Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

Full party wipes are less frequent now I'm level 5; part of the issue is the AI sending everyone in Leeroy Jenkins style. Another big factor is that I can now buff with bull's strength and tons of mage armour etc to help the tanks mitigate while my MC does most of the damage dealing, with respecc to human full Mutation Warrior + one dip into Cavalier for a Mastodon pet. It tanks as well as Seelah. Fighter is a blessing so early with all the extra feats.

I'm kind of tempted to give everyone a Mastodon pet lol. Would keep everything off my back line. Also got the Oracle character, so much dedicated healing yet I'm burning gold on restoration spells to get rid of energy drain delevels. Ugh if they're gonna put that kind of mob in an early part of the campaign, at least give me a NPC cleric in town to remove such permanent debuffs.

Bfgp wrote:

Full party wipes are less frequent now I'm level 5; part of the issue is the AI sending everyone in Leeroy Jenkins style.

Give turn based combat a try. It gives you much better control over positioning. Also, like the help file says, don’t sleep on team feats. Outflank on everyone (pets included).

Outflank and Shake it Off are two teamwork feats that I took in Kingmaker and again in Wrath for all my melee or close-to-melee characters, super useful for the boost to hit and to saves!

I'm kind of tempted to give everyone a Mastodon pet lol. Would keep everything off my back line.

I've done it and I am not ashamed

X dip hunter works well for wisdom casters...

Yeah, with more careful tactical play, I don't think I need that many tanks. Pets really clutter the battlefield.

But if I do proceed with pet "swarms", the intent would be to supercharge everyone and everything with teamwork feats for ridiculous buffs and AOO procs / additional flanking damage. For example, the early +1 glaive with fright procs on hit for the first successful hit on an enemy and AOE fears within a radius. It's been so helpful to break enemy lines I use it in preference to higher raw damage 2H weapons that are starting to drop. Then I just whittle the runners through lots of combat reflexes/seize the moment.

I love the story and characters but really dislike some of the mechanics. Especially the extra stuff like city management and crusade mode. Crusade being especially egregious in that the game punishes you for being too successful. In my last play through I ended up stopping and replaying Pillars insted so that I could just enjoy the fun parts of a crpg without the boring parts.

strangederby wrote:

I love the story and characters but really dislike some of the mechanics. Especially the extra stuff like city management and crusade mode. Crusade being especially egregious in that the game punishes you for being too successful. In my last play through I ended up stopping and replaying Pillars insted so that I could just enjoy the fun parts of a crpg without the boring parts.

This, a hundred times this. Just as in the first game, where I got to the part where I was granted the barony or whatever it was and then there was this half-arsed management sim thrown at me. And I just remember thinking "what the hell is this?"

It's like Brütal Legend all over again.

You can turn on auto crusade FYI

fangblackbone wrote:

You can turn on auto crusade FYI

True but then you miss out on content.

So, I recently rediscovered the joy of communal energy (fire) resistance and Fireball Nerio gets a lot of casts with her intelligence and spell pool + feats.

I'd been reading guides about the Wide Reach scythe and that thing is ridiculously good for clearing waves on my MC Fighter. Not sure any other 30k cost weapon would come close in bang for buck.

Aside from that; a bit annoyed that some set piece climatic battles are anticlimactic due to plot device.

Like at the end of Act 1

Spoiler:

when your mythic powers leak out - I had Seelah's mount (Hoarse, as it were) explode everything in a ridiculous single round of attacks. I also got to the top of the tundra Chappel fight and I'd barely thrown a fireball when the boss got chunked by an absurd attack/damage roll.

Also, the crusade army battles are outstaying their welcome. They are not bad in a basic HOMM way but I'm here for heroic crpg action.

All in all, enjoying this for what it is (modern IWD with Pathfinder rules for more silly multiclassing shenanigans and way too much low exp combat). I feel like I've got a slightly better AC curve than I did with Kingmaker, at least fully buffed.

Whew, another midnight session and I cleared Act 2.

Imagine climbing a keep only to see plot armoured Minahgo jump off the rampart when she abandons Staunton. I actually like her character and voice acting.

Now, Staunton was a weird fight. The AI kept bugging out, not targeting him after the set battle reset. That meant he could chug his buff potion and slaughter everyone. HOWEVER five reloads later my party rolled high initiative, going them the drop on him once I could target him manually. He fell in the first round without drinking his buff potion.

I know they keep pulling the mythic path schtick in Act 1-2 for plot reasons but heck I just want a straight up slugfest with no gimmicks.

Unfortunately it looks like Act 3 is a lot of Crusade strategic map management. I need more gold!

Act 5 companion stuff

Spoiler:

Bye, Camellia. Had enough of your 'rituals'. My PC is LG and I already felt uneasy letting you slide in Act 3, thought you may have started a redemption arc in Act 4, but no. I could not abide letting you murder all those servants. At least you made it easy and attacked me.

Ah well, now to hire a merc that can do Trickery and who is specced to be a better fencer than you.

Felix Threepaper wrote:

Act 5 companion stuff

Spoiler:

Bye, Camellia. Had enough of your 'rituals'. My PC is LG and I already felt uneasy letting you slide in Act 3, thought you may have started a redemption arc in Act 4, but no. I could not abide letting you murder all those servants. At least you made it easy and attacked me.

Ah well, now to hire a merc that can do Trickery and who is specced to be a better fencer than you.

Might I recommend a skald.

Clumber wrote:
Felix Threepaper wrote:

Act 5 companion stuff

Spoiler:

Bye, Camellia. Had enough of your 'rituals'. My PC is LG and I already felt uneasy letting you slide in Act 3, thought you may have started a redemption arc in Act 4, but no. I could not abide letting you murder all those servants. At least you made it easy and attacked me.

Ah well, now to hire a merc that can do Trickery and who is specced to be a better fencer than you.

Might I recommend a skald.

ooh, sounds interesting!

Act 3 is kind of annoying how you have to deal with crusade management to clear road routes to advance map access for the party.

I'd read Skalds are good buffers (perhaps second to Brown Fur) but I'm too cheap to pay for a merc, thus respecced Ember into one. Unfortunately I can't take the party out for the foregoing reason to test it out. I'll have to read up on how people are getting high damage ranged touch spellcasters because right now Daerun and Nerio are buff bots at level 10 that don't do much else. I even gave up on Camellia and rerolled her into an Elven Curve Blade sword saint who happens to have the highest trickery for unlocking chests.

Bfgp wrote:

Act 3 is kind of annoying how you have to deal with crusade management to clear road routes to advance map access for the party.

I'd read Skalds are good buffers (perhaps second to Brown Fur) but I'm too cheap to pay for a merc, thus respecced Ember into one. Unfortunately I can't take the party out for the foregoing reason to test it out. I'll have to read up on how people are getting high damage ranged touch spellcasters because right now Daerun and Nerio are buff bots at level 10 that don't do much else. I even gave up on Camellia and rerolled her into an Elven Curve Blade sword saint who happens to have the highest trickery for unlocking chests.

To make Nenio into an effective damage-dealing spellcaster, I multiclassed her into a Loremaster, juiced up my Illusion Spell Focus/School Specialisation, then took the "Expanded Arsenal" mythic ability to carry all that over to Evocation. Loremaster requires a metamagic, and I took Bolster and Selective and suddenly you can AoE all day long.

Another common build path is to make her into an Arcane Trickster, with a dip in Vivisectionist, to add sneak damage on spells and get mutagen access, which can help to boost DEX for the to-hit.

Before I'd levelled enough to do all that, though, I found this dagger, Edge of Force, from defeating a demon army near of Drezen in Act 3. It adds +2 per damage dice rolled for force spells. It juices magic missile and turns Battering Blast into a beast, adding +10 damage per bolt at caster level 10. While many demons are immune to magic missile, I've yet to meet a demon that has immunity or resistance to force damage. Battering Blast also has a knockback effect, and I took Greater Bull Rush as one of Nenio's Loremaster secrets, so that the knockback can trigger attacks of opportunity from my melee characters, who get better to-hit bonuses than their normal attacks because of Ever Ready and I think the target is flat-footed while being knocked back. Bolster it for another +10 damage on each blast and you got a clutch single-target spell going.

New DLC coming in a month: the shifter class looks really interesting.
Full BAB class, nature based mutation style buffs
Manticore archetype that does 4 ranged natural attacks
Fey archetype that gives you sneak attack, DR to all attacks not cold iron and other rogue features
Dragon shifter
Rage shifter
and more...

There is a new area to explore but it is unclear whether this is a new "campaign" or questing area. You can also romance the new male NPC whether male or female.

I'm making progress in Act 3.

I've done maybe a fifth of the map exploration and quests? Aside from unlocking routes to quest nodes, I'm now pacing out the Fifth Crusade to avoid morale malus. My secondary army stack now has enough ranged firepower so I'm going to build a third stack for defence then my doomstack can focus on freeing up more nodes.

I also went and splurged on gear. Like 100k gold on fire resistance gear to fight the dragon. Well, that turned out unnecessary. Got a few good hits in each phase and the dragon was down. Still, I should get good value out of it since Nerio contributes via fireball spells especially with the 3 free fireballs staff and salamander ring.

Companion choice is hard as ever. Arueshalae has so many skill points and get stats are monstrous. She can replace two roles (trickster Camille now redundant and interchangeable with Lann as your ranged attacker).

The companions that seem to be hard locked in my party are: Daeran (buffer/healer); Seelah mounted tank with a 2H Greataxe); Nerio (utility arcane caster). 5th slot trickster is more flexible and 6th is flexible. Lann is good for 6th as you can focus fire back lines together with Arueshalae.

Wide Sweep is still ridiculously overpowered but now I'm on the hunt for a Greatsword for ridiculously oversized criticals.

Unless you have already taken greatsword improved critical feats, you might want to enchant the relic to create Gravesinger (x3 critical with an 18-20 crit range)

Edit - forgot to mention it’s a greataxe.

Don't forget about the weapon companion Finnean that can be whatever weapon you want it to be.

Yeah, Finnean is not yet upgraded so he's not in use at the moment (although ghost touch is quite nice).

I'm on the angel mythic pathway and one of the greatswords from a quest is quite nice (I think it's +3 and user does not suffer from -AC when in rage).

Personally I doubt anything will come close to Wide Sweep, which my MC Mutation Warrior has a bunch of feats towards scythe specialisation. But I figure it's trivialising encounters with swarms of enemies and I want battles to take longer than 3 rounds.

Going through Act 5 and boy howdy are some of the skill check DCs high, even for the characters who have been pumping points into that skill the whole way through. Too bad if you took feats to maximise combat effectiveness and not skills.

Reroll into a human with base 18 intelligence and pump the skill feats

That's the problem with an (almost) pure combat build. Often you dump Int to 10 or lower and your class gives you very little to play with in skill points. Compare that to, say, Nerio (with her sky high intelligence) or Arueshalae (with her high base attribute rolls and skill selection).

Skill checking made a huge difference when I went for the dragon in Act 3.

Spoiler:

Getting the drop on the dragon via the athletics/mobility and stealth DC checks on Phase 2 (Greybor gets a sneak attack) I think he rolled a crit for 100 damage, which practically shifted me into Phase 3. Compare that when the dragon ambushed me on the world map, with a 100+ damage breath attack before I could even cast resist fire/protection from fire.

Bfgp wrote:

Reroll into a human with base 18 intelligence and pump the skill feats

That's the problem with an (almost) pure combat build. Often you dump Int to 10 or lower and your class gives you very little to play with in skill points. Compare that to, say, Nerio (with her sky high intelligence) or Arueshalae (with her high base attribute rolls and skill selection).

Skill checking made a huge difference when I went for the dragon in Act 3.

Spoiler:

Getting the drop on the dragon via the athletics/mobility and stealth DC checks on Phase 2 (Greybor gets a sneak attack) I think he rolled a crit for 100 damage, which practically shifted me into Phase 3. Compare that when the dragon ambushed me on the world map, with a 100+ damage breath attack before I could even cast resist fire/protection from fire.

Yeah my team was smashing those skill checks in Act 3. I thought I had the skill difficulty curve worked out, so I leant into crits and combat feats.

Nenio's been great for all my knowledge checks, Lann is my perceiver, plus he and my horsies handle mobility/athletics, but some of the trickery checks are brutal. DC 57 on a random trap in a dungeon? My highest trickery peeps have 34. Arueshalae has gloves that add +5 to that, but that still needs an 18 and I left her at home.

I have a couple of levels left to take some boosts if it becomes a pain. They're also getting more fiendish with trap placement—often there'll be a trap, then another trap along the line to the disarm point for the first trap. Caught me out a few times.

Yeah, trickery is weird. There was a chest in Purula Falls where, with an imp pet, Level 13 Arueshalae had 85% lockpick chance, 100% with a lockpick set. But it still refuses to unlock with 100% chance. Oh well.

I'm still enjoying the game, albeit it's a bit tiring traipsing back and forth between Drezen and quest nodes while managing the crusade. Too broke in materials to upgrade the outposts for big QoL improvement with teleportation circles everywhere, but I'll get there. If anything, I've steamrolled the quests too quickly and now I have to pace the crusade (capture a new fort every 30 days) to earn more resources and crusade dollars.

Fail on a 100%? That is super brutal.

I also felt the pacing gap between the party and crusade modes — I hit the same point as you in Act 3 where crusade was lagging behind party quests.

It felt weird to have my party wandering aimlessly, just to pass time to recharge Army movement points and finish decrees.

There's a skip day option in the Crusade management screen...I did it in Act 2 thinking I could print infinite campaign money...right until my morale dropped so negative the the troops in my Drezen battle were losing turns to fear (it was pretty easy to beat even with that problem).

Still, the relatively relaxed pacing and leeway they give you in the Crusade is way better than the Kingmaker curse research timetable. I'm finding it way easier to get around and clear nodes. If anything, I'm slowing it down deliberately to farm resources to buff/level Crusade stats.

True that ... I never finished Kingmaker but I'm sure as hell going to finish WOTR.

Finished my Legend play through. The highest single target damage build I’ve tried without a doubt. Started as trickster for the improved critical feats. At level 40, power attack bonus alone was +55.