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

[TwoEdge]

Is now the time to start a new playthrough, or should I wait another two years for them to fix it?

Also, I heard they got the rights to Kingmaker back from the publisher. Does that mean they'll keep diddling that game with patches for eternity, as well?

Most likely wild speculation, as Starrok's response strikes this down:

 

[Desiderius]

Is the Magus Bladebound archetype any good? Seems no one is talking about it.

I took another look at it and looks like it's more akin to a Pet that shows up at lvl 12, and gives you 1/4 your lvl Circumstance AC bonus as long as its adjacent to you. It's stats are all equal to your INT (high), but only lasts for a minute until it needs to be resummoned. Minute is ten rounds so long enough for a fight, but if you want to buff it would have to rebuff each time. It's Enhancement bonus and damage go up with lvl so kind of like Finnean.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Is now the time to start a new playthrough, or should I wait another two years for them to fix it?

At minimum two months.

 

[Rhobar121]

More bugs I haven't seen before.
Invisibility for enemies does not work, almost all enemies that previously started the fight as invisible now do not have this status, including all Babau and shadow demons in Drezen.
In addition, for some reason, corruption increases during the first part of the siege (it didn't do this before), although I don't know if it's a new bug or a fix introduced on purpose.

 

[TwoEdge]

More bugs I haven't seen before.
Invisibility for enemies does not work, almost all enemies that previously started the fight as invisible now do not have this status, including all Babau and shadow demons in Drezen.
In addition, for some reason, corruption increases during the first part of the siege (it didn't do this before), although I don't know if it's a new bug or a fix introduced on purpose.

Maybe your party has a pet with the new scent ability? It gives them blindsense.

 

[Desiderius]

The Marauder Leader Invis worked just fine, as did the Conjurer in Market Square.

Removing Invis from Drezen Siege is regrettable but may be the nerf required to reintroduce corruption, the removal of which made rest trivial there.

It could be that the Shadow guys were totally wiping people who had no idea what was going on.

EDIT: could be Scent! More great design - using extant features to achieve player experience objectives.

 

[Rhobar121]

More bugs I haven't seen before.
Invisibility for enemies does not work, almost all enemies that previously started the fight as invisible now do not have this status, including all Babau and shadow demons in Drezen.
In addition, for some reason, corruption increases during the first part of the siege (it didn't do this before), although I don't know if it's a new bug or a fix introduced on purpose.

Maybe your party has a pet with the new scent ability? It gives them blindsense.

It's quite likely that this is it. I didn't think about it, I use leopard as a tank.

The Marauder Leader Invis worked just fine, as did the Conjurer in Market Square.

Removing Invis from Drezen Siege is regrettable but may be the nerf required to reintroduce corruption, the removal of which made rest trivial there.

It could be that the Shadow guys were totally wiping people who had no idea what was going on.

EDIT: could be Scent! More great design - using extant features to achieve player experience objectives.

As for the corruption, I am sure that it is just a bug and it is unlikely that they will introduce this change after such a long time.
Another thing is that Drezen has always been a mess anyway, at the same time there are supplies that are supposed to be a rest limit, and there are also artifacts that undo corruption, as if they didn't quite know what they wanted to do.

 

[Desiderius]

Pretty sure it had corruption for a long time, then at some point they completely nerfed it and put supplies everywhere, probably because people were getting filtered hard there.

The resource management challenge was up there with KotC2 on Unfair.

 

[Rhobar121]

Pretty sure it had corruption for a long time, then at some point they completely nerfed it and put supplies everywhere, probably because people were getting filtered hard there.

The resource management challenge was up there with KotC2 on Unfair.

I remember that the inner part of Drezen sometimes had and sometimes didn't have corruption mechanics, the first part was always limited only by supplies.

 

[MerchantKing]

Is now the time to start a new playthrough, or should I wait another two years for them to fix it?

At minimum two months.

I'm not sure why Owlcat still releases its games and DLC in pre-alpha states. They've had six years at this point to learn this was a bad idea.

Edit: BTW, the inciter capstone doesn't work. -1 to AC and you can't cast.

 

[Desiderius]

I haven’t encountered any bugs/missing functionality outside of the pet leveling. Infusion Specialization probably not WAI yet but smol issue.

 

[Vorark]

I took another look at it and looks like it's more akin to a Pet that shows up at lvl 12, and gives you 1/4 your lvl Circumstance AC bonus as long as its adjacent to you. It's stats are all equal to your INT (high), but only lasts for a minute until it needs to be resummoned. Minute is ten rounds so long enough for a fight, but if you want to buff it would have to rebuff each time. It's Enhancement bonus and damage go up with lvl so kind of like Finnean.

Thanks for looking into it. It reminded me or Finnean too but I thought maybe there would be more oomph to it. Oh well.

 

[MerchantKing]

I'm disappointed by the DLC. No Bane references so far.

 

[Desiderius]

I took another look at it and looks like it's more akin to a Pet that shows up at lvl 12, and gives you 1/4 your lvl Circumstance AC bonus as long as its adjacent to you. It's stats are all equal to your INT (high), but only lasts for a minute until it needs to be resummoned. Minute is ten rounds so long enough for a fight, but if you want to buff it would have to rebuff each time. It's Enhancement bonus and damage go up with lvl so kind of like Finnean.

Thanks for looking into it. It reminded me or Finnean too but I thought maybe there would be more oomph to it. Oh well.

I think you're guaranteed a good weapon until lvl 12 where you're pretty much guaranteed one anyway (from drops/relics), at which point it's probably as strong as a pet and hangs around protecting you while you cast stuff would be my take. Can change damage type to take advantage of vulnerabilities/get around immunities for a very high cost in Arcane Pool too. Always on buff effects like Songs and Domain powers will still buff it (like summons) and it shares your BAB with physical stats = to your INT.

 

[Rhobar121]

For some reason, killing Morveg in Wintersun gave me over 20k exp.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think you're guaranteed a good weapon until lvl 12 where you're pretty much guaranteed one anyway (from drops/relics), at which point it's probably as strong as a pet and hangs around protecting you while you cast stuff would be my take. Can change damage type to take advantage of vulnerabilities/get around immunities for a very high cost in Arcane Pool too. Always on buff effects like Songs and Domain powers will still buff it (like summons) and it shares your BAB with physical stats = to your INT.

It's just plain bad. The weapon is balanced for a low-magic campaign where simply having a guaranteed +x weapon appropriate to your level would be a powerful boon. That's not the game WotR is, even from chapter 1 we're doused in extremely powerful weapons with huge;y impactful tertiary abilities attached which can make them hold up to mid and end game gear after you cast greater magic weapon to make them to +5, which basically means that your Black Blade is no better than a common +0 weapon aside from the +1 damage per 3 levels ability (which... its fine but not great).

It is in no way shape or form even close to as powerful as a pet when independent. It gets no feats, no abilities, no items, trash AC, trash HP, trash stats. You can't even control it. Even when it hits (which is fairly rare as you're not gonna spend your time buffing it much), it'd 1d6+11 or so. Barely even noticable amounts of damage. Meanwhile even a poorly buffed pet has like 40 strength/25 con/60+ AC by the time you get your independent blade. Nevermind the utility of riding it and getting full round melee attacks from across the map.

You can make the argument that you really don't lose much to take the class (the list of good magus arcana is fairly short), but its certainly not even close to the same realm as what the other Magus archetypes get. And most of them lose even less relevant stuff in exchange for their abilities (ask me if I care about losing access to heavy armor at level 13 when I'm on a horse from level 1, lmao).

 

[MerchantKing]

I'm not sure why they have to throw around all these items.

 

[Desiderius]

the list of good magus arcana is fairly short

Why do people do this?

 

[Desiderius]

Sos/Necro fight confirmed WAI. If you go the back way (as intended, they even added a cutscene hint) entire party warps down beside the Necromancer surrounding Sosiel. He doesn't even run off by himself now.

They've nerfed it three times for you clowns and still you cry for more. Just beat it on Unfair. Got to use the Sable Company Bull Rush Wind thingie to good effect.

*Use Dark Veil for this fight*

Oh, and Deceiver is nuts. Fused spells take the lower save, but if one spell ignores Spell Resistance the whole thing does. Frigid Touch doesn't have a save (but is Evocation) so you've got Staggerballs if you want. Tack on Blindness instead for a Fort save if it's lower.

Mantis Zealot Fading ability that turns on at level 7 counts as Concealment for the +2 AB bonus.

 

[Desiderius]

Here's Deceiver Blindball. Messed up the Respec going all-in on Evo/Elemental Fire Focus. But 18 net was enough. Should have brought Empower Rod.



Rough Landing saving Daeran who got lit up by an Exploding Arrow from KinShooter Lann. Trips everything then slays.



Even though they were Immune to the Insult effect they still all tried to attack Inciter Seelah. Guarded Stance + Rolling Dodge (the Arrow is pointing to that bonus) with Dark Veil backup (note the 50% Concealment) meant that didn't pay. Ticks up to +3/+3 next level.



Forgot to put Eagle's Splendor on Sos, but Channeling headband from Nenio quest location made sure he could still do decent damage with it.



Kinshooter Lann using Vanish from Nenio to disarm the traps then let the Smilo have it unawares with a Steam Blast.



Definitely the most reliable source of damage.

 

[Desiderius]

Not sure if it’s TTT or base game but the melee Mythics have gotten a *big* boost. +4 damage each round stacks to +20 for instance. The damage on miss thingie is AoE and significantly more damage.

Witch of the Veil has unlimited Swift Invis from beginning (adds teleport onto it at lvl 8). Applying Protective Luck/Fortune doesn't break it.

 

[Desiderius]

So this is a thing now:



Remember that this can be fused with AoE spells. It also has no save.

Deceiver has several spells that apply DoTs. My guess is that those apply the fused effect each round but I'll need to test it.

I think the main buildaround spell is Obsidian Flow. AoE, bypasses SR, damage over time to things moving in it, Difficult Terrain to give it time to tick. Shares a school with Slow and Baleful Polymorph, the former is selective AoE, the latter can be fused with AoE spells to apply to multiple targets. Disintegrate, Excruciating Deformation, and Reduce Person are other Transmutation spells that can be combined with no save spells if you use Spell Focus Transmutation.

Some more info on how it determines saves:



You can see that the saves for the individual spells are *both* higher than the fused spell. If you look in the spellbook you'll see that spells that have no save are nonetheless assigned a difficulty class. That is determined by spell level + CHR modifier regardless of Feats (as here with Spell/Elemental Focus). It appears that fused spells default to that regardless of those Feats, since here Wolj has Greater Spell Focus Evo and Greater Elemental Focus Fire, but the fused spell doesn't care, at least on the interface.

I fused Acid Arrow and Frigid Touch (neither of which has a save) and both effects applied regardless so not sure if this is simply an interface issue.

 

[Average Manatee]

Deceiver has several spells that apply DoTs. My guess is that those apply the fused effect each round but I'll need to test it.

I don't see why it would do that. It should apply the normal DoT and whatever the 2nd spell's effect is, but not apply the 2nd spell over and over. That'd just get silly if the 2nd spell was chain lightning or something.

It appears that fused spells default to that regardless of those Feats, since here Wolj has Greater Spell Focus Evo and Greater Elemental Focus Fire, but the fused spell doesn't care, at least on the interface.

Well that's annoying, since I assume that also means that items like e.g. +2 DC for illusion spells also don't work. Which is like 2/3rds of the itemization for casters.

 

[MerchantKing]

I was think about putting my paladin on a griffin. But then I remembered that I don't like Griffins.

They are extremely evil creatures. I think I'd rather put my Dwarf paladin on a bear instead.

 

[Desiderius]

Traps on Ranger General have been buffed. A lot. Cover several spaces and do a shit-ton of damage.

The basic ability Hunt still doesn't work, but with Traps, Flare, Bless, and Healing plenty to do already early in the game.

Unfair Vescavor Queen has pretty crazy stats, but not immune to Blind. Extended Spit Venom (no SR) with Corruptor Mythic does this:



Cam is Witch of the Veil so can go Invis as Swift to cast it.



Ember here as Wandering Marksman lvl 7 taking advantage of the Blind along with Anevia.



Kinetic Sharpshooter Lann did this earlier before the Blind. If he can get through the SR he can hit anything. There's a TTT Mythic that gives advantage on Spell Pen/Dispel rolls that's great on Kinshooter. Approaching 100 damage on Steam Blast, but that doesn't get Touch AC.

Unfair Gibber (36 DC) is tough to manage. Even if you use item to get immunity it has 40 base AB on attax.

Can probably just spam Animate Dead to keep it occupied while taking it down from range with help from the Blind.