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

[Desiderius]

Pets don’t buff themselves. Sos does. And everyone else in combat and out. If that’s the criteria it’s garbage.

It is basic a criteria for a "competent" melee that I compare to when I call his melee output subpar.
My criteria for buff bots are different. As long as he provides spell buffs, domain short buffs, dispels and heals he may even shoot from crossbow with his negative DEX in the spare time and I would call him effective. But with some conditions: that he is not at risk of being hit, not crowding a melee range, not blocking narrow corridors, and not walking around like a cretin eating AoO because his pathfinding went retarded once again. Especially if he is an only person in the party who have clerical buffs and Mass Heals.

But I would never waste a Mythic Feats and Abilities on improving martial performance of the such character and I wont waste his spell-slots on self buffs. But if I have a free space for extra melee in my line up I will definitely get him Animal Domain. I usually run with 2 pets (3 is pure annoyance for me) so nothing wrong with wasting Mythic Ability slot on my buff bot to supply one.

Zerg leaves him in good position away from frontlines and you can use Touch during the Charge (like Seelah does Smite). Next round he casts Prayer, does another Touch/Luck on front liner, and cleans up AoOs. After that can slay or cast as needed.

And that is exactly what I call buff bot (or just support)- character who spends first 3 turns of most non-trash fights doing anything else but attacking with his weapon. And if it regularly takes more than 3 full turns to clean up non-boss fights in Pathfinders with the 6-man party, this means only one thing - your party sucks for the difficulty you are playing on.

If you put half the energy you’re putting into rationalizing blowing half your action economy on your Clerics into competently using it you’d see for yourself.

Your buffbots create a field in which even Nenio can do good damage. There’s no reason for them to ploink when they can slay. And that isn’t just on trash since all those abilities you’re neglecting let you spike up to bosses.

Have you never @Haplo’ed up a character and reached half the screen? None of this shit you’re complaining about happens. He’s well behind the front lines. He attacks first round on zerg (tge Charge stops at the end of his - large - reach), casts second, then can cast or slay as needed getting BIG AoOs all the time. Meanwhile giving big Swift bonuses to whoever needs them. Fortune Hex is once per day. Bit of Luck isn’t.

I demonstrated it on freaking Tristian with Serpent Prince. If he can do it of course Sos can and does. Most of the things letting Haplo do that are available on Cleric and a few things that aren’t. Half of 700 damage is still a lot and you eventually do get four attacks with Haste (in adfition to the big AoOs).

I don’t think I’ve ever had to cast a Mass Heal on either game. Sounds like you’re the one whose fights are dragging out because you aren’t using the resources already at your disposal.

Resource cost is low. Outflank and one Mythic Feat to get Shatter earlier. Ever Ready late because it’s awesome. You can get Mythic Focus first if you want and still have everything in time for Frightful.

 

[Desiderius]

I think there is a dedicated nuker or even an Abjurer build with favorite meta that could work (I’ve done the nuker on Daeran) but “buffbot” is only half an action economy and Sos sets up well for the other half.

 

[Daidre]

getting BIG AoOs all the time.

Except he is not getting AoO until his first proper round without combat reflexes. And with his worst initiative in the game he is usually dead last in the initiative order and that means no AoO until the turn 2.

But now you will write that he can burn another useless Mythic feat on it too. Because he is amazing theoretical melee Sosiel in vacuum - he always got enough Mythic ranks for Domain Zealot, 3 Abudant castings, Ever Ready, Spell Focus, couple extra feats from Mythic Feat and whatever else you may need to make an argument and turn him into productive melee.

PS I had run several oversized melees with Legendary Proportions and etc. And I would not say that characters like my Trickster-Bloodragers with Wide Sweep and Cleaving Finish needed some cleric with the glaive to help her to clean the screen. And I do not think that some Angelic Haploids need any help from him and his glaive either to chain-one-shot enemies with Vital Strike.

 

[Stoned Ape]

EA good class even with all the abilities stuck on melee lol.

Yeah, a 360+ damage volley at level 11 really isn't too shabby (I have to thank Seelah's Mark of Justice for a big chunk of that, though!)

It’s a funny combination: the ranged archetype whose spells and abilities are all for melee combined with the companion whose starting abilities are also all for melee.

Doing pretty well with that handicap, tho tbf that’s what my logs look like (with more damage on main packet, less maybe on extras) with melee Wolj and Leading Strike. Plus you get Outflank and Crusader’s Edge Sicken and distracting all the mobs.

And getting to use those abilities. Tabletop Tweaks “fixes” Barrage. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Yeah, I only intended to use barrage for this playthrough; I've not used it much before.

Overall, I think a high-damage archer has a few advantages over melee, too. With Haste he gets 5 arrows at full AB (-2), but can also use arcane accuracy for +6 to-hit for the round. I realize you can get a similar number of full-AB attacks with dual wielding by using the x2 haste dagger in the off hand, but the archer can full attack almost every round without having to move, and can easily target mages in the back rank without having to try to charge them.

If you open combat with the archer, then the AI targets him rather than the melee companions and ignores them when moving to attack him, which works out as AoO central as they push past the front rank.

It also benefits my party tactic to have two archers, two front-line 'shieldwall' fighters (at the moment Lann the Shieldbash Crusader and Skeleton Towershield Bulwark), two reach-weapon enlarged damage dealers (MC Lich Eldritch Knight+Seelah), two archers (Arue+Woljif), and a spare slot for whoever I think will be useful (at the moment, mostly Daeran because his spellcasting is more versatile than Sosiel's, and my MC is more effective at crowd control than Nenio). The Skeleton Bulwark will become another cleric when I get to Mythic rank 4, which will be useful. I'm almost thinking twice about going for Legend because Lich has been really fun so far; having the extra undead companion really helps party composition.

 

[Desiderius]

Testing out some Clerics and discovered there’s a new archetype that Channels Entropy (damages everything), comes with a free Weapon Prof (including Exotic) and has Madness Domain (only gets one).

Think I’ll choose Falcata for the AoE Sonic damage with Dazzling and see how it goes. Been looking for a good Abjurer shell (Stunning Barrier, Dismissal, Dispel, Banish with meta) and it might work.

 

[Average Manatee]

Damn zoophiles, I don't care how much you can jack up your pets. I refuse to play as a fucking travelling zoo.
No animals in my righteous crusade, except Greybor-bro, coz he's a beast.

Finally, someone else who agrees that Nenio needs to sent to the glue factory.

 

[Stoned Ape]

If you tank the big skinless dude that's worth 20k XP with your Skeleton, it can have its skin seized which makes it permanently spray blood until you cast restoration on it lol

(Although I'm not sure why a skeleton sprays blood, or how it has any skin to seize, really)

 

[Average Manatee]

Maybe the skeleton identifies as living, bigot

 

[IllusiveBrian]

Maybe the skeleton identifies as living, bigot

Given the blood spray, he's a lot more likely to pass as living than a transexual is as a woman.

 

[Lambach]

If every single Owlcat developer emerged from my screen and took turns fist-fucking my ass, it would still be a significantly less painful experience than a lot of the puzzles in this game.

God damn, what a miserable chore.

 

[Acrux]

​

If every single Owlcat developer emerged from my screen and took turns fist-fucking my ass, it would still be a significantly less painful experience than a lot of the puzzles in this game.

God damn, what a miserable chore.

Your new favorite mod.:

https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/246

Puzzle Skip​

Allows skipping puzzles, like the slab puzzles in The Secrets of Creation

 

[ga♥]

Wrath for what three?

Less than a year

 

[Lambach]

The latest update apparently fixed Eyes of the Bodak, and good Lord, that thing FUCKS.



A passive aura that targets enemies only, allows no Save, ignores SR and gives a Negative Level per round to everything not completely immune to Level Drain in a hefty AoE seems way to good to be a 4th Level Spell, but I ain't complaining.

 

[BanEvader]

If every single Owlcat developer emerged from my screen and took turns fist-fucking my ass, it would still be a significantly less painful experience than a lot of the puzzles in this game.

God damn, what a miserable chore.

That's what you get for playing a game made by trannies for trannies.
The puzzles are an expression of self-loathing by the devs, and at the same time loathing for their playerbase.
Play a superior game my dude, play Baldur's Gate 3, or, failing that if you want to wait for the official release, D:OS 2.
Larian will love you. Swen will love you.

 

[Desiderius]

getting BIG AoOs all the time.

Except he is not getting AoO until his first proper round without combat reflexes. And with his worst initiative in the game he is usually dead last in the initiative order and that means no AoO until the turn 2.

But now you will write that he can burn another useless Mythic feat on it too. Because he is amazing theoretical melee Sosiel in vacuum - he always got enough Mythic ranks for Domain Zealot, 3 Abudant castings, Ever Ready, Spell Focus, couple extra feats from Mythic Feat and whatever else you may need to make an argument and turn him into productive melee.

PS I had run several oversized melees with Legendary Proportions and etc. And I would not say that characters like my Trickster-Bloodragers with Wide Sweep and Cleaving Finish needed some cleric with the glaive to help her to clean the screen. And I do not think that some Angelic Haploids need any help from him and his glaive either to chain-one-shot enemies with Vital Strike.

It's neither theoretical nor in a vacuum. I posted the pics.

Seriously do not get the passion for the negative theorycrafting. *You're* the one in the vacuum. You obviously have never even played Sos because you think his big Domain activation is once per day (and if you're not using battle-long advantage what are you even doing?). Why do you feel obliged to opine on something so vociferously that you've never even tested?

If you're building a monstrosity that can solo the game it doesn't need help from a face-melting Cleric or whatever either. We've seen Haplo solo. Obv that can be done. If you're playing full team instead it only makes sense to use some of the unique spells and abilities that companion gets (he's the only big two-hander) to do a similar version on a smaller scale if he's set up for it (he is) so he can carry his weight. If my MC is already doing that I'm taking Daeran instead obv, but most MCs aren't. None of your frantic arguments make sense.

The melee isn't there for AoE like Wide Sweepers or whatever anyway because he doesn't get the Feats for Cleaving nor for solo-level damage because the same goes for Vital Strike. What is there is big (enough) damage, the ability to spike AB with advantage, and very wide Zone of Control to keep attackers away from the backlines at a very low cost compared to half of an action economy and what else you'd be getting with those Mythic Feats (not much).

Domain Zealot is there on any Sos build so you can Hex + Cast every round. It's a better Sorcerous Reflex. Likewise with Abundant. What does that even have to do with melee?

You're just not beating that. Ever Ready is somewhere after those but by then it's a sizable - and growing - bonus* and will trigger a lot with your Reach and Outflank. The Spell Focus is the alternative to the heavy melee build, but you can pick it up after the *one* Mythic Feat on Shatter or whatever. Or just take your time and don't spend any Mythic Feats on melee and get there in time for Frightful. I don't even know what you're trying to do at this point. Am I supposed to just ignore my dude with 40-something STR (?) bestriding the battlefield (because I'm already using Frightful for the shaken) who can give himself advantage for whole fights and spike his AB super high because he's theoretically "subpar"? Why?

* - if you're calling Ever Ready useless that's yet another thing you've never tested and yet feel obliged to weigh in on because if you had you'd know it's borderline broken.

 

[Average Manatee]

The latest update apparently fixed Eyes of the Bodak, and good Lord, that thing FUCKS.



A passive aura that targets enemies only, allows no Save, ignores SR and gives a Negative Level per round to everything not completely immune to Level Drain in a hefty AoE seems way to good to be a 4th Level Spell, but I ain't complaining.

Nce.

Does anyone know whether negative levels are actually implemented properly? Do enemies all have a specific leveling scheme and therefore lose specific abilities with each negative level, or does it just apply a generic BAB/saving throws/HP/etc penalty? Most games I know end up adding special abilities (i.e. not gained from class) such that enemies always have them even at level 1. EDIT: Nevermind, apparently in pathfinder negative levels are actually supposed to just be a generic BAB/saving throws/HP loss rather than actually losing abilities, you aren't even supposed to lose spells or spell slots. On the plus side it's always 1 BAB loss per negative level even if the enemy is a class that would only get 2/3rd or 1/2 BAB per class level, same with saving throws.

Also it should still be a gaze attack therefore enemies who are blind or have blind fight or other abilities that give immunity to gazes should be immune.

 

[Average Manatee]

Seriously do not get the passion for the negative theorycrafting.

My brother in Christ, that is half your posts in this thread.

 

[Lambach]

Lulz, Hellfire Ray can be ridiculous sometimes. I encountered that Deskari High Priestess in Midnight Fane and after she totally wiped my entire party out with Polar Midnight, I figured I simply can't focus her down quickly enough before Polar Midnight kills everyone through Dex drain.

So I Metamagic'd a Bolstered + Empowered Hellfire Ray, toggled Skeletal Finger that allows me to cast one Spell up to level 6 as a Swift Action, cast Improved Invisibility on myself, snuck up on her, blew that Metamagic'd Hellfire Ray first then quickly followed up with another regular one (cast instantly thanks to Skeletal Finger). 464 damage in a single Round and it was just barely enough to take her down.

I had planned on my next playthrough being an Azata Bard or something similar, but I have no idea how I'd beat encounters like this were I not a stupidly powerful Lich with a merged Spellbook that can cast 9th Level Spells while being a level 14 Sorc.

 

[Desiderius]

Seriously do not get the passion for the negative theorycrafting.

My brother in Christ, that is half your posts in this thread.

No, they’re not. I was a big splasher/multiclasser myself.

 

[Desiderius]

Lulz, Hellfire Ray can be ridiculous sometimes. I encountered that Deskari High Priestess in Midnight Fane and after she totally wiped my entire party out with Polar Midnight, I figured I simply can't focus her down quickly enough before Polar Midnight kills everyone through Dex drain.

So I Metamagic'd a Bolstered + Empowered Hellfire Ray, toggled Skeletal Finger that allows me to cast one Spell up to level 6 as a Swift Action, cast Improved Invisibility on myself, snuck up on her, blew that Metamagic'd Hellfire Ray first then quickly followed up with another regular one (cast instantly thanks to Skeletal Finger). 464 damage in a single Round and it was just barely enough to take her down.

I had planned on my next playthrough being an Azata Bard or something similar, but I have no idea how I'd beat encounters like this were I not a stupidly powerful Lich with a merged Spellbook that can cast 9th Level Spells while being a level 14 Sorc.

Ice Body

Or just stay out of the Midnight Area.

Lich isn’t any more stupidly powerful than Azata Bard. Lann can shoot her for that much in a round by then with a couple crits and Winter Witch Cam can stack meta pretty high too.

Swarms are also a pain there. I think Chain Lightning is pretty good against them IIRC.

 

[Desiderius]

Average Manatee it's funny you bring that up because I originally joined the Codex to argue for a build like Stoned Ape's Wolj here except on Octavia with R4/W3/AT10. As now it was Daidre then who was telling me how ridiculous it was.

But then he was right because those extra 3 Rogue levels were a major price to pay that seriously delayed her development as a caster, as I belatedly figured out once I started suspecting that my dips and splashes were doing more harm than good and let her develop naturally. That's not what I'm saying on Sos. The price you pay there for letting him fight is much smaller and the payoff much bigger because he's 3/4, your only 2-handed companion, and has several spells and abilities that make him relatively effective at it.

Now the other thing I was arguing for then (and now as with Sos) was letting her fight with weapons when not casting, which is a much tougher case to make for Wizard than Cleric. But there was a very good Unfair player on Steam who tested the R4 build vs his R1 caster build and decided the R4 wasn't worth it but that even his R1 Octavia could fight with weapons to save casts (to his surprise). That's much less necessary in Wrath where you have a lot more rest available but Daidre has already said he likes low rest so I'm surprised he hasn't discovered melee Sos himself. Casts-wise you're just using Divine Favor to offset 3/4 BAB and spiking with one cast of Divine Power/Righteous Might on the hardest fight each rest then making use of Frightful when you get it and whatever good Glaive you've got laying around.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Average Manatee it's funny you bring that up because I originally joined the Codex to argue for a build like Stoned Ape's Wolj here except on Octavia with R4/W3/AT10. As now it was Daidre then who was telling me how ridiculous it was.

But then he was right because those extra 3 Rogue levels were a major price to pay that seriously delayed her development as a caster, as I belatedly figured out once I started suspecting that my dips and splashes were doing more harm than good and let her develop naturally. That's not what I'm saying on Sos. The price you pay there for letting him fight is much smaller and the payoff much bigger because he's 3/4, your only 2-handed companion, and has several spells and abilities that make him relatively effective at it.

Now the other thing I was arguing for then (and now as with Sos) was letting her fight with weapons when not casting, which is a much tougher case to make for Wizard than Cleric. But there was a very good Unfair player on Steam who tested the R4 build vs his R1 caster build and decided the R4 wasn't worth it but that even his R1 Octavia could fight with weapons to save casts (to his surprise). That's much less necessary in Wrath where you have a lot more rest available but Daidre has already said he likes low rest so I'm surprised he hasn't discovered melee Sos himself. Casts-wise you're just using Divine Favor to offset 3/4 BAB and spiking with one cast of Divine Power/Righteous Might on the hardest fight each rest then making use of Frightful when you get it and whatever good Glaive you've got laying around.

I would say the difference between Octavia going R4/W/AT and Woljif R4/EA16 are the focuses on what their roles are in the party.

Octavia's primarily a caster who has access to a full wizard spellbook, while Woljif is primarily a rogue who can cast a good selection of wizard spells. For Octavia the delay on getting spells is really harsh with 4 lost caster levels, and she loses 9th level spells completely, while for Woljif the Eldritch Archer is decent from level 2 (and I tend to recruit Woljif at 5th/6th level) and fully up to speed with 3 elemental enhancements by 13th character level. The way I use him, casting is pretty much secondary to shooting stuff and mostly just useful for Acid Dart to trigger his extra attack. Even so, he'll still get access to 6th level spells eventually, although it's not something he's focused around.

I think multiclassing is always a cost/benefit equation and trying to work out what precise role you want the character to do is the most important thing. Choosing options that specifically make them good at that role is what is most important. Sometimes that involves staying single-class, and sometimes it involves multiclassing.

Looking at it the other way around, if Woljif started as a Eldritch Archer, I could make a good argument for taking 4 levels of rogue with him as I think he gains more than he loses when doing so (arcane weapon +5 isn't needed (especially in Wrath with Greater Magic Weapon), the 17th level arcana is nice but for a sniper it's outweighed by sneak attack, spell access isn't what I'm after for his role, and True Magus isn't as good as Debilitating injury (blanket +2 to hit vs -4 to target's AC for every arrow after the first that hits).

 

[Desiderius]

If I want a ranged companion I just don't play Wolj. Losing Outflank + Crusader's Edge and adding another -2 from Spell Combat is a big deal, as is not getting to Hellfire even if I want him to do some range. My first Octavia build was R4/EA2 for the "extra" attack from Spell Combat but the biggest issue for both of them is landing the initial attack (and iteratives against things immune to Debilitating) since Rogue is a 3/4 class with no abilities that enhance AB. If you're Barraging you're not even using the AB help you could otherwise get from EA's ability to enhance it's weapon.

If a companion can do melee I want it there because Edge is so absurd in this setting and Outflank gives melee another +4 AB over ranged. I keep Lann and Aru ranged because they start out committed to that but their AB will always trail that on melee characters on combat logs so requires something to compensate for it. On Unfair Lann ZA is sometimes even reduced to crit-fishing, which he's pretty good at with Perfect Strike and Bless Weapon and a lot of chances from Flurry.

Your Wolj build like my initial one on Octavia duplicates what he's already good at (damage) while exacerbating his main issue (AB) and wasting his initial Feats and abilities (TWF, Finesse, Finesse training) and the advantages of fighting in melee. That's in addition to missing out on the rewards for getting to the high level abilities on time (on Wolj Double Debilitation, which you're not even using, the additional -2 at lvl 10 and 16 on ES for regular Debilitating, the incomparable Advanced Rogue Talents, and on Octavia Surprise Spells).

 

[Desiderius]

Sos in comparison does get Edge and Outflank and also has Divine Favor/Power and even Touch of Good at Swift (or Eaglesoul by lvl 11). Righteous Might/Frightful also enhance his main stat and so AB. The gap there is big.

True Strike into Debilitating helps but TS is one hit not one minute.

Main motivation for staying straight EA is to stack Metamagic (you get an extra layer with Arcana that other classes don't, but only if you have enough class levels to unlock it) high enough to switch to Touch or move + Spellstrike (no Combat) without a fall-off in damage.

 

[Stoned Ape]

If I want a ranged companion I just don't play Wolj. Losing Outflank + Crusader's Edge and adding another -2 from Spell Combat is a big deal, as is not getting to Hellfire even if I want him to do some range. My first Octavia build was R4/EA2 for the "extra" attack from Spell Combat but the biggest issue for both of them is landing the initial attack (and iteratives against things immune to Debilitating) since Rogue is a 3/4 class with no abilities that enhance AB. If you're Barraging you're not even using the AB help you could otherwise get from EA's ability to enhance it's weapon.

If a companion can do melee I want it there because Edge is so absurd in this setting and Outflank gives melee another +4 AB over ranged. I keep Lann and Aru ranged because they start out committed to that but their AB will always trail that on melee characters on combat logs so requires something to compensate for it. On Unfair Lann ZA is sometimes even reduced to crit-fishing, which he's pretty good at with Perfect Strike and Bless Weapon and a lot of chances from Flurry.

Your build like my initial one duplicates what he's already good at (damage) while exacerbating his main issue (AB) and wasting his initial Feats and abilities (TWF, Finesse, Finesse training) and the advantages of fighting in melee.

EA can choose Int bonus AB from Arcane Accuracy (in my game currently +7 with a +6 Int headband for Woljif), Prescient Attack to make the target lose its Dex bonus, or all arrows striking as ranged touch attacks with Dimension Strike. Any one of these can equal out the AB difference from missing Outflank (and in many cases beat it by a substantial margin).

Also, my front rank is already crowded enough without trying to squeeze another body in there. I have 4 melee fighters (Skeleton Vanguard Scimitar+Tower Shield, Lann Longsword+Shieldbash Crusader, Seelah Bardiche 2-hander Enlarged, and MC Sorc/EK Greatsword Frightful Aspect) and that is more than enough.

Additionally, EA doesn't have to travel around the map wasting most of its attacks moving between targets, so it can make a far greater number of full attacks (unless you have a skald on hand for the ET to pounce).

Eventually it will even get Bane arrows on top.

Sure, I waste 2 early feats, but I have more then enough available to make the build work from chapter 1 onward.

TL;DR From having used both, I find the archer far more useful in practice.