Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - [Failed a Will Check]

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - [Failed a Will Check]

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Best of luck op, I spent about 50h in this at launch and even with the HoMM mode disabled I had to stop because of bugs ruining my experience. I guess now most of them have been streamlined...my poor cavalier was stopping their charges on random stones way too often

# ¿ Jul 5, 2022 19:32

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:32

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Lynneth posted:

Jesus, that's a lot of bloody classes. And they have subtypes? So over a hundred options, at minimum? I'd get decision paralysis if I tried playing.

Yeah it's really overwhelming, especially cause you can multiclass much more easily compared to 5e D&D. This means that if you want to minimax you usually end up with a 5class-multi'd monstrosity with one or two "main" classes and a bunch of 1-2lvl dips to get specific features.

That said, if you want to minimax you will probably only touch 20 or so classes/subclasses in total cause the balance is really skewed towards certain archetypes , IE: as someone has mentioned, if you want to build a minimax tank, you are going to splash 2 levels of Scaled Fist Monk - allows you to add Cha bonus to AC and gives you Crane Style and prereq feats to fight defensively with increased bonuses - which means that you are never going to use any armor on your main tank if you are minmaxing. Similar "almost always in" dips are Vivisectionist for the added sneak attack damage or Alchemist for the lvl1 Mutagen buff and the potion selfbuffs.

If you are playing on Normal (or Core even) you don't really need to minimax, but if you know how the system works you will have to play the game knowing that you have partially merged yourself every time you are having issues with a difficult fight.

E: on Normal you can probably get through the game with a 20lvl single class character and be happy about it, as mentioned the "missing out" feeling is only there if you know how the system works.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Jul 8, 2022

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 08:50

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

DoubleNegative posted:

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.

Respecs are free until they are not, so yeah you are free to experiment a bit!

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 09:35

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Yeah I just started playing this and ended up going for a Half-Orc standard fighter. Should be simple right? Except the fighter class gets to pick a new feat almost every level and the list of feats has dozens of options.

Feats are especially tricky cause there are so many of them and a lot of feats that appear to be useless are prerequisites for very powerful ones 8 levels down the level progression; it's especially difficult when the feat that you actually want is locked behind multiple prereqs IE: Cleave progression may be self evident for someone not familiar with PF, but that's not the case for Shatter Defenses (and how to get there, since the prerequisites feats for it won't even show up in the list of available ones on level up if you don't have enough ranks in Intimidate).

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Jul 8, 2022

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 12:25

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Yeah in PF "Dex to attack" and "Dex to damage" are separate bonuses that you get with separate feats/class features.

Also Cam can become a powerful tank/buffer and yes, she has absolutely no skeletons in her closet either.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 16:20

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

GiantRockFromSpace posted:

Kinda surprised to see these opinions on Cam, I've read a lot of opinions on the gane and a lot swear on Cam as the best tank/frontliner, to some people's annoyance since she's... totally not problematic. Yup, nothing to see here.

Yeah, if you want to roll with the NPCs instead of rolling your own mercenaries, Camelia/the PC are the default main tank slots since our Paladin friend is the best suited to become a Bard - and if you are minmaxing you need a Bard in your party.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 16:28

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

NullBlack posted:

how they handled it kinda makes meta-knowledge unavoidable. They should've pretended Camellia's amulet was some non-magical keepsake (explaining why she'd refuse to take it off) or just left it unidentified (and Camellia refuses to let you identify it or tell you what it does), and shown Camellia's alignment as Neutral (because alignment detection spells only reveal if the target is or isn't Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic, not if the target's Neutral. So True Neutral is indistinguishable from undetectable alignment). That way, you might know or suspect that Camellia's hiding something, but you don't know what.

I think that's exactly the way it was in the Beta (unremovable amulet with hidden powers, her alignment appearing as Neutral in the sheet) but people were complaining that nothing was giving up the "mystery".

quote:

Instead, Camellia might as well have introduced herself by saying "Hi, I'm definitely not evil! *wink wink*"

I mean, what they went with instead is having her literally say non-stop psychotic stuff. Yep, just your regular Neutral person screaming "I'll bathe in the blood of children", nothing to see here.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2022 20:22

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

FrenchBen posted:

Lisbeth and Wenduag.

This!

# ¿ Jul 10, 2022 21:53

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

achtungnight posted:

Thanks Lann! You�re so awesome, Lann!

Lann is the only one who thinks he is awesome.

Lann is super weird as a character cause he's written like the classic Neutral Good "fun" sidekick (like Alistair in DA:O or Eder in Pillars of Eternity) but he is Lawful Neutral. His characterization is a bit all over the place.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2022 17:42

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Zeniel posted:

Eh it fits his characterisation later on, he's a pretty hard line and strict dude and not in a merciful way either

Yeah what I'm saying is that his generic banter is all carefree and "funny" while his decision making is in line with his LN alignment, so there's quite the disconnect between "regular Lann" and "actual gameplay consequences Lann".

There's a reason why LN is normally reserved for dour bureocrats at best and literal embodiments of the Law as written at worst.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2022 19:02

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Galick posted:

She should get a horse instead and name it Iomineigh

# ¿ Jul 13, 2022 14:17

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

I don't particularly enjoy alignment tagged choices. I agree that having the player know the mechanical implications of their choices is the right thing to do, but the way the tag system is implemented in WotR feels very "gamey". The choices are relatively sparse and since they are only tied to a single axis at a time (law/chaos or good/evil) this creates the feeling that a player needs to do "course correction" to stay within their desired alignment - even if running into an alignment shift is mechanically difficult.

This wouldn't be a problem if the choices offered to a specific alignment were more varied in nature, but most of the Lawful choices are written with a Lawful Neutral character in mind, most of the Good choices fit a Neutral Good one and so on. So you have your Lawful Good character alternating a "We are going to give this merchant's goods to the starving masses" Good choice with a "Split the baby in twain and every parent gets one half" Lawful choice, neither of which fit the LG alignment.

The short end of the stick (as usual) goes to the Chaotic and Evil choices since they tend to be even more extreme. So your Chaotic Good Robin Hood-like character will have access to plenty of total lolrandom wako or complete psycho Chaotic choices; and your Littlefinger-like Lawful Evil schemer will have the Good vs Evil decision of "save the orphanage OR eat the children", with very little choices that allow you to play a subtly evil character.

I guess at least tagged choices are not as bad as they were in Kingmaker where you have the infamous/implication heavy "Kobolds and Mites are all inherently evil, so the only course for a LG character is to kill them all on sight" even if these are clearly tribal people and not mindless monsters, especially considering that in the same area you meet some peaceminded Kobolds that are not aggressive and are, in fact, just smoking some fat joints all day long.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Jul 14, 2022

# ¿ Jul 14, 2022 09:41

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

This game is absolutely chock-full of trash fights, which is were martial classes are good cause you can't run out of sword swing slots; it really felt like going back 20 years to BG on that end, and not in a good way - you see some monsters, you have your tank run in front of the party, everyone autoattacks everything (including casters with their crossbows), everything is dead in 10s.

If you cut those kind of encounters to a third of what they currently are, the game's pacing gets progressively better (especially if you want to play turn based, although at least you can switch) while the relevance of martial characters gets progressively worse. If you had 5-10 fights per zone instead of 25-30, your casters would win most of these serious encounters; right now even when your martial character is "carrying" the party through a difficult encounter, it's usually cause they are buffed to the gills with arcane+divine goodies.

E: actually, a single cast of Grease or similar spell can win the day even in a non-bottom-tier trash fight, and that's a lvl1 spell.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Jul 20, 2022

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 11:58

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

Then you run into the goddamn infinity gargoyles and cry deeply because they have high reflex saves and are immune to grease.

Thinking at how I won that fight, I've just realized that the best melee class is the tens of disposable skeletons that you can get through Summon Undead. Jokes aside, they aren't great against anything with high physical res, but they soak up so much heat, especially in turn mode.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2022 19:01

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Zeniel posted:

Wenduag isn't chaotic evil though

I like Wenduag as a damage dealer, but I don't understand what exactly is so nuanced about her, she always just came off as a very one dimensional character, having the same justification for anything and responding to any situation in the most obvious manner. Strong good, power good, more power, weak bad, etc etc.

I guess what's interesting is that I can't think of any other evil CRPG companions with such a clear cut Evil Enchman personality. Wenduang's schtick is nothing new in media at large, but most evil CRPG companions tend to be on the "I do what the gently caress I want" spectrum and the reason they are along for the ride with the MC are self convenience at best or weirdly unexplainable at worst. They may cheer on the MC for being a proper rear end in a top hat, but they don't really share their goals or serve under them.

That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jul 26, 2022

# ¿ Jul 26, 2022 19:57

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

achtungnight posted:

Backer quests are a heavily debated subject in this game. Short summary of what a backer quest is for the unaware- the developers set up an online fundraiser where people can pay several thousand dollars and have the side quest they write put into the game. Often these quests aren�t written particularly well, and they have to be completed a certain way for maximum (or in some cases any) rewards. Some fans like them, many others do not. In this day, they are sadly a necessity for many game developers. I will let people form their own opinions of the backer quests in this game. For the most part, I don�t care for them.

I didn't know these 2 characters were backer created and that makes soooo much sense now.

I bounced back hard from Pillars of Eternity 1 the first time around cause I was interacting with all the ghosts around the starting hub - I thought they were related to the MC ability to speak with the dead and that some of them would have quests or interesting/relevant info; but all their text was so overblown and boring that I stopped playing the game altogether. Turns out those are all backer created content (except for the 1% that are clearly main quest related) that have 0 impact on the game and that can be entirely skipped - they're just static text dumps about the tragic death of said ghosts. At least in that game the backer content is easily identifiable and entirely skippable once you know about it.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2022 09:28

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

Black Robe posted:

I think one reason it comes up so often is that most of these settings work in such a way that generally most people won't want to/be able to leave home and go off on an adventure unless they're forced into it, and usually that force involves some sort of tragedy meaning that either you want revenge, you have to recover something or someone, or you've lost everything and will starve to death unless you find some way to start a new life. So generally the people you meet who aren't just ordinary farmers/merchants/soldiers/whatever will have some kind of unusual and normally tragic backstory, because everyone else is happy to stay home and get on with their lives and/or scared of the various monsters and evil forces outside and/or simply don't have the resources to leave.

Of course, the other reason is that most writers find it hard to create memorable and interesting characters without the standard shortcut of pouring a load of angst onto the character sheet There's a fine line between the two.

Many many years ago I was involved in organizing a series of large-ish LARPing events. A conservative 65% of the backgrounds submitted by players were a variation of "parents killed by orc raiders, came here to become a better warrior", to the point that we had to put a "do not do this" disclaimer on the website. The only one that got through was a orc player that went "parents killed by humans, got here to get revenge".
NOTE: there was no large involvement by orcs (raiders or not) in any part of the setting. It was shortly after the LotR movies aired though :v:

# ¿ Jul 30, 2022 09:51

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 07:32

That Italian Guy: Jul 25, 2012; We need the equivalent of the shrimp = small pastry avatar, but for ambulances and their mysteries now.

achtungnight posted:

I�m wondering how you make peace between Hulrun & Ramien exactly. I continue their quest and get to a point where you have to kill one and help the other. Ramien has always been my choice thus far, though I will probably go opposite in my Devil playthrough (Lich will probably kill both and call it a day). Every character I�ve played this far has axed the jerk. I personally wish they�d thrown in some 300 homage.

Me- �You want to guard that hole? How about from the inside? This�. Is� JUSTICE!!!!� [kicks Hulrun down, then throws in a fireball for good measure]

And in case you hadn�t guessed, the reason he�s energy drained is so that a low level character has a chance to beat him. Ordinarily I think he�s level 14.

If you kill him with a melee crit his body will ragdoll wildly - and since you are most likely facing the gap he will fly down it.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2022 14:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - [Failed a Will Check]