Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

ShakyJake said:

I personally am not a "min/maxer", but I do enjoy looking at builds other players have come up with and simply copy those if I find them interesting in an "op" way.

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Strangely enough, that's actually a pretty good place to be for this one. Mostly because creating effective OP builds from scratch requires literally hundreds of hours of study of obscure mechanics as well as extensive testing of exactly how those particular mechanics are implemented in game.

And then being prepared for your build to instantly turn to unusable shit due to balance changes.

I have to give them credit though - even with the most absurdly busted ridiculousness, the hardest difficulty is still damn challenging. ( Actually exhaustingly so - do not recommend unless you are a masochist ;p Especially without auto-buff mods )

Highly recommend making an angel oracle for your first playthrough if you pick this up. It's an amazing game, one of the best CRPGs out there.

Anyone else use the Toybox option "all characters get full mythic path"?

I'm sure someone could come up with way more insane combo, but 4 Legends, a Trickster, and an Angel are an OP party.

Main was Legend Slayer Deliverer 20, Ranger Demonslayer 20 and probably the most fun class I've played in any game. The passive damage is just absurd. Once your Trickster makes everything suicide I'll admit that kinda took the fun out of things.

riiiiiiise.

jumping into WotR on core after breezing through Kingmaker on normal is a real eye opener, I didn't realize how much the game was nerfed even on normal until I went back and looked. Had a random ass crossbowman in the prologue kill my animal companion outright and then drop me into the negatives the next round. Also I've had the most retarded strings of low rolls on some fights. That water elemental is just a dumbass RNG fest but its 2024 and who isn't a slave to achievements at this point.

one of us, one of us, one of us!

the cambians can one shot you easy in the prologue yeah.
the water elemental is very much intended to be a test. optional side boss. theres a few of those in the game. not really rng if you know what you are doing. save it for last, and use the potions. 2h glaive seelah, with str potions, while AC tanking camilla w cold resist ought to do it.



are you going in blind? did you read the thread, for tips, etc?

Caliane said:

not really rng if you know what you are doing.

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I probably have more d20 experience than the entire rest of this board put together.

Ok obviously that's a wild exaggeration for laughs but I do have somewhere in the vicinity of a couple thousand hours between tabletop and other CRPGs, and I'm coming directly from a Kingmaker playthrough so I'm quite fresh on the Owlcat's version of Pathfinder. First failed run the water elemental dropped one of my tanks with a nat 20, I forgot that elementals that size have reach, botched the defensive cast roll when I tried to heal the tank, and got gibbed by another natural 20 from the water ele. Second failed run the water ele rolled consecutive natural 20s again and killed seelah outright. Third attempt he went down and nobody took any damage at all, all three attempts with the same strat and same buffs. So a bit of a brainfart on my part with the first attempt but it still required back to back 20s from the elemental, second one was another set of consecutive 20s from the elemental. RNGfest is not an inaccurate term.

The boss-fight of the prologue was a bit hairy due to one of the things that Owlcat does that I really despise, the 'combat is interrupted for a split second to bring in scripted reinforcements and now you have to make fresh initiative rolls instead of maintaining the existing initiative order' but she didn't wipe the smite evil debuff like the devil in the Middle of Nowhere fight in Kingmaker did so Seelah was able to finish her off quickly. That shit kinda fucked me on the Lantern King fight too because Amiri and my MC obliterated the first two phases before my cleric got to act due to repeated low rolls, then he rolls low again going into Phase 3 and I have to watch the Wild Hunt army he spawns run wild because my cleric never got a chance to put up a heightened stinking cloud.

The shadows in the marketplace really stretched my butt. I'm sorely tempted to bump it down to whichever difficulty was between normal and core, not because I can't handle core but because it really seems to straddle the line between challenging and tedious. Then again I *always* play a melee in CRPGs and for the first time ever I'm doing a caster MC (and a spontaneous caster at that, which I always avoided like a plague during my tabletop days) and melees tend to have an easier early game. So I kinda set myself up for frustration by both jacking up the difficulty and getting out of my comfort zone a bit. Also maybe I should have played something else instead of jumping right into WotR so that starting over at low levels wouldn't feel quite so jarring and I wouldn't be so used to roflstomping everything in my way with a fully developed party.

wotr does often play like a puzzle on higher difficulties. where either you have the tools to fight, and its easy, or you don't and have a bad time.

like iirc seelah is immune to disease at that point, so sending her forward to tank the zombies in the graveyard, easy.

having the ghost touch bow for those shadows and lann. easy... ish. I dont think you can have deathward at that point? maybe. edit: double checked the bow I was thinkig of isn't ghost touch. I don't remember specifically what lets you kill those shadows easy.

the shadow demon in the basement. not immune to slumber.

stack FR on one person and go send them to tank/kill the brimorok. (seelah likely)


and spellcasters start weak of course. pathfinder is better then some... but still early game will often just be buffing the melee.
The mythic stuff is of course bonkers when you get it. abundant spells giving you way more casts/rest, letting your casters cast freely, and not have to reserve so much. and enduring spells making buffs last a very long time. and of course elemental immunity bypass.

which caster did you end up going?

I just healed through the shadow demon but I definitely should have come back for it with resist cold for my tank. Disease immunity is for ghouls, not zombies, and Finnean is your answer to the Shadows but on core there's 2 shadows and a lesser shadow that jump you during a zombie fight and it's basically impossible to escape without strength damage. I actually got lucky and they low rolled their touch attacks but of course the one shadow that did hit Seelah still rolled a 6 for damage, and then the single shadow you fight a little later also hit her. She has lesser resto but that's only one str recovered per rest so shes still rolling around with a -7. Death Ward is a lvl 4 spell so I won't have it until lvl 8 as a spontaneous caster unless I keep Sosiel around (which I probably will now that I think about it).

I went with Oracle because multiple people have waxed lyrical about how crazy op the merged spellbook Angel is, especially with the higher casts per day a spontaneous caster gets. Just a bumpy road to start, especially since I decided to be ultra hardcore and went with the powerless prophecy curse which fucking wrecks your butt until you get freedom of movement.

Gavinmad said:

I just healed through the shadow demon but I definitely should have come back for it with resist cold for my tank. Disease immunity is for ghouls, not zombies, and Finnean is your answer to the Shadows but on core there's 2 shadows and a lesser shadow that jump you during a zombie fight and it's basically impossible to escape without strength damage. I actually got lucky and they low rolled their touch attacks but of course the one shadow that did hit Seelah still rolled a 6 for damage, and then the single shadow you fight a little later also hit her. She has lesser resto but that's only one str recovered per rest so shes still rolling around with a -7. Death Ward is a lvl 4 spell so I won't have it until lvl 8 as a spontaneous caster unless I keep Sosiel around (which I probably will now that I think about it).

I went with Oracle because multiple people have waxed lyrical about how crazy op the merged spellbook Angel is, especially with the higher casts per day a spontaneous caster gets. Just a bumpy road to start, especially since I decided to be ultra hardcore and went with the powerless prophecy curse which fucking wrecks your butt until you get freedom of movement.

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The Oracle is versatile and strong and fits pretty perfect with Angel. The War Oracle with reach weapon can build into monster melee even. Early game on a caster heavy party in indeed a little bit harder, but buffs and pets are king by mid game. Buffs are the most tedious part, and I would suggest getting a mod to manage them.

While, for my first playthrough, I didn't do this, all the subsequent playthroughs I used toolbox to give my party the extended buffs heroic talents for free, so I wasn't waiting levels on them.

As an aside, I dunno how much of this thread you read and some people like building characters themselves so this may not apply. While you defiantly don't need meta builds for core, Neoseaker made some pretty good write ups for them, if that sort of thing interests you: Melee Oracle Angle

Burns said:

The Oracle is versatile and strong and fits pretty perfect with Angel. The War Oracle with reach weapon can build into monster melee even. Early game on a caster heavy party in indeed a little bit harder, but buffs and pets are king by mid game. Buffs are the most tedious part, and I would suggest getting a mod to manage them.

While, for my first playthrough, I didn't do this, all the subsequent playthroughs I used toolbox to give my party the extended buffs heroic talents for free, so I wasn't waiting levels on them.

As an aside, I dunno how much of this thread you read and some people like building characters themselves so this may not apply. While you defiantly don't need meta builds for core, Neoseaker made some pretty good write ups for them, if that sort of thing interests you: Melee Oracle Angle

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Melee build guide for WotR characters: 1) If playing a class without martial weapon proficiency, take one of the two backgrounds that gives you axe proficiencies. 2) Equip Grave Singer.

Guide over.

Gavinmad said:

Melee build guide for WotR characters: 1) If playing a class without martial weapon proficiency, take one of the two backgrounds that gives you axe proficiencies. 2) Equip Grave Singer.

Guide over.

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Not exactly... for unfair, almost all the builds have 2 or 3 different class dips. I'm not sure I have seen a single pure class meta build. My first playthrough was Oracle Angle with a reach weapon on a mount. I think I gave grave singer to a companion, but then ending up turning the two melee companions into super buffed dragons using a Brown-Fur.

I love Owlcat for being a large contributor in helping "revive" the CRPG genre, but they have two pretty major design flaws present in all their games..

1. Verbosity - Jesus fucking Christ. If I wanted to read a novel, I'd just read one. I don't need it in video game form. Use more cutscenes, use less exposition, and start working with editors to shave this shit down. And for the love of god fucking DEMONSTRATE, you don't have to fucking explicate all the goddamn time! It wasn't quite as bad in Kingmaker and Rogue Trader, but holy fuck is it horrible in WotR (the main reason I only made it about 30ish hours into the game).

2. Absolutely meaningless fights. There are sooooo many, "fight 8 goblins, walk two steps, fight 10 zombies, walk 10 steps, fight 10 more goblins and an orc, etc." in their level design philosophy. Cut down on all the wasted fucking combat for no reason. It's in Kingmaker, WotR, and Rogue Trader.

Meaningful combat was one of BG3's greatest strengths. Are there some meaningless fights in that game? Oh, absolutely. But, very little combat in the game was wasted. It almost always led to a quest objective, a cool item, hidden area, or something.

Combat for combat's sake is one of the worst fucking things in gaming(unless your game has an incredible combat system - which most CRPGs don't, really), especially in tabletop/tabletop based video games. I've quit so many campaigns in RL due to DMs who would throw out meaningless fights for no purpose other than.."COMBAT!!".

Kirun said:

1. Verbosity - Jesus fucking Christ. If I wanted to read a novel, I'd just read one. I don't need it in video game form. Use more cutscenes, use less exposition, and start working with editors to shave this shit down. And for the love of god fucking DEMONSTRATE, you don't have to fucking explicate all the goddamn time! It wasn't quite as bad in Kingmaker and Rogue Trader, but holy fuck is it horrible in WotR (the main reason I only made it about 30ish hours into the game).

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This is Paizo more than Owlcat. When Pathfinder first came out the writing style made my gaming group at the time joke about how every single one of their writers were frustrated English majors. As for excessive chump combat encounters, there's a lot of fights where you can and should just swap to RTWP once you've had a chance to evaluate the encounter then swap back to turn based afterwards. You're also comparing WotR to a game with a much smaller scope being made by a much more experienced dev studio and based on a much simpler and more trimmed down ruleset.

Which is not to say you're wrong of course, I'm only in chapter 1 and it already feels more like I'm reading a book at times.

Cruised for a while after hitting lvl 5, Seelah getting mounted made a surprisingly big difference. Was pretty chill for a while...then Leper's Smile happened.

Think I'd rather have mandragora swarms back than ever have to deal with another fucking Vescavor. Stupid RNG bullshit for days.

Anyone else have a problem with enemies just suicide rushing Camellia? And I don't mean prioritizing my back line, I mean specifically suicide rushing Camellia. It's getting kind of absurd at this point when half an encounter dies to attacks of opportunity trying to get past my front line to attack Camellia and then she goes down anyway because they just kept rushing and either run me out of attacks of opportunity (despite both frontliners having combat reflexes and ever ready) or just get lucky to not get killed/tripped as they rush through. Her spell list is great for buffing but straight up garbage for self-defense, Ember at least has access to temp hps through false life/greater fl.

*edit*

Also it's weird how many times I see 'debuff with hex' if I take the time to read a guide to a fight when hexes don't work on 1/3 to 1/2 the monsters in the game. Is this just a core thing and mind affecting abilities actually work on undead/constructs/etc on normal?

about 75% of the enemies are demons, 15% undead, 10%human/other. so yeah, theres some undead that are immune to mind effecting. but most of the game arent.
guide specifically calling for it versus undead? not sure. I did play on core.
sure they weren't saying buff with fortune hex etc?

Slumber hex is pretty crazy the whole game. lots of stuff is not immune to it, in the way stuff is immune to sleep. sleep has Hit die caps, making bosses off limits usually.

Diving at cam. I don't think so. 90% of the time, the front line is targeted I'd say. only rarely do that rush past. Blackwater I seem to remember do that a bit. 15 enemies at once, and yeah, the start going after the back lines. cam is generally considered a solid main/offtank. odd you feel shes soft.

you playing turn based or real time? I do turn based, so that might be relevant.