Decline Wrath of the Righteous is even worse than Kingmaker (which was already shit)

[Desiderius]

To quote the great Lilura, Poncefinder: Cuckmaker was utter crap, as Gregz eloquently outlined here a few years back. Now, I finished that turd back in the day, and I dunno why, perhaps because I am glutton for punishment (among other things), I decided to play the sequel, which I picked up for cheap.

And oh boy, after about 20 hours, I have to declare, Wrath of the Nauseous might even be worse than Shitmaker 1. In fact, it's so bad, I will not even try to finish it, and instead do the smart thing and uninstall it.

Why do I hate it so much? Well, for one thing, Owlcat has learned literally nothing from Kingmaker. All the same exact shit that caused problems there is back, and in some cases even worse.

As early as the first chapter, when you are clearing Kenabres from the demons, and your fucking party is like level 3, and you barely have any shit or spells, half the fucking enemies apply permanent ability and stat drains. The Shadows with their stat drain. The rat swarms with their filth fever. Not to mention if someone dies and is resurrected, which already takes a high level resource to do, they get applied a negative level too, because in Russia this passes for fun. What kind of retard would think this is a good idea in a product meant for entertainment?

Even though I would agree that demons are a retarded enemy thematically for a low level party and that it's retarded to even give a low level party access to such items, it's starting to sound like you were filtered.

You can get filtered by idiocy, you know. Now stop quoting internet memes before I show you that I can dual wield them. With my feet.

Some of this shit can be undone with rest, which brings me to my next point, the fucking "brilliance" behind corruption. See, these retards (much like the retards behind Pooplars of Eternity) decided that rest spamming is a bad idea in RPGs, so they introduced camping gear or rations, to limit the rests. Of course everybody normal hated this idea, because all it did is make rest more annoying. IE, everyone still rested the same, they just had to make more trips now in and out of dungeons, or play like misers (ooohh, i can't cast this spell now, cause I gotta save it for the boss, let me use a fucking crossbow on my wizard instead). So after all the complaints about rations, the Einsteins at Owlcat decided to replace it with .. corruption. Lol.

Where do these idiots even come from? Like who the fuck even cares about rest spamming? I played the Baldur's Gate saga, and the NWN games, and ToEE, and NetHack and other DnD games, and never had any issues with rest spamming. Because good games can balance the combat around other, more sensible stuff. Only autistic retards want massive attrition in their games, literally being barely able to use their weapons, and think that's fun. It's probably the people who play the same game 20 times, and then whine about how it's too easy. But why the fuck would you design your game around those kinds of people? If your game needs attrition to be fun, then your game is shit.

I see you hate mechanical features that add to the roleplaying by further mechanically simulating aspects of the world like scarcity or some kind of problem endemic to a region that you have to do. It's almost like you don't like mechanical features that encourage roleplaying in roleplaying games. If anything, WotR should've kept the rations requirement for camping. CRPGs in general need more such mechanics to help reinforce the fact that a problem in the region is more than just dialogue lines and something you run into by simply following the linear plotline. At the same time, both games allowed you to utilize your party member's skills to get some additional benefits during camping and an improved chance to avoid random encounters. Plus someone with a high enough nature skill could eliminate the need for rations entirely.

But BG1+2, IWD1+2, and ToEE certainly had their anti-rest spam in the form of random encounters that could kill your party if you got the wrong encounter. NWN's anti rest spam depended on who made the module you're playing through. You always had the timer for rests however. Most D&D games had some kind of anti-rest spam mechanics. At times in BG1, you can find yourself resting over and over again just to run into encounter after encounter on each attempt only to realize the best course of action is to leave the area and rest in a more appropriate place. There was also the restriction that you very likely couldn't just rest wherever in towns since a guard would interupt your rest requiring that you use an Inn.

A stupid mechanical feature is a bad thing. In previous DnD games, there was some reasonable punishment for resting, ie you could get attacked/woken up, so you didn't spam rest too much, only when you needed it to refresh your key abilities.

But this new shit with camping rations or corruption or whatever, it's just dumb as fuck, because you are literally preventing the player from using their class abilities. Think about a game like System Shock 2, where you get relatively limited ammo, to keep the suspense up. But you still generally get enough bullets to kill every enemy, as long as you don't auto fire like a retard, and place your shots carefully.

But in Shitmakers/PoE/other crap, it doesn't matter how carefully you cast your spells, you cannot spread them over anything near the total amount of encounters, so basically your healers/casters/wizards should just be mostly useless with crossbows or whatever, and save up their shit for a few key fights. This is the opposite of fun, and basically all it does in realistic terms is screw over casters and elevate melee to kings of combat.

Then, speaking of unfun, there is the fucking endless buffing. This is the height of Owlcat combat design: every enemy has inflated stats, so the "challenge" of the combat system is not tactics, or anything interesting, it is to literally prebuff your fucking party 20 times with the cornucopia of consumable shit that the game showers you with. Who needs tactics when you can click on drink potion or cast scroll 20 times before each fight, that's WAY more fun. Well, I am no rocket scientist, but here is a fucking idea: if you remove stupid stat bloat from enemies, then you wouldn't need to prebuff 20 times, and then you also wouldn't be showered with a million useless pieces of trash in every container.

The rampant buff spam is a 3e problem that pf1e inherited. It was possible in ToEE and many NWN1+2 builds depend heavily on the buff spam. Also, unless you're playing on Hard or Unfair, you probably don't have to buff spam for most encounters in either PF game since so many of them are just trash. At best it's just the best practice to buff spam at the beginning of an area to more quickly steamroll the trash mob spam with garbage AI.

There's also the problem that they didn't implement some of the rules correctly which allowed for buff stacking and getting bonsues that wouldn't be possible in tabletop, i.e. Magical vestment, sneak attack without satisfying the flanking rules, etc.

I don't give a flying owlrat's ass who they inherited it from. They chose the system for their game, they also chose HOW to adapt it. So they are responsible for the shit. Nobody says you have to adopt a PnP system verbatim into a video game, smart designers know this.

Holy fuck, then you might actually spend your time in the game on doing something fun instead.

Collecting and selling loot for profit is part of the fun of crpgs!

Not when that "loot" is like a bazillion of similar potions and scrolls and other useless crap. It's even tiring to read the labels/descriptions in the inventory cause there is so much shit and most of it does the same shit. or all that horrible "Here is a fucking frozen fart sculpture of the northern mammoth squirrel. It will be of interest to some collector. Worth 2 coppers." Are these fucking collectors homeless?

Frankly it is impressive to be *this* retarded.

It’s like you’re not retarded at all you’re just brilliant at convincing yourself of shit that has no correspondence whatsoever with reality.

Bizarro autism

Where can you even get filtered by corruption before Labyrinth? Because of you phaggot whiners they got rid of the locked in the Tomb mechanic from P:K so even there you can just teleport back and take multiple trips.

 

[Lacrymas]

Go back the way you came?

So you must not have read my first post. The way they came in was through the wall of thorns (where I labeled it impassible, because it is; it's a one way passage that can only be used from its other side).This is how they passed that ambush without seeing it. The surface exit is to the left, the passageway to the right leads downward into a lower level. Further onward (and downward) eventually leads to a new area with encounters that are impossible for a weakened party with no spells. The fights are winnable to a rested party, but there is no way to rest, and no way to acquire any camping gear. The ONLY option for this group is to retreat (leftward) past that ambush—and they cannot survive it.

This is what I said in the beginning.

I guess I must have forgotten this, but outside of the drake pit this is probably the only time the game locks you into a fight (not a dungeon, just a single fight). You saved immediately after going past that thorn wall and have no other saves before it? You can't stealth past the spores or craft/have any consumables and scrolls? To me, that fight seems definitely doable for 4 people, especially two of them being Druid and Chanter, if you have some consumables.

 

[Desiderius]

Probably the toughest level in either game.

 

[Serus]

On the one hand: Porky is right (Broken clock)
On the other hand: It's Porky

On the one hand: Fedora Master is right (Broken clock)*
On the other hand: It's Fedora Master

*Yes that also means Porkly is right too. That is much more bizarre, I know.

I wouldn't call P:K "shit" though, that's too harsh

 

[Fedora Master]

On the one hand: Fedora Master is right (Broken clock)*

Like Cassandra, I am often right in my predictions but seldom heard.

 

[Cryomancer]

success of BG3 shows that you are just yelling at the cloud. 4E is indeed trash for a TTRPG, but it would have been an interesting and potentially great system for a CRPG. Since it basically was designed to appeal to the World of Warcraft

Disagreed. Bg3 is popular due marketing and high production values. Also, owlcat target audience ia not critical role normies. Is grognards. I wanna game mechanics and the fictional universe as close as they can be. Wow is trash exactly due the high amount of gamey bs making the game purely a gear farming cooldown managing chore.

I dont wanna nonsensical gamey stuff. This is why I hated the new rogue trader.

resource management is a fundamental part of good dungeon crawling and exploration. Incentives towards resource management are good design. Attrition is a good thing

Yep. Well said. Imagine how much he would complain if he plays eye of the beholder 3 with underwater anti magical zones with puzzles for eg.

Fedora Master is right

Yep. He is right when he says that there are too much redundancy. Lets say that I wanna to be a illusionist, I can be a arcanist, a sorcerer of certain bloodlines, a phantasmal mage, a wizard specialist, a thassilonian specialist or a shadowcaster. 6 (sub) classes with different flavors of illusionist that will end up spamming phantasmal killer/weird 24/7.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Why would grognards like Shitmakers? There is zero actual tactics in either game, unless you think buffing characters with everything in your inventory is tactics.

 

[Desiderius]

Why would grognards like Shitmakers? There is zero actual tactics in either game, unless you think buffing characters with everything in your inventory is tactics.

Enough tactics to filter you.

Touch AC, how does it work?

6 (sub) classes with different flavors of illusionist that will end up spamming phantasmal killer/weird 24/7.

PK is double save single target mind-affecting, Weird available at lvl 17 at the earliest. Each of those archetypes dictate distinctive gameplay patterns and options depending on what you're facing, and choosing the appropriate one to cover holes in your own approach or simply for variety or to pwn the retard clickbait builds is a satisfying experience.

People are too lazy to even come up with cohesive critiques the days.

 

[Desiderius]

Here's one.

This pic was taken in OCT '22 to highlight how Owlcat had neglected to implement the base ability that all melee generals share (Dispersal of Forces) that would otherwise be the first ability a new player learns how to use along the way to master the HoMM portion of the game:



It would be unconscionable for that particular ability not to work at that late a date in any other game since it undermines the kind of engagement you need to produce good word of mouth and high satisfication scores at the earliest possible moment.

It's like the ignition not working on Toyota trucks. All of them. And Toyota refusing to even acknowledge the problem despite endless bug reporting because their people in charge of that are too busy cancelling customers for being insufficently pro-trans.

Maybe you'd say just drive a car. There are two other generals. The equivalent ability on the Ranger general (Hunt) *also* does nothing. Damndest thing I've ever seen.

Well, that was early in the lifecycle of the game. Give them time to fix the "bugs".

Tomorrow is 2024 and they *still* are unimplemented. At this point this has to be some sort of internal sabotage.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Why would grognards like Shitmakers? There is zero actual tactics in either game, unless you think buffing characters with everything in your inventory is tactics.

Enough tactics to filter you.

You dumb fuck with reading comprehension issues, I mentioned in the OP that I completed Shitmaker 1 (to my eternal regret). Do your miniscule chicken brains even understand what filter means? It's like ever since internet memes became a thing, people just regurgitate them mindlessly without even understanding what they stand for. Sad.

Touch AC, how does it work?

You show me where Crispy touched you?

 

[Desiderius]

PorkyThePaladin yet again proving my point.

Yes I am angry that a perfectly intelligent gamer decides to vandalize games instead of learning how to master the basics, and also that the devs haven't even implemented those basics in half their game.

OTOH it isn't my butt that hurts. Why would it be? I'm not the one willfully sucking this badly and advertising it to the world and demanding that the world adjust itself to make me suck less.

what filter means?

It means whining about a mechanic (Shadow Touch Attack) that I just demonstrated how to easily beat two days ago by simply using the proper companion for the task (the one with high Touch AC), that isn't even in an area to which any quest sends you but you have to go out of your way (passing a relatively high Athletics check) to find. Just like the Owlbears in P:K. We can't even have our minimally challenging areas in games any more because now the psychotics seek them out to feed their ravenous dissastifaction with the world.

As for Corruption I'm doing a playthrough now and lamenting how it isn't close to thing yet and I'm almost to level 8. How did you even fuck that up?

 

[Desiderius]

Yes. you too Fedora Master.

You're more subtle than PorkyThePaladin (the bar could hardly be lower) but it's the same derangement.

 

[Fedora Master]

You are simply autistic and therefore the target audience for Wrath.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Aren't you the retard who played Shitmaker for ~2,000 hours? So let me get this straight, you are saying permanent shadow damage is ok, because you can find an out-of-the-way companion, passing a high skill check, and then use them (and I guess keep the rest of your party away) because the enemy uses some special attack which might or might not even be described in detail in the game itself?

Do you understand what meta-gaming is? Do you realize most people don't play games many times over, and learn every little thing about them? I mean, listen, I can appreciate the level of autism involved with people like you, and I guess it's good that games like Shitmakers are fun for you, but for relatively normal players, this is not how we play.

 

[Desiderius]

you are saying permanent shadow damage is ok, because you can find an out-of-the-way companion, passing a high skill check, and then use them (and I guess keep the rest of your party away) because the enemy uses some special attack which might or might not even be described in detail in the game itself?

a) it isn't permanent

b) he's in the basement of the starting Tavern

c) there's no skill check

d) tanking is not an obscure tactic

e) touch AC is on the main character sheet with handy tooltip

f) the only skill check involved is the one you have to pass to even find the fight to which no quest even sends you.

 

[Desiderius]

I ended up with 2,000 hours on P:K because several people asked me to help them with builds and so I tested them and posted results.

I also figured out that many of the prominent memes were simply mistaken and enjoyed debunking them to vindicate the ruleset and its designers. I like good design and want to encourage more of it and save it from the psychotic haters who project your own issues on those designers and their games.

Most archetypes in PF do in fact offer significant differences in gameplay and were designed to do so. That kind of design is at the heart of the replayability that good designers strive for. I'm happy to encourage it. People who beclown themselves with absurdly inaccurate critiques obliquely serve the same purpose I guess so do carry on. Buff time is an issue but there are easy mods to obviate that. Things like Abundant Casting that blunt the trade-offs too much do make the game too solvable but that can be handled by player stipulation.

 

[Cryomancer]

dictate distinctive gameplay patterns

fact offer significant differences in gameplay

I know. My point is that they could be just feats. For eg, thassilonian specialist could be a lv 1 feat "sin magic"which expands opposition schools and gives a extra spell slot. No need to create subclasses for every mechanical diffference. Same for the ghost rider archetype. Most archetypes could have been feats.

But paizo make them into archetypes to sell more books. I am not saying that a phantasmal mage and a shadowcaster plays in the same way. Only that "shadow magic" could be a "freee feat" for illusionist specialized wizard and do the same that the archetype does.

 

[Desiderius]

dictate distinctive gameplay patterns

fact offer significant differences in gameplay

I know. My point is that they could be just feats. For eg, thassilonian specialist could be a lv 1 feat "sin magic"which expands opposition schools and gives a extra spell slot. No need to create subclasses for every mechanical diffference. Same for the ghost rider archetype. Most archetypes could have been feats.

But paizo make them into archetypes to sell more books

Can’t really do trade-offs with feats. Each archetype gives up something substantial from base class (Ghost Rider gives up a ton) to the extent that sometimes the base class itself is the best all-around.

Thass trades off the ability to cast off-school spells mid-late where you’ve got the slots to cast them for significantly more early slots where they’re most at a premium. Plays like a Sorc with faster Spell Progression and ability to use metamagic as a standard action.

 

[Lacrymas]

Taking something as a feat already has the trade-off of not taking anything else. Sorcerer Viktor is correct that a lot of the subclasses in PF 1E are superfluous at best, pointless bloat at worst.

 

[Desiderius]

Except it's a (much) bigger difference than a Feat gives you and a bigger tradeoff.

It's always interesting that the examples people bring up to illustrate this point always end up playing out dramatically differently.

Let's look at Thassalonian Specialist. Say you want to be a Ray Caster. Usually people choose Sorc for that since the selection of spells you want to cast is pretty narrow and you want more casts sooner.



What if you instead choose a Sloth Thessalonian Specialist? Conj spells bypass Spell Resistance saving two feats (and maybe a Mythic) right off the bat.

You get the crappy Acid Touch which I guess you can use to finish things off since it targets Touch. But you also get the Move Action Teleport with is nice since Wiz can cast spells with Meta as Standard and add another as Swift with Sorcerous Reflex.

You also get duration on Summons which can let you pre-cast or keep them around for multiple fights, which goes well with Augment Summons (unlocked by Conj Focus which you want anyway). Extra duration means you can summon before group buffs pre-boss fight.

Any Wiz can get this School (but any Sorc can't). What does Thass give you?



Rime Metamagic is from one of the common mods and works well since few things are immune to Entangle and it's no save. If you don't have Rime you can just take Bolster (TTT makes Bolster add two levels but vanilla is only one). Unlike Sorc you've got second level spells at lvl 3 and can Move in the same turn you cast one with Metamagic.

Already at lvl 3 you've got two extra casts per rest compared to other Wiz types. You can use them for the good early conj spells like Grease, Web, and Glitterdust instead if you prefer. All bypass Spell Resistance.



At level five you can add in Empower (or just cast some Clouds and Pits or Hastes). Three extra casts per rest vs Wizard, third level spells (which Sorc doesn't have yet) and you can Scribe Scrolls with Metamagic included in them each rest to give you more.



Since you're picking up those extra casts you can start taking Favorite Metamagic Mythics instead of Abundant, which lets you stack your meta pretty high midgame! As always a different Rod can be added to mix and match with your spells of different levels to get them all.



By midgame the good Summon spells start showing up, and those can be Empowered and Maximized too.



Toward endgame you can also pivot to Dispel Magic, Greater duty backed up by an arsenal of *very* souped up Snowballs (Items start showing up to add damage per die), especially if you have Azata Zippy Magic or you can pivot to Arcane Trickster with Trickster Mythic. Aeonbane does work on Snowballs too.

Now what's the trade off here?

You can't cast any Evocation or Illusion spells the whole game!

That doesn't seem so trivial!

 

[Cryomancer]

a (much) bigger difference than a Feat gives you and a bigger tradeoff

Here is how much a single feat changes in 3.5e.

From now on, your spells tap the Shadow Weave instead of the Weave. You also can activate magic items that use the Shadow Weave without taking damage. Add a +1 bonus to the DC for all saving throws of spells you cast from the schools of Enchantment, Illusion, and Necromancy, and spells with the darkness descriptor. You get a +1 bonus on caster level checks to overcome spell resistance for these schools and spells. The Shadow Weave proves less than optimal for effects involving energy or matter. Your effective caster level for spells you cast from the schools of Evocation or Transmutation (except spells with the darkness descriptor) is reduced by one. (First-level Shadow Weave users cannot cast spells from these schools.) The reduced caster level affects the spell's range, duration, damage, and any other level-dependent variables the spell might have, including dispel checks against you. You can no longer cast spells with the light descriptor, no matter _ what your level is. Such spells automatically fail. Your ability to use magic items that produce light effects is also limited--you cannot invoke an item's light power if the item's activation method is spell trigger or spell completion. From now on, any magic item you create is a Shadow Weave item -(see Chapter 2: Magic). · SPECIAL: Knowledge of the Shadow Weave has a price. When you acquire this feat, your Wisdom score is immediately reduced by 2 points. If this loss or any future Wisdom loss reduces your Wisdom score to less than 13, you still have the feat. (This is an exception to" the general rule governing feats with prerequisites.) Restorative spells (such as restoration or greater restoration) do not reverse the Wisdom loss. You can, however, strike a deal with Shar, the goddess who holds sway over the Shadow Weave, to regain your lost Wisdom. You must receive an atonement spell from a cleric of Shar. Sharran clerics require the subject to complete a dangerous quest before receiving the atonement, and afterward you must choose her as your patron. (The usual quest is to destroy a follower of Selűne whose level is at least as high as yours.) If you later change your patron, you immediately suffer the Wisdom loss. If you take Shar back again as your patron deity, it is not regained

source : https://dnd.arkalseif.info/feats/fo...tting--19/shadow-weave-magic--2568/index.html

This feat is also the prerequisite for multiple other feats giving unique metamagic effects and changes spell caster level and dcs of many spells, caster level of many spells makes the magical items that he creates vastly different, costs attributes, come with quest hook and inflicts a limitation upon the caster.

If I look to pf1e exploiter wizard, most stuff that he has one feat which replaces arcane bound and one for arcane school( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/co...pes/paizo-wizard-archetypes/exploiter-wizard/ )

Less changes than the shadow magic feat in 3.5e.

 

[9ted6]

In this case I think mechanics are irrelevant to the game.

Doesn't matter if you have the best CRPG combat and leveling there's ever been if it's only in service to you going from place to place to listen to polygender elves tell you how much they love to get pounded by their noble and never evil gay trans orc lovers every single quest.

1 hour or 10,000 hours it's a dumb woke shitshow and Paizo's fantasy world, like Larian's and Bioware's, is just current day West Coast USA with larpers.

 

[scytheavatar]

Disagreed. Bg3 is popular due marketing and high production values. Also, owlcat target audience ia not critical role normies. Is grognards. I wanna game mechanics and the fictional universe as close as they can be. Wow is trash exactly due the high amount of gamey bs making the game purely a gear farming cooldown managing chore.

I dont wanna nonsensical gamey stuff. This is why I hated the new rogue trader.

Like it or not, game development costs are constantly rising. Not to mention with their next game being on the Unreal Engine...... thus Owlcat has no choice but to widen their audience if they want to survive.

 

[Desiderius]

They don't even have quests.

They're there at the beginning to suck up to journophags and you have to ask them about the tranny shit to hear about it.

It's immersion-breaking horseshit and ideally you'd have something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance for the setting but it doesn't have much to do with the gameplay.

OTOH playing the game (especially the early game where rests are at a premium if you want to get to everything) with the MC I outlined above will play out a lot differently than a class that has to worry about Spell Resistance or Sorc spell progression and Full Action casting that will take a lot longer to develop. The fun of the game is getting the most out of the different archetypes, and you can do ten or so a playthrough by respeccing the companions once you've mastered the ones they come with.

There are idk 10-20% of the subclasses that don't do enough to merit being in the game but there's a ton of play to the other ones that people haven't gotten to because they've fallen for the memes.

Current playthrough I've got:

No Lawful (Trickster MC, Lawful characters for companion quests only)

Main party:

MC Order of the Paw Cavalier (the unique racial archetypes are particularly interesting) giving extra AC to Dog Mount (Mount going down throws rider Prone), AoE saves boosting + Advantage, moving into CM bonuses in midgame
Ulbrig Griffin Shifter Grappler getting Banner bonuses from MC on Death from Above
Wolj Eldritch Archer on XBow for wide crit + Meta Rays
Aru Espionage Expert Mounted on Bismuth
Daeran Purifier (racial unique archetype for Aasimar) tank (Purifier gets Heavy Armor + Armor Training), Channels Demons
Ember Enchantress using Stigmatized Witch Enchantments and her unique Spell

Come in for Companion Quests:

Sosiel Crusader tank with Heavy + Tower Mythics giving high DR
Regill Phantasmal Mage Hellknight Signifier
Nenio Loremaster Scriber
Greybor Two-weapon Fighter mod archetype
Seelah Pal Heavy Shield Basher with Mythic for Extra damage
ZA Lann with Elk companion via Nature's Ally mod Feat chain (takes 3 to get full Pet, all pets modded to PnP values), eventually mounted

Crusade with Hellknights instead of Clerics, melee General, and no army from Irabeth

None of the above is anything I've played before so learning as I go. Learning is fun.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Why would grognards like Shitmakers? There is zero actual tactics in either game, unless you think buffing characters with everything in your inventory is tactics.

Enough tactics to filter you.

You dumb fuck with reading comprehension issues, I mentioned in the OP that I completed Shitmaker 1 (to my eternal regret). Do your miniscule chicken brains even understand what filter means? It's like ever since internet memes became a thing, people just regurgitate them mindlessly without even understanding what they stand for. Sad.

Touch AC, how does it work?

You show me where Crispy touched you?

Desiderus is some kind of humanities professor aka peak midwit. This is why he gets so defensive and prideful about the """sophistication""" of Cuckretarder games' supposedly compelling and deep gameplay systems