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

[gurugeorge]

Playing around with an Enchantress (Crossblooded Fey/Serpentine Sorc, with mythic Arcane second bloodline, Kindred-raised Half-Elf with redonkulous CHA, both Foci, both Pens, lvl 10 atm, on Core), it really does seem quite painful, quite often, at least with mobs that matter.

Looking at the logs it's pretty close though, the fails are often by quite a narrow margin, often with NPCs that have special Will bumps like Huntresses, and I'm thinking maybe once I've got mythic Pen, mythic focus and Elven Magic, that'll tip the balance to make it more consistently satisfying and less consistently sucky.

But it's such a heavy investment. The combat feels much more satisfying out of the box playing basically any decent melee build than any magic character, but I guess that's always been the case with these systems - magic only fully blossoms later in the game.

Persevere my boy, persevere ...

 

[Haplo]

On my Sanctified Slayer I could pick a Loremaster dip to learn Sense Vitals for +5d6 Sneak Attacks when active (for 10d6 total).
Down 2 feats, though. Likely also -1 BAB, -1 attack, -1 Studied Target, -1d6 permanent Sneak attacks, loosing access to the single level 6 spell... and -1 useless Teamwork feat.

Kinda wondering if its worth it.

 

[Desiderius]

On my Sanctified Slayer I could pick a Loremaster dip to learn Sense Vitals for +5d6 Sneak Attacks when active (for 10d6 total).
Down 2 feats, though. Likely also -1 BAB, -1 attack, -1 Studied Target, -1d6 permanent Sneak attacks, loosing access to the single level 6 spell... and -1 useless Teamwork feat.

Kinda wondering if its worth it.

Lol depends on your goals. If you want maximally ridiculous pics then I guess go for it. But you’re already doing enough damage for any other purpose. What’s 16 more conditional going to do?

 

[Desiderius]

Playing around with an Enchantress (Crossblooded Fey/Serpentine Sorc, with mythic Arcane second bloodline, Kindred-raised Half-Elf with redonkulous CHA, both Foci, both Pens, lvl 10 atm, on Core), it really does seem quite painful, quite often, at least with mobs that matter.

Looking at the logs it's pretty close though, the fails are often by quite a narrow margin, often with NPCs that have special Will bumps like Huntresses, and I'm thinking maybe once I've got mythic Pen, mythic focus and Elven Magic, that'll tip the balance to make it more consistently satisfying and less consistently sucky.

But it's such a heavy investment. The combat feels much more satisfying out of the box playing basically any decent melee build than any magic character, but I guess that's always been the case with these systems - magic only fully blossoms later in the game.

Persevere my boy, persevere ...

Then you hit Azata…

 

[gurugeorge]

Then you hit Azata…

Yeah, she's gone Azata (built her off another Azata toon from the Drezen choice). Are you saying it's a bad choice or good?

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah, she's gone Azata (built her off another Azata toon from the Drezen choice). Are you saying it's a bad choice or good?

Only really. Favorable Magic is that good and Azata also has specific boosts to Enchantments. For non-evil caster your choice is either casting Angel spells (mostly Conj nukes) or Azata boosting everything else, especially Enchantments.

 

[Haplo]

Lol depends on your goals. If you want maximally ridiculous pics then I guess go for it. But you’re already doing enough damage for any other purpose. What’s 16 more conditional going to do?

True.

And the loss of 1 regular +1 conditional AB hurts a little. Particularly where it counts, versus bosses.
As well as the loss of a feat, for example Double Slice.

Nearly doubling the sneak attack dice would be very nice for auto-attacking (when active), but wouldn't change the charging effects in a meaningful way. Think I'm gonna skip it.

Thanks, Desiderius!

 

[Yosharian]

Only if you have Greater Enduring on rnd/lvl spells

 

[Haplo]

Only if you have Greater Enduring on rnd/lvl spells

I do not have Enduring at all on the main char

 

[Yosharian]

Then it's absolutely not worth it.

 

[Desiderius]

Only if you have Greater Enduring on rnd/lvl spells

It fills a hole in the melee Inq spellbook, so he'd have it up whenever he needs it. I think the people obsessed with the rnd/lvl Enduring stuff must be kiting a lot.

 

[Haplo]

True, at spell level 2 it doesn't get much competition.

Still, probably not worth it - particularly if I don't plan to auto-attack much in the tougher fights.

 

[IllusiveBrian]

It fills a hole in the melee Inq spellbook, so he'd have it up whenever he needs it. I think the people obsessed with the rnd/lvl Enduring stuff must be kiting a lot.

I think people just like being able to cast all their buffs once and not have to think about them again. I never remember to prebuff unless I have to reload.

 

[Desiderius]

I think people just like being able to cast all their buffs once and not have to think about them again. I never remember to prebuff unless I have to reload.

Bubble buffs solve that. But I hear a lot of people saying Divine Favor for instance is too short. If ten rounds is too short you're not doing enough damage.

 

[Average Manatee]

I cast <20 rounds single target buffs only when I do a fight and fail, which means they probably shouldn't even be in my spell book because I only cast them literally about once per year for kingmaker.

 

[Desiderius]

Then you're needlessly nerfing yourself.

They're literally the principal strength of the Divine spellbook. One reason why Angel is so powerful tacked onto Martial.

Divine Power alone is better than a Mutagen if you can keep it up and no reason you can't for the three toughest fights per rest, which should be 90% of them in Wrath.

 

[Average Manatee]

No reason to expend spells if not needed. Almost always more efficient to just spontaneously convert them to healing to heal up whatever small extra damage was taken.

Plus, pre-buffing before a room where you know a boss fight is reeks of disgusting metagaming.

 

[The_Mask]

No reason to expend spells if not needed. Almost always more efficient to just spontaneously convert them to healing to heal up whatever small extra damage was taken.

Plus, pre-buffing before a room where you know a boss fight is reeks of disgusting metagaming.

Oh c'mon, that's half the fun of an 2nd playthrough: to know (pretty much) where things are coming from, and come in pre-buffed properly. Just like the fun of a 1st playthrough is to always try to have your best buffs up at all time(s), because you never know what's coming.

You're basically telling me how to play my game when it's just me and the PC. And the PC doesn't tell.

 

[Average Manatee]

I play all my RPGs as if they are blind, regardless of how many times I've played them. Feels like cheating otherwise.

 

[Desiderius]

No reason to expend spells if not needed. Almost always more efficient to just spontaneously convert them to healing to heal up whatever small extra damage was taken.

Plus, pre-buffing before a room where you know a boss fight is reeks of disgusting metagaming.

Because I pre-buff I rarely need to heal at all. It's not metagaming disgusting or otherwise - I use Stealth to scout things out. Why don't you? You've got the rests in Wrath to keep them up for every meaningful fight anyway.

We're playing different games. If it's too much trouble for you to cast them, use Bubble Buff. If it's too much trouble for you to learn them you're playing the wrong game.

 

[Desiderius]

In P:K things are a little trickier, but even there you can manage if you're aware of all your spells, abilities, and consumables.



Admittedly I wouldn't want to try to do this (no rest Vordokai's Tomb full clear) blind, so point taken. It's fun to do both, as long as you're not needlessly tying a hand behind your back.

 

[Average Manatee]

Because I pre-buff I rarely need to heal at all.

Same, most things only hit on a nat 20, or else they get focused/disabled hard. Once in while you get hit for some spell damage or because I mess up and ran something in before it got initiative and ended up flatfooted. Short term buffs just generally aren't needed for this. Haste is still king though.

I use Stealth to scout things out. Why don't you? You've got the rests in Wrath to keep them up for every meaningful fight anyway.

Scouting takes too much time, I've got bitches to bang when I'm done with my RPGs and if I keep them waiting they start whining too much. I also don't have time to listen to them whine, I have RPGs to play after all.

Still, fair point, but then most of the big bosses engage you in forced dialog anyway I expect? Haven't actually tested but basically every game does this. If you can actually scout boss fights like this then I have to give credit to the devs.

Admittedly I wouldn't want to try to do this (no rest Vordokai's Tomb full clear) blind, so point taken. It's fun to do both, as long as you're not needlessly tying a hand behind your back.

I did no rest whole varnhold chapter. Wasn't too hard, only buffed for Vordekai's Tomb itself and spent all my short term buffs on some sporadic healing.

 

[gurugeorge]

Just a wee PSA. If you've been wondering about hard drive space mysteriously disappearing, it might be the fault of Player.log and Player-prev.log in the Owlcat folder (in Local Low). I'm getting tight on my C drive recently, so I noticed that I'd lost an unconscionable amount of h/d space for some reason the other day. On checking with WinDirStat I noticed that those two files had bloated to 17 Gigs and 5 gigs respectively. (And just now I checked again and this time it was the other way round, the latter had ballooned to 14 Gig, the former 1 Gig).

[Later note: on just firing up the game and shutting it down, there was a 17mb file, and most of it was related to UMM stuff and various mods. So it's probably that - if you have a huge modlist, you might get this bloat.]

[Later later note: haha, traced it, it was a dumb bug in Spell Pouch, my second favourite mod - it was spewing out some verbose "unexception handled error whatever something" at a rate of knots, which amounted in my case after a few sessions to 17 gigs of the error in the log Amusingly, just as I was writing this there was a discussion in the Issues for the mod at Github, and the mod author has just fixed it! ]

 

[Average Manatee]

Anyone know whether being immune to being flanked (specifically with a daredevil pet) still lets you take advantage of feats like Back to Back?

EDIT: Answer is apparently: No!

 

[Haplo]

Had some more charging fun in Blackwater: