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 Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a game kickstarted by (formerly) Russian developer Owlcat games. (They have since pulled up stakes and moved to Cyprus.) It launched in September of 2021 and was pretty well received. It's an old school CRPG, in the style of Baldur's Gate, but for modern times. A good friend gave me a copy as a gift back in March and after a relatively rocky start, I wound up enjoying it quite a lot. We're only halfway through the year, and it's already made the top of my personal Game of the Year list. Doing a LP of it was something of a pipe dream, but my extremely old PC meant that playing it was a struggle. Actually recording gameplay would have melted what was left of my ancient processor into unusable slag. That has since changed. Thanks to the Crypto market crashing, prices on PC parts went down a lot. I am now in possession of a fairly modern system with a friggin' 3060 powering it. No longer do I have to mess with Fraps and recording 200 GB+ AVI files, I can just tell Shadowplay to record while I play. So my little pipe dream quickly became a reality. What knowledge do you have about Pathfinder? Almost nothing! Before March, I had never even played anything Pathfinder-related before. And while I have since learned enough that I don't have to consult my generous friends on every build I make, I'm not what you would call an expert. This is not going to be a run that shows off Brutal Unfair difficulty. I do not possess, nor do I want, the knowledge that it would take to pull off that sort of chicanery. Thanks to Owlcat letting you fine tune your desired difficulty to what feels best for you, I'm going to put the difficulty somewhere between Story and Casual and have a nice, relaxed play through while showing off the pretty decent story. So feel free to correct me on whatever I get wrong. I run a lot of what I write by other folks, but sometimes they aren't available because the hours I keep are, at best, chaotic. And sometimes I'm just flat out wrong about things. It happens a lot! Just don't be a dick about it, yeah? Are you using mods? Yep! To keep the OP relatively clean, I'll put the mods in a second, separate, post. But yes, I'm using 20 mods, most of them are quality of life changes or additive things. Spoiler Policy? The game's not even a year old, nor does its Enhanced Edition even exist yet. A lot of people haven't played this yet. But if you're one of the few who have, just use spoiler tags judiciously. And don't be That Guy who wants to talk about the ending before we even start Act 1. About the LP This is going to be a single run through the game. During my first time playing, the save file clocked in upwards of 120 hours. Put simply, there's just no way I will have the ability to do multiple runs without burning out. I've recorded the first couple of updates with a particular character, and after we get through those, you guys will vote on how we progress from there and with whom. Updates: Prologue: Trapped in the Darkness #1 - City Day in Kenabres #2 - Caverns Under Kenabres #3 - Caverns Under Kenabres Part 2 (Memories of an Angel) #4 - Neathholm #5 - Shield Maze #6 - Shield Maze Part 2 Act 1: The Wardstone Legacy #7 - The Gray Garrison #8 - The Defender's Heart Part 1 #9 - The Defender's Heart Part 2 #10 - The Defender's Heart Part 3 #11 - The Tower of Estrod #12 - Beneath the Tower of Estrod #13 - Ancientries and Wonders Shop #14 - Market Square Part 1 #15 - Market Square Part 2 (Memories of an Aeon) #16 - Market Square Part 3 #17 - Market Square Part 4 DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Nov 10, 2022 |
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Dramatis Personae Party Members  LisbethA half elf ninja who showed up in Kenabres with a mysterious wound on her chest. After getting knocked into the caverns beneath Kenabres, she rounded up a group of survivors and led them back to the surface, through an ancient maze full of demon worshipping cultists.  Seelah "It is unusual to find so much cheer in a person with such a dark past. And strange to see a former thief and a street urchin wearing the shining armor of Iomedae's paladin. This young woman has forged her faith from the pain of her losses, and her thirst for justice and redemption. She has managed to preserve her compassion and kindness underneath her steel armor. Will this become Seelah's weakness, leading her to ultimate ruin?"  Camellia "Camellia has both youth and talent in her favor. She tirelessly fights demons and cultists alike, but prefers to keep her distance from her fellow warriors. It's hard to tell if this is the arrogance inherent to some people of noble birth, or if she has another reason for keeping her companions at arm's length."  Wenduag "The deadly and cunning huntress from the mongrel tribe left her home to travel to the surface with her new commander. She inhabited a harsh and brutal world where the weak inevitably became prey for the strong. So she chose to be strong. Is there anything in the world she wouldn't do in her quest for power, or will survival always remain her primary instinct?"  Woljif "As the descendants of demons, tieflings are not the most respected or trusted of Mendev's citizens, to put it mildly. However, a few minutes in conversation with Woljif is enough to see that it isn't prejudice working against this particular tiefling — it is his puddle-deep personality, his membership of one of Mendev's biggest thief gangs, and his chronic inability to stick to anything, even his own principles. Woljif sees Lisbeth purely as a convenient way to solve a few of his problems. At least, for now." Zenic Kiyomi "Mercenaries are common on Golarion. Some become mercenaries to travel the world and find a decent lot in life, others for gold or the thrill of battle. In any case, a sellsword is a dependable ally able to provide help in battling the many dangers of the Worldwound." Important NPCs  Prelate HulrunInquisitor and governor of Kenabres. He tried to heal Lisbeth in the opening, but eventually called for the help of Terendelev. Hasn't been seen since. Terendelev, the Silver Dragon Guardian of Kenabres. She tried to heal Lisbeth's wound with her magics, and made promises to help further. Then Deskari invaded her city and cut her head clean off.  Deskari, Lord of LocustsAn extremely powerful demon lord. He invaded Kenabres, destroyed most of the city, and killed its guardian. Having accomplished that, he left.  Anevia TirabadeIrabeth's wife and member of the Eagle Watch. She's a talented archer and a skilled rogue, serving as the head of intelligence for the Eagle Watch.  LannWanted to come with Lisbeth on her journey, but she preferred Wenduag over him. He got very bitter over this fact and fled from the Shield Maze and has not been seen since. Chief Sull The chief of the mongrels who live in the caverns beneath Kenabres. Thanks to Lisbeth's efforts, he has banished Lann from his tribe. He is also taking care of some youths from his tribe who had their bodies corrupted by the demon, Savamelekh.  Horgus GwermA bit of a dick, but appears to have a hidden heart of gold. He anonymously donates money and resources to the crusaders protecting Kenabres to ensure his own safety. He also repeatedly pays Lisbeth large sums of cash to act as his personal bodyguard.  Irabeth TirabadePaladin of Iomedae and head of the Eagle Watch. She's Anevia's wife and is, currently, the person in charge of resistance efforts in Kenabres.  Staunton VhaneA dwarf who serves in the Condemned, a unit made up of criminals who are serving in the army as a form of penance. In the past, he was personally responsible for the fall of Drezen and the loss of Iomedae's banner, the Sword of Valor. Especially hates Minagho, the demon who he claims caused his downfall.  MinaghoA high ranking lilitu who is blamed for both the fall of Drezen, and a massacre in Kenabres several decades ago. She is the demon in charge of the city, and is working to subvert the wardstones. Forn Autumn Haze An elf who has been tasked with killing a deskarite and suspected drow, Kaylessa. Jernaugh A priest of Erastil who is waiting for the liberation of Kenabres so he can travel to a small village, Chilly Creek. Hilor The guy who offers retraining and mercenary contracts. He's also a member of the Pathfinder society, and his daughter was killed by a demon called the Spinner of Nightmares. List of Mods In alphabetical order (along with a brief description)... Brawler Class - Adds a class (and archetypes) that focuses on unarmed combat without tying you to Lawful like monk does Bubble Buffs - Lets you buff your entire party with a single button Buy Material Components - Lets you cast spells even if you don't have the spell components on hand. Instead it just costs you the market value of the component Cleaner - Reduces save file bloat by cleaning up unnecessary bodies when you leave a map. Combat Relief - Lets you skip random encounters CompanionRespec - While a respec system exists in the game, this lets you fully respec your companions. So Nenio no longer has to be tied to Scroll Savant if you want to take her in a different direction Enhanced Inventory - Adds a search and better filter options to the inventory GreatRadiance - Changes the legendary weapon Radiance into a different class of weapon because not everyone can use longswords Lichfix 1.3+ Rework - Various fixes for the Lich mythic path Microscopic Content Expansion - Some minor quality of life things by the TabletopTweaks guys, including a fix to make Radiance properly update to its final form More Relic Info - Lets you actually see what the relics will become without having to go to the (completely empty and worthless) associated fextralife pages. Ninja Class - Lets you play as a ninja! We'll be doing the first couple of updates as one Puzzle Skip - If you've played the game, you understand exactly why I have this mod and are nodding along sagely. If not, you will learn. Oh how you will learn. Scaling Cantrips - Adds some feats that let cantrips scale with your primary spellcasting stat. The mod page claims they top out at a little less than what magic missile can do at its top end Spears Sorcerous Sundries - Adds a bunch of magic items from Kingmaker into the game. Also by the Tabletop Tweaks crew. Tabletop Tweaks Base - The actual tabletop tweaks mod. This adds a bunch of tabletop rules into the game. These can be enabled or disabled on an individual basis. Most of them are pretty nice, though. Tabletop Tweaks Core - This makes the entire Tabletop Tweaks suite work. All of them have this as a dependency. Tome of the Firebird - The last of the Tabletop Tweaks crew. This adds some new spells in that we can potentially play with Toybox - The big one. Toybox is basically the developer console in mod form. It adds so many quality of life features that it's basically mandatory. It also allows you to further tweak the difficulty (up or down!) if that sort of thing interests you. Weapon Focus+ - In the base game, weapon feats apply to only individual weapons. This makes them apply to entire groups instead. Most of these, I'm sure you'll agree, are quality of life additions or are additive to the experience. Nobody likes the puzzles in this game, nor does anyone think stopping every 5 steps for yet another random encounter is worthwhile gameplay. DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Aug 4, 2022 |
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  Dmitry V. Silantyev - Wrath Of The Righteous Main ThemeHello and welcome to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Normally I'd show you the main menu here, but it has a shot of your most recent saved game right in the middle left of the screen, and that's kind of a spoilery location. So instead, have the first thing you see when you hit New Game! I don't own either of the DLC packs, nor am I especially inclined to grab them. Inevitable Excess is a super endgame DLC that happens concurrent with the Point of No Return approximately 120 hours in. Through the Ashes is something closer to survival horror in an isometric CRPG, and it happens during the events of Act 1. The friend who bought the game for me assures me they're both good, but I'm happy enough with just the super long base campaign. If you can't read the text because it's too tiny, never fear! I found the localization file buried in the game's files, so I have a complete text dump of every word in this incredibly wordy game. The text says... "Join the struggle against the Worldwound, the epic war between Golarion and the Abyss that has raged for more than a hundred years. Up to now, the crusader armies have barely managed to curb the overwhelming enemy forces, but not for much longer - the demon lords are preparing to strike a decisive blow. You will have to harness mythic powers, take command of the Fifth Crusade, and lead it against the demonic hordes." That sounds like a pretty severe destiny, so let's not leave it waiting any longer than we have to!  The next page lets us set up the difficulty. I said it in the OP, but this is not going to be a skillful run of the game where I show off Brutal Unfair and how you have to game the system to make it work. Before March of this year, I had never played a Pathfinder game in my life. I barely knew how to make a character. And while I've somewhat mitigated that, I'm still not the gal to show all that off. Instead, this is going to be mechanics lite, and will instead focus on the game's story, which is pretty good. So to that end, I'm making the game easier in some respects...
 The next page has us selecting from a list of characters or making our own. I'll just go ahead and make a custom character. After conferring with Yapping Eevee, who I was talking to at the time, we've decided I'm gonna show off the first couple updates with...  Lisbeth, the Half-Elf Ninja. She's really good at stabbing things. I know this looks like a lot, but the important takeaways are below. If you don't care, just skip to the next picture. STR: 8 (-1 bonus) (How hard you hit) DEX: 19 (+4 bonus) (How often you hit) CON: 12 (+1 bonus) (How healthy you are) INT: 12 (+1 bonus) (Book learning) WIS: 14 (+2 bonus) (Common sense) CHA: 14 (+2 bonus) (Force of personality) Going by the ability scores page on PFSRD, we can infer the following things about Lisbeth: She is not especially strong, and has trouble moving heavy objects. She is light on her feet and can hit small objects from a distance. She can take a couple hits before being knocked out. She is quick to pick up new ideas. If a situation is wrong somehow, she will get a gut feeling about it. She is an interesting person who always knows what to say. From a mechanical standpoint, her stats are fairly well balanced. Low strength doesn't really matter for rogues (or ninjas) because a feat she gets by default lets her put her DEX bonus to damage rolls, instead of STR. Constitution is needed for health. You should almost never make CON your dump stat unless you know what you're doing. Intelligence doesn't really matter for non-casters outside of getting skill points to distribute. A score of 12 lets us distribute 4 or 5 each level, which is more than enough. Wisdom governs saving throws and perception, and we're gonna need a fair few of both of those across the game. Finally, as the main character, we'll be doing a lot of chattering. So CHA is important in that regard. TeeQueue posted:Also a side note: while this is true eventually, rogues don’t get to add DEX to damage rolls until level 3. At level 1 it only replaces their STR on attack rolls—our ninja buddy will be a bit lacking on melee damage until they grow a bit. Moving on to her skills... Athletics: -1 (Pure strength, climbing, swimming, etc.) Mobility: +8 (Acrobatics and movement) Trickery: +11 (Lock picking, subterfuge) Stealth: +12 (Remaining unseen) Knowledge (Arcana): +1 (Knowledge about magical things. This is used to identify items.) Knowledge (World): +1 (Knowledge about the world) Lore (Nature): +2 (Information about the natural world) Lore (Religion): +2 (Information about religion) Perception: +8 (Seeing the hidden, also used in conversations to see if someone is lying) Persuasion: +8 (Convincing other people to come around to your way of thinking) Use Magic Device: +6 (Use wands, read scrolls) As the main character, Persuasion is probably most important because there are some conversations you have without other party members present. Being able to use persuasion in those is handy. Otherwise, she's really good at ninja things, and okay at being perceptive. I tagged UMD because it was a skill she had access to and I had a spare skill point that needed to be spent. Seriously. Lisbeth's race bonus, background, and level 1 feat all give bonuses to stealth, because it's kind of important all throughout the game. Finally, Lisbeth is a Chaotic Neutral atheist. I know CN is the meme alignment with good reason, but I'm choosing to interpret her look on life as "I'm here for a good time, not a long time." Owlcat, the developers, have written the game with the view that Chaotic alignments are all about freedom, which works well enough for me. If I'm gonna be honest, she's probably gonna drift Chaotic Good during the course of the game, which is also fine with me. She's not a dick, she's just looking to be entertained. (Also while there are a lot of evil prompts in the game, most of them are generic *kicks puppies* dumbassery. That makes it difficult to maintain neutrality when the good prompts are all being nice. To maintain neutrality, you'd have to be the embodiment of  )Also atheism, in a world where the gods are Very Real, is less "the gods aren't real" and more "the gods don't care." There are a lot of smug atheist prompts in the game.  Putting this here so the people that skipped all my words about my Chaotic Neutral Elf Rogue can join the rest of you who I'm sure are already composing a list of corrections. (Please do, actually. I don't mind being corrected if it's in a nice fashion! And that sort of stuff usually spurs friendly discussion.)  The game opens up on a festival!  That's us being carried around on the stretcher. Not the most auspicious of starts to an epic tale. Guard: "Make way! Coming through! Fetch a healer, quick!" There are a billion characters in this game who don't have a portrait, and because it's isometric I can't see if they're a human or half-elf at a glance. So I'm not even gonna try. So just get used to seeing some weird conversations between a bold name and a portrait.  The guards place the stretcher down off to the side of the festival square. "Hey, somebody! We got a wounded fighter! Can we get a healer over here?" "My, my, would you look at this? But why would you drag a wounded fighter into the middle of the festival square? Couldn't she be carted off somewhere else, like... oh I don't know... an infirmary? Or an accommodating ditch?"An armored man walks up.   Certain words come with a purple hyperlink like the image above. Also the narration is not mine, it's the game's. You can tell because it's Those purple links pull up encyclopedia entries for the associated words. I'll add new ones at the end of each update to keep the pace going. You can probably guess what a demon is anyway. Kenabres is the city that the festival is happening in. So this guard found us barely clinging to life after a demon attack outside the city. "The walls, you say? The enemy doesn't usually stray so close to the city. We must fortify the defenses... And you - hold fast, don't die, we'll see you right! We'll get you patched up now. But first - you there, guard, take her weapons: bearing arms is not permitted during the festival. Wounded or not, everyone must abide by the rules. She can get her things back after the festival."A guard comes to relieve us of our weapons. "Oh Inheritor, leader of our troops, the sharpened edge of our blades and the unyielding strength of our armor. Iomedae, I beseech you, grant your mercy, heal her wounds." The magic envelops you, but your pain lessens only slightly. Restoration posted:This spell functions like lesser restoration, except that it also dispels temporary negative levels or one permanent negative level. If this spell is used to dispel a permanent negative level, it has a material component of diamond dust worth 1,000 gp. This spell cannot be used to dispel more than one permanent negative level possessed by a target in a 1-week period. [Grit your teeth in silence] "My powers are not enough here. Someone call for Terendelev! You there! Yes, you - stop dithering and gawping and make yourself useful - go and get Terendelev!" "Prelate." The lady raises her head in an affectation of surprise. "Surely there is somebody else here better suited to running errands." "I'll get her. Terendelev! Has anyone seen Terendelev?" The excitable woman runs straight off at top speed through the crowd. "Be quick about it, before it's too late!" The old man leans over you. "Now, who are you? I don't remember seeing you before, and I have an excellent memory for faces." "I'm Lisbeth." "That's the first I've heard of that name. Who are you then? What's your business in the city?" Seelah comes back with a woman in silver armor. Terendelev: "My dear Prelate, please - for the sake of the festivities, stop interrogating this poor woman. She has been through enough already. Go on, I'll take care of her." "Hmph! All right, as you wish. You are our protector, and a dragon at that, so I shall defer to your wisdom. But be on your guard: I've been informed she was wounded near Kenabres - that means the demons are prowling just outside the walls. And the city is crawling with their spies! Others may be able to relax on this holiday, but not you or I - not the defenders of the city!" Muttering discontentedly, the old man walks off."Terendelev: A beautiful silver-haired woman leans over you. She seems ageless, her face wholly unlined, but centuries-old sadness gleams in her eyes. "Pry loose the grudging grip of pain. Cast off the veil of suffering flesh. Let light and life go forth in triumph to repel the skulking shade of death." The longer she speaks, the stronger her voice becomes. "There."  Restoration, Greater posted:This spell functions like lesser restoration, except that it dispels all permanent and temporary negative levels afflicting the healed creature. Greater restoration also dispels all magical effects penalizing the creature’s abilities, cures all temporary ability damage, and restores all points permanently drained from all ability scores. It also eliminates fatigue and exhaustion, and removes all forms of insanity, confusion, and similar mental effects. Yes, she used the greater version of the spell Hulrun cast on us. Restoration is a level 4 Inquisitor spell (Hulrun is an Inquisitor, and Governor of the city.) While Restoration, Greater is a level 7 spell. It does not actually heal any damage you've taken.  I saw at least one other LP do this and thought it was a smart idea. Conversations are one of the big draws for the game because it's a CRPG in the old style. And there's a lot of topics to cover. So I'm going to put line breaks between disparate topics so you can tell they're not related. "Thank you for healing me."Terendelev: "I accept your thanks. But my work is not yet done." "Who are you?"Terendelev: "My name is Terendelev. I am the protector of this city." "Are you really a dragon?" Terendelev: "You don't believe me? Perhaps I should retake my true form and engulf this square with my icy breath to win your trust?" The woman lets out a melodious laugh. "Pay no mind to my current guise - I appear this way when I walk among the people. I would hamper the festivities if I tried to attend in my true form." "What happened to me?"Terendelev: "I do not know yet - and that troubles me. I am not entirely sure what the demons did to you. This wound is no ordinary injury, and it was inflicted by no ordinary weapon. I have rid you of your pain and restored your strength, but only time will allow you to heal fully." "Can I go?"Terendelev: "Certainly, but be careful. I have managed to get you back on your feet - but I have not healed you fully. Alas, sooner or later your pain will return. But do not be discouraged. You will recover, I promise you that. Tomorrow, come to the cathedral and say that you are expected by Terendelev, protector of Kenabres. We will find a way to help you. But for now, put this out of your mind and enjoy the festival - they are all too rare in this time of war, and merriment is one of the best medicines."   The conversation (and cutscene) ends and we're given control for the first time!  We also get a journal update up at the top of the screen, which is what I've highlighted here. So let's take a look at it. New quests/objectives are highlighted with a yellow exclamation mark.  Let's take a look around and get our bearings. There's a nameless guard and a masked fellow over by one of the tents. If we click on them...   One of these things is not like the others. The masked dude speaking in riddles walks off and eventually vanishes. Sure, okay. Moving on...  "So many happy faces! Days like this keep our hope alive." "Grubby peasants and their grubby diversions. Why did I even bother coming?" "Yes, yes, happy city day. And now, step away, please. I do not wish for Horgus Gwerm to be seen next to... you."Most folks are celebratory, but some are assholes like Camellia and Horgus.  Over in this corner is a young half-elf girl holding court.  "Happy city day, good people! Spare a coin for a hungry belly..." The guy asking for a kiss is bent over, drunk as he can possibly be.  Over here on the opposite side of the square from where we started, we find the guy who called for us to be thrown into a ditch.  Everyone from the center up on the image is leaving with him. I guess they want to see what goes on in his mansion.  Hulrun and Terendelev are in the middle of the square. "A strange wound... Cursed, perhaps?"Terendelev: "This will ease your suffering."  Off in the upper right of the screen, past where Daeran walked off, we find another woman from the intro cutscene. "Everybody's letting their hair down. Everybody's drinking, havin' a good time... But the demons' spies never let up, so that means no fun for me!"She says this while drinking.  Just past her at the bar we can find the last familiar face. "How are you? Did Terendelev help you?"Jannah Aldori: "I've been a crusader five whole days already, and I love it! The future's going to be grand indeed..." Curl: "They should let us off to enjoy the festivities. Instead we're digging ditches and training day in, day out..."  Right next to the trio getting drunk, we can find a hand icon. This means "use." Well, a drink does sound pretty good, so...   I love this game's pop-up text.  Now let's see about finishing the other two objectives. We need to throw a dart and smack a mannequin. Aravashnial: "I have a feeling something terrible is going to happen... As usual..." Ramien: "On days like this, it's as if the war doesn't even exist. Desna, grant us peace!" Ramien is an important character in one of the game's many paths, while Aravashnial is not. He, however, was a very important character in the Adventure Path this game is based on. (Adventure Paths are the Pathfinder term for pre-written modules that tell a complete story. Like the Tomb of Horrors, of D&D fame.) So it's neat to see the game give a little nod to what came before.  Not too far away from the bar, we find another interact point. This looks like the dreaded mannequin.   However, as soon as everyone finishes clapping for us, we run into a little snag. A huge explosion rocks the city.   A very deep, very evil voice calls out over the celebrations while demons start teleporting in out of nowhere.   Up in the north of the square, Terendelev is giving the demons hell.  Flame Strike posted:A flame strike evokes a vertical column of divine fire. The spell deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 15d6). Half the damage is fire damage, but the other half results directly from divine power and is therefore not subject to being reduced by resistance to fire-based attacks.  Polar Ray posted:A blue-white ray of freezing air and ice springs from your hand. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack with the ray to deal damage to a target. The ray deals 1d6 points of cold damage per caster level (maximum 25d6) and 1d4 points of Dexterity drain. She's apparently a dragon, so I imagine those spells are rolling on the high end of that scale.   As if on cue, Deskari appears in the skies above the city.    And Terendelev reveals her full silver draconic glory!   That scythe has a spiked end.   So Terendelev is pretty badly hurt right out the gate.   Oh... Never mind. That's Terendelev's head off in the top of the image. "Let the feast begin."  With the city in chaos, Lisbeth finds herself hiding behind a table. A familiar halfling runs up to her. Guard: "Deskari's here! Deskari himself! Blimey! One minute we had a dragon, the next - bam! She was gone!" The halfling's armor is splashed with blood and he is armed to the teeth, with a sword, a blade, and a hatchet on his belt, and a crossbow on his back. His voice sounds familiar to you. "What're you gonna do - fight or flee? If fleeing's your plan, let me help you out, I've got a scroll here with a good protective spell!" "I've seen you somewhere before."Guard: "Yeah, you have - you owe me your life! I'm the one who found you outside the walls and brought you inside to be healed." He looks you over. "I see they've patched you up. Good thing they did it before the attack, or else you'd have been done for." "Who is Deskari?"Guard: "You must have got a good drubbin' round the head, friend! Deskari's a demon lord! The most fearsome enemy of all crusaders, and all living things, come to think of it!" "What's the situation in the city?"Guard: "Who knows! Everything's on fire, crashin' down around our ears, the place is crawling with demons... Looks like a whole army attacked the city. We're sitting ducks!" "Care to lend me a weapon? I'll try to fight the demons."Guard: "Sure thing! Here, take this." The halfling holds out the crossbow. "Best crossbow I've got! The person who made it said it could pierce the hide of a demon lord, even!" Items received: Light Crossbow Guard: "Good luck! Try not to get eaten now..." The halfling's words are drowned out by a terrible rumbling and the rustling of countless tiny wings."  If we're gonna go down, may as well go down swinging at the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the room. Let's put that halfling's claim to the test...   That weird red bolt came from our crossbow.  I'll be damned, it worked!  "A mortal gnat snaps its jaws at the lord of locusts."Welp. We pissed him off and now we have his undivided attention.  He rears his scythe back...   "Behold, Iomedae - behold the death I sow." He split the earth in two with a single strike.  And the aftershocks from the attack leave us reeling...    Encyclopedia Golarionnica Demons Kenabres Iomedae Deskari Demon Lords City Day Highlights DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 18:08
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TeeQueue posted:You absolute madperson, you’re really doing it. Oop, good catch. A very important distinction! EDIT: And edited it into the update! DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 19:01
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Oh wow, this is more of a response to the thread than I expected. I'm especially excited to see so many people who are either new to the game, or haven't seen much of it yet. This's gonna be a lot of fun!Kobold Sex Tape posted:WotR has really great voice acting, I hope you'll be able to show off samples of it for certain characters at some point without it being a huge hassle. There's some primo "I could just listen to them read from the dictionary and be entertained" tier voice talent for some of them. Banging out some clips of especially cool moments shouldn't be a problem. Gimme a few and I'll try to get one made that features both the intro (showing us a lot of character voices) as well as Deskari appearing.
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Jul 6, 2022 08:42
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DoubleNegative posted:
This took longer than I would have liked, but here's the voice acting in this update. I won't show every instance of it in the game after this, but I'll try to capture really cool moments. Update 1 Highlights
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Jul 6, 2022 11:08
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anilEhilated posted:On a bit of the side note, could we get some more info on the ninja class? The short version is it's a hybrid of Rogue and Monk. It gets access to Ki abilities, but they're all ninja-themed. They get innate proficiency with most of the "far eastern" weapons like the kama, nunchucks, katanas, etc. They also come with Simple weapons and Light Armor proficiencies. At level 1 they can spend a single Ki point to get "Acceleration of Form" which is temporary Haste and Displacement (1 round per 2 Ninja levels) They can also apply poisons a limited number of times per day. Poisons can damage Strength, Constitution, or Dex and... uh...  They also get the standard stacking sneak attack bonuses every other level. Finally on even levels, they get access to the following tricks: (These are all fueled by Ki)    If you know what the icons mean, you can guess what the "tricks" do. Shadow Clone is Mirror Image, Step Through the Shadows is Dimension Door, Ghost Slayer gives temporary ghost touch, etc EDIT: If you want to mess with it yourself, the mod is found here: Ninja Class Though you can't install it with Unity Mod Manager, and have to do the manual method instead. DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 11:56
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In the strictest possible sense, there is a way to turn a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer into a dragon. But it's a little roundabout. Also you can't really do it before the like... 75-80% mark of the game. So it's really a curiosity more than anything else. Also, once I get through the first couple updates (next one is tomorrow) I'm gonna be putting character choice for the rest of the LP to a vote. I'm gonna be offering a choice between 4 premade characters, as well as opening up the floor for you all to suggest something fun as well. And one of the choices I've prepared is a specialized sorcerer! 
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Jul 7, 2022 15:22
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Also helping decision paralysis is respecs, as far as I've seen, are free. Or if you somehow use up all the free ones, are apparently very cheap. So you can start off going "playing as a mad bomber sounds like fun" and then just completely change your mind and become something else entirely with zero downsides. Update will be a little later on.
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Jul 8, 2022 09:15
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 Hello everyone and welcome back. We somehow survived our first encounter with a demon lord. If you didn't read the encyclopedia entry on them, then let me get you up to speed... demon lords are practically demigods. They possess power on a scale that's unfathomable. We not only shot one in the chest with a crossbow and managed to hurt him, but we survived to tell the tale!  Let's break narrative for a moment and take a look at the game's mod manager. I'm using a fair few.  The one we're interested in is the Toybox mod. This is basically the developer console, but in mod form. It's incredibly powerful and can be used to outright cheat if you want. It also lets you further tweak the difficulty of the game. Call it homebrew rules if you like.  Some options are also quality of life changes. Stuff like letting companions not in your active party comment on the situation at hand. The option isn't quite right and will break scripting in a couple of edge cases, but for the most part it works wonderfully.  Down here in the "cheats" section is what I'm more interested in however. I've got Modifier Stacking - On reflection, I have removed this because it's not the intended experience and the game is designed around only non-alike modifiers stacking. Spontaneous Caster Scroll Copy - TeeQueue posted:From the wording, I think it may let Spontaneous Casters copy scrolls into their own spellbook, letting them grow their list of spells known to choose from? That's a huge buff to spontaneous casters like Sorcerers/Bards/etc, if so. I have also removed this because this is way too cheaty and removes the only downside spontaneous casters have! Highlight Hidden Objects - This is mostly moot if you have a character with high Perception (like we do), because you'll see all the hidden poo poo anyway. But this lets you see where it is. Handy and not really broken because, like I said, high perception. No Equipment Weight - Nobody cares about inventory weight limits, and if they claim they do, then they're lying to either you or themselves. Wrath of the Righteous also isn't Skyrim or Fallout where having a cheated carry weight lets you break the game's economy. The only time we're gonna be hurting for money is early on. By the time we get to the midpoint of the game, we will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. And that's with weight limits enabled! So the system is completely pointless. Anyway, that's it for the Toybox portion of the game. Now back to the update already in progress...  First off, here's Lisbeth's portrait. See that little icon there?  Apparently somebody was looking out for us! I hesitate to think what might have happened had that spell not been in effect, because Lisbeth woke up lying face down.   The intro is scripted to end after you finish two out of the three objectives on the tracker.  I'm never going to remember to look at the journal every time it updates. But luckily we can see all the previous entries when we finish a quest. So we won't miss anything!  Let's get a move on.  Ouch. Looks like we really did catch a lucky break! And a little further past them...  We get thrown into a conversation. Anevia here is one of the people we met twice in the intro. She's the lady who was complaining about not being able to relax while downing a beer. She's apparently "a small woman" despite her model being the same size as every other female character. She's also a trans woman whose wife bought her an elixir of gender change as a wedding gift. None of this ever comes up unless you pass an extremely difficult skill check in act 5. Also Anevia's portrait (and her wife's portrait) are both ones you can use for your own character.  Seelah is another familiar face from the intro. This is the woman who barreled off through a crowd to get the dragon, Terendelev. I would have "I feel 'em all right, wouldn't say no to a little less feelin' in 'em... My ankle's killin' me. But my back seems to still be in one piece. My head, too." Lisbeth is not a dick, so she's not gonna question why helping someone is a good idea, nor is she going to demand payment like the evil option is suggesting. See what I mean about evil being stupid in this game? So let's look at the options in green. If we mouse over the green bits...  These are the skill prompts I mentioned in the last update. Athletics is not a tagged skill, and its bonus is running off of Lisbeth's strength bonus. If you don't remember, her "bonus" is -1. So she takes a -1 penalty to every strength check. Because of both her low strength, plus athletics not being tagged, the skill's "bonus" is a -2. Thankfully these maluses aren't cumulative. The strength penalty has already been applied, in fact. On a DC12, we'd need to roll 14 or higher to win. While it's theoretically doable, this is probably not the smart pick.  Knowledge (World) is not a tagged skill either, but it has a +1 bonus, so we would only need to roll 11 or better to beat the DC12. These dice checks, that's what DC means by the way, are off a D20. So we would need to roll 11 or better on a D20, to give you an idea of how likely or not the outcome is. The funny thing is, the diplomacy check would be the most likely to succeed. But again - Lisbeth isn't an rear end in a top hat. [Knowledge (World) 12] "We don't have to rely on brute strength for this. I'll try to find something to use as a lever." [Failed a Knowledge (World) check] Either the sticks you've found aren't suitable or you're just not using them correctly, but your efforts come to nothing. For purely illustrative LP-related purposes, this is probably the optimal outcome. Failed skill checks aren't the end of the world. The game has to continue. Anevia is a major NPC in the game, so she can't just be left rotting down under Kenabres because we were playing a rail thin half-elf. "I don't think you're going to get anywhere with that. Why don't I just..." Using all of her strength, the knight moves the boulder and drags the wounded woman out from under the rubble. After making sure her charge is all right, the knight allows herself to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her brow."Seelah will come through like this if you fail like we did, or just refuse to help. She's about to join our party after this conversation, however, and she'll probably never leave it outside of extenuating circumstances. So if she's gonna be around for the rest of the game, may as well get off on the correct foot! The woman feels her leg. "drat it all! I think it's broken. Ah well, I've had worse — I'll just make myself a splint outta something..." Fishing a piece of twine from her pocket, she gets to work. "Thanks for the help. I wouldn't have lasted long on my own stuck under there. I'm Anevia Tirabade, of the Eagle Watch. I was overseeing security at the festival square — I thought maybe spies or demon worshipers might have something nasty planned... What actually happened, though, now that I did not see coming. I don't think anyone could've been prepared for that..." "Well, I'm Seelah, paladin by the grace of Iomedae. I crossed the whole continent to come to Mendev and fight demons... And well, I've been fighting for a while now." Seelah's expression darkens. "I don't even want to think what might be happening up there in the city. Kenabres has lost the protection of Terendelev, and of the Wardstone too, looks like! It's a relic without equal, it was placed here personally by Iomedae's herald with the goddess's blessing. I really wanted to go see it, to pray before it... But there's no point worrying about a stone when there are people dying in the streets." "Yeah, things are lookin' grim enough, but don't lose heart. Wardstone or no, dragon or no, Kenabres will never give in — simple as." Anevia's eyes shift to you. "Well, we've introduced ourselves, what about you?" Our decision here doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. Wrath of the Righteous is an ambitious game, but it's nothing quite like NWN2 or KOTOR2. So while a character might disapprove of one answer or another, you're not gonna get hosed out of a good ending for them because you said your name and nothing else, for instance. So, in keeping with Lisbeth's nature as a ninja, let's just give an answer in that vein. "One person's war is another person's opportunity. I'm in the city to seek my fortune." Seelah frowns. "Yeah, we've seen plenty of your type before..." "If I'm here to kill demons, what does it matter that I'm doing it for a paycheck?"Seelah dislikes mercenaries, but gently caress it, may as well get paid! This world is caught up in a Hellwar that has been going on for over a century at this point. Anevia and Seelah are both young, probably in their twenties, so they grew up in a world where this war and the associated Crusades are a stark reality. And while Lisbeth is a half-elf, I like to think she's similarly young. So it makes no sense why anyone would be distrustful of mercs at this point in history. "At least it's an honest answer." Anevia tightly ties off the twine on her improvised splint and, leaning on a stick, hauls herself to her feet. "Now then, I'll hobble my way outta here somehow. The city ain't far, only thirty paces or so... That's if you're going straight up, of course. I'm afraid we're gonna have to go the long way round." "To summarize: there are three of us, with five working legs, three pairs of decent hands, two clear heads and one made of wood — that's mine. Underground monsters, beware!" Seelah winks. "Anevia, you stay behind us. You're in no fit state to fight. If we do come up against anything, the two of us will try to manage on our own first. Well, onward! May the good deities lead us back to the open sky soon!"Anevia is an extremely well-trained archer. She is gonna hard carry us for this first section of the game.  Anevia is also a guest party member. She follows behind us, and can't be hurt, but she's also not controllable. But here's Seelah!  She's got a permanent fatigue debuff because we didn't pass the skill check. Pathfinder Permanent is different from real world permanent. In Pathfinder, "permanent" buffs/debuffs just mean they don't have a set duration. Like the tooltip says, fatigue gets cleared by rest. I think we can live with a -2 malus to strength for this first part of the game.  We also need to fix the game's formation. I'm not sure what automatic is going for here, but this is kinda useless for two melee characters. So let's just fix it up some.  My personal preference is the wedge formation. Anyway, I didn't think to grab a shot of her stats, but Seelah is a Paladin. She joins at level 1, so you can do pretty much anything with her, though her stats are built to be a physical fighter. In pretty much every play through I do, I turn her into my party's tank. Monsters tend to attack whoever they see first, so putting her at the lead is a good way to get enmity. She can also wear heavy armor out the gate, making her even more ideal for the role. As a Paladin, she also very slowly learns divine magic, so she will eventually be able to buff the party. I've got a build more-or-less in mind for her, one we'll be able to start pursuing in the next couple updates. Spoilers, nobody levels up in this update because I have XP gains set to 1x. One of my games in progress has XP gains set to 3x. My characters in that are early-mid act 3 and are a full act ahead in terms of relative power. It's really fun as a power fantasy, but levels in this game are pretty deliberately paced for a reason.  "Look, Hulrun put all the confiscated weapons in this chest. Take a look — maybe your things survived the fall." Weapons in red are ones we don't have the proficiency to use. Ones in blue are magic. I want to get my hands on a really good dagger, but we'll have to make do with something else until then.  A resistance bonus is different from armor bonus, and so on. Normally similar bonuses don't stack. So two resistance bonuses, for example, don't stack. But you can stack a resistance and a mutation bonus. This +1 is a handy bonus to have, and so it's going on Lisbeth. The 375 (Target Logo) is the monetary amount for the cloak. +1 cloaks are a dime a dozen, and by the end of the game we'll likely be drowning in them.  This shuriken would be an ideal starter weapon, but take a look at the tooltip again. "1-1 damage when equipped" is kinda poo poo. It uses strength to damage as well, and is not finesse, so it doesn't qualify for dex to damage. A pity, because masterwork and cold iron are both handy qualities to have. I don't know what they do, but they're more modifiers so they have to be better. Right?  I grabbed everything. Even if we did have carry weight enabled, this tutorial section is so short that there's no downside to doing so. In fact, it's free money! Also we'll be using this short sword because we can finesse wield it.  Lastly, we have some magical bracers on hand. Curious... Who promises what? Oh well, mysteries for another time!  Just past the chest we find another item.  This is an extremely rare item. In fact there are only a small handful in the game, all found in this little "dungeon". This resurrects someone back from the actual dead instead of a KO state.  Full tooltip if you're curious! Permanent negative levels can be dispelled by a cleric. I'm not playing on Core or above, so we will not need these. Just as well, because if I'm not mistaken, these scales will be possibly needed for something else later on. And if not, at least we have a memento of the nice dragon that saved our life before getting decapitated.  Past another bend, we find Camellia (also from the intro) in a strange position. She's covered in blood, standing next to a mutilated dead body.  "Relax, friend, we're not demons or cultists! Don't poke my eye out with that thing, all right? We fell down here during the attack. I'm Seelah, that's Anevia and Lisbeth. We're looking for a way back to the surface." "Really? I'm so ever glad to hear it..." The girl relaxes slightly, but she keeps her hand on her sheathed weapon. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am Camellia. I was also in the square when... when..." Her self-control falters for a moment and you glimpse the fear beneath her mask of perfect placidity. She licks her lips nervously. "I can scarcely believe it. How did all those demons get into the city? I thought — naively, it now seems — that the Wardstone protected us from attack. And Terendelev? I can't wrap my head around it." "What happened to that poor man? Who is he?" "I don't know. He must have been in the square when disaster struck. I tried to revive him, but he was already dead, sadly." "He didn't get these wounds from the fall..." Seelah's eyes warily scan the area. "Be on your guard. Whatever killed him likely hasn't gone far." "Seriously?" "Yeah, stick close. I'll make sure it doesn't hurt you." You roll your eyes. "Thanks, Seelah." Anevia peers at the dead man's face. "Hang on, I think I know him. His name's Aravashnial, the egghead from the library. He was a good lad, even if he was kinda stuck-up... May his soul rest in peace!" She catches your eye and ever-so-subtly shakes her head. "Not many could withstand a strike from a demon lord - not even Terendelev." "I can't argue with that. We're fortunate to be alive, albeit underground." "Deskari himself has come to Kenabres... There's no mistaking that ugly mug. Terendelev tried to fight him, but what could she do against a near-deity? Even the Wardstone was no help. Our city used to be protected by powerful forces, but now..." Anevia shakes her head. "...we've seen how powerless they truly are." Camellia finishes Anevia's thought with ruthless precision. "Henceforth we shall have no one but ourselves to rely on, I suppose?" "Tell me about yourself." The girl gives an elegant shrug. "Who am I? Just an ordinary citizen who decided to take a stroll through the square on the day of the festival. But that's not what you wish to know, is it? You most likely wish to know whether I'll be a burden should you ask me to join your group. No need to worry about that. I can assure you that I am skilled with a rapier, and I also possess some knowledge of magic." She touches the polished snake skull amulet that hangs around her neck. "We need to keep moving. There must be a way back to the surface somewhere around here." "That's right. It would be the height of foolishness to survive a demon attack only to perish under a pile of rubble." "Are you coming with us then? The more the merrier. And that blade of yours is nothing to sniff at." "Certainly. Survivors should stick together, it's only sensible. Who knows what else could be prowling about in these caves." "Let's see if this poor bloke has anything useful on him. Not to sound like a heartless brigand or nothin', but we kinda need all the supplies we can get right now."Gained 125 Experience  We need to do something to make Camellia useful.  Pathfinder, for some reason, introduces dual wielding penalties for holding a shield in your offhand. Despite having just as much Dex as Lisbeth, Camellia won't be able to hit anything while holding her shield. (Yes this applies to Seelah too.) So we need to unequip her shield. Her amulet can't be removed. It's an amulet of hide alignment. So to recap, Camellia was found standing near a dead man covered in blood, she claims to be skilled with her rapier, and she's hiding her alignment from the party. She's definitely trustworthy. Anyway, Camellia is a Spirit Hunter, which is a subclass of Shaman. She learns spells primarily from the Druid trees, but also has some early game crossover with divine casters like Clerics or Paladins. She also gets access to hexes from Witches, which means she's technically one of the more useful party members. She can also off tank with her shield if need be. She can cover a lot of niches, it just depends on what you need in any given situation. I never used her in my first play through because she couldn't hit the loving broad side of a barn with both hands and a bat, no matter how much I leveled her up and gave her feats to counteract that. So she became the first permanent bench warmer in the party. That kind of colored my impression of her, and so despite how useful she can be, she will always, to me, be the worthless dipshit who couldn't do anything right.  Moving on, Aravashnial has a masterwork dagger on him. It's technically lower damage, but we can make some miracles happen with daggers.  A little further on, we come across the first encounter. Fitting for a level 1 party, it's against bugs. While I could show off the turn-based system, I don't really care for it too much. So we're just gonna kinda steamroll these suckers.  Like I said, Anevia has got this poo poo handled.  Another group later, and she's definitely hard carrying us. There were two flies. She killed both of them.  A dead body down a dead end has some equipment. Those are +1 AC bracers, and the potions are low level healing potions. Finally the scroll is Inflict Light Wounds. Inflict Light Wounds posted:When laying your hand upon a creature, you channel negative energy that deals 1d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +5). The Inflict Light Wounds scroll would be handy if we had a spell caster in the party. A proper spell caster, I mean. Camellia technically counts, but she's got the stats to be a front liner. Cure Light Wounds posted:When laying your hand upon a living creature, you channel positive energy that cures 1d8 points of damage +1 point per caster level (maximum +5). Since undead are powered by negative energy, this spell deals damage to them instead of curing their wounds. An undead creature can apply Spell Resistance, and can attempt a Will save to take half damage. The potion doesn't technically have a caster level, outside of specific feats, so I think it's just 1d8+1. So it cures between 2 and 9 HP. Given most of the party has around 10, that's pretty good! berryjon posted:1d8+1 is a range of 2-9, not 1-9.  Several unremarkable encounters later, we arrive at an underground structure. I know it feels like I'm skipping through these updates, but this is more focused on the story than the combat. Legitimately all I've done for combat is put it on Real Time With Pause mode and just let Anevia turn things into paste. The encounters end in like 10 seconds this way, it's pretty great. Anyway, I'm cutting the update here because there's about to be a shitload of talking going down. Originally the next update and this one were planned to be one huge whole. But the next one is longer than this one while covering about the same amount of ground. Also it would have gone over the post limit by somthing like 10,000. Encyclopedia Golarionnica Wardstones DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Jul 8, 2022 |
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Jul 8, 2022 11:23
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TeeQueue posted:I think I know what this should do if it was working, I think? Normally for Arcane Casters, a Wizard can copy scrolls into their spellbook without issue, while Spontaneous Casters can never grow their spell list through that means since they don't have to pre-prep spells from a defined list and just know what they know. Oh. In which case, I'm gonna turn that off. That's a little too cheaty.
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Jul 8, 2022 12:32
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Chicken Thumbs posted:This has nothing to do with the game but I feel the need to share this official art of Seelah from one of the PF rulebooks. If I recall correctly it was from a section about how to deal with moral dilemmas in-game.  I love Seelah.Galick posted:I'm genuinely not sure why you'd ever need to cheat in modifiers of the same type stacking. The game has really tight math and I had one or two tricky spots the entire way through at Hard mode. I don't want people getting the wrong idea about the game mostly - it can be difficult but I only remember one (incredibly out of my way and 100% optional) fight that I thought was unreasonable. Given the poo poo we're gonna be getting up to with mythics, stacking a couple of +1 AC modifiers is gonna be the least of our worries.  Though you do raise a good point. While a couple of +1 AC bonuses aren't gonna make or break anything, it isn't intended by any stretch.berryjon posted:1d8+1 is a range of 2-9, not 1-9. Good to know, thanks! I'll edit this into the update.
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Jul 8, 2022 13:59
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Culka posted:Wait what. You do not get dual wielding penalties for using a shield. That should only happen of you are using shield bash (which requires a feat), in which case you actually are using the shield as a weapon. Check if they have shield bash toggled on in their abilities. Or maybe some mod has broken it, both of them hit stuff just fine in my game. After conferring with a friend about it, it's apparently specifically only bucklers. And it's a -1 to hit instead of a dual wield penalty. Also she has informed me that Cam doesn't use dex for her to-hit stat. Good thing we get saddled with her for the first dungeon of the game. 
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Jul 8, 2022 16:04
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This is why I’m happy to be corrected! I’m learning a lot and it’s also informative to any other Pathfinder newbies in the thread. I’m still not sure why Camellia is historically (for me at least) bad at hitting. It does sting a lot less on RTWP though when others can cover for her better.
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Jul 8, 2022 16:25
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 Hello everyone and welcome back. I was originally gonna post this update tomorrow, but here it is a day early! This little shot of the map shows just how far we've come. We haven't really covered very much ground at all. Oh well, this is not gonna be a short LP.  We take a step closer to the ruins and a cutscene takes over.  The man notices you and freezes. The curling horn protruding from his head casts a malevolent shadow on the cave wall. "Wenduag!" "Lann? Did you find it?" The woman looks just as strange as her companion — like a cross between a cat and a spider. When she catches sight of you, she immediately drops into a fighting stance. Her movements reveal the lethal grace of a wild predator. "Who is that?" "The do-gooders here to save our mongrel souls, no doubt." Lann stops her with a gesture. "Wait, they might know what's going on up there." "Demons are laying waste to Kenabres!" Lann's expression hardens. "If things are as bad as you say, then we all have to hurry." Wenduag looks you over, considering something. "You didn't come from the direction of the Shield Maze... drat it! I couldn't care less about what's happening on the surface, but the Maze..." Evil points are really easy to get, but they paint your character as a complete moron. "Who are you? Tieflings?" Wenduag's face twists scornfully. "Tieflings are the descendants of people who sullied themselves by mating with demons. Our ancestors would never sink that low. We are the underground crusaders, the children of the crusade's finest." "Sadly, 'underground crusaders' is a bit of a mouthful, so people usually just call us 'mongrels'." Wenduag lets out a disdainful huff. "You just love repeating that, don't you, Lann? 'Mongrels' — that's what the uplanders call us. But we call ourselves 'neathers'." "I've never heard of underground crusaders before." "In Kenabres they're called the mongrels. People say that they come up to the surface at night and eat anyone foolish enough to wander alone after midnight." Seelah turns to Lann and Wenduag. "To tell you the truth, I thought you guys were just a tale to tell kids at night." Wenduag gives a contemptuous snort. "That's human gratitude for you. Our forefathers suffered the consequences of demonic corruption, all to protect Mendev and Golarion, and for what? So we could become monsters used to frighten children." Lann sighs. "Every mongrel has their own take on it. Our chief, for example, thinks of us as something like a reserve military force. He thinks we're standing by until the moment we're needed. And when we emerge on the surface and save the day, all the people will see how good we are, and they'll love us for it. He leaves that last part out when he talks about it, of course, but it's easy enough to read between the lines."Mendev is the nation this takes place in, while Golarion is the planet. "What is this place?" "This is the hall where we remember the glory of our forebears. Sorry about the mess — it doesn't usually look like this, trust me. Sometimes we even wipe the dust off the exhibits." "This is where the relics of the first crusaders are displayed. Our lives are short, our glories are quickly forgotten... but this place helps us to remember that we are just as worthy as anyone else, and that our lives are not lived in vain." Anevia lets out a low whistle. "The first crusaders? You've been down here that long? That's crazy!" "What are you doing here?" "That's none of your..." "We're looking for a holy sword. It was here, in the center, sticking out of a rock." Lann frowns. "The sooner we find it, the better. Some kids from our tribe took off for the Shield Maze. They figured it had collapsed and now it's their time to go up to the surface like all the legends foretold... Except they don't have a clue what's waiting for them up there. They're not fighters. And Sull, the chief of our tribe, is dead set against it — he says that now isn't the time for the underground crusaders to take up arms. If we get the holy sword, we might be able to change the Chief's mind." Wenduag huffs a breath. "It's a fool's errand. None of us will be able to hold the sword, let alone use it to save anyone. It's not an ordinary weapon — it's made from righteous heavenly flame and will burn anyone who touches it. Do you think you're special, Lann?" "I'll pick it up with my teeth and tie it to my hand if I have to... it doesn't matter. An angel's sword and a troop of stalwart mongrels will be able to work a minor miracle." He chuckles. "Speaking of which — you're still here, Wendu, which means that deep down you know it's possible." This is a very in-depth conversation! It keeps going. So let's keep the question train rolling as well~ "Maze? Does it really lead to the surface?" "Yes. There are other ways up, but they are far from here, and after the earthquakes, there's a good chance they've collapsed. But the Maze — there's a legend among our people that when the walls of the Maze fall, that will be the signal for us, the underground crusaders, that the time has come to go up to the surface and fight the demons in the final confrontation." Wenduag snorts. "Until then, people say the Maze is 'shielding' us from taking rash actions. I'm the only one in our whole tribe to have been in the Maze and even I don't know if it's true. But the further I went in the Maze, the fresher the air became. That means that it really must lead to the surface." "When the ceiling and walls started shaking, the young ones in our tribe lost their heads — they figured the Maze was going to collapse, so it was time to go up to the surface. They grabbed whatever weapons were on hand and ran off toward the Maze." His eyes are filled with genuine concern. "They think the Maze is no longer a danger to them. They've been listening to Wenduag too much..." "Don't try to blame this on me. Yes, I told them that our people are capable of making our way through the Maze. In the future. But I always told them to wait until I had made a map of all the Maze's dangers. I warned them a hundred times!" You hear a hint of emotion in Wenduag's voice for the first time. "But it was no use! My words just went in one ear and out the other!"It's not a maze. It's a temple and it's really straightforward. "A sword of holy flame? How did it wind up down here?" "It came here with its owner. A long time ago, fifty thousand gongs to be precise..." "Seventy years ago, in uplander time." Wenduag rewards Lann with an irritated glare. "Fifty thousand gongs ago, our forebears found a dead angel here along with the bodies of his comrades. The tribe gave them a dignified burial, and they were laid to rest with their weapons — but the flaming angelic sword was stuck in a rock and no one was able to pull it out. It burned to the touch, like real fire. So the rock was placed over the angel's grave. It should be here somewhere..." "Maybe the angel will dig himself out and find the sword for us? That might be our best shot in this chaos." "Lann! Watch your tongue." "We'll find the sword faster if we work together. I'll help you." Lann's expression brightens. "Thanks! An extra pair of eyes can only help. The sword will be easy enough to spot. It looks... swordy. Help us and in return we'll get you out of here." "Now we're talking! Let's get to work. It's a good thing we all bumped into each other, isn't it?" "What, you want to find the sword quickly so the underground monsters bring you back to the surface? So be it."If we'd asked for payment, Wendy and Lann both would point out that they have no money and know the only way to the surface. We're asking them for a favor, not the other way around.  A mutually beneficial partnership, however? That works out nicely!  Holding tab shows all objects we can interact with. There's a few objects in the world we can interact with to get bonus XP and a little world building. They are always labeled with a skill and a DC. Also the purple outline is a hidden object that can be revealed with perception.  These checks never make or break anything, they just offer additional insights into stuff. Here we can see that the neathers are actually right about their Crusader ties.   Eventually we find a pile of rubble that has a gear icon instead of a loot icon. Also none of the hidden loot in here is worth anything. It's all just low level vendor trash.  Well that's definitely a glowing sword. And it looks pretty holy.    Dmitry V. Silantyev - Light of HeavenA strange flash pierces the gloom, and Lisbeth feels drops of searing blood run down her chest. The wound healed by Terendelev reopens and weeps scarlet, but there is no pain or weakness. A hazy scene appears, a cave chamber — this one or another one entirely? Lisbeth's heartbeat quickens, and a stream of thoughts suddenly bursts into her mind — thoughts that clearly belong to another... "Treachery! They betrayed me, trapped me, and stabbed me in the back! My trusted allies, my treasured friends, the people I swore to protect... The people for whom I descended from Heaven and came to this turbulent mortal world. There they are, up ahead, in the gloom of the cave. What are they waiting for? Are they afraid to draw any closer? Do they believe I am about to die from their traitorous blows? Next to me — a quiet moan. A girl with a golden braid lies on the rocks, clutching her slashed side. She refused to join with the traitors and paid dearly for it. I could have tried to run, but I will not! Whilst I still have strength, I must..." While recognizing the foreign origin of these thoughts, Lisbeth intuits that she can control them somehow. Let's try to...  These are "choose your own adventure" sections. You remember that cutscene from the start where Deskari attacked Kenabres? Yeah, that's never happening again. These CYOA sections instead take the place of proper cutscenes. Lisbeth isn't a dick, but she's also not exactly a good person. Not yet at least. So she would be less worried about an injured woman than the damage done to herself. So... ...furiously call out to the traitors.The voice, trembling with pain and rage, carries to the farthest reaches of the cave ceiling in this strange vision. "Why? Why did you betray me and your comrades? What did the servants of the Abyss tempt you with?" Blurred shapes — the faces of several mortals — bleed into existence. One of them, a young half-elf with his hair twisted into a knot, responds to the accusations: "You and your goddess have given us nothing, Lariel! Nothing! But Lord Deskari will give us everything! And there is no power in the world that will stop his advance!" The frenzy of foreign thoughts comes faster and faster, like a rushing river, and images flash by one after another. A priestess in colorful robes observing the stars. A young female paladin praying, clutching her glowing sword. A majestic golden-winged angel gazing into the distance, his face covered by a helmet but his voice ringing clear: "Only if you're willing, and only if you're ready. There is no going back." There, in the vision, the darkness in the cave stirs into motion. Something massive appears from within its depths — a vague shadow, an outline — a nightmare come to life. A wave of odious chirruping and rustling emanates from the shadow, the sound piercing like hot irons lancing through flesh and bone. The traitors fall to their knees before the shadow in reverent ecstasy, and the wounded girl thrashes in her death throes. The yawning chest wound burns white-hot, Lisbeth's head pounds with pain, and it is no longer clear whose pain it is — the person called Lariel who sent this vision, or the one unlucky enough to receive it. [Will 10] But Lisbeth is determined to fight off the illusion.Lisbeth gets a +4 to will, versus a +1 to Knowledge (Arcana) [Failed a Will check] The force of this terrifying attack, though originating in a vision, is much greater than anything Lisbeth can withstand. Crippling fatigue drags her to the ground, hands trembling, cold piercing her skull and slowly creeping along her spine. The one who sent the vision is experiencing something similar: he is broken and exhausted. A monstrous shadow emerges from the murk of the cave. It is not real, it exists only in this strange vision or memory. But the thrill of fear it provokes is more than real — the shadow's features starkly resemble those of Deskari, the terrifying demon lord. In a movement as swift as thought itself, the monster's hand is wrapped around the throat of the one they called Lariel. "The foolish angel struggling on the rocks, like a fly with its wings torn off," intones the shadow. Its voice changes as it moves, shifting from a quiet whispering to a sonorous shout, becoming young, then old and quavering. "Where is your goddess, angel? Where is her self-assured herald? How is it that you are dying here alone, so far from the light of your Heaven?" A strange calm envelops the thoughts of the one called Lariel. He recognizes who stands before him and he knows he will never bow down before this enemy. The flaming sword flares to life in his hand — bright, pure, flickering with multi-colored sparks like a sun beam through stained glass. Slash! The blade slices through the demonic creature's flesh and the monster recoils with a howl, releasing his grip on Lariel's throat. The angel falls back heavily on the rocks. His vitality is ebbing, but his pride remains undiminished. He grips the sword, and with his last burst of strength — plunges it into the rock. Lisbeth senses that the vision is fading, the rush of thoughts diminishing, like a river running dry. The last thing she hears is this: You will kill me, monster. This I know. But one day, someone will come here and raise up my sword. They will raise it up and..." "...punish evildoers and traitors."The vision disappears, vanishing in a burst of colors. Lisbeth does not hear the final words, but she seems to complete the thought, taking it to heart. The words fly from her lips, and with them... something else. The heat blazing in Lisbeth's chest fades away. The edges of the scarlet wound close, leaving not even a scar behind. Looking down, Lisbeth sees the flaming sword in her hand — or, rather, its outline, the memory of what the sword looked like. With a final surge of warm and soothing light, the sword vanishes, and the light is drawn into her hand. Lisbeth senses that it will return — all she need do is call it.  So what the gently caress was all that? Well that was the introduction to the game's mythic paths system. Specifically the first of nine. This is the angel path, and it has two distinct flavors - protecting the innocent and punishing those that deserve it. Angels have to be one step away from lawful good. So Lawful Neutral, Lawful Good, and Neutral Good all apply. Lisbeth is a very long way away from Neutral Good, let alone any of the others. Her destiny is not to become an angel. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll be following Lisbeth for the rest of the LP. I'll explain at the end of the update.  There's no mistaking the flash, so Lann and Wendy both rush over. "Hey, Lisbeth! Are you all right? You were kinda... glowing just now!" Seelah kneels before the light, offering up a prayer to Iomedae. Lann looks at you, dumbfounded. "That... that was it! The Light of Heaven! But how..." Wenduag frowns. "What did you do with it? Where did it go?" "You saw it too? The traitors, the dying girl..." Lann looks around. "It's only us here. Your group, you, me, Wendu, and... the Light of Heaven, that sort of got... uh... sucked into you. Any chance you can whip it out again? We do kind of need it. Lann rubs his chin anxiously. "Sorry, I crack jokes when I get nervous. And when I'm upset. And when I'm happy. Anyway, what I said, it came out wrong. We need to bring you to Chief Sull! You can show everyone the Light of Heaven, we'll rally the tribe and go into the Maze, and we'll get back our kin!" "And what if she can't make it happen a second time? What then? The tribe will just say we're crazy and turn its back on us." "I think... I saw the memories of Lariel, the angel who died here." "Lariel? That really was Lariel? The angel from the legends? The ancestors even got his name right on the gravestone — the Chief will be thrilled." Wenduag watches you with suspicion. "You? Thousands of gongs and no one's been able to touch it, and now you, an ordinary creature of flesh and blood no different to us, get the sword and start talking about visions?" "Now, now, Wenduag, don't be a sore loser." Lann nods toward you. "She is clearly different from us — the sword appeared before her, along with the angel's name, and all that other stuff. Because she doesn't carry our mongrel taint. Heaven doesn't give a drat how special we are. We're born with evil inside us, Heaven doesn't need to know any more than that. I know you're willing to tear anyone apart to uphold our people's honor, but... you and Sull, you just refuse to face the truth: we are the way we are because our ancestors' bodies were corrupted by the Abyss. It does the same thing to plants and animals, there's nothing heroic or special about it. It doesn't make us better and it doesn't make us worthier." [Requires Angel Mythic Path] [Reveal the Light of Heaven] "It seems I can control it."Taking the mythic path options doesn't lock us in, so if the option is available to take, then feel free to do so. We'll be asked to commit at the end of act 2, and our options will be limited to the ones we've 1) found and 2) expressed an interest in (via these conversational options). There's more we can uncover later, but six of the nine are available to find before we are told to commit. The last three are... special cases and only become available at the 90% mark of the game. We can swap to them later, but we have to pick one of the original six first. For the sake of not hiding anything, the first six paths are listed below. (Be sure to click on the name for the associated theme song.) Angel - Saving the innocent, punishing the wicked. Become a powerful supporting force on the battlefield Demon - Kick untold amounts of rear end as the embodiment of rage Azata - A fae spirit. Good-natured, but very "LOL PENGUINS SPOOOOORK xD". You get actual superpowers. I'm serious. Aeon - Guards the fabric of reality, "Get in loser, we're gonna kill Chaos." You can fix and undo stuff that would be impossible for any other Mythic path. Lich - Immortal master of the undead legions. Death is your domain, and all will enter it given enough time. Trickster - Playing a prank upon reality itself. You become the ultimate troll, the best shitposter. Aeons guard reality, but you rewrite it according to your whims!  "That is just... wow... I mean, that's amazing! Heaven has truly blessed you, Lisbeth." Wenduag stares at the divine light as if transfixed. "This power... is the most majestic thing I've ever seen in all my life... Is this what the sun is like, Lann?" "Yes, it's similar... but this light is more... golden." Lann drags his gaze away from it. "Chief Sull needs to see this. Now that we have the power of angels on our side, he can't say no. He'll have to assemble a troop to storm the Maze." Lann looks at you pleadingly. "You uplanders care about your kids, right? Help us save ours. Without them, we won't survive. And then... the perils of the Maze won't be so bad if we go together, we'll make our way through it and find the way to Kenabres." "Lead us to your chief and I'll decide if I'm going to help you or not." "Let's go, we'll take the short route. Well, the only route, really." Everyone runs over here. We now have Lann and Wenduag as party members. Once we leave this zone, we'll be asked to pick from between them. So don't get used to seeing them both in the party at the same time. Lann is a Zen Archer, which is an archer who has monk skills. Wenduag is a straight fighter. Both wield bows, but Wendy can be easily changed to something else and will be if she's picked. If you have the whole party selected and click on a skill challenge, the game automatically uses the most appropriate person for the job. In this case, it's Lisbeth because she has a +8 to mobility. So we only need to roll a 6 to beat this DC14!  With three archers in the back, the rest of the caves are just a formality.  And just past the spiders is another mobility check. These checks tend to get a lot easier once you have more than 4 people in your party, because like a good Pokemon team, diversity of skills is the key.  These earth elementals are an optional challenge. Though challenge might be too strong a word here.  The more people there are in your party, the more quickly hits add up, so the faster combat goes. And outside of being in town with everyone else, we won't be alone again unless we specifically go out of our way to do it. But Owlcat are also aware of the force multiplier that additional bodies in the party means, so they ensure that encounters are balanced around having six bodies at minimum in the party. (Six is the maximum party size, for what it's worth, not counting pets.)  More combat shots. This spider didn't know what hit it!  After the spider, I found a kama on a body. This might be a more appropriate weapon for Lisbeth, because she has ninja proficiencies that specifically include kama. The damage range is wider, too. So no reason not to use it!  As we near the zone border, Wenduag catches up to us to have a little heart to heart. Wenduag glances at Lann, who is fixing his slipped bowstring, and quickly walks over to you. Her cat-like eyes glow from beneath her hood. "Listen here... you. I don't know who you are or where you come from, but you and I are the only two people here who see things clearly. That's why I'm asking you: don't show the Light of Heaven to Sull." Lann is sure that the Light should be shown to the mongrels." "I thought you considered the mongrels to be great warriors." "The descendants of great warriors. I believe that my people are worthy of greatness, that we are strong and can do many things — that's why we were chased down here, we scared people. But it's one thing to go hunting in the caves, and another to fight in the Shield Maze." Wenduag leans closer, her pupils dilating. "I've been there. I've spent my whole life training so I can make it through all the way to the end. There were more of us trackers at the start. We were young and stupid. What's a couple of monsters when there's a whole world out there waiting for us? That's what we thought. But we weren't prepared. The Maze isn't just a physical challenge — it's cunning and full of traps. It's dark as the primordial night. And if you close your eyes and listen, you hear whispers right behind you, and soft singing in the distance that seems to rise and fall with the beating of your heart." "Don't you want to save the kids lost in the maze?" "I do want to. But I'm not going to risk the future of the tribe for the sake of a few stupid kids. Chief Sull is hesitant, and for good reason. He also understands how dangerous this is for the tribe. Lann's the only one who benefits from these childish games of heroism. I'll go alone if I have to and find them, or whatever's left of them. Without any heroics, relying only on myself. Risking only my own life." Wenduag slows. "You and your friends... you can come with me. Perhaps we can make it to the end of the Maze together and find the way out to the surface." "I'll think about it. Let's go." Wenduag nods. "Don't show the Chief the Light, and I'll lead you through the Maze to the surface. I swear it." We'll explore Neatholm next time. But until then, I have a little job for you guys. A vote! Multiple votes, actually. First... What character are we gonna go through this game with? I have some ready-made characters if you want. You can also suggest something else and I'll use that if it's popular enough. As for my choices?  Kiyomi, the Neutral Good kitsune cleric. She's a good-natured, good-hearted fox woman who wants to help the world for no other reason than it's the right thing to do. As a cleric, Kiyomi gets access to a lot of divine magic, which has some of the strongest buffing spells in the game. And because she's such a sweetheart, she will go on to earn her wings and halo and ascend to the heavens as an angel - specifically the "protect the innocent" type rather than the "full of wrath and fury" kind. Pressli, the Lawful Neutral halfling sorcerer. I'm not sold on the name, so feel free to suggest a different one if we go this route. Pressli worships the god of magic, Nethys, and at some point in history, her ancestors bred with an air elemental. This heritage has manifested in the tiny halfling, who can turn every type of spell damage into electric damage. As a sorcerer, she gets very few spells, but the ones she gets she will be an undisputed master of. She is a hardline stickler for rules, and believes in the triumph of law above all else. Because of this, she is a perfect choice to ascend and become an Aeon. Lisbeth, the Chaotic Neutral half-elf ninja. This is our current character, naturally. Ninjas are a specialized hybrid of rogue and monk. In just a couple levels, she will be able to pull off some insane bullshit like a free haste spell for herself alone. Lisbeth is not necessarily a good person, she's just not a dick either. She's here to be entertained and to make a little money along the way. And disparage the gods at every step of the way as an atheist. She has already started walking the path of the Trickster, she just doesn't know it yet. Zenic, the Lawful Evil half-orc fighter. Zenic is not a good person, to put it bluntly. You know the old quote from Dr. Horrible? "The world is a mess and I just need to rule it." That's her. She specializes in wielding a scythe, the favored weapon of her dread god, Urgathoa. She also has enough feats at level 1 propping up the scythe that she will be a blender with it. She has an interest in learning to cast spells, and will eventually learn to do so. If it weren't obvious from her weapon of choice and her chosen Goddess, Zenic is a prime candidate to become a Lich.For what it's worth, if the choice is close, I will create two of the runner ups as mercenaries so we can bring them along with us on the journey. Also, choice of Mythic Path will dictate how the game goes. The overall story is the same, naturally, but the world will adapt to our choices. An angel that protects the weak and believes in redemption will leave the world better for her having been there. On the other hand, the story of a lich that raises all problems from the dead as her eternal servants will probably chronicle the rise of a new evil overlord. There's no wrong answers here, just different flavors of play style. If you don't want to use any of those four options, then I need to know some important things: Name, Race, Class, Favored Weapon, What God they worship, Alignment, Personality type, and Which of the six Mythics they will favor. Now for the second decision. Do we trust Lann or Wenduag? To reiterate some points... Lann is a Zen Archer. That means he's pretty much locked to using a bow, and on top of that, he also gets crossover with monk. He's also Lawful Neutral, and is sadly the Funnyman Jokester, subtype 2-C ("Overexplains the joke into the ground because it's supposed to be funny.") He wants us to show the Light of Heaven to his chief, so we can rally the tribes and lead them into the maze to save the kids. Wenduag is a straight fighter with the stats to make pretty much any martial build work. If we side with her, I'm going to be turning her into a strength-based throwing weapons user. So she would be able to put those shurikens we found to devastating use. She's also neutral evil and makes no effort to hide that she follows the strongest side. Luckily for us, we're able to kick apocalyptic amounts of rear end, so she'll be relatively loyal. She wants us to hide the Light of Heaven from Chief Sull, so she can sneak us off alone into the maze. This is an either/or choice! Either Lann or Wenduag. Both have their pros and cons. Wenduag is one of the better-written romances in the game if we want to pursue that angle. Lann is extremely powerful as a Zen Archer, but we'll be getting multiple archers counting him. Including, possibly, Kiyomi as a main character. Ki skills affect only the user, so having Lann and Lisbeth in the same party won't be retreading the same ground. Post your votes, answers bolded please! Votes will remain open until sometime Tuesday evening. Encyclopedia Golarionnica Mendev Golarion Heaven Angels Abyss
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Jul 10, 2022 18:31
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JustJeff88 posted:I found it interesting that Kiyomi, while a cleric, has higher Dex than Wis. Is there an optimisation reason for this that I cannot see? Two primary reasons! One: She’s a bow user, so dex is important to them. Two: You don’t need that much Wis to get access to level 10 spells, and at 16 she can reach that with a Wisdom crown.
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Jul 10, 2022 21:24
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Kobold Sex Tape posted:Odd stats. Odd stats are because there's 5 stat points you earn by leveling. Starting with an odd number means you end on an even one.EDIT: I do appreciate the feedback on my builds, though! It's legitimately very helpful to get that sort of information. So thank you! DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 11, 2022 |
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Jul 11, 2022 01:27
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wiegieman posted:Everyone plays Azata the first time, so it makes sense it's not an option this time around. I played angel my first time.
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Jul 11, 2022 07:01
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I really like that there's so much back and forth between both Kiyomi and Lisbeth, as well as Lann and Wendy to a lesser extent. When I went to bed, there were only 5 votes between the fox and the elf. And while that gap has widened, it's still a close vote!
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Jul 11, 2022 16:42
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I'm gonna be closing voting in a little less than three hours. So you have until 3:30 PM EST to get your last minute votes in or change your mind!
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Jul 12, 2022 17:37
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Votes close in 15 minutes!
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Jul 12, 2022 20:16
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Double posting because votes are closed! If my vote counts weren't off, then these are the final totals.quote:Kiyomi: IIIII IIIII II - 12 Kiyomi put up a decent fight, but the drawing power of cute foxes wasn't enough to topple half-elf ninjas! And on the companion side of things, Wenduag thoroughly schooled Lann by getting nearly double the amount of votes.
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Jul 12, 2022 20:33
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Pressli was probably gonna fall more on the Judge Dredd end of the Lawful spectrum. Aeons are called upon to judge matters like that, and she was pretty uniquely suited to the role! And also to clear up some confusion and talk about the paths not taken... Zenic was gonna spend the first two acts as a mutation warrior. Then at the start of act 3, she was gonna respec, stats and all, to be, ultimately, a 4/6/10 Eldritch Knight. (4 Mutation Warrior, 6 Wizard/Sorcerer, 10 Eldritch Knight) Which would have given her access to the Lich's level 10 spells while also being capable of staying on the front lines with her scythe of death. Kiyomi, similarly, was custom built to use her weapon of choice (the legendary weapon Radiance, but in Longbow form) while buffing the rest of the party to the gills with both Cleric spells and Angel buffs. An angel wielding Radiance is basically the Doom Slayer, and this game has a lot of demon enemies. But Lisbeth is gonna be a lot of fun, too! The Trickster mythic path synergizes especially well with martial classes, as we're gonna find out across the next however many months this LP takes.
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Jul 12, 2022 23:44
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If Seelah were to get a pet dog, what would she name it and why?
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Jul 13, 2022 03:56
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 Hello everyone and welcome back! Today we're gonna start off by fixing a few problems and issues from the previous several updates. First off - auto level is off because the pre-built paths for companions are really, really bad. I'm not good at making builds, as you can probably tell from the previous update, but even my stuff is better than the game's defaults.  I'll correct the rest in a moment. First, let's have an overdue conversation with Chief Sull.  The locals in Neathholm are very nice.  Up the hill, a cutscene takes over.  A heavyset, aged mongrel slowly shuffles his way toward you. The hair on his head grows in limp, wispy strands, and his face has a distinctly rat-like appearance with pronounced teeth, and you hear a rattling sound in his chest with every breath he takes. One of his eyes is white, fully scarred by cataracts, while the other gleams with moisture. "Uplandersh, eh... End timesh are upon ush, indeed..." Gained 250 Experience (For finishing the quest objective) "Chief Sull! We found the angel's sword! And we found the one who can wield it." Lann points at you. "She had a vision and now the angel's sword together with the Light of Heaven are somehow... inside her. Gather the tribe! Anyone who can hold a weapon. The young ones are still alive, we can go save them!"Chief Sull: Sull raises his hand with ragged, broken fingernails. "Ah... Lann, alwaysh dreaming, alwaysh talking. You're too hashty, too hashty for your own good. It'sh going to get you in trouble." Sull eyes you up and down. "An uplander with the Light o' Heaven... That'sh too good for ush. Our kind don't have good thingsh happen — there'sh alwaysh a catch. Lann trustsh people becaush he likesh to believe. Ishn't that right, Lann? I'm the chief, I don't work on faith. Show the Light." Wenduag stares at you intently, like a cat watching a bird, and shakes her head in warning. "Is there someone else from the surface here?"Chief Sull: Sull points off to the side. "There he ish. Hale and hearty and prim as a peacock. Jusht like me." Sull laughs, but quickly returns to business. "Sh'not good. Too many uplandersh — sh'not good, sh'not right. What are you up to here? You're not one of ush, we're not your kind. When the time comesh, we'll come to you. Not you to ush." (Chaotic) "Lann is mistaken. We didn't find the sword." Lann whips around to look at you, stunned. He clenches his fists for a moment, as if planning to shake the truth out of you, but he quickly gets a handle on himself. "I don't know why you're lying — no doubt you have your reasons. But I know it's a lie, and you know it. And Wendu knows it." Lann turns to Wenduag. "Tell him, Wendu!"You've performed a Chaotic action Wenduag stares blankly back at him. "I saw the Light shining between the rocks and then it went out. Lann saw what he wanted to see." "Why are you doing this?" "Doing what? Telling the truth?" [say nothing] Lann looks at you expectantly, and sighs when you don't answer. "Right... You and Wendu have worked everything out between yourselves. You've played me for a blind mole here." Lann barks a hollow laugh." "Everybody around me said that they didn't want to go anywhere or save anyone, but I didn't believe them. I always have to take things further than anybody else, isn't that right, Chief? Fine. I see how things are, I don't need any more convincing." Lann offers a crooked smile."Chief Sull: "Peash, Lann. Miraclesh are not meant for ush. We, the tribe, we wait. If you're one of ush, you will wait. We're not going anywhere. Uplandersh — resht now. There ish a hut over there, you can resht there." Lann is silent, his eyes shifting from you and Sull to Wenduag. "You made the right choice. It was the lesser of two evils. And now — rest, so we can be at our best when we go into the Maze. I promised to lead you to the surface, and I will." So a few things. First off: everyone leveled up from finishing that quest. So we'll have points to distribute in a moment. Secondly, we can see that Lann is quite bitter when Lisbeth didn't immediately live up to his ideals. She never promised she would help, only that she would think about it. And Wenduag's offer, voted by you all, made more sense. If we'd voted for Lann, Wendy's accusations would be less bitter and more hateful. It is what it is, but this is also a binding vote you all made. At the end of the upcoming dungeon, we would normally have the opportunity to make one final choice between Lann and Wendy, but Wendy's lead was so commanding that there's no point in holding a second vote. Finally, let's talk Alignment. We've had a few options to make (Evil) choices in the past, but I'm pretty sure this was our first (Chaotic) choice. So naturally Pathfinder 1E is very heavily based on D&D3E, which means that the old faithful 3x3 grid makes a return. Everything from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil. In Wrath in particular (I haven't played Kingmaker, so it could also be true there. I don't actually know.) if you make a decision on one particular axis, the game moves your alignment toward the purest expression of that axis. That sounds more confusing than it actually is, so let me explain using the choice we made above. We lied to Chief Sull and performed a Chaotic action in the process. Alignment shifts like this are always very clearly marked. Making that choice pushed us closer to Chaotic Neutral. We're already there, but it pushed us further toward the extreme. If we were to make a Good choice, it would push us toward Neutral Good. So if you want to be, say, Chaotic Good, you would have to actively work to maintain it because too many decisions one way would cause an alignment shift. Toybox has a fix that I've actually enabled that makes alignment decisions affect on one axis only. So if we made a good choice, we would merely rise on the 3x3 grid instead of going toward the extreme top middle square. Most individual choices don't budge the needle very much. So it's just something to occasionally keep your eye on rather than being worried that taking a funny, but aligned, response will suddenly make you Neutral Evil or whatever. Bioware this ain't.  Let's level everyone up. Or most everyone. We can level up Lann, but he's leaving the party in approximately 3 minutes. And while we can get him back, it legitimately will not be until mid-late act 5. The game only has 5 acts.  I'm gonna walk us through leveling up Lisbeth once, just to show it off and explain my thought process, then I'm just gonna show the end result for everyone else. With a few exceptions. This page is asking us to distribute skill points. The options with a green V are Lisbeth's tagged skills. If she were to put points in them, she'd get a big boost for the first one. But unless you're building a character to be a skill monkey with a lot of INT, it's better to specialize. Five points at level up is pretty decent for her meager (12) INT. I'm just gonna drop the points where they already are spent - Mobility, Trickery, Perception, Persuasion, UMD.  This next page is asking us to pick a ninja trick. We can take all of these once, including a free Rogue Talent. Many tricks are contingent on having others as well. So we've got a lot to pick from across the game.  Shadow Clone is what I'm going with here. It's straight up just the arcane spell Mirror Image. This KI ability alone is going to greatly extend Lisbeth's survivability! Mirror Image posted:This spell creates a number of illusory doubles of you that inhabit your square. These doubles make it difficult for enemies to precisely locate and attack you. It's been my experience playing the game that you need to exhaust all of something's mirror images before you can actually damage them. And Lisbeth's Ki pool is (Level*0.5+Cha mod) So at level 2 she has a pool of 3 Ki. So in theory she could be an extremely effective evasion offtank.  Some levels are like this, where you don't get a lot besides maybe one ability and some skillpoints. At least we can now put our Ki abilities to use in combat!  Camellia gets Evil Eye as a hex. This lets her put a debuff, including crucially -AC, on an enemy for a turn. There are ways to extend it later on.  Wendy is trading in her bow for throwing axes. The goal here is to set her up to throw a bunch of axes per round. She's gonna be a mainstay in our party because of her super high potential damage output.  Seelah is going to be going down the route of Paladin, sure. But for level 2, we want to take her down the Oracle path. You'll see why in just a minute.  She's gonna be a bitey gal.  Nature domain...  And here's why. Paladins get a free mount eventually, but it's automatically a warhorse. I want her to have a dire wolf instead. This is critical to my plans.  The rest doesn't matter. The critical part here was Nature Domain for a companion at level 2.  And he's here already! A wolf has just phased into existence and is now following Seelah like a lost puppy. And we can level him up! We'll be doing that in a minute. First let's continue with the plot...   It's this rear end in a top hat from the opening! An elderly man in expensive but not ostentatious clothes approaches you. His face is peppered with several healed cuts and bruises and twisted in an expression of extreme discontent. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Horgus Gwerm. Yes, that Gwerm — you no doubt have heard of me if you've spent any time at all in the city. I have a business proposition for you." "Your name tells me nothing. Who are you?" "You truly are freshly arrived in the city, then? You couldn't have picked a worse time, that's for certain. Only just arrived, and the city's been razed to rubble! You should know that you are looking at one of the richest and most distinguished men in Kenabres. I may not be as well known as certain swaggering loudmouths who spend their lives traipsing from one ball to the next... But the Gwerm trading company is one of the pillars of the city, I'll have you know! Did you see the marquees in the square? I paid for those. Tried any festival delicacies? You have Horgus Gwerm to thank for that!" "How did you end up here?" For a moment Horgus's eyes focus on Camellia before his gaze returns to you. "Like everyone else — down I went when that accursed beetle cleaved the ground in twain beneath our feet. I'm lucky I didn't break my neck in the fall, and I'm doubly lucky that I didn't encounter any subterranean cockroaches on my blind wanderings and instead came across hunters from this settlement. Although I must say that when I first glimpsed their physiognomies, my life flashed before my very eyes... But they turned out to be decent chaps. Frightening to look at, but able to keep a bargain." "What kind of business proposition?" "I don't know what is happening on the surface right now, but I am determined to find out. You have no intention of seeing out the rest of your days in this village, I suspect. We must find a route back to the surface, to the city. If there's anything left of it. You are strong, it will be no trouble to you. But I, alas, am not as fit as I once was. I can't go crawling about through caves, playing at scouts. My proposition is simple: lead me back to the city and I shall pay you a thousand gold coins." "I suggest we help this man. It is good to have friends among the Kenabres elite." "Deal." "Splendid. In the meantime, I shall sit here, in the village." "We have to go." "Go on, go on. Don't forget our agreement: when you find the way out — be sure to tell me!" A quick peek at our quests.  I dunno, the Mongrels seem to be pretty decent hosts if nothing else. And paying $1000 to secure safe passage out with the only people interested in leaving is just good business sense.   Around the corner, we find Horgus and Anevia sitting at a table. "This tragedy may not have happened if you'd spent less time surveilling honest citizens and more time tracking the real spies and demon worshipers!" "Brilliant idea. How come I didn't think of it? Now if only the cultists would tell us they were cultists... Then we wouldn't have to waste time investigating honest citizens who decide to go all cloak and dagger right under our noses!" Let's ask a bunch of probing questions! "What's the bad blood between you two about?" "It's an old matter... Ms. Tirabade here had the notion of spying on me, then of rummaging through my goods. I ask you, do I look like a cultist? Hmph!" "Cultists don't tend to look like cultists, y'know, that's kinda the whole problem. And you, Mr. Gwerm, built a whole secret operation of buying and smuggling into the city — what was it? — oh yeah, magical weapons. How was I s'posed to know that all the rigmarole with middlemen was so you could anonymously donate supplies to the crusade?" "Don't you see? I have a reputation to uphold, one that I value most highly. Horgus Gwerm is a hard-nosed businessman, not a good fairy from a tale. Yes, I care about my city. Yes, I wished to see that its defenders — my defenders! — were well fed, healthy, and well armed. But to make those donations openly was unthinkable — I might as well hang a sign outside my door welcoming in every sponger, leech, and parasite in the city!" "I appreciate your help for the crusade. No jokes, you're an all right bloke. But carrying on secret dealings in a city that's teeming with cultists is a huge pain in the backside for us lot whose job it is to keep an eye on that sort of thing." "Anevia, how's the leg?" Anevia scrunches up her nose. "Well, it hasn't fallen off yet — so that's good. They've bandaged me up all nice, and smeared some stinking stuff on the wound, so it looks like I'm gonna live! They said wait a day and I'll be right as rain. So I'm waitin'." "What do you think is happening in the city now?" "Perhaps the city is no more! If Deskari himself appeared, there's no telling how bad things are." "Can you hold off on writing our obituaries just yet? The city's full of fighters. And besides that, it's barely a stone's throw from Nerosyan. I think our people will hold on long enough for reinforcements to come from the Queen. This ain't Deskari's home turf — he's gonna have to retreat or else fight off the whole Mendevian army." "What do you think of the Mongrels?" "I thought they were just a story — the sort of thing drunks in the taverns would come out with! Now I discover that it's true. Well, what can I possibly think of them? The poor creatures are most unfortunate, with their faces and their minds so deformed. It's a miracle they're even alive." "The part that boggles my mind is that they're the descendants of the first crusaders. All these years they've been living beneath our feet, in caves, in the dirt... If I'd known the legends about them were true, I'd have dedicated my life to getting them out of this place." "To what end? The people of Kenabres would have stoned them on sight, and Prelate Hulrun would have had them tossed on the pyre en masse. Whatever the ills of this place, it is their home. How long do you think they would have survived on the surface?" "What are you going to do when you get back to the surface?" "I'm going to go home. Last I knew, I owned a very fine mansion — I shall see if it's still standing or if I am now homeless." "I'm going to find Irabeth. She's my wife and the leader of the Eagle Watch. As long as she lives, she won't allow Kenabres to fall." "We have to go." "Go on then, and don't dilly-dally. The sooner we get out of here, the likelier we are to find some people still alive up there!" "Take care of yourself." Next up, time to level up the pupper. We're going with bully. I can't remember if it's because wolves get innate trip, or if bully just lets them do it with their primary attack. It really doesn't matter anyway. The point is that, one way or another, bully lets wolves trip enemies. Now why would we want to do that? Tell me, do you know what an attack of opportunity is? The short version is that it's a free attack you get on something because it did something (or moved) when you were nearby. Wizards casting spells in melee range provoke AOOs, as do anyone moving past an enemy to get somewhere else. Enemies that have been tripped provoke an AOO from anything nearby when they stand up. On top of that, prone enemies get maluses to their AC score. So a wolf animal companion can shut down difficult encounters and make them take a shitload of damage when they stand back up. There are a lot of feats out there that make attacks of opportunity better. Or they allow multiple AOOs against a single target. Do you see where I'm going with this? This dog here is going to be the team's MVP... he just doesn't realize it yet.  Doggos are pretty well suited to taking Athletics, Mobility, and Perception as tagged skills. I take the top two because of his ability scores.  Fury's Fall lets him use his Dex bonus in addition to his Strength Bonus when using trip.  I asked the question upthread after getting Seelah her level, and I couldn't wait to record until after you all had answered. So Cookie is his temporary name, because that seems like the sort of thing Seelah would name her pet dog. I'll rename him later on with whatever you guys decide!   Cookie also gets a second level and all he gets are some skill points to spend. That's fine, he does his job well and doesn't need a lot of extras. At the next opportunity, we'll be getting Seelah a feat to make him level up with her. But that's gonna be several levels off.  I also turn off most of the cheat options I had selected. I found a better way to handle functionally unlimited inventory weight than making equipment weigh nothing. (I just multiplied the carry weight by 10 in the Toybox settings instead, which lets me fine tune it.)  Moving further past the bickering pair, we find Dyra. She's the vendor for this area.  "Who are you?"Dyra: "The people round here call me all sorts: Dyra the Hoarder, Dyra the Coin, Dyra the City Girl... Like that's a bad thing, ha ha! I trawl the caves picking up all kinds of things from the surface that wash down here through your sewers. I trade all kinds of junk for food and clothes, but I only part with my best finds for coins. Got no coins? Forget what money is? Well then I have no use for you. If you want city goods, you need to pay for them with gold, like city folk!" "Why are you so eager to trade with me?"Dyra: "Because all the people here are no better than animals now!" Dyra yells with surprising anger, before being overcome with coughing. Wiping her mouth, she continues: "Our forefathers lived in the city — like you. Our people love to reminisce about armies, knights, crusades... But I couldn't care less about that. Savages with clubs can fight a war. Only civilized folk can buy and sell! They've all forgotten what trading is. They've forgotten the value of gold. They barter hides for plant roots and go on about the feats of the crusaders. Who cares about them — I don't need help remembering! I have coins and I have things to sell. Now let's trade like proper city folk!" "Let's trade." The trade screen is nothing special. One of the mods adds a Bulk Selling button which lets you sell junk from your inventory.  Junk is kind of a broad term, though. This early on, Masterwork stuff is better than what most of the party is carrying around. But masterwork great swords do none of us any good, so there's no point in saving them. We'll find a lot more. So sell them!  I wind up selling her most of my crap while buying a single throwing axe for Wendy.  Finally we arrive at the hut Chief Sull mentioned. Lann is gonna leave once we click this button, so get your goodbyes in now. Time Passed: 9H 0M  Let's not be a complete dipshit and ask what Wendy is talking about. "Lann won't get in our way? Where is he?" "On the way to his death, if he decided to go it alone. Or maybe he's in a hole somewhere, crying about how lonely he is. I don't care either way." "Are we just going to leave Horgus and Anevia here?" "Getting you all out at once will be difficult. We'll let the injured woman recover. Do you think I like knowing there are uplanders sitting in our village? But trying to drag an injured person through the Maze would be suicide. And don't even get me started on the other one — he's not going to get off his backside unless we send a litter to carry him." "Were you watching me sleep or something?" Wenduag snorts and turns away. "You think I like looking at uplanders? I've got better things to do! Don't think you're special."Wendy will use this line to talk about your character's race. She doesn't seem too interested in a half-elf, though. She would have been deeply interested in Pressli because halflings are tiny and to survive for so long while being so small means she has a lot of strength. Wenduag, by the way, is powersexual. She doesn't care what gender someone is or isn't, she's just attracted to the strong. "Let's go. It's time to get out of here." Wenduag nods. "Right. And another thing. You could have chosen not to listen to me, but you did. That means you have real strength in you. A strong person can take the truth, even if they don't like it. And the truth was on my side. I want to say..." Wenduag averts her eyes. "Thank you. You saved the tribe from a stupid mistake. They're alive now because of you. Now let's go to the boats. We'll get there fastest by water."  I think this is a really good spot to call things now. Next time? The real first dungeon of the game. The prologue is quickly drawing to a close! Encyclopedia Golarionnica Nerosyan Hulrun
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Jul 13, 2022 20:01
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inscrutable horse posted:Oh Jesus, please don't tell me Wendy is going all tsundere on Lisbeth. That is exactly what she's doing.
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Jul 15, 2022 14:42
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 Loading screens give gameplay hints and tips. Sometimes they're really badly timed. This particular hint won't even come into play until act 3. We're not even into act 1 yet. Anyway, hello everyone and welcome back. Today we're going into the Shield Maze.   Let's set up the formation first. Seelah can't ride Cookie yet, so they'll take the lead while the rest of the party fans out behind them. Wendy is in the back because she's ranged support.  If we'd picked Lann, all the various Neather tribes would be assembled here, and they'd be waiting for the right time to move in. Lann would suggest we scout ahead to mark the way for them. But because we picked Wendy, it's just us by ourselves.  The door is wide open for Lann, but with Wendy we have to "squeeze through." I guess it's the difference between an outright assault and sneaking in. Enough about could-have-beens, however. I'm not as well versed in what they look like past this point, but I've done the Shield Maze some half dozen times or more.  The inside is pretty well furnished.  A well-carved bas-relief of Baphomet. Hmm...  I mentioned it before, but this isn't a maze. It's a temple. The way through isn't difficult, it's basically straightforward - there's only two major divergences from the otherwise linear path through the temple. And while it's true that those divergences are actually fairly lengthy, it's not exactly a complicated layout regardless. And we're forced down both divergences during exploration anyway.  The primary enemies in the maze are Baphomet cultists and their various buddies. I'm not gonna call out most encounters unless they're particularly noteworthy. So this should be a pretty brisk jog through the "maze." Also didn't Wendy say that she had been in the maze multiple times? These cultists look pretty well established here. We'll see a little later on that they have a fully furnished kitchen, dining room, and barracks. So it's not like they're recent arrivals. Curious...  Let's take a closer look at that thing in the floor.  This little set piece is a really good tutorial without any words. Allow me to explain.  The orange-red thing on the floor is a trap, of course. By turning the camera into the wall, we can see exactly where the trap originates from (the little indentation in the wall), we can see its area of effect (the trapezoid), and we can see the disarming trigger (the switch on the wall.) I'm sure the game has a tutorial pop-up explaining it here, but I've turned those off and also forced off all tutorials in Toybox. But even without the pop ups, once you realize you're looking at a trap, you can basically intuit everything important about it from this shot. It's quite clever in that regard! Disarming traps uses the trickery skill. Camellia technically has a higher score than Lisbeth (13 vs 12) but both are more than enough to cover the entirety of the Shield Maze.  Moving on, we can see just why I love wolf/dog bully companions so much. Those attacks of opportunity are Seelah, Camellia, and Lisbeth all stabbing the poo poo out of this poor guy when he stands back up. Rare is the combat where you won't see an explosion of "Attack of Opportunity" appear out of the melee pile at some point! It's free damage and it happens a lot.  More evidence these cultists are well-established down here. Wendy got some 'splainin' to do.  Ahhh. This is something Toybox does that I really like. There's a million books you can read in the game, and most of them are just flavor text. But some special books will give you a small stat boost when you read them. Toybox will (or should) automatically flag those with a yellow background. It does the same thing for scrolls that your non-spontaneous casters haven't yet learned.  Free Weapon Training (Glaive)! Not entirely useful for Lisbeth, but I'm not gonna cry about a free feat.  This is either a dining room or a meeting room. And on the far side...  We find some Corrupted Mongrels. Very, very curious...  After we kill them, we talk to Wendy about it. Wenduag looks at the mongrel's corpse, her lip curling, and then turns away. "Well? Are we going or what?" "You never told me this maze was crawling with cultists." "I didn't because there weren't any. Looks like they got here the same way you did — they fell from the surface." [Perception check passed] "The Maze doesn't look like the mysterious place you've made it out to be. Looks more like a cultists' den to me, and a well-established one at that." "The Maze has always been full of traps and subterranean monsters. And now it's got cultists as well. What does it matter to you?" Wenduag studies you with narrowed eyes. "I promised to lead you to the surface and that's what I'm doing. You do not belong here. Let's go." She turns away."Gained 4 experience Wendy is very obviously lying to us here. And Lisbeth saw right through it.  It's a very lovely place.  Anyway, this room has three exits. One of the major divergences I mentioned happens here. We need to go that way first anyway, so let's set out.  But first, another side room. This one is special because it has something of a mini-boss inside. Cultist Champions have a lot of AC, which makes them particular bastards to hit at level 2 like we are.  I put it on turn based to demonstrate, actually. Cookie rolled high on his initiative, so he went first. His first attack knocked the champion right over. Remember what I said about being prone?  All the AC in the world don't mean poo poo when you're lying on the ground getting the poo poo kicked out of you.  Seelah, who is currently under the effects of Enlarge Person and the Light spell, is still in melee range thanks to her increased reach.  It never gets old. Also note that while the enemy does have maluses to AC while prone, you aren't guaranteed hits against them. Sometimes you just roll low.  While we're in this room, I mouse over a trap disarm switch on the wall. It controls the trap in the next hallway, so we'll just turn that off before we even see it.  Moving on, we descend some stairs into a flooded basement.  And a little further past that, we can see why. One of the walls has collapsed and water is flooding in through it.  Also there's this mysterious box. I had originally written up that I'd never been able to force my characters to spot it. But in the spirit of S C I E N C E, I have loaded up a prior save file and used Toybox to set everyone's perception to 250 base. Even with 5 characters with enough perception to spot anything else in the game from clear across the map, the hidden spot still won't trigger. So it's probably legitimately just a bugged interaction. There's a similar spot much later in the game. I'll point it out when we reach it.  We're tearing right through the hapless cultists without a lot of trouble. Outside of the rare mini-boss monsters, most encounters have trouble even hitting us before we merc them.   This encounter drops a magical ring. I think it's a +1 AC ring. But because the party is collectively not very good at arcane lore, nobody can identify it. We'll have to wait until we enter act 1 and get the next companion in a couple updates.  Deskari really messed up Kenabres, both physically and politically. The city, after this mini cataclysm, is in for some dark days ahead.  Anyway, the second basement is ahead. You can actually see the water cascading down both the stairs and the walls. So within a few days, this "maze" is gonna be unusable.   This person, the Hand of Hosilla, is our target.  The note he's holding is what we're after!  What a nice lady.   There are two fights remaining in the basement - this one and the water elemental mentioned in Hosilla's orders. This fight is pretty dangerous because it's a big group against our own.  Low level Pathfinder combat sucks. It's a million missed rolls and the ones that do hit are deadly as hell. Camellia went down during the fight and Cookie very nearly joined her. It was all thanks to the Brute enemy who hit like a truck and dodged like Ali. Once he went down, the rest folded like a house of cards. Our reward for finishing the fight?  "This door's got a strong lock on it. You'll break every lockpick you have and it still won't budge. Believe me, I've tried."  This is about the only decent reward in the lot. It's a pretty alright early-game scalemail, perfect for Seelah. But we can't identify it yet. So onto the pile it goes for now.  Before we take on the Water Elemental, I'm gonna have the party make camp. The buff spells ran out a while back and we've been feeling their loss ever since. We're gonna need to be at our best for the water elemental, who is an optional super hard boss encounter.  Hitting the 'R' key will bring out a ghost icon of the party's camp. Just stick it somewhere where it's green and...  As you might imagine, you can't rest in the ankle-deep water. That doesn't make for very good sleeping.  This brings up the camping menu. Seelah will do her best to put down protective rituals, Lisbeth will (somehow) camouflage the camp, while Wendy will take second watch. But wait... we're missing someone.  Against what I'm sure are endless protests, Camellia is not gonna get a free pass because she's "nobility" and "doesn't have to work." Her rear end is taking the first night watch shift. Everyone in the party, pets excluded, can only do one job. So while Lisbeth is better suited to doing night watch than Camellia, Liz is also the better person to do camouflage. Night Watch tends to be where those who can't do anything else wind up. Time Passed: 1H 0M  Seelah is kinda dumb. Shaman wield nature magics like druids. "What does it matter where the power comes from? What matters is it's on our side."Time Passed: 8H 0M  Corruption is a mechanic that won't pop up too much yet. It plays a bigger role later in the game as a way to mitigate you spending weeks out in the field. The short version is that Lisbeth (in particular) has a bar that fills when she camps out. This bar is how much the corruption of the Abyss is affecting her. The bar can be emptied if she rests in a sanctified location, or if she makes use of rare holy items to purge it. If the bar fills up all the way, we get a game over because, presumably, the corruption takes her over and kills her/transforms her into a demon.  Now that we're rested up, let's hit the buff button and get into a fight. I'll explain this later on when we have more than 3 spells to show off. But this is the Bubble Buffs mod. It automates casting buffs for you by casting them all simultaneously. It still uses daily spell slots to do it, so this is just streamlining what would otherwise be a tedious process.  Dmitry V. Silantyev - Champions of the Abyss (This is one of my personal favorite tracks in the game!) I put this in turn based mode too, but it's actually a pretty simple fight. You see, most enemies can be knocked prone. So all we need to do is get Cookie to land a single hit. Camellia is trying to land Evil Eye (-AC) on the elemental, while Seelah is using this...  On reflection, this water elemental is not evil. So I don't know why I expected Smite Evil to work against it. But it's supposed to make enemies easier to hit. Most enemies in the game are evil, so this is a good tactic in most other situations.  This is why the water elemental is so dangerous. It missed three of its targets and crit two others. So Camellia and Cookie both immediately dropped to critical HP from a single attack.  Cookie doesn't successfully land a trip attack until turn 3, when most of the elemental's HP has been depleted. It dies before its next turn comes up.  During the fight, Lisbeth used her "Summon Nature's Ally" ability, which summoned a shade named "Woljif". Okay then?  More evidence this was a well-entrenched cultist base. Wendy's gonna have a lot of 'splainin' to do.  This ring is our prize for taking on the water elemental and living. It adds minor resistance to frost. I have never used it. This entire encounter is the definition of "absolutely not worth it."  Believe it or not, we're more than halfway through the "maze" now. All that remains is one smaller side branch and that's it. I originally wanted to cut the update here, because we've covered a lot of ground. Then I looked at the length. This update, right now, is half the size of the previous one despite covering 10x as much gameplay. So let's keep going.  This is the bunk room I mentioned earlier. Bear in mind that we're only two rooms away from the start of the dungeon. Most of what we've covered so far has been a gigantic technically-not-optional branch.  Take a look! We fought the elemental in the room on the far right. We entered in the middle bottom, above the winding cave passage.  Another cultist champion shows up in this small storeroom. He goes down like a chump thanks to Cookie.   A usable torch on the wall opens up a secret passage full of  This is the second half of the chapel we walked into at the start of the update. So all the progress we've made thus far has been closing the loop. There's no shortcut back, but running back, if we had to for some reason, wouldn't add much more than 30 seconds.  This is the blood pool that Hosilla mentioned. Lizzy decided to donate some of the cultists' blood to it.  And this is the torch Hosilla mentioned in her orders. We'll need to go in here to get a key to open the inner sanctum.  Straight across the hall. Business first, then exploring!  The second Hand of Hosilla is hanging out in here.  Wendy and Lann both said, as I recall, that this was an ancient maze. And yet these bodies look pretty fresh. I have no idea what's going on anymore.  This is an identical copy of Hosilla's Orders. Unless I'm mistaken, you can't get in here without finding the first copy. The key's what we're after anyway - it opens the way to the exit. And we could head straight there! But there's loot to be found first.  We find a wrecked cage in a nearby room full of monitor lizards.  Smashing a few jerks...  More junk in a hidden room...  And top top things off, a couple of earth elementals in this chamber. These are presumably the same ones that killed the maze builders.  If there's one thing the maze is good for, it's giving you a bunch of Cure Light Wounds potions.  This looks like progress, but it's not. This leads the way to a pretty hidden side chamber, and the whole reason we even came this way in the first place.  This nasty torture chamber has some trash enemies, sure.  But it also has a little puzzle in it. If I were a better LPer, I would have secretly shown the answer to this earlier. The answer was just out of sight in a screenshot much earlier in the update. Let's go take a look!  This was in that big meeting chamber... the one we camped in. Yellow-Blue-Red-Yellow. Easy enough!   Inside, a cutscene takes over.  Liz and Seelah walk up to this altar, and Seelah touches it. Dmitry V. Silantyev - Crusade Victory Theme Seelah peers closely at the sword, which seems utterly unexceptional to you. "Wait, this is... No, it can't be!" Her eyes light up. "I know that hilt! Radiance, the sword of the great Yaniel, that's what this is. But... it's meant to be in the Tower of Estrod with all the other relics... That's what I heard, at least." "Well, of course this rusted piece of metal must be that very same sword!" Camellia rolls her eyes. "I think you merely wish that this were the illustrious sword of legend." "You don't get it — I've seen this sword a hundred times, in paintings and in the hands of the Yaniel statue. I've even thought of going to the Estrod museum to see the real thing in person... How did it get here?"Items Received: Radiance "What's so special about it?" Seelah frowns. "Now... nothing, I guess. But this sword was legendary in its day! People say that when Yaniel held it, the blade would glow, striking demons left and right. Soldiers would see Radiance's light from afar and take heart, rushing into the fray and winning. But I don't know what's wrong with it now, or how to restore its power. All I can sense is that they made a mockery of it." "You're empathizing with an object? Extraordinary. Are all paladins so tender-hearted and sensitive?"", "Sensitive in a way, yes. We're highly attuned to evil and everything wrought by demons. Radiance was in evil hands, and, as a paladin, I can tell you they did nothing good to it." "Who's Yaniel?" "No! You've never heard of Yaniel? She's famous all over Golarion! She was a great woman. She was born in Mendev, and when the crusade started, she couldn't just sit idly by. She dedicated her life to the crusade. People say she was audacious and spirited: she was always the first into battle and she never sacrificed other peoples' lives for a tactical advantage." "That's how she's been remembered: as an incredible warrior who seemed to blaze with righteous fury. In all the images of her, she looks capable of driving all the demons back to the Abyss single-handedly! But then something happened between her and her commanders. Maybe they envied her, maybe there was more to it than that, I don't know. But anyway, she went into the Worldwound without her fellow soldiers... and she didn't just survive the mission, she even brought back crusaders she rescued in there! Can you imagine?" "She died as she lived — proudly. She was covering the escape of the refugees fleeing Drezen — that's where she perished. She wasn't even forty, very young for a half-elf. But I guess I don't have to explain that to you! You half-elves live twice as long as we do. If you think about it, the crusades aren't even a hundred years old. That's how little time separates us from the heroes of legend. Yaniel could still have been alive today... But fate decided otherwise." "You know a lot about Yaniel. Are you a fan of hers or something?" "I suppose you could say that." Seelah chuckles. "I've always felt an affinity with Yaniel. I know what it's like to not be what your commanders want you to be. Whenever I used to feel under pressure, I always thought of Yaniel: maybe some people didn't like how she was, but to the people she pulled out of the Worldwound, she was perfect. And to the people she saved on the battlefield, she was incredible. And to those who keep her memory alive, she is a hero. That's what counts." "How could a priceless relic end up down here?" "Yaniel disappeared, but by some miracle Radiance was recovered from the battle. No one else has ever wielded it — it is Yaniel's blade and always will be. That's why it was put in the Tower of Estrod with the other crusade relics. But now it turns out that somebody stole it..." Seelah laughs. "I have this weird feeling, like I'm rescuing a fellow warrior from a dungeon. We can't just abandon it, even if it's no use to us. It's no use to anyone down here. But what if it could be repaired?" "Let's keep going." Right now Radiance is still a scythe because of the nature of the GreatRadiance mod. But we can easily change that, and I'm aiming to do so! But I'm also going to work on getting Lisbeth up to Chaotic Good so she can use it in her main hand. As we progress through the game, Radiance will occasionally upgrade. And when it does, it's always spectacular. In the hands of a good-aligned hero, it becomes a best in slot demon murdering implement.  Alright, all the way back out we go. We're going clear across the hall in that large chapel, to the door opposite where we just left. In here are some Dretches and a demon summoning ritual circle. Dretches are super low level demons, but they're priority targets all the way up through the end of the game. You see, Dretches are one of the few demons that are likely to cast crowd control spells that shut down a large chunk of your party.   For the sake of keeping these short, I'm gonna call the update here. The end of the dungeon is just through that door, but there is a lot of talking coming up. I saved before and after the upcoming bits and there's more than 25 minutes of difference between the two saves! So join me next time when we confront whatever evil lurks at the end of this maze, and then hopefully escape up into Kenabres. Encyclopedia Golarionnica Tome of the Minotaur - Sermons from the Labyrinth Hosilla's Orders Almost New Diary Drezen
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Jul 18, 2022 00:07
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achtungnight posted:I think you mean Radiance is a sword, not a scythe. In most games players who don’t use long swords with their main character will probably give it to Seelah. It's definitely a scythe right now.
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Jul 18, 2022 00:41
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Lord Koth posted:I'll admit, it's a bit strange that the mod which allows you to swap what kind of weapon Radiance is defaults to a scythe. No real insightful comment here, it's just odd. Also regarding Radiance, this is actually a point where your class choice matters - if you're playing a Paladin, it immediately becomes a +1 weapon rather than being stuck at masterwork for a while. It's currently a scythe because before I started the LP, I was playing the proof of concept of Zenic's run. So I installed the scythe version to give it a test run. The way the mod is set up, you have to specifically download a file that changes it into a specific type of weapon. Once we get into Act 1 proper, I'm gonna change it into either a dagger or a kama or something for Lisbeth to use as her mainhand.
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Jul 18, 2022 01:46
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 Hello everyone and welcome back. Today we're opening up with another rest because the buffs ran out again and I want to be ready for the boss fight ahead. This also lets me showcase what is perhaps my least favorite mechanic in Wrath of the Righteous.  Let must just zoom in here. Do you see it yet?  For some reason, the game has it set that you can only rest once in a 24 hour period. So the last time we did this, mid last update, we got to rest for 9 hours. Because of this inexplicable limitation, we now have to camp out for twenty four hours to get the same amount of rest that 9 gave us not 15 minutes ago. Why are we resting twice in 15 minutes? Because spell slots are a bullshit system that I hate. I will not be accepting questions at this time. And, no, toggling off "use recommended rest period" also does not work. The engine itself, for some reason, will not let you rest twice in 24 hours. Time Passed: 1H 0M "I stay out of your way, and you stay out of mine. If we do that, we'll get along just fine. Agreed?" "Keep away from me. We don't have to touch hands - that's for weaklings. If you have a problem with me, grab your sword and try to get rid of me. I can tell you want to, so come on!"Time Passed: 23H 0M  Moving on, we head through the door and down some stairs.    This demon does not take praising Iomedae well. Savamelekh: "Here you are... huddled together like a herd of animals... pitiful monsters, not human or demon. Even tieflings are less defective than you! But I, your master Savamelekh, can make you better, stronger. I can satisfy your hunger, starvelings of the dark... Submit to me!" Mongrel: "No! We are the descendants of crusaders! Trusting a demon would be a betrayal of their memory!" Savamelekh: "Hosilla."  Hosilla puts down the Mongrel who denied Savamelekh. Hosilla: "Well? Who is the next 'descendant of crusaders' who values old legends more than their life?" Savamelekh: "Beasts... monsters in human guise... reveal your true nature! This is the sweet, wholesome flesh of a righteous aasimar! Eat, 'underground crusaders'! Eat the flesh of the crusader from above! Find your true strength!"  The mongrels are greedily cannibalizing the Aasimar. If you are, somehow, not aware - Aasimar are the descendants of celestial beings, usually angels or devas, who mate with a mortal woman. So Savamelekh is corrupting the mongrels' souls by having them eat basically sanctified flesh. All those mindless mongrels we fought as encounters in this very dungeon had the same thing happen to them.   As they eat, an infernal glow overtakes their bodies.  The first time this happened, I thought I had skipped something. But no, as soon as that ends, you're standing in front of Savamelekh for no reason. Your companions writhe in agony: one clutches at their head, another doubles over. You feel saliva pool in your mouth. The metallic tang awakens hunger in you. The hunger turns to rage. This winged filth dares to try to bind you to its will? It dares to tempt you with the sweet scent of meat, untainted by corruption! The wretch must die! Die! And still the clarity remains with you. Somewhere deep down, beneath the veil of rage and anger, you sense the light trying to break through. There is no mechanical benefit to selecting Demon here. In fact, it makes things a little harder in a couple places later on. Lisbeth is also not a ragelord. So... [Requires Angel Mythic Path] [Seize the light hidden within you] By sheer force of will, you master your rage, and, almost in response, warmth suffuses you from within. Warmth and joy from a simple realization: you can win. You can save these people. The power of Heaven bolsters and guides you. Its light breaks free and, enveloping the mongrels, grants them the gift of blissful oblivion. Lowering your gaze, you see a scarlet stain on your chest — the wound has reopened, and instead of blood pouring forth, you see only radiant light! Bolt of Justice posted:Level: 6 Lisbeth just used a level 6 Mythic ability from the Angel tree. Normally you don't get access to level 6 Mythic abilities like this until the middle of Act 4. Using the demon option would have just had her direct her rage at Savamelekh and he would get spooked and run off.  Savamelekh: The demon convulses in pain when the light reaches him. "What are you? Destroy this vermin!"  In a single blow, she knocked out the poor afflicted mongrels, stunned Savamelekh, and scared him enough to send him packing. Just as a reminder, you all did not vote for the angel path where we could do this sort of poo poo on the regular. Hosilla: Hosilla points at you. "She's already wounded! Wenduag — kill!" Oh no. I'm totally surprised by this. Who would have expected the woman who was acting shady was really in league with demons? Anyway. Wenduag takes a step forward. "I no longer serve you, you bitch! Not you, or your flying monkey! I always fight with the strongest side." Lann emerges from the shadows, nocking an arrow in his bow as he moves. "What'd I miss? A dramatic showdown?" "Oh it's you. Perfect." I'll give you a guess how this goes. Hosilla is not nearly as hard as the Champions we fought before, let alone the water elemental. Legitimately less than 10 seconds later   Hosilla is hidden behind Seelah's gigantic shield.  Wendy shoots Hosilla unceremoniously after the latter summons... two Quasits. Sure, okay.  Quasits aren't exactly a difficult encounter. Less than a second of focused fire kills them. Before we move on, this is something that makes me laugh. Zenic would have worshipped Urgathoa, goddess of the undead among other things. You see, the game likes to occasionally make calls regarding your chosen god and... The Path Not Taken posted:Some lines from Urgathoa's sacred text float into your mind, as if of their own volition. You can make a great marinade for aasimar flesh using honey and pomegranate juice... To make the meat even more tender, roll it in breadcrumbs before frying... I can't promise to show off every alternate dialogue with god choice, because this  "Keep telling yourself that, Lann. There is always a choice. They could have chosen to die, but now they're going to live and become stronger! I know that from personal experience." Lann turns to her, his face twisted in fury — the lizard half is snarling, the eye narrowed. "Shut up!" The words come out like a growl. "You're not just a traitor! You're a monster! The young ones, they believed your stories, and you lured them to a demon and watched them eat human flesh!" "I was trying to make them strong! What have you done for them? What were you doing while I was looking for ways to bring strength to our tribe? You're useless, Lann!" "I led by example! I trained. I tried to become stronger so I could go to the surface and maybe do something worthwhile with my stupidly short life! And I will do it, if Lisbeth will have me. I might be the one to bring our whole tribe to the surface! But you... Why would you want any power that turns you into a monster? These young guys and girls, they trusted you, and they were turned into mindless animals, ready to eat corpses at a demon's command!" "I went through the same ritual as them, and I didn't become an animal. I conquered my anger, the anger that has been building and building in every one of us for decades! Unlike you, I have no intention of just lying down and politely accepting death! I will rise above all this, while you'll still be stuck with your pride, chewing on rats!" This is going to be an incredibly involved conversation. And this is entirely why I split this update away from the previous one. [Inspect the wound on your chest] The bleeding, deep wound on your chest is gone, like it was never there in the first place. The skin is totally smooth and unmarred. Sighing loudly, Lann whispers: "It's gone... It was just there, and now... it's gone. It's got to be some kind of demonic trickery. You need to have a cleric look at that." "Ha! As if you know anything about demons and their powers! Some dark force cast its gaze on her and chose her from among all others. There is magic inside this uplander that is beyond your meagre understanding, and all you have to say is, 'Go see a cleric'? You're pathetic, Lann!"I really hope every time she checks the wound, she isn't baring her chest. Nobody needs to see half-elf boobs that often. "Lann, how did you find your way here?" Lann offers a vague shrug. "I just kept going until I found it. You can find a way into anywhere if you try hard enough. And besides, I also remembered some of this traitor's stories. At least some of them were true. But that doesn't matter now! We need to tell Sull everything! And then we need to get out of here." "'We'? You think you're the one going to the surface with them? Isn't that sweet?"Seriously, this is a large temple. It's about as straightforward as you can possibly get. If it weren't for the rubble in the middle of the chapel, you'd be able to get through it in about a minute. "So you've been serving Savamelekh this whole time, Wenduag?" "Better to serve a strong master than to eke out an existence in a dark hole with no hope. I am of the neathers, our lives are short, but we are hardier than humans. I realized a long time ago that I was capable of more than this life offered, and I follow whomever is the strongest. You..." Wenduag's eyes gleam. "You scared Savamelekh. Hosilla has fallen. Now I wish to serve you." Lann looks at Wenduag in disgust. "I thought you were proud of your heritage, but you're willing to crawl on your belly before anyone who's even a little stronger than you. You say you didn't become an animal? What a joke! Only animals pledge their allegiance to whoever has the sharpest teeth! But what am I saying? Even cave spiders are loyal to their mother. You're even lower than that." Wenduag laughs. "Oh, so now you think you know everything about me! You're one of the best hunters in the tribe, it benefited me to ingratiate myself with you, so I acted in a way that pleased you. And Lisbeth will get the Wenduag that she} wants to see. I'm willing to do anything to get out of this hole!" Wenduag's laughter cuts off sharply. "And you're willing to do anything too, don't try to hide it. I know you, Lann. I've had time to study you." "I'm going to the surface only because my time has come to leave. Lisbeth and the other uplanders are in danger, they need all the help they can get. But I'm only risking my own life, see the difference? I'll do whatever the crusade asks of me, but I'll never be like you!" "Why didn't you try to stop us from going inside the Maze? You knew we might uncover your secret." "Savamelekh is always in need of new servants. You'd make as good a servant as anyone else. And then..." Wenduag bursts into laughter. "Once you'd gone missing in the Maze, not even the redoubtable Lann would've dared look for you." "But then why did you come with me to look for the sword?" "So I could kill you quietly if you found it, and stop you taking it to the village, you idiot! I would have told everyone that you got caught in a cave-in. But then the uplanders showed up and I had to change my plans. I don't regret what I did. I met you, Lisbeth. Just say the word and all the neathers will be yours. I'll bring them to you if you take me with you!"It's a wonder anyone chose Wendy for their first time because she's so blatantly evil here, that not even evil characters would realistically want to take her on. She's just demonstrated she betrays people at the drop of a hat. "What exactly are you planning to do with the mongrels?" "What you saw here. They will become stronger. They will be an army unlike anything ever seen before on Golarion! Our lives may be short, but while we live, we are faster, deadlier, and harder to kill than most. I am offering you an army, an army that will win you land, power, and everything you desire." "An army of cannibals? Are you insane? You want to turn them from rational beings into rabid beasts that only want to kill! They will be slaves, and you will be their slave driver. Is that the kind of power you're so desperate to gain?" "I went through the same process they did. The beast raged inside me. My mind was foggy. But I have an iron will, and I never back down. I snatched victory from the jaws of insanity! If there are any individuals worthy of becoming my officers among those neathers, they will be able to do the same." "You said you went through the same ritual. Does that mean you ate human flesh too?" "Yes." Wenduag holds your gaze. "Hosilla found me in the caves. I was lost and hungry, and she offered me a choice: die as a nobody, or live and gain the power to change everything. Savamelekh tore off a piece of an aasimar priestess's thigh. A big, juicy piece, more meat than I'd ever received in the tribe." Wenduag laughs. "That was the first time I knew what it was like to be happy, to have a full belly. I swore to myself that it would always be that way." "Then the madness and rage took over. I came very close to turning into an animal, no better than the weaklings you saw in the Maze. But I am strong. I mastered myself. I brought myself under control. I fell, so that I could rise again!" Lann looks at her in disgust. "You should have chosen death. Dying's better than living like... that." "You're saying I should have died that day, Lann? But then who would have listened to your feeble jokes? Who would have showed you the best caves for hunting?" A predatory gleam appears in Wenduag's eyes. "Who would have made you a man?" "I would have been fine without all that. And without you. Your death will make the world a slightly better place, Wenduag." "Look, Lisbeth, isn't our Lann sweet?" Wenduag's words drip with venom. "Look how his eyes blaze as he speaks of murder! And we were so close, too... Tell me, what do you think he'll do to you if you fail to live up to his precious ideals?"I don't want to say the cannibal spider-cat girl has a point, but Lann was quick to turn on Wendy the second she stopped being who he thought she was. "What did your service to Hosilla entail?" "It was simple. I lured those I deemed worthy into the Maze. To the rest I told stories of the horrors of the Maze, making them stay away. It all hung in the balance when the cave walls shuddered, and many of the young ones decided that the time of their great exodus had come. I had no doubt that Hosilla would dispatch a dozen young neathers easily — but what would become of the Maze if all the tribes poured in?" "So, when Lann ran off looking for the angel's sword, I went after him — not to help him, but to make sure that the sword never reached Neathholm. It's a pity that you got involved and stopped me from killing him... but then again, the evening gong has not yet been struck." "You sicken me." "I've heard enough." "Then you know which one of us you need. Take me with you and I will give you an army of neathers." "Don't fall for her empty words. Wenduag despises everyone but herself. As soon as you show any weakness, she'll betray you just like she betrayed us." A lot of those questions above were under the broad heading of "questions for Wenduag." Thankfully that's the majority of the discussion. Now we can start winding down. "Why do you want to come with me, Lann?" Lann rubs his forehead, right in the spot where the skin and scales meet, and catches his breath. "Up there on the surface, the crusades are still going on, right? Since I'm a mongrel, that means I've got crusader blood in my veins. You could say it's my destiny, even... Anyway, I'm ready to do my duty. And, all of you crusaders get rations, right? With vegetables? I'll be killing demons and be well fed for doing it — that's not life, that's a dream come true." "I'm sorry you trusted Wenduag instead of me, and that you didn't show the Light of Heaven to Sull. But she can be very persuasive — she honed her skills on all of us in the tribe! I'm asking you — believe me when I say that I won't let you down. I have nothing to lose down here apart from my chief's distrust and my friendship with the giant roaches. I'll do whatever the crusade needs." "The angel deemed you worthy of his power, not just his sword, to light the path in the darkness, so I can trust you too. Seems fair to me." "Are you really that desperate to go to the surface, Lann? Why didn't you run away before? You know why: the uplanders will never accept us. Don't pretend you're going for food rations. Then, why? For death? For glory? If it's death you seek, you're sure to find it." Lann calmly stares Wenduag down, his fists clenching. "Maybe I'll be able to find something on the surface that you can't get down here: a way to help the mongrels. A way to stop our tribes from having to follow scum like you." "Why do you want to help me, Wenduag?" "You think I'm just a freak from the catacombs... but neathers are faster, stronger, and tougher than you uplanders. Take me with you and I'll build you an army of neathers! I'll lure them out of this hole, we'll round them all up — every last tribe — and perform the ritual. And then..." Her cat-like gaze is locked on yours, her pupils blown wide. "You will be a power to be reckoned with on the surface! Many of the neathers will be no better than the mindless beasts we encountered in the dungeons. But there will also be those who can overcome the fog and be like me. I will lead them into battle and you will command us all!" "You trusted me from the beginning and hid the angel's light from that idiot Sull. Keep listening to me and a glorious future awaits us! Just don't become too reliant on Heaven's light." Wenduag smirks. "Remember what happened to the angel who wielded it before you.Despite how this appears, Wendy is not the patently evil option that she appears to be. She will not betray us because as powerful as demons can be, we are smart and fight with cunning. Savamelekh is a very high level demon and we sent him packing with a fraction of our potential power. Likewise, Lann is not the straightforward good choice he also appears to be. Both are extremely powerful combatants, and both are willing to offer advice if you ask. Wendy's advice is very pragmatic, while Lann's is more in keeping with his Lawful Neutral nature. Also it's extremely easy to get stuck in a romance with Lann because you were nice to him. If we choose to romance Wendy, then it'll be something we explicitly start and express interest in. "Alright, I've made my decision." "I hope we're not taking this girl with us. She'll sell us to the first demon she sees." "If we're befriending monsters in order to fight the demons, why not join forces with the strongest of them? Isn't that the rational choice? They're both equally hideous — neither of them will improve the aesthetics of our little band." "Come with me, Wenduag." Lann shakes his head. "You're making a mistake. If some priest ever winds up down here, I'll ask him to pray for your soul. But I doubt it'll help you." Wenduag's eyes gleam with triumph. "Who cares what you think? The mistress has made her choice." She turns to you. "Lann knows too much. He must die." "You're right. I know everything. And I also know where I'm not wanted. So I think I'll just go and have a chat with Sull." "Leave while I'm still in a good mood, Lann." "If this is you in a good mood, then maybe I'm lucky we're parting ways now."Even if we attacked him, he would dodge it. Nor is Lisbeth the sort of person who would do that.  Lann runs off. "He got away. Don't worry, Lann, I'll get you!" Wenduag turns to you. "Wait here, mistress, I will bring Sull and the other uplanders. We'll make sure everyone knows that Lann failed to save anyone and fled like a coward." Chief Sull: Chief Sull appears flanked by mongrels. The journey has taken its toll on him — his breath is labored and the sweat is dripping from his bloated face. "What... what'sish?" Anevia gives a low whistle. "Well, I'll be damned... Turns out old Hulrun isn't as crazy as we all thought... There really were demons down here! I should've listened and sent a patrol down here, drat it..." From the top... "You said you were in charge of reconnaissance for the Eagle Watch, Anevia. How could you miss a nest of demons beneath Kenabres?" Anevia sighs. "Yeah right, like it wasn't enough that I sniffed after every drat shadow in the city. Everybody knows the stories about the demons living beneath the streets of Kenabres — those tales are as old as the crusades themselves! I messed up, but you fixed my mistake, so... thanks." "How's your leg?" Anevia winces slightly but forces a smile. "Better than yesterday. Worse than the day before. I'm not gonna die, don't worry!" "The maze was full of dangers, but we dealt with them." Wenduag crosses her arms. "I sensed that the Maze was an evil place. And so it was. There was a demon sitting right in the center of it, with spells to dull our minds — we barely managed to overpower him." "When we reached the cultists' lair, that's when we saw Lann. He ran like the coward he is, abandoning the young ones to be mauled by the demon."Chief Sull: Sull looks at the unconscious mongrels laid out on the ground. "Yesh... Lann ish too hashty. Will we survive if we listen to people like him? No. Lann ish not one of ush. He doesh not undershtand our path. You undershtand Wenduag. You saved ush." "Always thought you were a decent sort. Respect." "You need to look after the young mongrels." "They're out for the count, but when they wake up, Chief, you'll see that these experiments have made them stronger. They survived. They're warriors now."Chief Sull: "As long as they can hunt. The resht can wait. Uplander, and you, Wenduag, you saved them. That'sh what mattersh. We will help them from here. But if they want to go up to the shurface... I don't know if I there'sh anything I can do to shtop them." "It's time to get out of here." "I'm going with the uplanders, Chief. The Maze holds no more secrets now. I have to go further."Chief Sull: Sull heaves a sigh. "Hmph... You alwaysh had to go further than everybody elshe. But what can I do? Go on then, but make shure to come back to ush somehow. But where are you going? Where'sh the way out?" "I think I've worked it out." Wenduag searches Hosilla's body and shows you some papers and a key. "If there's a key, there's a door. If there's a letter, then it was intended for someone." Anevia's eyes quickly skim over the letter and she passes it to you. "Those cheeky sons of...! This is all the information on the cultists in the city — their meeting places, passwords, their secret hideouts. I think we should show this to whoever's in charge of Kenabres right now. As soon as we get back to the surface, we'll find out what's what!"Items received: Cultist's Dispatch  We'll meet Minagho next time.  And just like that, we're through the first dungeon of the game! Just dozens more to go.   Right. Let's move on.   End of Prologue Encyclopedia Golarionnica Cultist's Dispatch
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Jul 21, 2022 01:31
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JustJeff88 posted:I just wanted to express my agreement with this. I'm always interested in hearing about alternate magic systems in games because I am so sick of 'Vancian' casting. The inverted commas are because I am not sure how much these games still resemble that. Toybox. Legitimately. You can put a bandage on the rest/cast system by using the cheats menu to give yourself infinite casts. Or make casts reset after each combat. Or you can bind a hotkey to the "instantly rest everyone" button. You can also use Toybox to put a multiplier on casts per day if you want to straddle the line between cheating and not. Or you could increase buff durations too. 10x buff length makes most common buffs generally last more than an hour of realtime. If you're not constantly casting Bless/Protection From Alignment/Etc, you'll get a lot more mileage out of your limited cast slots. In fact, you could slot up a bunch of buffs, cast those, slot up your attack spells, rest, and less than 20 seconds on the buff will have passed. Outside of like... one exception I will be pointing out, Wrath doesn't have harsh time limits like Kingmaker did. So there's really nothing lost by resting, beyond a date on a fictional calendar moving forward.
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Jul 21, 2022 02:33
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I'm gonna be recording the first part of act 1 soon and I've made up my mind to use a couple of mercenaries as fill for the team. One of them is going to be Zenic because I have a scythe in mind that I really want her to use. But who and what should the second be? Here's my list of current and future companions. Future companion names are naturally spoilered. Lisbeth: Ninja - Martial dex user Wenduag: Fighter - Ranged dex user Seelah & OSHA: Paladin/Bully - Martial str users Camellia: Shaman - dex user/druid spells/hexes Woljif: Arcane Trickster - Martial dex user/support caster Zenic: Mutation Warrior - Martial str user Ember: Stigmatized Witch - Spontaneous caster cha user Nenio: Scroll Savant - Wizard subclass, int user Daeran: Oracle of some sort - Spontaneous caster cha user Regill: Sir Not Appearing In This Game Sosiel: Cleric - Wis/Str user Arueshelae: Ranger - Ranged dex user Greybor: Slayer - Martial str user Trever: Lmao - Lmfao EDIT: It looks like what the team will need "most" is an arcane magic user. DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Jul 21, 2022 |
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Jul 21, 2022 04:01
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bagrada posted:Showing off the game, especially on the trickster path, you pretty much have to bring along the spoilered Wizard subclass int user imho. Here's the thing... Something about the game is turbo bugged for me at the moment. I don't know why, but it's not reducing the count of items I use. The spoilered wizard specializes in using scrolls. I'm sure you can see the problem here. While it's true I can discard items after I use them, it's adding a lot of extra micro to a process that shouldn't need it. Also I have "distant companions can comment on the situation" checked, so the spoilered wizard will be able to chime in to almost every conversation. I think there's two that the option breaks.
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Jul 21, 2022 05:13
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LukasR23 posted:That aside.. you're entirely skipping one of the (non-secret) party members? I'm pretty sure that's only possible if you tell them to piss off. The short explanation is that certain companions will leave after you ascend to a specific mythic path. Camellia will leave basically instantly after you become an Aeon, Seelah will leave eventually after you become a Lich, and the one you're asking about (as much as I like them) can't abide serving under a Trickster. I'm not sure who leaves for Demon. I'm pretty sure nobody will leave over Angel and Azata, though. And technically everyone leaves if you follow one of the hidden paths.
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Jul 21, 2022 09:23
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Regarding SNAitG, all I had heard constantly was how he would leave for Trickster. So I had to assume it would be like unlocking Lich where Seelah leaves basically immediately and made plans based on that. Hearing he sticks around is good news because I actually like him quite a lot. So no worries on skipping him. He's too valuable to leave on the table. It also means that a merc to replace him isn't as critical. I still want to roll with two mercs anyway, but now one doesn't have to be a replacement bruiser. So far I've heard interest in Alchemist and Bard. Because they're so useful, Alchemist I'm actually planning to cover with one of the next companions! (Rogue archetype to Vivisectionist) Bard is also a great suggestion. I'm going to record about half of act 1 today, so I'm open to any other suggestions. Also worth noting that I'm not planning on using Woljif much in the party because he's covering ground Lisbeth already does. But Vivi will give him potion brewing which will be invaluable for resting in camp. And the archetype will still make him deadly as hell when we do use him.
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Jul 21, 2022 19:33
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It's gonna be several updates before we get introduced to them, but I'd like you all to meet our new mercs. I decided to go with the two characters who lost the vote. Remember: odd mainstat values are because you get 5 stat increases across the game, and starting odd means you finish with an even base main stat. Zenic's whole job is to hit hard. Unlike her main character counterpart, she's not gonna go gish and will spend her entire time becoming an increasingly more powerful mutation warrior. There is a scythe she will get that will let her lay waste to entire groups at a time. I don't know why, but at some point the game greatly reduced the number of available portraits for mercenaries. So we can't use the "tactician" portrait for Zenic and instead have the berserker one instead.  Fun fact: the original incarnation of Kiyomi was actually a grenadier alchemist. She pulls triple duty here as a skill fox, the resident potion brewer and meal maker, and eventually will be able to buff the party to the gills with infusions. Kitsune can take mythic shapeshifter to gain a permanent +4 to all physical attributes as long as they stay in human form instead of fox. So her STR/DEX/CON will eventually go from 10/16/13 to 14/20/17 DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Jul 23, 2022 |
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Jul 23, 2022 08:21
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At level 3 she has all the tier 1 spells but Firebelly and Stone Fist. EDIT: At level 1: Bomber's Eye - +10y throwing range, +1 insight bonus to thrown weapons including alchemist bombs Expeditious Retreat - +30ft base land speed enhancement bonus Enlarge Person - Double size, +2 str size bonus, -2 dex size penalty, -1 attack roll penalty, -1 ac penalty (Seelah is rocking this in most screenshots) Reduce Person - Halve size, -2 str size penalty, +2 dex size bonus, +1 attack roll bonus, +1 ac bonus Long Arm - Increase reach by 5 foot (will let lisbeth attack from outside the melee pile) Targeted Bomb Admixture - Bombs do not deal splash damage, Damage = 2(Base Damage) + 2(Int Mod) True Strike - +20 insight bonus to next attack roll made before end of round, no penalty for attacking a target in concealment At level 3: Cure Light Wounds - 1d8+CL (up to +5) healing DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Jul 23, 2022 |
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Jul 23, 2022 09:37
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 Hello everyone and welcome back. Today's update is basically a playable cutscene. On lower difficulties, like we're playing on, I don't think it's actually possible to lose three of the four fights we get into. We start off in some random basement, so let's waltz up and see if we can figure out where we are exactly.  The muffled sounds of battle are much clearer. In fact if we walk to the archway...  Ah, yep. There's fighting going on.  Divine Weapon Bond posted:Upon reaching 5th level, a paladin forms a divine bond with her god. This bond can take one of two forms. Once the form is chosen, it cannot be changed. So the woman in the middle there is a Paladin of at least 5th level. Given that a horse didn't appear, her bond is apparently the type to give her bonuses.  Then we watch these guys flail at each other for a good 15-20 seconds. It's just long enough to be irritating. Eventually the fight ends and our motley crew saunters in.  This is why Seelah has that ball of light over her head. That's the Light cantrip. It illuminates the area around her, making screenshots infinitely easier to get because you can see what's going on. This is a problem with other "realistic" RPGs I've tried to LP in the past. (See: FFXIV, Dragon's Dogma)   Anevia and the half-orc share a tender hug. "By the goddess... Nevi, I... I'd almost lost all hope..." "Everything's fine, Beth. I'm here. I'm here." Anevia strokes Irabeth's head and whispers something in her ear, then stands back and points at you. "This here's Lisbeth. She rounded up those of us who survived the fall and led us up to the surface. Without her, we'd never have made it out." She turns to you. "Lisbeth, let me introduce to you my wife, Irabeth Tirabade — head of the Eagle Watch." Irabeth is good people. She's in charge of the biggest organized group of survivors. And like Anevia, she's gonna be a major non-companion NPC going forward. "Where are we?" "The Gray Garrison. Until recently it served as barracks for the crusaders, but it's now been taken over by cultists." "We met some mongrels who live beneath Kenabres. This is Wenduag." Surprise steals across Irabeth's face, but it quickly gives way to respect. "Most people in Kenabres think that the children of the first crusaders are simply a legend. Other people say that the day you emerge on the surface heralds the start of the end of the world. I'm not superstitious, but the situation is apocalyptic all right. Having a living legend on our side can't hurt." "I see you are in serious need of help. You're in luck. If my mistress is with you, then I am with you also." "I have important information about the location of a cultist den!" "Very good. Report to me in full when we get back to the Defender's Heart — it's our temporary headquarters. Right now, the most dangerous cultists are here, the ones occupying the Gray Garrison."Getting the less serious responses out of the way first.  Then we can move to the more important questions. "What is the target of this battle?" "When the demons attacked the city, their main target was the. I trust I don't have to explain to you what the Wardstone is and how important it is to the crusaders. We must retake it at any cost — or the fall of Kenabres will be the beginning of the end of the crusades, and with them the rest of the world." "I see that you had a difficult journey to the surface. You need to rest. But there's a lot riding on this battle. I have no right to command you, but I'm asking you to help us."After this we could ask her about the wardstones, but it feels kinda stupid to be asking for a history lesson when we're gonna be seeing it shortly. Short version: Wardstones protect the city against demonic incursion. It was supposed to prevent Deskari from even entering the city, but something went wrong. Also it shouldn't even be in the Gray Garrison, so that's curious as well. "What's the situation in the city?" Irabeth slowly drags her hand over her face. "The city's gone. Most of the defenders, including the dragon Terendelev, fell in the first few hours. The civilians either fled or died in the chaos. The place is overrun with cultists and demons." "Don't talk like that. Kenabres hasn't fallen, not while it still has defenders like you and me." "Sweet words don't change the grim truth." "No, she's right. Thank you, knight. Until we no longer have the strength to hold a weapon, until Iomedae abandons us, we will fight for Kenabres."Irabeth is kind of a defeatist. This is something to keep in mind as the LP goes forward. "How did the Wardstone end up in the Gray Garrison?" "The demons have long laid siege to Kenabres, but this time their lord Deskari appeared in the flesh. He ripped the Wardstone from the ground and hurled it halfway across the city, to here. I thought the stone was destroyed, but it seems all is not lost... yet. Deskari has gone, but the Wardstone is surrounded by a horde of those creatures. What are they going to do to it? Nothing good, that's for certain!" "But... How did he do that? He's a demon, the Wardstone should have burned his filthy hide!" ""It should have. But what happened, happened. We don't know why."Like I said, we could ask about the history of the Wardstone, but Lisbeth generally understands the importance place and time. With the stakes suitably explained, she's ready to lead the charge herself. "Let's not waste any time. To battle!" "That's the spirit!" Irabeth turns to one of her fighters. "You — take Anevia to the rear. The rest of you — with me!" You hear labored breathing interspersed with disgruntled muttering. Horgus is holding his rapier hilt in a white-knuckled grip. A bead of sweat trickles down from his temple. "Lord Horgus Gwerm, forgive me, I did not realize we had civilians among us. My people will escort you somewhere safe — to the extent that anywhere in Kenabres can be said to be safe right now."Fun fact, the audio that plays when Horgus speaks up has him actually muttering under his breath. But none of it is intelligible.  Horgus, Anevia, and some random dude run out of the room. We'll see the two important characters later. I assume random nameless soldier will also survive.  Each major act vaguely has its own heading. Trapped in the Darkness was the prologue. So we can collapse the header now because no more quests from that will pop up.  I hope you've been reading the text on these quest updates. Some of it is quite snarky and funny.  For the most part, Wrath of the Righteous is not a game burdened by timers. There are only a couple of major exceptions. This quest is connected to one of those exceptions, and it's something we're gonna be doing our best to disarm as soon as we get to the world map. Anevia and Irabeth will explain more the next time we meet them.  You can't enter the door now, and I wasn't able to get in the last time I played the Return to the Gray Garrison. And once you leave act 1, you can't come back as far as I can tell. Is it even possible to get in here at any point?  There's a bunch of cultists here. They can be dangerous, but Irabeth alone is level 7, and Staunton Vhane (not pictured, but with her nonetheless) is like level 12. These mooks are level 1-2.   That's a lot of bodies to loot. Also worth noting if you're a scythe user, this is very likely your first opportunity to find one.  The NPCs rush upstairs, but let's take a minute to look at this door first.  Neither Camellia nor Lisbeth can make much headway with the lock. But if we use one of the disposable lockpicks we've found as loot...  Much better.  The loot isn't even worth writing home about. The potion is a potion of Inflict Light Wounds.  Upstairs a cutscene takes over.   Enemies on both sides... pretty sizable groups no less.   Crusader: "I... Uh... I can't." Cultist: "Come on, leave these losers! The crusades are over, soon the demons will rule the whole world." The Crusader looks around...   And now we face both groups at once while down a man. Grrreat.  Irabeth's squad handles the quisling's side. Our group handles the rest.  Some unlucky rolls means Lisbeth gets a bit low. I probably should have put it on turn-based and used acceleration of form or mirror image. But it's not too long before Irabeth comes sprinting over to render aid with the remaining foes.  Wrath of the Righteous is not a grimdark game about struggling against the odds and eking out a slim victory. It's a power fantasy. At level 2 our group of four took on more than 7 Baphomet Cultists at once and held the line long enough for the pair of powerful NPCs to come help. Not to save the day, but with mopping up.  It took 3 potions of cure light wounds to get Lisbeth back to 100%. The enemies dropped more than that.  There's a bunch of doors along the outside wall, and they're all locked. When we come back here for the Act 1 Finale, we'll be able to go through them.  We head upstairs...    Welp. Ain't no gettin' back down that way.  Another group waits up top.  Minagho here is voiced by a woman named Lindsay Sheppard. But she is doing her absolute level best to channel Laura Bailey's performance as Lust. The demon's mouth drops open in surprise, and she brings her manicured hand up to cover it. "What an unexpected surprise! Staunton, my little sweetheart, long time no see. I've missed you so much... Have you missed me? Admit it — you missed me terribly!" The aged dwarf from Irabeth's troop, silent up to now, spits on the floor. His hardened, craggy face, like storm-weathered stone, twists as if in pain. "Minagho. You again, you wench." Minagho? The one who..." The half-orc is too well-bred to spit on the floor, but the name sounds like a slur on her tongue. "Be careful, she's one of the deadliest creatures in the whole demon horde. She was once responsible for a massacre in Kenabres... She must be back to finish what she started!"Minagho is gonna be an antagonist for most of the game. So let's get off on the right foot. (Chaotic) "Hey, demon woman! What's wrong with your face?" "Hmph, how rude! You're one to talk, mortal, with a face that even a mother would loathe! Staunton, sweetie, you're not going to let your friends speak to me like that, are you?" "That wench..." The dwarf's voice rasps like rusted metal. "She's the one who led me astray. She's the reason my life has gone to the Abyss. She's the reason... why Drezen fell." "Oh my, like butter wouldn't melt!" Minagho threatens Staunton with a dainty clawed finger. "What I remember is how eagerly you would run to our trysts. How you begged to see me again. How you promised you'd do anything I asked — by your own free will you said this! And now you claim that Drezen fell because of me? No, no, my dear, that was entirely your own doing!" "I'll beat your lying lips into your filthy throat!" "Now, Staunton, don't say things like that! Not about these lips, the ones you kissed so sweetly...? Staunton, dearest, don't you love me anymore? Remember how good we were together. I was so hoping that we could patch things up..." "I'll kill you!!!" Minagho flees away and leaves us to fight her entourage.  Anyway.  The mobility check will ferry us to the end of this section.  If I were a betting woman, I'd say that's the much-touted wardstone.  And those dorks are doing stuff to it while Minagho observes.  As soon as you step into the chamber, your vision seems to darken and your knees buckle — you struggle to keep your balance. The air in here is laden with the power coming from the stone. Suddenly, your head is filled with voices — screaming, whispering, cackling, threatening, voices pleading for help, shrieking curses and taunts... You blink, and the illusion passes. A demon with a mocking smile stands beside the Wardstone. "Congratulations. You made it all the way here. This is it, your precious Wardstone. But what are you planning to do now, hm? I could kill you where you stand... But wouldn't it be nice if you could die in battle, like heroes? No. I want you to die in despair, scrabbling around like rats in the blighted ruins of your city — blind and broken, your flesh scabbed and seeping, and every moment knowing precisely what was done to you!" "There isn't a soul that can resist the temptations of the Abyss. Even a stone can be turned. I'm not joking — your precious Wardstone, weakened from the injury inflicted by Deskari, has almost succumbed to my charms. Soon the whole barrier around the Worldwound, the gift of your useless goddess, will be a weapon of the Abyss. Just a little more, and... boom!" Minagho's laugh rings through the chamber. "Every city with one of these eyesores stuck in the middle of it, from Kenabres to Nerosyan, will turn into smoking craters, and all the mortals into red sludge beneath our hooves!" Talking to Minagho unlocks options for how to deal with her. There is never a situation in this game where you don't want to exhaust dialogue before moving on. In fact, doing so often changes your available options. There's one situation coming up soon-ish where talking to someone changes the "YOU DIE NOW" option from Evil to non-aligned. "Who are you?" "You've already forgotten me? You mortals have awfully short memories, even shorter than your little lives... Staunton, sweetums, don't you want to introduce me to your friends properly? No? Well, I'd better do it myself. I am Minagho, lilitu and faithful servant of Baphomet, and leader of his armies. This city is mine now. I'm just starting to settle in, get things just how I like them... But once I'm finished, I promise you the results will be simply to die for." "And it was such a charming little place until you sullied it with your presence. It had such lovely boulevards, quiet and shaded... You took those away from me, and I shan't forgive you for that." "They have done much worse things than spoil the promenades. All the people they've killed..." "Yes, yes, of course. You're right. I grieve for the common folk as well." You feel righteous fury swell within you. How dare this demon besmirch the ground of this beautiful world with her hooves, a world created by the gods and cultivated by mortals? And these cultists — how dare they betray all that is sacred in this world and join the forces of the foulest evil? Can they repent and redeem themselves, or have they followed the path of evil past the point of no return? The Wardstone seems to sense your thoughts: the chamber grows slightly brighter. "What are you doing to the stone?" "Well quite, what am I doing to it?" The demon brings her clawed finger coquettishly to her lips. "Probably the same thing I did to many of your comrades — sweetly and tenderly persuading it to abandon the mortals and join our side!" You feel a sudden rush of wild rage, and with it comes a feeling of monstrous, unbridled destructive power. It is like the power you felt in the Shield Maze, when you were confronting Savamelekh, but now it feels more fully fledged, more conscious. (Good) [Requires Angel Mythic Path] [Reveal the Light of Heaven] "Your victory celebrations are a little premature, demon." Echoing the holy flame erupting from your hand, the light also gets brighter and brighter until it floods the chamber. You hear the voices again — stronger now, they repeat your words like a choir of angels.Baphomet Cultist: The demon giggles, but you hear a note of astonishment in her laughter. A man standing among the cultists turns to her: "Hey, no-eyes, didn't you tell us that Heaven had turned its back on us, and no one would come to our aid?" "Don't listen to her, the fiend wants us to lose all hope. She won't succeed."Baphomet Cultist: The cultists glance at each other, hesitating. At last, the man who was first to speak up against Minagho rips Baphomet's unholy symbol from his chest and casts it to the floor. "I'm done with this poo poo! I only followed this hoofed menace because I thought the crusaders had had it, and there was no other way to protect my family. But now I see that there is hope. I won't bow before these heinous idols ever again! If they kill me — at least I'll die a decent death." "Yes! Return to our side, friends! Have courage! We will welcome you back. And Heaven never abandoned you, no matter what this deceiver told you."Deskari Cultist: A tattoo-covered cultist reaches for his weapon. "Turncoat! I'll cut out your heart!" Neophyte Cleric: "We'll see how tough you really are!" An elf with a face deformed by acid burns throws her unholy symbol at him. "We let you frighten us once, but it won't happen again!"  So we can't win this fight. If I activate Examine mode...  Yeah, Minagho is level 28. On a system that goes to 20 normally.   She throws out super high level magic constantly until everyone goes down. Once Lisbeth's HP is depeleted...   The demoness whispers a spell and a wave of darkness sweeps through the chamber. Your companions wince in pain, but it is nothing compared to what you feel: thousands of voices once again burst into your mind, drowning you in their moans, screams, and sobs. Pain rocks through your skull. (Good) "Your evil spells won't stop a righteous army!" "Iomedae is with us!" "Yes, yes, keep telling yourself that." The roar of voices blends into an unbearable wall of screaming. Your vision goes dark.Encyclopedia Golarionnica Anevia Tirabade Mendevian Crusades Horgus Gwerm Minagho Baphomet Lilitu Savamelekh
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Jul 24, 2022 02:53
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The Lone Badger posted:I'm kinda interested in this game, but I've forgotten all my D&D3 knowledge and never knew Pathfinder so I'd never be able to make a character. The game is extremely forgiving if you play on a low difficulty level like I am for the LP. Your builds don't have to be super optimized, and you can just leave all the companions in their base classes and pick feats vaguely related to the role you want them to perform, and you'll get by just fine on Normal and below. And if the decisions you made aren't working out, there's basically no downside to respeccing your character wholly and trying something new. There is some stuff that makes no sense until you have it explained to you, like the way equipment modifiers do and do not stack, but you can generally get through by just reading the tooltips. I recommend anyone with an interest in CRPGs to play it. Though be aware that in about 2 months, the game's Enhanced Edition is gonna be released, which will supposedly, hopefully, fix a lot of long-standing bugs. Come the end of September, I look forward to my save files for the LP breaking because suddenly none of my mods work anymore.  JustJeff88 posted:Sad to hear about the merc thing. The NPCs so far are basically not people I would want to hang around with. Unlike a merc, I wouldn't pay for them. For some of them, I'd pay £1000 not to be stuck in a lift with them. Like all things, the toybox fixes this! It lets you set the mercs to a 25 point buy as well.
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Jul 24, 2022 09:38
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Godna posted:I really hate the build up and everything toward recruiting wenduag here. She has one of the best romances...and yet you really kind of have to go pants on the head stupid to recruit her. Like God drat. She's like two wildly different characters. At the end of the prologue she's on the path of sneering villainy. And then you recruit her and her personality immediately turns to obsequious fawning and doesn't really stray away from that. Even when she's not being servile, she's not the same person again.
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Jul 25, 2022 23:08
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