Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[Spore]

Is not even the word.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shred

[Kaptin Keen]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shred

Oh, well - yes, I know it's a word that accurately describes a process highly unpleasant to living and unwilling participants. It's just that I feel even that word isn't quite describtive enough. I like to think that Nok Nok carves his enemies into ribbons, braids them into bloody banners under which he marches on the slaughter their friends and family and everyone who knew or loved them.

I think that just about covers how disgusting I feel his damage output is.

[Inarius]

Are you sure you didn't just misread the damage? If yes, a Rogue can't do 100 damage with a single attack if he isn't bugged. Octavia occasionally does 15-20 damage with her acid splash at 5th level, so I can assume a pure rogue (I think Nok Nok is not a knife master, is he) can eventually do 100 damage with two weapon fighting per round, yes. But not per attack.

Kind of depends on the level, but Nok-Nok should get close to 100 damage per hit if its a crit. He should also be critting fairly often with those Kukri's of his and for me at least he has +15 damage mod to them so that right there off the bat on a crit is 32-36 damage on a crit. Plus the elemental effects his quest kukri's have (2d6), then all those d8 sneak die's he has and yeah it gets crazy.

Honestly the only builds I've seen that are competitive with rogues damage are crit builds based off full BAB classes (less likely to wiff on a select few stupidly absurdly high ac targets compared to rogues) and arcane tricksters.

That, plus while a rogue brings out of combat utility to the table, a druid does too. Sadly the game is filled with damage sources so that a druid imho is not enough to act as the party's single healer. In fact I usually prefer 1,5 healers (a cleric or paladin plus another class with access to healing like a bard, or a druid, or even an inquisitor).

This is also where I see the game's greatest flaw. The companions are terribly balanced and they don't feel satisfying. You start off with a barbarian wielding a weapon with insane penalties that you can never alleviate (come on, why doesn't she have a variant feat like monkey grip), a Fighter whose stats SCREAM Paladin and you cannot bring her back around to being LG to allow Paladin (yes, it is ingrained in her story that she would never do that but that is what character growth is for), a good bard (her weakness is her poor carryig capacity but that is okay) that just is a bit too infatuated with the hero, a Sylvanas-lite and the grumpiest dwarf (that I am surprised he doesn't have Charisma 6 to be perfectly honest).

As far as comparing a druid to a rogue damage wise, its best not to but only because druids bring a lot of other stuff to the table like a solid pet at lower levels and nice buffs/crowd control spells. While they can't carry the healing on their own at low/mid levels I have found that at my current level if my MT needs a heal I've probably already lost the fight because I didn't prebuff with something that trivializes the fight. I rarely ever heal in combat anymore, except for when a dps takes a hit, which is kind of irksome because I actually have access to spells which actually heal for a decent amount of damage now.

As far as companions go, they're all over the place. Some are stupidly good like Nok-Nok, Ekun, and Octavia. Others are pretty awful either because of a gimmick like Jaethal or just having stats designed more for roleplay than actual combat like Valerie. Most I would say are passable which works until the game decides to throw some stupidly hard enemies at you. Amiri is one of those weird ones, she starts off fairly bad due to her weapon and stat spread but with the right gear and maybe some limited multiclassing she gets beastly. On top of that her sword gets upgraded into one of the better barb weapons in the game so its not like her bastard sword feat is totally wasted.

[Kaptin Keen]

As far as companions go, they're all over the place. Some are stupidly good like Nok-Nok, Ekun, and Octavia. Others are pretty awful either because of a gimmick like Jaethal or just having stats designed more for roleplay than actual combat like Valerie. Most I would say are passable which works until the game decides to throw some stupidly hard enemies at you. Amiri is one of those weird ones, she starts off fairly bad due to her weapon and stat spread but with the right gear and maybe some limited multiclassing she gets beastly. On top of that her sword gets upgraded into one of the better barb weapons in the game so its not like her bastard sword feat is totally wasted.

Are we playing the same game???

Generally, if enemies do not focus Valerie, I lost the fight. No contest - no one can stand up to any damage. If she fails to pick up agro for any reason, it's a wipe in 2-3 rounds.

And to keep Valerie standing, Tristian spams Channel, pretty much every round the entire fight.

That's not every fight - some are random encounters with two goblins, after all - but it's all the hard ones.

[Eurus]

You know, I really like Jaethal's gimmick, but I haven't figured out how useful those immunities actually are and how often they come into play at higher levels yet... she'd definitely combine well with an evil cleric, though. I'm just also not sure how to build around her bad stats.

[Inarius]

Are we playing the same game???

Generally, if enemies do not focus Valerie, I lost the fight. No contest - no one can stand up to any damage. If she fails to pick up agro for any reason, it's a wipe in 2-3 rounds.

And to keep Valerie standing, Tristian spams Channel, pretty much every round the entire fight.

That's not every fight - some are random encounters with two goblins, after all - but it's all the hard ones.

I made a mercenary my tank, something like 52 ac before buffs and using abilities like defensive fighting and stalwart defender stance. Also has 10ish DR and I always make sure to stoneskin the tank for another 10 DR which seems to help considerably. I haven't checked in combat but I wouldn't be surprised if my mercs AC goes over 60, so the merc almost never gets hit and with the layered DR they take minimal damage when they do. I have 2 characters that can function as offtanks as well to pick up 2-3 extra enemies that leak past my MT if necessary, though really my PC is more of a crit based DPS and my paladin offtank is there for backup heals which I no longer really need.

[Kaptin Keen]

I made a mercenary my tank, something like 52 ac before buffs and using abilities like defensive fighting and stalwart defender stance. Also has 10ish DR and I always make sure to stoneskin the tank for another 10 DR which seems to help considerably. I haven't checked in combat but I wouldn't be surprised if my mercs AC goes over 60, so the merc almost never gets hit and with the layered DR they take minimal damage when they do. I have 2 characters that can function as offtanks as well to pick up 2-3 extra enemies that leak past my MT if necessary, though really my PC is more of a crit based DPS and my paladin offtank is there for backup heals which I no longer really need.

Ha! My 'offtanks' die instantly. Offtank would be, like, Harrim, right? Full plate, shield, buffs. He goes down like a ton of rocks. I actually think Nok Nok has the second highest AC in my group, and he takes no damage from anything other than melee attacks (cause he saves against almost everything else), and odds are he's invisible.

But your main has better AC than Valerie, it seems. That's not the case for me, at least not yet - my main is a paladin, so he has the potential. I'm not going for tower shield though, so maybe not.

[Inarius]

Ha! My 'offtanks' die instantly. Offtank would be, like, Harrim, right? Full plate, shield, buffs. He goes down like a ton of rocks. I actually think Nok Nok has the second highest AC in my group, and he takes no damage from anything other than melee attacks (cause he saves against almost everything else), and odds are he's invisible.

But your main has better AC than Valerie, it seems. That's not the case for me, at least not yet - my main is a paladin, so he has the potential. I'm not going for tower shield though, so maybe not.

All my tanks/offtanks are player made. My PC is Swordsaint/aldori/duelist and due to some weird stacking I get double my int to my AC in addition to my dex score. I also get some really nice bonuses to defensive fighting if I need to get my AC into the mid 50s but she has no DR which really seems to matter more than AC does when fighting more than a few enemies or single tough opponents. My other offtank is a Hospitalier that has decent AC and middling DR but LOH and the pally self buffs combined with one of the extend metamagic rods when prebuffing really do wonders for helping him offtank.

I would recommend against getting Tower Shield on your Paladin btw, there don't seem to be any really good tower shields in the game but there are several amazing heavy shields in game and even if they don't have the best enhancement you can always have a priest cast magical vestment: shield to buff the enhancement AC of it if necessary.

[Spore]

I am starting to assume you guys cranked up the difficulty, right?

I am additionally assuming that the engine weirdly enough treats Nok Nok with any increases the game gives to "monsters" because his race is tagged as goblin (I've seen Dex 26 kobolds in some early versions of the game).

Ha! My 'offtanks' die instantly. Offtank would be, like, Harrim, right?

Right up until the Stag Lord fight, the game behaves normally. When the kingdom opens up however your 5th level party suddenly can run into overly difficult fights. I think I wiped to a shambling mounder or a similar plant giant. It was like 2 spots away from the main city.

My main problem is that none of the followers fill their spots decently. Octavia is very good for my normal setup, which is: 2 frontliners (1 tank, 1 bruiser), a melee cleric, a rogue, an archer, one misc. (preff a buffer like a wizard or alchemist)

Frontliners can be Valerie and Amiri, for melee cleric there is only Harrim whose healing is lackluster enough to need backup. Rogue is covered by Octavia, Archer would be Ekundayo (or Jaethal but I feel not being a human with an extra feat AND having picked Toughness is severaly hampering her progress as an archer), and the last slot is the hero, or the gnome, or Linzi.

For comparison, a similar group in Baldur's Gate would have looked like the following:
Minsc, Jaheira/Anomen, Keldorn,
Jan Jansen/Imoen/Nalia, Aerie/Edwin, Mazzy 'Arrow Hail' Fentan.

It is not the quality of the NPCs, it is the amount. If you need an NPC wizard, you have to make due with Octavia (and let's just say Con 8 wass def. not a good idea). If you want a druid in a wilderness setting, well screw you I guess. If you want a ranger of an untamed wilderness? Guess what? Wait until Act 2. don't want an archer ranger? Well, bad luck then.

[Kaptin Keen]

I am starting to assume you guys cranked up the difficulty, right?

Hell no, I play on normal.

I don't know PF well enough to optimize. I just auto level my pick of characters - which is Valerie, Amiri, Tristian, Linzi, and unless I'm forced to pick differently for quest reasons, Ekun. And my main is a paladin, who isn't going to do any optimizing either, he'll be straight paladin right to the end.

And this works just fine. I don't have trouble with anything except HP depletion (I mean, ok, in the end all problems are HP depletion, what I mean is melee damage is my main concern) which I fix by tanking with high AC, and spam healing.

This works for all fights up to level 15 at least - at which point I had to start over. There is the odd spider fight or the Scythe Tree which requires specific buffs. But otherwise I win by being surprisingly uninventive =)

[Inarius]

Hell no, I play on normal.

I don't know PF well enough to optimize. I just auto level my pick of characters - which is Valerie, Amiri, Tristian, Linzi, and unless I'm forced to pick differently for quest reasons, Ekun. And my main is a paladin, who isn't going to do any optimizing either, he'll be straight paladin right to the end.

And this works just fine. I don't have trouble with anything except HP depletion (I mean, ok, in the end all problems are HP depletion, what I mean is melee damage is my main concern) which I fix by tanking with high AC, and spam healing.

This works for all fights up to level 15 at least - at which point I had to start over. There is the odd spider fight or the Scythe Tree which requires specific buffs. But otherwise I win by being surprisingly uninventive =)

Last night I kind of forgot he other buff line that seems to really help with tanking. That would be Blur and its bigger shorter lived brother Displacement. Layering defenses really seems to be the way to go for the game.

As far as optimizing goes, just leveling up a single class is usually a really good choice in Pathfinder and especially in this game with the limited selection of prestige classes.

[Tome]

I play 3.5 - there's no swift action self healing where I'm from.

You mean you're playing a 3.5 paladin and haven't taken Battle Blessing?

[Kaptin Keen]

You mean you're playing a 3.5 paladin and haven't taken Battle Blessing?

Is that in the game?

But anyways, I have like 3 spells - total, as in all I can cast before I need to rest - and it's not like I can't cast those before the fight.

[Tome]

Is that in the game?

But anyways, I have like 3 spells - total, as in all I can cast before I need to rest - and it's not like I can't cast those before the fight.

Nope, that's 3.5 content. Just remarking on the comment about no swift action healing in 3.5.

[Kaptin Keen]

Nope, that's 3.5 content. Just remarking on the comment about no swift action healing in 3.5.

Oh! Right, true, yes. I'm also pretty much a core-only-fascist, so such content tends to not show up on my radar. I don't even disagree what paladins are weak (or maybe just boring - or both) - I just don't think a solution that guns the action economy down in the street is much of an improvement.

[Test Pattern]

Say is this game worth getting?

The mixed reviews on steam say the following:

A: Fantastic core gameplay
B: The Bugs have made nests in homes of glitches.

[Kaptin Keen]

Say is this game worth getting?

The mixed reviews on steam say the following:

A: Fantastic core gameplay
B: The Bugs have made nests in homes of glitches.

It's absolutely worth getting. It is, however, highly annoying at times. For me, on my first play kingdom management simply spiralled irrecoverably out of control. As far as I can tell, not through any fault of mine. But now I've restarted, and my kingdom is happy and chugging along succesfully.

[Maryring]

I'd say it's worth the price... in a couple months assuming the massive amounts of bugspray works. It did scratch my itch for Baldur's Gate style RPGs, but it left me unsatisfied because of constant game-interfering bugs, poorly balanced encounters that run the gamut from too easy to too hard and the writing is only average.

[Sloanzilla]

You know, I really like Jaethal's gimmick, but I haven't figured out how useful those immunities actually are and how often they come into play at higher levels yet... she'd definitely combine well with an evil cleric, though. I'm just also not sure how to build around her bad stats.

IMO Jaethal's best gimmick is her immunity to fatigue. Which means she and your main- if wearing the necklace you find in Varnhold- can run around the map together forever without resting.

[Spore]

I just auto level my pick of characters - which is Valerie, Amiri, Tristian, Linzi, and unless I'm forced to pick differently for quest reasons, Ekun.

That might be the problem. Even though the game is a lot more of a dirty slug fest than the actual Pathfinder (normally I love me some fireballs but the cast times make it so that I grill my own troops more than anything) the wild difference between a player that knows what he or she is doing and a player that is just picking feats wildly as they sound

A very basic example from our tabletop group:

Spoiler

Show

1) Our DM's wife played a barbarian (who is scarily close to Amiri in terms of being flashy and impressive rather than well-thought out). She picked the Demon totem gore attack (basically like the Animal Fury it is an extra natural attack with -5), has gone for Con 20 (she has Con 24 now, with AC of 11 or 12 since she refuses to wear armor). I played the healer in that group where she was our only frontline. She held pretty nicely but dear god does she suck up a lot of healing.

Comparatively, my barbarian whom I crafted painstakingly in a 12 hour crunch session does the following:

2) Does not tank, but rather take a single hit and then retaliates as an Attack of Opportunity, dishing out damage rather than taking it, going for the "if I kill it first, it cannot hurt us" mentality. I dumped mental stats and boosted my will save with Superstitious (basically +6 to will saves but the character then takes will saves even against beneficial spells). Note that this is only possibly in the paper version.

Now imagine a Fighter.

1) Bob is a fighter who takes the obvious feats. He has Weapon Focus for Twohanded Swords, maybe Power Attack and Weapon Specialization. He has AC of 18-20, dishes out fairly nice damage. He is slowed down by the Plate armor though. All is well.

2) In comes Caldric, the Halfling Aldori Defender. He goes the hard route of a dex build. He picks up Weapon Finesse and Weapon Focus (Aldori Duel Sword), knowing this leads into the feat that allows you to add dex to damage after the tutorial. After 2nd level, his damage is a bit lower than Bob's. In return, he hits more frequent, and with a shield and the duel sword, and a magical chain shirt, his AC suddenly is 22-23, so he takes another 20% less damage than Bob. As a nice bonus he does not take the penalties to Stealth and Athletics checks, meaning he can contribute to skill challenges and maybe even take the duty to cover up the party camp even though fighters do not get a class bonus to that.

Another problem arises, since Caldric's AC is bound to rise as magical shields are a thing, and he will eventually hit often enough to permanently be able to the use defensive combat stance, while bob will simply melt in enemy fire starting in Act 2.

[Narkis]

Say is this game worth getting?

The mixed reviews on steam say the following:

A: Fantastic core gameplay
B: The Bugs have made nests in homes of glitches.

It's the most fun I've had since Witcher 3, the closest anything has come to Baldur's Gate in more than a decade. And I stopped playing until they fix more things. The devs have put out something like 20 patches since release, so at least we know they won't abandon it half-baked.

I plan to check it out again around Christmas. The first DLC, adding a new companion, will be out and the game should be in a good state.

[Kaptin Keen]

Ah ... @sporeegg

Yea, I know what you mean. I've been wondering what the outcome would be if you used Reduce Person on Nok Nok. That's an effective +3 to AC, +2 to hit, a bit of damage increase due to better dex, but at the cost of damage from weapon size. But I'm pretty sure he can main tank, if you want him to. While maintaining the most absurd damage in the game.

[Rynjin]

It's the most fun I've had since Witcher 3, the closest anything has come to Baldur's Gate in more than a decade. And I stopped playing until they fix more things. The devs have put out something like 20 patches since release, so at least we know they won't abandon it half-baked.

I plan to check it out again around Christmas. The first DLC, adding a new companion, will be out and the game should be in a good state.

Guess this answers my question. Not quite time to get back into this game yet.

Hopefully they streamline some stuff. Maybe Divinity original Sin/2 spoiled me, but this game's interface feels so...clunky after those games.

[Sloanzilla]

I really think it probably does the best job of combining an RPG with kingdom building I've ever seen. Most of them just kind of phone the kingdom building in with 3-5 options.
3/4 of the bugs I'm aware of have been resolved.

[Inarius]

I really think it probably does the best job of combining an RPG with kingdom building I've ever seen. Most of them just kind of phone the kingdom building in with 3-5 options.
3/4 of the bugs I'm aware of have been resolved.

Yeah, I have to agree with that even if I feel the kingdom aspect still needs some tuning and a better explanation of how things work. That being said allowing events to roll over to the next month if they occur within the last week or so of the current month was a pretty big improvement.

[russdm]

Alright, bought it.

Is there an option to name the kingdom? Like what to refer to it as?

Also, need to get back to playing NWN 2, which had a system for owning and running a keep of your own.

[Inarius]

Alright, bought it.

Is there an option to name the kingdom? Like what to refer to it as?

Also, need to get back to playing NWN 2, which had a system for owning and running a keep of your own.

When you found your Kingdom you get to name it, you can also rename the starting city as well as any other villages you create.

[Renegade Paladin]

I don't recall being given an option to name the starting city, but I did get to name the kingdom and subsequent villages.

[Narkis]

I don't recall being given an option to name the starting city, but I did get to name the kingdom and subsequent villages.

You don't get to name it on founding, but you can rename it later.

[Renegade Paladin]

You don't get to name it on founding, but you can rename it later.

How? I'd like to. In our tabletop campaign of this we called it Stag's Rest.