do Liches) and lose maybe 10% of your offense from EK while keeping your cool class progression from the interesting archetypes.

We probably have different standards for melee. When I say melee, for me it usually means:
- Power Attack with Mythic Feat, and it scales from BAB, +5 damage from each step for two handers
- Cleaving Finish
- Improved Crit
- Outflank
- Shatter Defenses Line
- spend 95% of his combat time hitting things with huge club
This kind of build is kinda pointless on Wiz20 or Sorc20, but fits well with EK.
I really wanted to do melee Lich for some time, just hadn't got to it yet, mainly because I've checked Lich special powers and really liked some of them meant for martials, like:

Fear Control
Lich gains a +4 profane bonus to attack and a +1 profane bonus per mythic rank to damage against frightened creatures, or ones under any mind-affecting effects. Additionally, all enemies within 10 feet of the Lich must make a Will saving throw (DC = 10 + double the mythic rank) or become shaken until the end of combat. A successful save gives immunity to this ability for 24 hours.

Weapon of Death
Lich can enchant items he wears with bane living and nullifying special abilities. If a creature is killed with the weapon of death, all creatures in a 15 feet radius suffer a penalty on caster level checks made to overcome spell resistance equal to twice the Lich's mythic rank until the end of combat.

4 level spell
Vampiric Blade
Your weapon becomes bloodthirsty. It deals (1d6 + caster level) additional damage, healing the wielder for the same amount.

From what I saw from the Lich spells, most of them, like Angel's, ignore SR and still hit for respectable damage even after successful save, so building a gish with max STR and medium INT/CHA is very attractive.

Power Attack is ok but you can outclass that quite a bit from just going large. No reason you can’t do both.

Cleaving is whatever, the bosses are the main threats you’ve got the rest of your team to deal with adds and EK only nets you one Feat anyway even if you further slow down your spell progression with a Martial Prof splash.

If you don’t need to land iteratives Shatter matters a lot less but your Sorc might want Dazzling anyway. You’ve got the Feats to do that on any class. Likewise Improved Crit and Outflank, though you’d have to wait a little longer.

Give a companion a Tactician class and you can get it earlier than EK while saving a Feat.

In any event if you’re determined to Cleave just play a Martial with Lich spells and get all that up to speed much earlier along with Vital.

 

[Yosharian]

You're beginning with a set of assumptions that aren't always the case, thus your conclusion is flawed

 

[Desiderius]

You're beginning with a set of assumptions that aren't always the case, thus your conclusion is flawed

The only pertinent one here - unless you'd be so kind as to point out the ones I'm missing - is whether you're soloing or not.

Even if you are what does EK really give you? Qualifying earlier for Feats? This was the rut InEffect got into where he was taking every class EK to squeeze out a couple more BAB since he didn't understand the other ways to generate AB and damage.

I've done EK.



This is Octavia R4/Wiz1/SS4/EK* (don't ask) and it turned out fine. I did Nenio EK with Arcane Enforcer splash for Martial Prof and Teleports to turn on Vulpine Pounce and it wasn't bad. It's a thing you can do, and if you need the BAB to unlock Feats sometimes you have to.

It's just not as good as it looks coming from other D&D games because as I belatedly learned PF was designed to obviate all the dipshittery by pre-multiclassing everything, which is why there's so many classes.

You get the fun you got in 3.5 finding the perfect combination of dips and splashes from the natural progression (both scaling and unlocking new abilities) of each class and you get the added fun of figuring out new ways of attacking the game from a different class with each playthrough. A Prestige that enhances what a class already does (and allows class abilities to progress) fits better with that than one that tacks on a different action economy (and doesn't).

* - this may even have two levels of Duelist. Who knows what I was doing. I used to be a big splasher.

 

[Daidre]

You're beginning with a set of assumptions that aren't always the case, thus your conclusion is flawed

That is what talking with Desiderius is like.
You tell him: I want Cleaving Finish and Myhtic Power Attack to blow up encounters with Wide Sweep, and I want merged Lich spellbook on the same character too all the way up to level 10 spells
He answers: Power Attack suck, Cleave is useless, you do not need iteratives, play pure Wizard instead.

 

[Sharpedge]

Well, you're not gaining any new slot, and a lot of damage spell won't go further than level 20. I also forgot that you will be lacking abundant casting, so your ressource are indeed a bit more limited. Still 6 spell slots per level should be enough.

When I last tested a large number of the spells that say they stop progressing at CL 20, did not actually stop progressing at 20. That included weird stuff like shield of faith or magical vestment, as well as some of the damage spells. Even if the tooltip explicitly stated the spell stopped progressing at 20, it did in fact progress all the way to CL 28. I imagine for many of them, Owlcat just did not bother to implement an upper bound since in kingmaker it wasn't exactly easy to get your CL that high for most spells.

 

[Desiderius]

You're beginning with a set of assumptions that aren't always the case, thus your conclusion is flawed

That is what talking with Desiderius is like.
You tell him: I want Cleaving Finish and Myhtic Power Attack to blow up encounters with Wide Sweep, and I want merged Lich spellbook on the same character too all the way up to level 10 spells
He answers: Power Attack suck, Cleave is useless, you do not need iteratives, play pure Wizard instead.

That is correct. There are no adjacent bosses, and those are the main threat. You don't need Wide Sweep or much Cleavage (I did Bloodrager MC with the Cleaves but obv there no ninth level spells because didn't need them) if you've got Lann and Aru on Cleaving Shot and Nenio and Wolj locking down adds.

If you're soloing you're playing a different game than I am so none of that applies, and if you just want to attack (but also merge) you don't need the Wiz caster feats so EK Combat Feats (barely) get you to Cleaving Finish and you're good. You'd attack better with a martial or some hybrids but if you're solo I can see where you'd also want the high level spells.

Back to the OP's question, if you like playing a full team EK doesn't buy you as much as it did in 3.5 and the (opportunity) cost is higher. It's a trap.

 

[Desiderius]

Note: this is the opposite of the argument I made regarding Bard in Chalice thread. There, Bard doesn't get enough activations to just "cast" so also has to do some fighting. EK has the opposite problem where it has too much action economy and isn't as good as a focused character at either one.

Soloer's may want the flexibility but he didn't specify soloing.

 

[Daidre]

That is correct. There are no adjacent bosses, and those are the main threat. You don't need Wide Sweep or much Cleavage (I did Bloodrager MC with the Cleaves but obv there no ninth level spells because didn't need them) if you've got Lann and Aru on Cleaving Shot and Nenio and Wolj locking down adds.

By the same logic you don't even need my MC in combat. Who the fuck cares that he is the only one who could synergy his class choices with Lich powers and build around PrC that would be subpar on any other Mythic - Lann, Aru, Nenio and Wolj can do all work by themselves just fine!

 

[Sarathiour]

You tell him: I want Cleaving Finish and Myhtic Power Attack to blow up encounters with Wide Sweep, and I want merged Lich spellbook on the same character too all the way up to level 10 spells
He answers: Power Attack suck, Cleave is useless, you do not need iteratives, play pure Wizard instead.

Autism unfortunately often goes in the way of having fun.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Note: this is the opposite of the argument I made regarding Bard in Chalice thread. There, Bard doesn't get enough activations to just "cast" so also has to do some fighting. EK has the opposite problem where it has too much action economy and isn't as good as a focused character at either one.

Soloer's may want the flexibility but he didn't specify soloing.

I think the disconnect here stem from a few things.

• Not everyone has the same playstyle or preferences.
• Building a specific concept appeals to most people and not all of these are covered by an existing class.
• Although there may be optimum ways to build a character, that doesn't mean that there's only one way to "solve the problem" of a game's encounters.
• Certainly, a specialized character (combat, casting, etc.) may be better off at their specialty than a hybrid character, the hybrid may bring certain things to the table that the specialists do not including the ability to pick up the slack if a specialist is dead or incapacitated, etc. Besides, the argument that specialists do the hybrids roles better than the hybrid sort of amounts to two or three characters are better than one. This isn't penetrating insight.

Other than that, EK is interesting. It isn't the most powerful class around, but the capstone that lets you free quicken anything on a crit opens up some interesting options. The most straight forward one is something like a melee dual wielder that stacks crit chance, but there are also possibilities for ranged weapon users including ray specialists. Maybe you'd be better off with a mutation warrior and a spell master, but that's two characters and neither of them does what this one does. Even a magus doesn't really capture what the EK does, it has different but similar strengths.