Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[ERYFKRAD]

I want to be able to win combat by throwing darts at a dartboard and going with the outcome. If the game doesn't let me do that its bad game design.

Throwing darts is kinda fungible as far as combat is concerned though.

 

[Cryomancer]

Why throwing darts when you can use magic?

 

[ArchAngel]

Why throwing darts when you can use magic?

Yes, Arcane Strike gives us bonus damage when throwing darts. And Haste lets us throw one more dart.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Dart throwing mongrel rangers give some grief in the Shield Maze. As least on Hard. Even without magic.

 

[Supermedo]

Is Stinking cloud bugged because I can't see in the logs that human cultist saving throw against it.

 

[Delterius]

Is Stinking cloud bugged because I can't see in the logs that human cultist saving throw against it.

new pandemic regulations force all baphomet cultists to wear masks

bogus i know

 

[NJClaw]

I just use troops with most damage AND use offensive spells, at least until I decide I don't want to waste more mana. Waiting for mana to recover is slowest thing in the game.

I don't understand what the point of troops is supposed to be when you can beat the hardest crusade encounter of the entire game in the first round before any unit gets to act. And it's not like you have to somehow optimize anything, you just need a level 20 mage general with Fire Storm and any other non-fire damaging spell.

Also, regarding mana, in my experience it's basically impossible to run out of it. I haven't even checked how the recovery formula works, because from the start of chapter 3 I have never found myself in the position of not casting a spell because I didn't have enough mana. If you build an alchemist laboratory in every single settlement, you basically have an infinite pool.

I know I might sound like a whiny bitch, but I can't shake the feeling that the entire system is so poorly designed that it's basically impossible to fix. Even with a bunch of miraculous fixes to the every single core mechanic, we would still be stuck with a minigame completely unable to offer any kind of challenge whatsoever. Owlcat would need to redesign basically everything to make it even just slightly more interesting than doing your taxes.

 

[Miserable Panda]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Don't get me wrong I REALLY enjoyed the game. Character creation is top notch, and almost all mythic paths are full of reactivity and cool stuff to discover. Party members are pretty cool too (particularly Daeran). The game is ambitious, but crusade mode was not needed at all. Also I felt that the game was a little too long, considering that replaying it is really recommended. I would like to see a Pathfinder game balanced at four party members, and only focused on the role-playing aspects. I don´t need management simulators, I have other games for that.

 

[Sunri]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Don't get me wrong I REALLY enjoyed the game. Character creation is top notch, and almost all mythic paths are full of reactivity and cool stuff to discover. Party members are pretty cool too (particularly Daeran). The game is ambitious, but crusade mode was not needed at all. Also I felt that the game was a little too long, considering that replaying it is really recommended. I would like to see a Pathfinder game balanced at four party members, and only focused on the role-playing aspects. I don´t need management simulators, I have other games for that.

I agree i wanted to replay this 2 more times for all achivments but i had to take a break due to crusade mode being repetitive they made game whit a lot replayability and added minigame thats exactly the same every playthrough lol

 

[Yosharian]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Don't get me wrong I REALLY enjoyed the game. Character creation is top notch, and almost all mythic paths are full of reactivity and cool stuff to discover. Party members are pretty cool too (particularly Daeran). The game is ambitious, but crusade mode was not needed at all. Also I felt that the game was a little too long, considering that replaying it is really recommended. I would like to see a Pathfinder game balanced at four party members, and only focused on the role-playing aspects. I don´t need management simulators, I have other games for that.

The Reddit comments we were laughing at were crying that the game is too hard, whereas you're talking about encounter design, not the same thing at all

 

[Miserable Panda]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Don't get me wrong I REALLY enjoyed the game. Character creation is top notch, and almost all mythic paths are full of reactivity and cool stuff to discover. Party members are pretty cool too (particularly Daeran). The game is ambitious, but crusade mode was not needed at all. Also I felt that the game was a little too long, considering that replaying it is really recommended. I would like to see a Pathfinder game balanced at four party members, and only focused on the role-playing aspects. I don´t need management simulators, I have other games for that.

The Reddit comments we were laughing at were crying that the game is too hard, whereas you're talking about encounter design, not the same thing at all

Sorry, I took some more time to read the comments and I see what you mean. While I believe the game can be unfairly difficult due to some questionable design decisions, I also see that a lot of players just like to complain and want the game to beat itself at this point lmao.

 

[Urthor]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Honestly I'm absolutely sure 90% of this game's playerbase will not bump the difficulty up, and will not learn how to actually do die roll math.

Nature of these products is that the vast majority of people don't really powergame. People who actually care about encounter design and video game AI in a singleplayer game are in the vast, vast minority, vs people just jerking around.

 

[Jaedar]

we would still be stuck with a minigame completely unable to offer any kind of challenge whatsoever.

Eh, ditch the mage generals (or just fix it so they don't scale with power^2) and there'd be a decent challenge. Not a true challenge mind you, since you can always just skip day for 6 months and get an unstoppable juggernaut army, but I think few players have the patience for that kind of tediousness.

I went mage general first playthrough and just roflstomped everything. Second playthru I went for the ranger general and while I wouldn't call it great, it's ok. There's some tactical usage of traps and positioning. My main issue with it is that all the enemy armies tend to be very close together so you'll usually have 3-5 fights in a row, followed by no crusade mode for an hour or two, followed by a dozen fights within 30 minutes.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light.

I agree. There needs to be more spellcaster enemies (especially the kind that cast control spells), and other tactical concerns. Enemies like babatus should try to flank more aggressively as well. All the enemies (after a certain point) having 6+ attacks with enough damage on each hit to instantly kill any character that doesn't have enough AC to to require a 20 to hit also doesn't help. Getting up close with the enemies in wrath is kind of an all or nothing deal. I still think it's a lot of fun to stomp demons though.

 

[Daidre]

Enemies like babatus should try to flank more aggressively as well.

Wow. Teleporting into back row babatus are not aggressive enough for you?)

That is what irks me in all difficulty discussions on Reddit - that most participants there (and some here) had not even played with not gutted version of enemy's AI Behaviors.

 

[lycanwarrior]

One quick fix for army I would do is make Infirmary per day instead of per battle, it makes clearing maps way too easy and fast. Number of battle per day is limited only by your movement speed as Infirmary makes loses irrelevant.

Personally I'd toss away the infirmary all together (or at least make is your losses have to spend X days resting, and then being rerecruitable from drezen). I'd also remove the cap on how many unit types you can have (it's ridiculous in act 3 when you have 4 or 5 "full" armies of 1-10 units you got from various events).

I'd also redesign the tankyness of a lot of units. Stuff like gargoyles are utterly ridiculous, they deal 0 damage but take dozens of turns to deal with.

The crusade minigame is unsalvageable. Nerfing the infirmary would do nothing to improve the experience, it would only make things slower. Everything about it, from the gameplay to the UI, is so utter shit that the only thing that matters is to find a way to deal with it as fast as possible. This is why the only viable strategy is to recruit a mage general and spam Scorching Ray/Fireball/Fire Storm every single encounter. Applying all the changes you proposed wouldn't change anything: you would still be going through boring fights with no strategical depth while navigating an interfaced clearly designed to be as obnoxious as possible.

One quick fix for army I would do is make Infirmary per day instead of per battle, it makes clearing maps way too easy and fast. Number of battle per day is limited only by your movement speed as Infirmary makes loses irrelevant.

But what's the point? The minigame itself makes losses irrelevant. Your fix would only force the player to click the "skip day" button more times. It's not like anything prevents you from skipping a day after every single encounter.

Lol, that's pretty much what I do. Lucky enough to choose the Oread mage general simply because his portrait looked kinda bad-ass haha.

 

[The_Mask]

time to make a mod that just boots homm 5 3 everytime you do crusading

 

[LannTheStupid]

That is what irks me in all difficulty discussions on Reddit - that most participants there (and some here) had not even played with not gutted version of enemy's AI Behaviors.

Precisely.

The room with 2 darts throwing rangers in the Shield Maze (!) behind 2 melee fighters very nicely complementing each other is way more difficult than the Water Elemental - for whom there are 2 hard counter potions. And the alchemist with... friends... in Topaz Solutions is on par with mini-bosses on the market square. In my humble opinion.

Boosting the difficulty changes your perspective of "trash" and "not trash" fights.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Idk why people think normal requires minmaxing. I went straight 20 levels of fey trickster (a terrible class,) and let all my companions auto level and beat normal just fine on my first playthrough, with very little crpg experience. I never had to spend 10 minutes buffing or whatever to beat normal. I just don't get how people are having all this trouble. And the hardest enemies have been nerfed since then.

 

[Sunri]

Idk why people think normal requires minmaxing. I went straight 20 levels of fey trickster (a terrible class,) and let all my companions auto level and beat normal just fine on my first playthrough, with very little crpg experience. I never had to spend 10 minutes buffing or whatever to beat normal. I just don't get how people are having all this trouble. And the hardest enemies have been nerfed since then.

You can play like that on core 2 you just won't clear all optional content.

 

[purupuru]

Perhaps I will be banished after saying this, but I agree with the people on Reddit a lot. Sure, there are a lot of players that don't have any interest in learning how the game works and decide to give Core a try. But they are the minority.

This has been discussed to death but encounter design is severely lacking. 80% of the game is full of trash fights, I thought I was playing Mu Online for a second. I don't care about bloated stats, but mobs just use 1-2 different spells and auto attack at the speed of light. Very little place for tactics, and itemization was horrendous as well. No, I don't want another fucking longsword that shoots a beam when I crit with a 17.

Don't get me wrong I REALLY enjoyed the game. Character creation is top notch, and almost all mythic paths are full of reactivity and cool stuff to discover. Party members are pretty cool too (particularly Daeran). The game is ambitious, but crusade mode was not needed at all. Also I felt that the game was a little too long, considering that replaying it is really recommended. I would like to see a Pathfinder game balanced at four party members, and only focused on the role-playing aspects. I don´t need management simulators, I have other games for that.

I agree i wanted to replay this 2 more times for all achivments but i had to take a break due to crusade mode being repetitive they made game whit a lot replayability and added minigame thats exactly the same every playthrough lol

Use Combat Relief mod, I know it was buggy before and will lock up the game from time to time, but the current version fixed that bug and works flawlessly for me.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Using mods before the pace of patching slows to once per month is a very convenient way to kill your game progress. Also, mods that ignore in-game mod manager are... dubious at best.

(I think I'm writing this for the 3d time already).

 

[Yosharian]

Enemies like babatus should try to flank more aggressively as well.

Wow. Teleporting into back row babatus are not aggressive enough for you?)

That is what irks me in all difficulty discussions on Reddit - that most participants there (and some here) had not even played with not gutted version of enemy's AI Behaviors.

That's on Owlcat for making a lot of the improved AI behaviours gated behind the higher difficulty settings and lost whenever you switch to custom difficulty

 

[Daidre]

That's on Owlcat for making a lot of the improved AI behaviours gated behind the higher difficulty settings and lost whenever you switch to custom difficulty

No, you can tag Additional Enemy Behaviors on Core and difficulty will stay Core. Played like this in my very first incomplete run and even got some Core-specific achievements.
Edit: I am wrong, looks like they've patched it out later.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's on Owlcat for making a lot of the improved AI behaviours gated behind the higher difficulty settings and lost whenever you switch to custom difficulty

No, you can tag Additional Enemy Behaviors on Core and difficulty will stay Core. Played like this in my very first incomplete run and even got some Core-specific achievements.
Edit: I am wrong, looks like they've patched it out later.

Yeah, that changed in one of the more recent patches. The one before this last, I think.

 

[Daidre]

Yeah, that changed in one of the more recent patches. The one before this last, I think.

Yes, I had even booted the game on my laptop that had not seen the light of day since Wrath 1.0.7 and I can still do Core + Additional AI Behaviors on that version.

Everything to protect casuals from hurting themselves( Even "Core" is nerfed.