Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

My furthest party (level 10, early act 3) has over a dozen incredible weapons just laying in inventory because everyone already has as good but different gear. They really don't skimp on the items:

I found a +4 ring of protection in act 2?
There is a hat ( I want to say you find in the maze but maybe market square) that gives fast healing to allies effected by your song/performance
The game starts you off with a cold iron weapon you can use.
And you get a minor companion that can be an upgradeable cold iron weapon of your choice. (that you can change at will)

fangblackbone wrote:

My furthest party (level 10, early act 3) has over a dozen incredible weapons just laying in inventory because everyone already has as good but different gear. They really don't skimp on the items:

I found a +4 ring of protection in act 2?
There is a hat ( I want to say you find in the maze but maybe market square) that gives fast healing to allies effected by your song/performance
The game starts you off with a cold iron weapon you can use.
And you get a minor companion that can be an upgradeable cold iron weapon of your choice. (that you can change at will)

Oh shoot, that hat is sitting in my personal chest, i forgot all about it when i gave my skellyboi bard abilities

I hadn't really played around with fast healing until I respecced into an elemental rampager build. Its nice to heal +6 hp per round. (maybe twice per round?)

I am going to share this here too: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

For those struggling with what to pick, this is a spreadsheet comparing all 186 class options to each other. Fangblackbone has requested a few more additions to the sheet, so I will try to get those incorporated soon (possibly as early as this evening, but that's going to depend on how the rest of my day goes). Putting this together involved cross-referencing the WotR wiki, the Pathfinder 1e SRD and the actual character creation screen in the game itself, so I am reasonably sure it's accurate, but if I have incorrect information in there, please tell me so I can fix it!

Once I'm happy with this, I'll probably add a second sheet to the same spreadsheet for the prestige classes.

Alchemist Vivisection loses bombs
Rogue Sylvan Trickster gets Hexes (Fey Tricks means you can choose a rogue talent or hex)
All Inquisitors except Faith Hunter get animal companion through domain. (Faith Hunter's can't choose a domain). Oh and as you marked already sylvan huntsmaster gets animal companion by default.

Fantastic resource BTW. It may get so big, you may want to split it into sheets too for whether the base class is martial or caster... This sheet will help so much with not having to load the game to figure things out.

I'll implement those tweaks this evening. Thanks for the editing pass!

Edit: and by "this evening" I guess I meant "this afternoon when work slows down." They're in.

I am smashing the like button and it isn't going up more

Incense Alchemist - incense fog is pretty much performance
Drovier - animal aspect totems?
Judge - Judgement Aura?
Sensei
Martyr

Are what I could find for performance at a cursory glance. There are also things like tactician that allow you to give teamwork feats to your allied a handful of times per day.

Also, the scion paladin... a paladin with sneak attack? Is it holy at least ;P

Arcane Enforcer can heal from an arcane exploit. In fact, I think every arcane pool class can heal with the healing exploit... I'll have to double check.

Kineticists can heal from healing infusion.

Okay - I've got Evasion and Uncanny Dodge in there as well. I'll tweak the other issues you found.

Okay - suggested changes implemented.

fangblackbone wrote:

Also, the scion paladin... a paladin with sneak attack? Is it holy at least ;P

It is not! It only goes up to 4d6 at 20th level though; less damaging than smite, but available far more often.

Accomplished sneak attack might serve well if you have spare feats. I can't imagine not taking it if you pick a class because of sneak attack. You can't go over your level/2 rounded up with sneak attack die. I wonder how many die that will net you?

Having taken a closer look at the subclasses as I put together that spreadsheet, I'm contemplating Paladin(Martyr)/Shaman (Shadow Shaman) now. That seems like it might be even more effective than my current build, but I just started the section in

Spoiler:

the abyss

and I've yet to find a store, much less a place I can respec, so it may be a while before I can try that.

And yeah, always take Accomplished Sneak Attacker for those partial sneak attack builds. Those extra d6s add up fast!

Another tweak I found: the domains-like features granted by warpriest do not provide animal companions.

Are there high level abilities it would be bad to miss by cross classing?

I don't recall 100% but I don't think you get to level 20 by the time you finish the game. (unless you are solo?)
If you are talking Wrath, there is a mythic path that lets you level to 40. So you can max 2 classes and anything in between.

One of the fun builds I've thought of over the past week is to take vivisectionist and then 1 dip the wizard class that gets bombs or the chemical rogue with 1 dip into wizard. At 3 or 4 the rogue bomber gets precise bombs for free!

End of Act 2 Stuff...

Spoiler:

Doing the assault on Drezen right now. I don't know that I've ever seen an isometric RPG capture the feeling of chaotic urban assault so well!

I went with Regill's plan because I found a perfume bottle in Nurrah's tent, which has me thinking she might be the traitor. That and her plan of "go to this place that only I know about for some reason" wreaks of trap.

I've basically fought my way through the church while looking for the ramparts, and then stumbled my way up them and over to the tavern. I have no idea if I'm doing the assault right at all, its just pure, delightful chaos. I keep getting dragged into street brawls and I'm not totally sure what the game wants me to do in a way that's great instead of frustrating. man, these early acts don't go short on epic encounters!

I'm curious what level everyone was going into this. I left some demon armies on the table and took the fort nearby, not realizing things hit a sprint there. My party is level 8 going in, but racking up quite a bit there.

RE: Act 2 End

Spoiler:

I went with Nurrah's idea knowing it was a trap or that something would go very wrong. 2 for 2 as I'm sure you found out by now. Though apparently you can get her to switch back through some dialogue options I've heard.

I really wanted to go with Regill's plan as it seemed the most sound but was rewarded by venturing into the dungeon with meeting Aurshalae. ( I hope that doesn't spoil anything because she reaches out to you before Drezen and right after)

By the end of Drezen I my party was level 9.5 (myrthic rank 3) so I'd wager you are right on track with where I was. I had to backtrack a bit because I stumbled on to an unhittable enemy that wiped my party. After losing 20-30 minutes, I avoided them the next time.

Drezen was on the longish side if only because it really builds anticipation for its finale. Plus there are some parts where it is easy to get lost on where to go next. But on the whole, it is a CRPG masterpiece.

It is such a great culmination that I haven't been drawn to done anything further. I have done Arushalae's quest and that was great too but its as far as I've got past Drezen. Of course you posted Build Block at that time too ;P

I definitely agree with your sentiments. The prologue end is epic. Market Square has SO much to unpack. Defender's Heart is epic. Gray Garrison is epic. Lost Chapel is epic. Oh and then you have Drezen after? Which is pretty much a self contained adventure with 3-5 stages...

Yeah, they really do grand storytelling well. The couple of companions you pick up in act 2 after Drezen is done are really well-written and good. There's more incredibly epic stuff to come, though. It's not done once you take Drezen by ANY stretch of the imagination.

I'm really hoping Owlcat makes a Starfinder game.

That is the rumor. Or something called Iron Lords I think?
Whichever direction they go? I'm on board.

Yeah, same here. Kingmaker was good, WotR is amazing.

I watch Wrath videos pretty religiously. I try not to spoiler things but due to deep delves, stuff slips.
I'm not upset at all. I'm not the kind to take it personal.

So the vaguest I can be is everyone will want to do a Aeon mythic path play through. And if what you can seem do proves true, hats off to Owlcat, wow! (and it makes me wonder what you can do with the other mythic paths)

I am so torn as to whether I want to do Aeon or Azata next when I finish with my Angel playthrough. I may actually roll both and alternate or something.

I keep hearing that Lich is amazing too, but I really don't like playing evil in CRPGs.

I should clarify that this is for story purposes and not necessarily mythic abilities. The mythic abilities you get for all the paths are/seem bonkers.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to as well.

Lich is quite amazing so far imo. But yeah, being evil (or at least neutral, which has been enough to keep the quests going for me so far) is not what I usually play.
However, it also gives me additional chances to be friendly toward my

Spoiler:

wannabe spider

companion as well my completely neutral and innocent

Spoiler:

shaman

companion. Serving your friends dinner from time to time is surely a Good action?

Next playthrough will be on the side of Good for sure. Although, I stumbled upon the Swarm-that-walks boss fight yesterday. Looks like it is a few steps beyond the Lich when it comes to evil. Now I want that too. Why does evil always win in the cool factor department :/

I dunno, man, the Angel, Aeon, and Azata all seem plenty cool to me.

I followed Shadout's thinking. Before the game released I saw the lich path and wanted it badly.
Then I remembered The Swarm That Walks and wanted that even more until I learned it was an evil path. I don't play evil play throughs. I don't play paladins because they are lawful and while I love monks, I hate that they are lawful as well.

I am close to 90% chaotic good with dips into neutral or neutral good because I love druids.

The crazy thing is I remember pining for reaching the Swarm stretch goal when the kickstarter first launched. The only reason I didn't back the kickstarter was I knew I could get a good discount from GMG. I thought at the time it was fair since I didn't fall in love with Pathfinder until Stolen Lands DLC. So as good as Wrath looked, it was still going to be a gamble until the rogue-like DLC was released.

I generally trend way more towards good than law (to the point where I slip into NG and need to use an atonement scroll a couple of times per playthrough) but I can usually lean into the duty and respect aspects of lawfulness enough to make playing a paladin at least mostly viable.

But I do find it frustrating that Owlcat's (or maybe Paizo's?) interpretation of law is so heavy on prejudice, bigotry, and harsh punishment for its own sake. Order should be, well - orderly. Organized, disciplined, efficient, and equipped with plans and contingencies certainly, but there's no reason it has to be so mean. Two of the best examples of Lawful Good that I can think of are Damian Lewis's portrayal of Dick Winters in Band of Brothers and Michael Carpenter from The Dresden Files and neither one of those guys has any cruelty or prejudice to them.

And they actually manage to portray Irabeth, Queen Galfrey, and Seelah just fine as Lawful Good people without falling victim to the nastiness, so I find it a little extra frustrating that they couldn't manage it better in the dialog choices.

I have a feeling that during my Aeon playthrough I'm going to be picking a lot of those dialog options at the bottom of the list that don't move your alignment at all.

Yeah I started out as Lawful but very quickly swung into chaotic good.