Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[Renegade Paladin]

Acid arrow. Reasons why are spoilery.

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Fire-immune trolls are a big thing later on.

[Sloanzilla]

Invisibility seems to work a little weird here, but I guess it is kinda ok.
If you run around past people, or near anything that might have scent- EVERYONE knows you are there but you still have a displacement chance.

I couldn't really find a good way to "reset" it to where they didn't know I was around.

[Narkis]

Story-wise, I think it's a bit of a shame that Lawful Good characters of all people cannot take a peaceful approach at the Old Sycamore. :( You have to declare hostilities to either Mites or Kobolds or both. Conversely, as an Evil character you can cross and double-cross so many NPCs you probably get 3x as much loot out of the quests than a Goodie would.

As a Neutral Good future Baron I was able to bow out of the hostilities, and then later make peace with them. Was this not available for you?

[/quote]
At long last, Octavia also got to 4th and finally gets her level 2 spells. Now there are actually some tough choices. Web is pretty much a given, but what to take as 2nd pick? Several good candidates:
[/QUOTE]

Scorching Ray sneak attacks are awesome and really easy to set up, and Octavia is built to take full advantage of them. It would be a mistake to take anything else.

Invisibility seems to work a little weird here, but I guess it is kinda ok.
If you run around past people, or near anything that might have scent- EVERYONE knows you are there but you still have a displacement chance.

I couldn't really find a good way to "reset" it to where they didn't know I was around.

I don't see a problem with this. In PnP 3.5 they can hear you and pinpoint your location just fine. Or do they still know where you are even if stealthed?

[Firechanter]

As a Neutral Good future Baron I was able to bow out of the hostilities, and then later make peace with them. Was this not available for you?

Nope. That dialogue option is greyed out if you don't have a Neutral alignment portion. Just says [Requires Neutral].
You'd think that a LAWFUL character should be able to come to terms with two LAWFUL tribes somehow, but no. :6

Scorching Ray sneak attacks are awesome and really easy to set up, and Octavia is built to take full advantage of them. It would be a mistake to take anything else.

Ah, "Scorching Roy" as we call it. ^^ Normally I don't even consider direct damage spells for my wizards. Does each ray get the full Sneak Attack damage? If so, that would mean for Octavia that at 12th level, Scorching Roy would do 4x 9d6 combined damage. Not shabby at all for a level 2 slot. And by then, I suppose I'll have had room to fit in Precise Shot as well.

My Main is just some 1500XP away from level 5. I wonder if exploring the rest of the map will get me there before I tackle the stag fort. ^^

[Inarius]

Invisibility seems to work a little weird here, but I guess it is kinda ok.
If you run around past people, or near anything that might have scent- EVERYONE knows you are there but you still have a displacement chance.

I couldn't really find a good way to "reset" it to where they didn't know I was around.

Invis just seems to give a bonus to stealth checks if you're moving around. Its listed as a +20 to stealth which isn't really that great if you don't have a decent dex and/or points in stealth to begin with.

Ah, "Scorching Roy" as we call it. ^^ Normally I don't even consider direct damage spells for my wizards. Does each ray get the full Sneak Attack damage? If so, that would mean for Octavia that at 12th level, Scorching Roy would do 4x 9d6 combined damage. Not shabby at all for a level 2 slot. And by then, I suppose I'll have had room to fit in Precise Shot as well.

Spell sneak attacks don't use the sneak attack die, they just double the damage you would've normally dealt. It's still pretty solid damage and it will wreck the day of anyone she gets a hit on, but it does require an annoyingly large feat tax to do so.

[Firechanter]

Spell sneak attacks don't use the sneak attack die, they just double the damage you would've normally dealt. It's still pretty solid damage and it will wreck the day of anyone she gets a hit on, but it does require an annoyingly large feat tax to do so.

Um. Huh? That's not a Pathfinder rule, and I'm pretty I have seen Octavia do more damage than 2x what the acid cantrip does, so I don't think it's a PFKM rule either. Are you mixing that up with the Magus's spell combat feature, that uses the weapon's threat range to determine Crits but always uses a x2 crit multiplier for the spell's effect?

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PSA:
The only level 2 wizard spells that seem to exist as scrolls seem to be (according to one guide) Acid Arrow and Scorching Ray. So it would be a waste to spend a free pick on either of those.

[Narkis]

Nope. That dialogue option is greyed out if you don't have a Neutral alignment portion. Just says [Requires Neutral].
You'd think that a LAWFUL character should be able to come to terms with two LAWFUL tribes somehow, but no. :6

That is odd, yes. Then again, the game has some weird ideas about alignment sometimes. I don't see why Regongar is Chaotic Evil instead of just Chaotic Neutral so far, for instance.

Ah, "Scorching Roy" as we call it. ^^ Normally I don't even consider direct damage spells for my wizards. Does each ray get the full Sneak Attack damage? If so, that would mean for Octavia that at 12th level, Scorching Roy would do 4x 9d6 combined damage. Not shabby at all for a level 2 slot. And by then, I suppose I'll have had room to fit in Precise Shot as well.

She's still at level 3 total in my game, so I can't test it atm. But even her Cantrips are pretty fearsome already.

Invis just seems to give a bonus to stealth checks if you're moving around. Its listed as a +20 to stealth which isn't really that great if you don't have a decent dex and/or points in stealth to begin with.

I still fail to see the problem. This is exactly how it works in PnP, with Invisibility giving you +20 to hide check if you're moving, or +40 if you're not. And +20 is a massive bonus for a d20.

Spell sneak attacks don't use the sneak attack die, they just double the damage you would've normally dealt. It's still pretty solid damage and it will wreck the day of anyone she gets a hit on, but it does require an annoyingly large feat tax to do so.

I had to fire up the game to check, but it would appear that is not the case:

Spoiler: 1080p screenshot

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That's a Rogue 1/Wizard 2 Octavia with Precise Shot and Accomplished Sneak Attacker, doing 1d3 +1 +2d6 damage as she should. She just needs Precise Shot now, and she'll be set for good.

[Inarius]

Um. Huh? That's not a Pathfinder rule, and I'm pretty I have seen Octavia do more damage than 2x what the acid cantrip does, so I don't think it's a PFKM rule either. Are you mixing that up with the Magus's spell combat feature, that uses the weapon's threat range to determine Crits but always uses a x2 crit multiplier for the spell's effect?

--

PSA:
The only level 2 wizard spells that seem to exist as scrolls seem to be (according to one guide) Acid Arrow and Scorching Ray. So it would be a waste to spend a free pick on either of those.

Yeah I'm probably mixing it up with the magus feature, though I could of sworn I saw it mentioned on a loading screen. I just went and checked it with Octavia and it functions like regular sneak attacks.

[Drasius]

Acid arrow. Reasons why are spoilery.

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Fire-immune trolls are a big thing later on.

Doesn't the acid blob cantrip do the job just fine for that?

[Inarius]

I have a question, when making settlements does anyone know if buildings adjacent diagonally count for bonuses?

[Firechanter]

I'm currently in two minds about my party composition. I'm kinda tempted to hire a Cleric to replace Tristian, and basically have two or three concepts to choose from:

- Archer
- Beastmaster (i.e. Animal Domain)
- Caster

With PB20 it's pretty much impossible to cover all bases. A full Pet costs a Domain and a feat, so that is a manageable investment. _Not_ having a pet allows to pick different deities, which is especially interesting for the Ecclesitheurge, who can pick his domain spells from _all_ domains his deity offers. So that is potentially awesome.
Working as an Archer requires pretty high Dex and ideally a bit of Str (to benefit from the x1,5 Str mod to bows), which in turn means you won't have enough points for Cha and might even chew into Wis. However, an "Ecci", as I'll call them henceforth, can keep himself occupied with handing out infinite single-round Blessings (it's annoying that those can't be automated, though), so he doesn't necessarily have to do direct damage himself, I guess.

Basically I always get stuck at the same point: I cannot find out what domain spells are in the game. The character creation interface tells us nothing. The Gamepedia just offers the domain powers, not the spells. The fan-made Wikia mostly just copypasted the tabletop rules, with an easily overlooked warning that the spell selection "may not be accurate". I find the lack of documentation... disturbing. Well, not disturbing, but annoying. I hate to buy the pig in a poke.

Just noticed: the Travel spell list on Wikia seems to be the in-game one. No Fly, no Teleport... some rather weird picks instead. All in all, Travel isn't as awesome as we're used to.

Of course, it would be possible to shed light on this riddle: hack your Main character to level 17, hack lots of money, hire a level 17 Mercenary Cleric, level them up and write down all the spells; reload and repeat until you have them all. But that's rather an awful amount of work for something that _should be in the friggin manual to begin with_.
So before I go to such troubles, I'd rather ask around -- does anyone know if and where such a list already exists?

[Sloanzilla]

New personal best! TWO elder fire elementals in a random encounter just outside of Oleg's.

[Firechanter]

New personal best! TWO elder fire elementals in a random encounter just outside of Oleg's.

Wow.
Did you patch your game? I think patch 1.0.2 was supposed to take the nastiest spikes also out of random encounters.

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In other news, my Paladin just hit level 5. Now I have the trouble of deciding what feat I should give her. ^^ So far she's got Power Attack and Extra Lay on Hands.
A shortlist:
- Weapon Focus - not for the +1 as such, but in the hopes that the game will change some scripted weapon drops accordingly. Any hopes for that?
- Precise Strike or Outflank - since I intend to hire a Monster Tactician who can also give that feat to his Summons.
- Skill Focus Persuasion (or Intimidating Prowess) - and then at level 7 complement it with Cornugon Smash.

But well, all in all, nothing really seems to stand out. Some higher-up feats that would be worth working towards are Fighter-Only. While I commend the effort to throw the humble Fighter a bone, that doesn't change the fact that there's not really a good feat chain for Paladins.
Any suggestions?

[Tome]

New personal best! TWO elder fire elementals in a random encounter just outside of Oleg's.

I got jumped by two owlbears. Which would be totally fine, being a level 5 party, except these owlbears had an extra 9 hit dice and +12 strength. For reasons.

And I have my difficulty set so that monsters don't get any extra bonuses.

In other news, Ekundayo is actually moderately optimised in a surprising change of pace. I guess he beats out Octavia and Gorrim for being a remotely competent party member.

[Renegade Paladin]

I find Octavia just fine. I use her to chuck around buffs and disarm traps, and she's VERY good at the latter, especially when they're popping up in completely unexpected places. The only one she hasn't gotten so far was

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the one in the first room of dungeon under the Verdant Chambers, which is how my party got three to five negative levels apiece in the first place. DO NOT go there until you're much higher level than when it's revealed to you.

[Driderman]

It's funny with all the people reporting insane CR random encounters, even at version 1.0.0 I never encountered anything out of my league. If anything, random encounters very quickly ended up being too easy because my Paladin and gang would tear through the bandits and kobolds in no time, on normal+ (modified to fit PnP rules as closely as possible) difficulty.

[Narkis]

It's funny with all the people reporting insane CR random encounters, even at version 1.0.0 I never encountered anything out of my league. If anything, random encounters very quickly ended up being too easy because my Paladin and gang would tear through the bandits and kobolds in no time, on normal+ (modified to fit PnP rules as closely as possible) difficulty.

That has been my experience as well. I'm playing on challenging with normal enemies, and the only fight I've found tough so far was the Technic League road ambush. I did manage to avoid giving anyone up, but it took me a few tries to find a workable tactic.

Also for those who haven't seen it, the developers have said they'll give out a free portrait DLC soon and have asked the community what they'd like to see. Make sure to vote your preference!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...UCjTg/viewform

[Cybren]

That is odd, yes. Then again, the game has some weird ideas about alignment sometimes. I don't see why Regongar is Chaotic Evil instead of just Chaotic Neutral so far, for instance.



She's still at level 3 total in my game, so I can't test it atm. But even her Cantrips are pretty fearsome already.



I still fail to see the problem. This is exactly how it works in PnP, with Invisibility giving you +20 to hide check if you're moving, or +40 if you're not. And +20 is a massive bonus for a d20.



I had to fire up the game to check, but it would appear that is not the case:

Spoiler: 1080p screenshot

Show

That's a Rogue 1/Wizard 2 Octavia with Precise Shot and Accomplished Sneak Attacker, doing 1d3 +1 +2d6 damage as she should. She just needs Precise Shot now, and she'll be set for good.

Regongar advocates for robbing or murdering... several people.

[Aotrs Commander]

That has been my experience as well. I'm playing on challenging with normal enemies, and the only fight I've found tough so far was the Technic League road ambush. I did manage to avoid giving anyone up, but it took me a few tries to find a workable tactic.

Also for those who haven't seen it, the developers have said they'll give out a free portrait DLC soon and have asked the community what they'd like to see. Make sure to vote your preference!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...UCjTg/viewform

Good of them.

Not something I can put any input in on yet (I just started Divinity Original Sin 1 while I wait for bugs and stuff), and haven't even installed Kingmaker yet.

But it does raisde an interesting question. In both Spellforce 3 and D:OS, I half considered having a male character and immediately nixed the idea because of a combination of the available portraits and the general body build being of the "overly-broad shoulder generically grizzled Space Marine sort of thing. (Didn't have the same issue with PoE - or X-Com 2, they had more variety and not so exaggerated.)

I'm sure I can remember something that let me choose between two body type per gender (a beefy one and a not beefy one) but I'm damned now if I can remember what it is, since it wasn't either of those aforementioned. I thought it might be Tides ofNumerara, but when I booted it up to have a look, I clicked through the dialogue in what I thought was the fastest way to get to the character gen, and proceeded to get the game start game over terminal velocity achievement. *skullpalm* And I'm about to go out walking, so nevermind...)

Where does Kingmaker fall into this sort of thing?

[Sloanzilla]

Is there a way to enchant your bonded item?

[Narkis]

Regongar advocates for robbing or murdering... several people.

Ah, I haven't reached those parts. I've only seen him gleefully advocate for the slaughter of slavers and make fun of various things we encounter. I suppose he just hasn't opened up yet.

Where does Kingmaker fall into this sort of thing?

It has three choices for character model, (beefy, normal, skinny) and a fair number of portraits that aren't even close to Space Marine-like.

edit: And it's pretty easy to import your own. I did just that with my favorite portrait from Icewind Dale.

Is there a way to enchant your bonded item?

You mean for wizards? The game kinda cheats on the bonded item, you get the extra spell per day but there's no in-game object to represent the actual item. So no enchanting it.

[Aotrs Commander]

It has three choices for character model, (beefy, normal, skinny) and a fair number of portraits that aren't even close to Space Marine-like.

Well, that's more than most, then, innit, so kudos to them. In fact, three is tip of the helmet level for extra effort, even.

How's the voice set diversity, by comparison (I assume there is one?)

edit: And it's pretty easy to import your own. I did just that with my favorite portrait from Icewind Dale.

Yeah, they've got a sticky on it in the forums (and it was in PoE 1/2 as well). Actually, I pretty much always ended up trawling for portraits for all of the old isometrics. The ones you get in D:OS are a bit small and paff though, so it's not worth the bother.

[Firechanter]

Oh man. Last night was one of those typical "just one more thing..." sessions. Originally I just wanted to do the levelup. And then hire an Inquisitor. And then take the new group for a spin to see how it performs. And suddenly, it was 6:30 in the morning and I had cleared out the Stag Fort.
Gotta hand it to the Owlcat folks, their game is really pretty addictive.

As planned, the Inquisitor's Pet alone is a more useful combatant than Valerie. And on top of that you get tons of Summons and a spellcaster on top. The Inqui unfortunately doesn't get Domain Spells, which is kind of a bummer (I don't know how it is in PF proper, but I had assumed it to be the case). So in the Pet department per se, Druid or even Cleric are better choices due to the availability of animal-related spells. Or even the Sorcerer, who can cast Mage Armour and Shield on the beast and thus bestow enormous AC on it.
BUT the Monster Tactician's Summons are really fantastic. With Augmented and Superior Summoning, I get a lot of bang for the buck. I think it took me two uses of Summon to clear out the entire Stag fort, and a third one to deal with the father. Which leaves 5 uses to go.
All in all, I would say the entire fort consumed about half my daily resources. More of the healing department (Channels / LoH), less in spells.

Bummer: I took Blur specifically to counter Sneak Attackers. Doesn't work. I had misssed that the Unchained Rogue gets to ignore Blur and similar concealment effects. Meh. Good for them, I suppose.

There was actually quite a bit of decent loot there, especially for my Archer. She was super deadly already, now I'm keen to watch her in the next engagement. xD
By the way, her name is Belaya Smert.

Linzi and Tristian also made level 5 during the assault. Linzi gets to hone her shooting skills now, and Tristian... I dunno. Not really sure where to take him, feat-wise. Any suggestions?

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Re character customization:
It's okay, I guess. You get 2-3 different body types per race and gender (buffed - huge - slim), and about 6-9 faces, hair styles, beard styles, and a varying palette of skin and hair colours also per race. Aasimars have shiny metallic hair, for instance. Oh! and you get to pick your clothing colour pattern (primary and secondary colour). That's a nice touch. Also, there are something like 8 voicesets per gender, but they don't seem to work right for Mercs (i.e. companions other than your Main that you create yourself, not the premade ones).
None of it matters very much, however. It is after all an isometric game, you can't zoom in very much, and most of all you cannot pan or tilt the camera _at all_, so most of the time you'll be looking at your party's hats and cloaks.

[Renegade Paladin]

I use Tristian as a buff caddy and healbot. He can't hack melee because of the Ecclesitheurge limitations and his awful Strength, so it's best to give him a crossbow and leave him in the back. Fortunately, between his selective channeling and my paladin's Lay On Hands, he makes my front line basically invincible.

[Starbuck_II]

Can anyone who's advanced in the game tell me if I can enchant Amiri's oversized Bastard Sword? I'm level 3 now, and debating on whether I should stick with it or take Weapon Focus: Greatsword.

Amri's sword is already +1, sort of makes up for -2 hit from oversized.

[Renegade Paladin]

The game recommends Weapon Focus for Amiri on level-up, but there's no Weapon Focus option for "Ginormous Sword." Since it's an oversized bastard sword, does anyone know if WF (Bastard Sword) would cover it, or is she just stuck?

[Firechanter]

I use Tristian as a buff caddy and healbot. He can't hack melee because of the Ecclesitheurge limitations and his awful Strength, so it's best to give him a crossbow and leave him in the back. Fortunately, between his selective channeling and my paladin's Lay On Hands, he makes my front line basically invincible.

Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose I could pick out a few offensive spells for him to cast and pick appropriate Spell Focuses, or just tack on Extra Channels every time. The latter is ofc a bit boring, but having a channeler in the party does save a lot of time and money, since there seem to be no CLW wands for sale. (One of my buddies found one of those as a drop, and otherwise buys all the CLW scrolls instead - twice as expensive as a wand, but he doesn't want to lug a healbot Cleric around. For me, the tedium of healing up a party with level 1 scrolls would be too much to bear.)

Also I found out last night that cooking Shepherd's Pie for dinner will boost Tristian's Channeling by +1d6 for the whole day. Came in really handy for the Stagfort fight. ^^

[Alex Knight]

The game recommends Weapon Focus for Amiri on level-up, but there's no Weapon Focus option for "Ginormous Sword." Since it's an oversized bastard sword, does anyone know if WF (Bastard Sword) would cover it, or is she just stuck?

Yeah, WF (Bastard Sword) works just fine. Her weapon is a bastard sword with the "Oversized" quality added.

[Firechanter]

The game recommends Weapon Focus for Amiri on level-up, but there's no Weapon Focus option for "Ginormous Sword." Since it's an oversized bastard sword, does anyone know if WF (Bastard Sword) would cover it, or is she just stuck?

Yes it's a bastard sword, so WF Bastard Sword will work. "Ginormous Sword" is just the name of the particular weapon, like the Staglord's bow is also called Stag Bow or something but still is a Longbow.

Edit: Swordsaged. :p

[Tome]

I wouldn't recommend taking WF for it though. You'll get better weapons for her quite quickly.

(Currently I have Amiri switching between a +2 greatclub and an anti-troll greataxe, for example.)