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That boss fight only feels like a bog standard "can't kill" style unwinnable fight on the lowest difficulties. On everything else, it instead becomes very clear very fast that Minagho is simply very powerful and you made the timeworn error of picking a fight with someone too strong. First time I ran it I was expecting a game over screen because it sincerely felt like I had just gotten utterly owned in a fight, rather then because I was in a scripted battle. I usually play on Core difficulty, and for me, it worked out pretty well. It establishes that, light of heaven or not, you're still not the big fish in this pond, at least not yet, and that you have to play carefully. You're on the sharply losing end of a demonic invasion here, and your victories are going to be scrabbled and hard fought. If you bite off too much, you join the hundreds of other dead crusaders around you. It's great and all that an angel blessed you, but the angels were on the losing side of this war long before you showed up. EDIT: I'll also note that, on the subject of difficulty, at higher difficulties, the Maze we just finished earns it's reputation. I'd in fact call it the hardest part of the entire game, simply due to being low level D&D. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 24, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 22:35
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As far as alignment goes, I'll note simply that Gygax modeled some of his lawful good paladin behaviors after John Chivington, a real world genocidal maniac, and literally quoted the Sand Creek Massacre as model behavior. He also once stated that a paladin who does manage to turn an orc towards good should murder him on the spot to ensure his soul goes to heaven and that he slip back into evil. So that's the origins of D&D's alignment. Also, I'll be real, it's beyond weird to see people unsarcastically claim that it's the fault of the Perfidious Slav that alignment is what it is. Gygax would be proud. CommissarMega posted:It's In The Blood (And Not Really): Tieflings My only weird and dumb addition to this is that the Motherless stand out in this game and in Kingmaker in particular by having access to a native bite attack, making them ideal for characters who focus on pumping out as many attacks as possible.
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Feb 26, 2024 17:11
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Cythereal posted:Well that's some loving Blizzard grade racist bullshit in Golarion's world. It is if anything the other way around - Blizzard had D&D levels of racism. D&D always had more, and it was always worse. As I said previously, Gygax's model of lawful good behavior was committing genocide on Native Americans, which is who he modelled orcs after.
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Feb 28, 2024 15:56
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Cythereal posted:And Pathfinder is supposed to be a modern DnD setting whose makers said they wanted to fix the problems with DnD. Gnooble posted:The developers of Pathfinder originally just wanted to streamline and preserve the overall gameplay of the 3.5 edition of D&D when Wizards of the Coast released 4th edition. Efforts to improve on the D&D setting and rules is mostly a later development, and this PC game is an adaptation of a Pathfinder 1st edition adventure, which was published before Paizo began any sort of organized attempt to revise their setting and rules beyond changes specific to individual adventures. Yeah, this is still PF1e, which if anything was more reactionary, as it was a backlash to D&D making a new edition thread I see you typing do not make this an edition war. Golarion as a setting also started as a weird "horror-fantasy" which adds to that. Believe it or not, Wrath here isn't even close to the worst adventure path along these lines PF2e has been trying to make ground against that, and in some cases has been succeeding! But, well. Welcome to PF1e.
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Feb 28, 2024 20:33
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A brief history of probably the worst "race" in D&D! Drow originate even before Salvatore. I believe their introduciton is in the AD&D 1e module Against the Giants, where it's hinted throughout the adventures that there's a shadowy force coordinating the giants together, and it's revealed to be evil elves! Who have, uh, all black skin. And worship a demonic spider goddess. And they have black skin because they're evil and their goddess made them evil. Uh. Hm. From there, fast forward a little bit, and bouncer-turned-writer R.A. Salvatore is about to get a deal with WotC, who's releasing a line of novels intended to flesh out their new setting, The Forgotten Realms, created by one Canadian hippie by the name of Ed Greenwood. As I understand, there actually wasn't a ton of detail on the drow in Forgotten Realms at that time. Anyways, Ed Greenwood wants to start his book by having an already established character show up and introduce his actual chosen main character, Wulfgar. Then he gets a phone call from his agent: he can't use that pre-established character, and they need a replacement, now, on the phone call. So he says the first thing that comes to his mind: A dark elf, named Drizzt Do'urden, which at the time is sincerely just vague noises he made in the shape of a name. They ask if he can spell that. He responds that he cannot. Drizzt was never meant to be the big deal of the books, but he very quickly became the big deal, and that meant Salvatore became, weirdly, The Dude Who Writes About The Dark Elf/Elves. There is some good from this - Salvatore establishes immediately that no, drow are not evil by nature. There is a whooooooole lot of bad from this - as I understand, no small amount of the more, uh, sexy BDSM aspects of drow come from him. The worst parts of drow stay the same - they were good elves, then their evil goddess became an evil goddess, and her followers were all cursed to join her, and a big part of that curse waaaaaaaas that they're black now. Well ok then. Also they're all evil FEMINISTS who think WOMEN are better then MEN! That's how you know they're bad! Good loving lord. And that's Drow! That's Drow in like, 90% of their appearances in general populous fantasy. It rarely gets any deeper then that. Sometimes they're written even worse; on the very rare occasion they're written slightly less bad. As sexy lady villains, they're also enormously popular, often for entirely awful and frequently fetishized reasons. Not always, I should say! There is the occasional interesting thing done with the concept, there are people who like them for non-fetishizes reasons! But in general, it's pretty grim. Pathfinder's setting of Golarion doesn't have an evil spider goddess, so they did some things different, but not actually better like, in any way. The initial story is that, in the Age of Darkness (we might learn more about that later), the elves that didn't escape into space (yes) went underground, but because the underground is full of Evil Radiation because of the cosmic horror god locked inside the planet, they became infected with Evil and turned into the Drow, which. Ok cool it's still an evil curse that makes them black, that's not better at all. This was later expanded to be such that any elf who becomes Evil Enough (and probably infected with Evil radiation) turns...black. That's actually significantly loving worse! As was mentioned before, Pathfinder's second edition has them changing a whole lot to try to be less horrifically poo poo. Also they're trying to remove a lot of the more vaguely semi-trademarked things in D&D after WotC started toying with the idea of pulling all rights to anyone else to use them. Drow are amongst those changes! They've been retconned majorly, and by majorly, I mean they straight up no longer even exist. The elves that went underground to escape the comet smashing into the planet are now cavern elves (they still have a fancy elvish name but it's not drow) and that's actually just it. They're not all evil, they're not tainted by Evil Radiation, they're just elves who went underground instead of onto another planet, and they see better in the dark, and that's it. Drow are potentially trademarked by WotC so Paizo doesn't want to use the name anymore to ensure WotC can't swipe them out, and while we're changing it, hey, let's maybe remove the horrific Mark of Ham poo poo they had going on. They're still the elves with the black skin who live underground and have vague links to spiders, so you can get the same aesthetics as before, but now you get that without the insane racism attached. It should be noted for reasons of cynicim that people (less then you'd think, more then you'd hope) were mad about this change, because nerds are the worst, always.
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Feb 28, 2024 22:46
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Oh yeah, Ember. Ember is one of the best companions in the game. Mechanically she's a powerhouse, especially once you get a singular ability later on that allows her to no longer care about things like "fire resistance" or "fire immunity;" even on higher difficulties she's an incredible blaster in a game that usually doesn't reward blasting over control spells, and bringing the boom is especially valuable when you're fighting the demon lord of swarms. And if you can't or don't want to blast, she also has full access to the witch hexes, which include some of the best control, buff, or debuff powers; slumber, especially on easier difficulties, may as well be a one-hit KO, Protective Luck is maybe the best defensive buff in the game, and Evil Eye is always a fantastic go-to if you want to conserve spells and have nothing else big to do. Plot and character wise, while it does get layed on a bit thick and is a bit "come on now" at times, she's an exceptional breath of fresh air in a genre that's nearly always inundated with cynical sneering. Ember is supremely optimistic, and, shockingly and thankfully, the game doesn't trip over itself to try and prove her wrong. She truly believes the world can be a better place, that people can be better then they are, and that nobody is so far gone that they're lost for good. If one of the themes for the game is hope and redemption, Ember is one of the characters that best exemplifies that. EDIT: Oh yeah, the really funny thing about Ember was, early on, before the game's release, due to her art and class, a bunch of people were super sure that she was going to turn out to be like, hyper evil. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 23:58
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I don't think it adds much to anyone that isn't going for some kind of melee or melee/spellcaster combo, personally. You lose a caster level and mostly gain benefits to hitting dudes in the face. And that's for four levels - going more then that is throwing away more caster levels for even less benefit. For an archery bard, it's potentially even more punishing, since it stops your songs from upgrading.
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Mar 3, 2024 01:49
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On the note of the DLC I will say that I really like the new NPC the Shifter DLC adds.
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Mar 4, 2024 04:57
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The introduction to the Azatas here is a fantastic moment, and frankly one of the best introductions to a mythic path in the game. I'll have more to sahy about it as we do more Azata stuff, but this is the path starting on an insanely high note. I liked both Nenio and Daeren as characters. Nenio usually has a place in my party (admittedly also because I nowadays tend to mod her into the insanely powerful brownfur transmuter - hey, it fits her character!), however, where Daeren usually...does not. Sorry bud, you're relegated to "glad I can mod companions to talk when not in my party" status. Nenio in a lot of ways is just the most wizard-rear end wizard you can get, taking the "scholar" title to the maximum degree with frankly pretty charming results. As for Daeren, "evil" D&D characters are typically so over the top in being sinister and malevolent that it's also really fun to have someone who's just a petty-rear end bitch rather then a blood gargling psychopath. And, as has been mentioned, he passes the Ember test.
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Mar 5, 2024 15:55
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Vivi is absolutely a better "rogue + caster" then Eldritch Scoundrel. Alchemist imo has better combat buffs in its spell list, but even if you disagree there, alchemist has full access to mutagens and the upgrades to that. The wizard spellbook isn't terrible for buffs, but the alchemist spellbook has most of the same buffs, and arcane spellbook in general is more built around things that require you focus on their primary casting attribute, whereas a vivi can focus on their combat attribute and not worry about their spell DCs. Like, yeah, vivisectionist doesn't get grease. But Woljif is a rogue, so his save DC is never going to be high enough to be your primary control spell caster anyways. And if it was, then he'd be better served as a full caster, not a rogue with some caster ability. That said we already have our champion grease caster, and her name is Nenio. Throw selective spell on that bad boy and it makes Act 1 into easy mode almost regardless of difficulty (Unfair remains unfair, don't play Unfair difficulty).
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Mar 7, 2024 16:11
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Kineticists are also super weird because a single gameplay change made them absurdly powerful in Kingmaker and still pretty dang good here in WotR, where they are mid as hell in the actual tabletop game. That one change is "it takes a standard action to stand up, not a move action." Enter the Kineticist and their ability to make giant fields of prone effects.
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Mar 9, 2024 04:13
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Lord Koth posted:Standing up is a move action in Kingmaker/Wrath, they didn't change its action type. You can pretty clearly see this if you ever get knocked down next to an enemy, as you can stand up and whack them in the same turn. The limitation of Kineticist in tabletop, aside from Deadly Earth not even coming until 13th, is this thing called "a DM can adapt on the fly." Suddenly your bright light show (what gathering power is explicitly called out as doing) gets every enemy targeting you every fight. Oh, and they're both spread out and flying. Huh, you're right on the move action. I'll chalk it up to poor memory. Beyond that, I think the games don't include the "you get a bonus vs trip for every leg you have" rule PF1e has, and in general made it easier to stack CMB vs CMD; at the very least, both games feel like it's substantially easier to beat CMD then in tabletop. I'll say also that kineticists often fall foul to one of the neverending issues in D&D - a combat system built around exact measurements with an assumption for interesting terrain, mixed with overbearing rules that make it kind of a pain to actually try to plan all that out, and DMs that mostly stage fights either without actual maps or representation, or lots of just big bland open spaces. Video games sorta need maps by default, which makes terrain fuckery more powerful. But, again, I'm almost positive there's something going on underneath the hood that makes trip way better in the game then it is in the tabletop. JT Jag posted:We can see how wildly incompetent these demon forces are, and yet they still have this entire world reeling. If this area had an uncontrolled link to the Hells instead of the Abyss, I feel like we'd be so much worse off. Devils tend to be more competent or, alternatively, obedient, which is way more dangerous in pitched military engagements. Part of it is the difficulty. Remember, this is the easiest difficulty in the game. Plenty of fights that've been kinda glossed over absolutely pushed my poo poo in the first time I tried playing it on Core difficulty; the water elemental is practically a puzzle boss because failure to manage it in some specific ways leads to it murdering the whole party, for example, and there's some demons we haven't seen yet that can appear this early on that can wipe the party. Every round you're in the cloud, you make a fort save; fail, and you lose your standard action, meaning you no longer have any offensive actions. There's an optional demon at this level that solo'd my team when I first started playing. It's not even like, a named boss or anything - it's just a slightly higher level type of demon. Also, all demons are going to be taking less damage from nearly all your attacks until/unless you get weapons specifically built to injure them. My personal MVP item of chapter one is the humble cold iron arrows if just so my archer characters can actually hurt the little fuckers. Part of it is that, well, this is a heroic fantasy game. We're the big ol' heroes here to save the day. Of course they're going to ensure that's actually possible. I mean, we DID encounter Minhago, who, on all other difficulties, generally wipes the floor with you. That's the standard result of normal low level nobodies trying to take on the higher level demons. Part of this is also intentional. This shows why the Worldwound hasn't enveloped the entire world yet. One of the basic rules of many D&D inspired settings is that evil loses because it can't stop falling into in-fighting. One of the stated reasons that the gods don't confront the Abyss directly is that doing so would get the demons to actually start working together. So long as they're scattered, they aren't a full on existential threat. This whole thing is just the pet project of two demon lords specifically, which is why you don't have the entire pantheon uniting to stop this threat as they've done in the past. This isn't a global crises, it's a regional threat. It's a big region that it's a threat to, and it could become something bigger, granted...but it hasn't. Not yet, at least. As for the Hells...why would they invade? For starters, breaking open a hole to invade sounds a whole lot like breaking the rules, and devils aren't about that. They also wouldn't really gain anything by it. The Hells wants people to willingly sign their souls away; mass slaughter would just send souls away from the Hells. Besides, they already have their own country. They don't need a Worldwound equivilent.
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Mar 9, 2024 12:51
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The nice thing about Daeren is that his own storyline is more or less entirely self-contained. You can sit him on the bench and still do all his content no problem. You miss out on his being catty and petty about everything, but if you don't like his archtype, you aren't really missing out on much. Melia likewise has content but once you figure out what she is, the content is...largely what you think it'll be. It has a single twist at the end that no doubt this thread will talk about in detail LONG before we ever reach that point, ahahaha. The last character who's been hinted at is a fan favorite, and they're definitely an interesting one, and I look forward to talking about why he's (perhaps accidentally) well written in some terrible ways, and why so many fans are utterly wrong about him. In the end, alignment is a terrible mechanic that should've been removed 6 editions and 50 years ago. Alas, it was not, and D&D and D&D inspired games still suffer under the yolk of a mechanic that was explicitly designed to further Gygax's own libertarian ideals of white patriarchal imperialist violence.
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Mar 9, 2024 22:53
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Those Babau are no joke. They're the source of a fair number of reloads both here and in the Market Square. On top of damage reduction, they also do a ton of damage; they start stealthed (and will likely beat your perception) and have access to sneak attack, and, like most demons, have spell resistance to stop offensive casters from hurting them. I honestly like Mellia a lot as a character from a writing perspective, explicitly just because the game sets up the sort of question of "how did she keep getting away with this," followed by no small number of players very eagerly answering that question. Yeah it turns out you get away with a whole lot of horrible poo poo when you're conventionally attractive and have enough money/privilege to keep the people who would otherwise stop you away! One of her go-to lines on I think selecting her is "I am useful, am I not?" She 100% knows she's getting away with it, knows why and how she's getting away with it, and in plenty of playthroughs, she's entirely correct. In a genre filled with vague evil characters you can "cure" with your magic romance dick, Mellia stands out as someone who not only can't be "cured," but knows you're going to try to do just that, and uses it to continue being a genuinely awful person. She's utterly terrible and, if you let her, plays you like a fiddle. It's great!
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Mar 10, 2024 20:47
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At it's most egregious - Bioware loved to go to this one, and WotR does it with one particular companion as well - you get a "redemptive romance." That is to say, your romance with them turns into you playing therapist through all their problems, and you're rewarded at the end with sex and a vague alignment change. And this "help them through their issues" thing ends up being locked behind the romance specifically, leading to the jokes about your Magic Healing Dick. Which is gross for like, a thousand different reasons. Please do not conduct real life relationships like this. Please do not gently caress your clients.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:32
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achtungnight posted:Delayed romance is still romance and that’s usually fine with me when given good reason. It’s this whole “you can’t help x and that’s wonderful!” attitude I don’t get. Why is that glorified? It’s like they say- there’s no accounting for taste. Because too much of the time that whole thing is about taking an evil baddie and making them "good," which 1) plays hard into a specific fantasy about taking a bad girl and making her good and wholesome which can be, let's be real, kinda hosed up, and 2) removes the idea of a person's agency and life story into "they just need a good dick to make them a better person" which, again, loving laundry list of why that's hosed up. Or, if you will, a lot of it ends up entangled in some pretty bad patriarchal ideas of "proper behavior" for women. Some people like that Camellia is a twist on the usual genre staple. Some people just frankly like an evil baddie and that's it; she's all red flags, and they're a bull. Some people like the writing aspect of challenging you with a character that you can't "redeem," you either accept her at her worse, or...well, deal with it, in some fashion. Some people like that she annoys other people who get more then a little too wound up about their waifus. There's a ton of reasons for it. Torrannor posted:I'm sorry, but you can "fix" (if that's the right word) that character without romancing her, so it's imho not a case of magically healing dick/vagina in any case? Yeah we'll get into it more as we approach it in game (this thread has been careening a lot into talking about stuff that is like multiple days of gameplay time away) but I actually hold that the NPC in question defly avoids the "heal her with romance" thing, even if it looks a lot like it.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:36
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Lord Koth posted:Also, it'd be nice if we could leave the sexism at the door. The "girls love bad boys (and want to fix them)" is a ludicrously common trope in all sorts of media. The concept isn't magically limited to a male fantasy. It's perhaps more common in video games specifically, but that's likely more down to them generally being viewed as a boy activity for a long time than anything else. Or do I need to be mean and start pointing to stuff like Twilight and Love Never Dies? Yes, you're right, I should shy away from focusing solely on the gendered side of things. Nonetheless, there's, let's go with, cultural baggage connected to the idea of certain sorts of "redemption" stories, and the cRPG style "romantic redemption" can fall afoul of it. achtungnight posted:It’s not the “you can’t fix this character and that’s great” mentality I don’t understand. It’s the whole “Iago did nothing wrong.” “Scar for President!” “Camellia lover for life.” mentality. That’s what I don’t understand. These characters absolutely did messed up stuff. They should not be welcomed. They should be given their just desserts asap. Sometimes you support a character not being artificially "redeemed" and staying true to their flaws. Sometimes you're just...tired of that storyline, and want something that isn't that. Sometimes you just think villians are hot. Sometimes, while bringing someone to good is a fantasy, so is its opposite of being the one pulled into something darker. Sometimes you think a villianous or antagonistic character is interesting because of the antagonistic side. Sometimes you think a character is good because you're irritated with people who think the character is bad. Sometimes you like a character because of how others in the audience react to them. Point is, there's a ton of reasons for people to like Camellia as a character. And plenty of reasons to dislike her! Hell, you can like her as a character and know that you would despise her as a person. The game gives you a lot of options, which is one of the reasons why the game is so good.
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Mar 11, 2024 02:40
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Daeren ultimately presents an important note that a lot of "redemption" storylines skip over - few people want to be bettered, and some are annoying about it. If you only try to help the easy cases, you're going to be missing a whole lot of other people you can help.
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Mar 12, 2024 20:22
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I have a simple policy that those who can be helped, should be. Suffice to say my current very modded game has me rolling as Salvation Angel + True Azata + Gold Dragon for maximum good guy, hahaha.
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Mar 12, 2024 21:17
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You don't need a dedicated healer at all. In fact, a "dedicated healer" makes the game more difficult, especially at higher difficulties; healing is very, very rarely an efficient use of actions in combat (until near late-game, you will almost never outheal damage dealt round-by-round), and outside of combat, you have access to healing consumables, special cleric and paladin abilities, or simply just resting. Nor do you even want to be taking much damage, as combat can be very swingy; few enemies beat you up a little over time, compared to those that you either negate or who crush you on sight. In contrast, I found Daeren's curse to be a nightmare to deal with; the first round of combat is often the most important, at least with how I tend to play, and starting staggered means Daeren spends that first round doing near gently caress all.
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Mar 12, 2024 23:03
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The game ultimately doesn't go into it. It's presented as him doing something stupid and debauched that he thought was funny during his big racous party where everyone is naked and dancing on tables, hired courtesans and nobles alike, rather then him doing a serious sexual assault, which is not to say you're wrong for reading it as serious sexual assault. It wasn't intended to cross a morality line, which is not the same as saying that it won't cross a morality line for you, the viewer. My read is that it was intended to be a show of his debauchery rather then him being written as a rapist, and whoever wrote that part missed their mark. It literally never comes up past that one mention, nor does he ever do anything remotely similar or close to that in the game itself. He is, other then that one line, consistently presented as a petty jackass who enjoys being mean and pissing people off, for reasons relating to the character that you can choose to accept or not, and that if you get past the part of him that inentionally pushes people away, he's sweet and charming. He hates the Crusade for his own reason, and hates the demons far more. When it comes to matters of sex, he's a hedonist, but, again, is never presented as someone who encourages or is even ok with sexual assault, and at least once much later on is very violently against it. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 01:32
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Drakenel posted:Does a love potion mean immediate aphrodisiac? Not being sarcastic, I actually don't know how that works in pathfinder verse, if that means immediately bang the first person you see or if they're both realizing they're horrible romantic poets. Given we're still like level 3, it's gonna be the lower level one. Also Daeren literally states it's going to wear off, so it's clearly not the permanent one. "This sweet-tasting liquid causes the character drinking it to become enraptured with the first creature she sees after consuming the draft (as charm person—the drinker must be a humanoid of Medium or smaller size, Will DC 14 negates). The charm effect wears off in 1d3 hours." As for how Charm person works: "This charm makes a humanoid creature regard you as its trusted friend and ally (treat the target’s attitude as friendly). " So...no. It's not a date rape drug. As fun as it is to imagine all the horrible and lurid things Daeren inflicted on the guards, it is not written to be the equivilant of sexual assault, nor in the text is it the equivilant of sexual assault. ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 02:52
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RelentlessImp posted:Sorry? Forcing 'good feelings' onto a person that you can then take advantage of isn't the definition of a date-rape drug? Hey guys ProfessorCirno just solved the 'can you give consent while drunk' question - they're in favor of it! Guess we can let Azure Horizon back on the boards! I cannot imagine a more unhinged response to my post then accusing me of being a date rapist. Drakenel posted:Wasn't sure, but it's still sketch as all hell and there's no real good reason for making people drink it. It is sketch! Daeren is an rear end in a top hat. He threw a big hedonistic party and was happy when demons showed up so he could explode them without caring about his guest's safety; at least on harder difficulties, the real challenge of this fight is that the random civilians keep running around the demons and die to opportunity attacks, so if you want to keep them alive, you have to immediately bring a lot of control. What he isn't, at least by my reading, is a psychopathic rapist, as is being presented.
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Mar 14, 2024 03:08
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The other big benefit to doing Woljif's quest first is that there's no combat, so it's some experience and loot without risk, and at higher difficulties, one of the main strategies is risk avoidance. You do this, fight maybe one random encounter, and in return you get some nice experience, a new party member, and a weapon that can be put on any character. On top of that, Finnean is both 1) maybe one of the only ghost touch weapon at this stage, and 2) is cold iron, so he not only works good with any character, he in fact works fantastic on them. Woljif's betrayal here is also kind of interesting because his defense, while not rock solid, also still makes sense - he didn't endanger the rest of the group, he just tried to steal something for himself in advance, in a "no honor amongst thieves" sense. And that's largely the same attitude that Kerismei has towards the city at large - they're not siding with the cultists, but they're grabbing what they can and getting out before things get too hot. It sorta reflects on one of the major failings of the Crusade. All these people assumedly joined these cults for a reason, and when you have Halrun "yeah burn that child" on the side of the Crusades, or you're a discriminated against minority, it's easy to go with Team gently caress Those Guys. And even if you don't go full blown cultist, when the chips are down, you aren't gonna side with the people who have been giving you poo poo since day one. The failure of the Crusades isn't in the demonic invasion, it's in the thousands of myriad people who get so fed up with the Crusade that they either don't help or actively hurt the cause.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:21
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Drakenel posted:Woljif always feels a bit odd to have as an addition to the party. He's not bad, sure, but the way he acts seems at odds with actually sticking around the group at the epicenter of the heaviest fighting. Then again, most video games gloss over the threats of mortal combat to people's fight or flight response. It'd be odd otherwise. Though in a way, the thieflings you recruited do address that a little better, but that's for a future update. My read with Woljif is that he actually does understand loyalty to at least some degree, but also, we are, maybe weirdly, the eye of the storm. poo poo is going buck wild, but wherever we are is where it weirdly ends up being safest - because we're there to MAKE it safe. So, we're the boss (affectionate name), but also, we're the boss (keeps him safe). CommissarMega posted:On the flip side, it also makes it easier to side with supposed 'bad guys' (or at least, morally neutral guys) whenever they choose to help the Crusade even when you don't find their reasons for doing so palatable, or even if you find their methods... disagreeable, as sometimes you can see where they're coming from. It really asks the player who they're willing to side with when the chips are down, and if moral principles are worth compromising if/when survival is at stake, which is a theme I for one eat up like candy. We'll get into it more as things come up, but questions about "can evil defeat a greater evil? Can acts of horror end with something wonderful?" is a question the game plays with here and there. We've already seen a bit of that second one come up, as Cyth's mentioned. It's also a question (or questions) that the game doesn't give a singular answer to. Sometimes the answer is a resounding "No. You have only made things worse." ~-~ Beyond that, for Ember - as others have said, Ember's nihilism is, to me, one of the best parts. And in fact I wouldn't classify it as nihilism. Ember is hope personified, and part of that is the hope things will get better even when there's absolutely no reason to believe they could. It is, at least to my thinking, what actual optimism is. Optimism isn't whether the glass is half full or half empty. Optimism is believing that, not only can an empty glass be refilled, but that you and those around you can be the ones to fill it up, or even just start the process of filling it back up. Ember looks at this situation and knows, quite acutely, that by all accounts everything is already lost. And that doesn't matter. She's still going to believe in and fight for a better world, no matter how pointless or hopeless. People can still always be better. Anyone can still always be better. The gods haven't been helping us a ton so far, and Ember's response to that is - well, then the gods themselves can be better, too. For Wendy, I'm doing a m-m-m-mega hacked run atm with both Lann and Wendy, and like...yeah no there's no contest, Lann is 100% better written. I'd say only bring Wendy along if specifically you want that "redemption" regardless of how dumb you have to act about it and how many obviously evil things you have to overlook, or because you just cannot help but desire that spidercatussy. And it's a shame, because there are some kernals of good writing in Wendy, but...they are deep, and you gotta dig through quite a bit of poo poo to get to them. I get people who think Lann is "boring" (though I disagree) and I get people annoyed that Lann is more then a bit pushy about romances (no defenses there, calm down dude), but I enjoy his overall narrative a whole lot, and think he's by far the better choice.
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Mar 14, 2024 22:44
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Exotic Weapons were actually pretty well valued in Kingmaker - or at least, some were. Elven curve blades, falcatas, fauchards, and bastard swords all had some insanely strong weapons in Kingmaker, especially in end game, and WotR continues the fauchard love with some exceptional choices in chapter 3 and 4. In all honesty, just plain ol' longswords are...not actually that good, here in WotR. The best weapon in the game (probably) is just a big meaty greataxe. Longswords run the problem of being, well, a one handed weapon, and mechanically speaking, one handed weapons typically fall behind, as you're nearly always better off not using a shield, given that most melee characters would much rather be mounted then on foot, and mount AC is absurdly easy to stack up high. Someone on a horse (or wolf! or boar!) with a big two hander will almost always be better then someone on foot with a sword and shield, especially since the person on the mount can move and still full attack. Seriously, give Seelah a horse and polearm and watch her massacre everything around her.
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Mar 15, 2024 04:29
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Crafting is legit useful at higher difficulties, it's worth saying. There used to be a fun thing you could do with scrolls of mage armor and a specific mythic feat, but they sadly got rid of that. Still, there's lots of scrolls that are legit useful to have on hand. As for the treadmill, it's not the biggest concern, simply because a lot of them can be replicated with spells. Rings of deflection can be substituted with a single level 1 cleric spell, for example. The downside is that you fall deep into the horrors of 3.x buffing, especially if you do it sans-mods.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:25
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Animal companions are whack because they, if I remember, actually scale with difficulty, which like. It's good because it ensures they're always good. It's also insane because it means, low level, animal companions are way stronger then your actual PCs are. The easiest way to demolish Shield Maze is to just shove Wendy or Lann into a class with a pet and let the pet do all the work. Which goes back to what I said earlier - mounting up makes you near invincible to HP damage, because attacks are all re-directed to your mount, and when your mount is invincible, guess what that makes you. Why bother using a shield when your horsey is your living shield?
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Mar 17, 2024 07:00
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Death is itself not evil. Undeath involves *enslaving souls*, so yeah, it's pretty evil! Consider: the horror of the original zombie myth was not that they ate brains or whatever. The zombie mythos we are all familiar with was born in the Haitian suger plantations, which were, to put it lightly, the most hellish experience the plantation slavers could make it. Hellish enough that they had the horrifically unique problem of their slave labor choosing to kill themselves rather then continue existing in such a miserable state. Enter the belief of the zombie. Many - I daresay, most - cultures already had a severe taboo against disrupting the rest of the dead. While not all cultures had the option or idea of a positive afterlife, it was still considered wrong in the extreme to interrupt or interfere with the dead. But in the Haitian colonies, this was taken to a more horrific extreme. Voodoo priests - often hired by plantation owners or slave drivers themselves - used the fear of zombification to stop their slaves from committing suicide. The horror was simple - even in death, you aren't free. Not even dying could save you from the horrors of slavery. There would be no heaven awaiting you - just endless slavery. It's from this idea that a lot of fantasy necromancy, somewhat unwittingly, comes fun. Undeath isn't just evil because disrupting the rest of the dead is a severe taboo, or D&D's own weird usage of "negative energy." It's also, at least in much fantasy, forcing the souls of the dead into servitude and slavery. And hey, guess what, slavery's real loving evil, even if (and maybe especially if) the person in question was dead before you pressed them into service.
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Mar 18, 2024 17:38
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 Slaan posted:In universe there is probably a soul enslavement aspect, which is obviously evil. But outside the PF universe, there are many other variants that don't require that. Some where people volunteer to have their souls and bodies used to defend others for certain periods of time, some where the soul doesn't go into at all so it's just moving some decayed bones from 100 years ago around, etc. Jokes aside, sure, you could create a universe where you have concepts such as the "hallowed dead" who return to fight such as numerous myths of sleeping kings, those oath-bound who cannot rest until their oath is fulfilled a'la Dead Men of Dunharrow, or simply "bone golems" (although if you're just animating inanimate objects, the only reason you'd choose skeletons is to be an edgelord about it, so I think you're still being a dick on that example). PF is none of those universes, and while the first two ideas have some grounds in fantasy, that's absolutely not the case of what the lich is doing.
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Mar 18, 2024 19:01
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I mean, you absolutely can play off your lich as someone who is tempted into dark powers for a greater good, believing they're doing this for the aforementioned reasons of using the dead to serve against a greater evil. It's a legitimate path in the game. It's just that, by the end of the game, you've almost certainly lost those pretenses, because every step into more power is also a step into greater profane evils to get that power. No matter how good your initial reasons are, no matter how much you tell yourself that you're doing this to stop the demons, you're stlil doing increasingly horrible things to achieve more and more personal power, and that inevitably tips you over. The more time you spend around other slavering ghouls and slaves to your will, the more the living start to look like so much unused meat. In other words, the Lich has two possible narratives - the full skeletor, and the descent and temptation into evil. There is no path where you remain a good person. Good people don't butcher the innocent and enslave their souls, regardless of their good intentions.
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Mar 18, 2024 19:21
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:well at that point all you have to do is take up the issue with the arbiters of good and demonstrate their faulty reasoning. admittedly this -will- involve storming the gates of their so-called heavens and laying waste to the blinkered fools who are so eager to die on their behalf, but once that preamble is dealt with the rest is just a matter of reasoned debate and several million heavily armed skeletons. Ahhhhh, a fan of the origins of the dumb image I used above!  Also very fitting given how much this game adores the HoMM series. You wanna make jokes about this game being Slavic, there's your actual source.
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Mar 18, 2024 20:45
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This dungeon has a few fights that are absolute nightmares on higher difficulties...and, at least in my experience, Hulrun takes the edge off some of the worst ones. That's not to say the Desnans aren't useful, but the room with the dudes around the table, and especially the room with the alchemist has been the bane of many a playthrough. In my current go, Hulrun popped out in the former and basically ended the fight before it could begin, and it was such an insane relief. Those clerics summon swarms! gently caress swarms! That haste buff is also no joke. At this early on, it's unlikely, outside of particular power leveling bullshit, that you're going to be level 6 (in fact, I'm not sure even with power leveling bullshit you can accomplish that). So everyone is packing one attack, and Haste makes that too. That means haste straight up doubles the damage all your mounted melee and archers do, and doubles the damage non-mounted melee does on turns where they don't have to move. I can't imagine doing this bit without it. Also of major import, by now, you've likely bought and found some cold iron arrows for your archer(s), and they turn into very vicious turrets, between ignoring demon damage resist and haste giving them a bonus attack. Special hate out goes to two monsters in particular, whose names I don't instantly remember - the fire demons, and the negative energy demons, who can both do very high levels of AoE damage. The former can be largely controlled with judicious use of resist fire scrolls, but the latter, you frankly just have to kill or control before they can fire their negative energy blast at you. Either way, Grey Garison feels appropriately challenging. The Haste buff encourages you to do it all without resting, and even then, there's a few times where I only just finish as that buff starts to wear off, and it feels pretty heroic by the time you've done it all. You swagger into this room as Mr Big Shot, having cleared the garison at great difficulty...and, very likely, very low on health and resources. The Minhago confrontation is fantastic and you absolutely need to listen to that song to get the full effect. That said...I have to assume difficulty makes a bigger change here. I would've sworn that song doesn't kick in until, uh, later events that we will likely see soon enough. As for the fight we missed, it's an unimaginable slog. It's not that it's super difficult at higher difficulties - it can hurt, certainly, but the enemies very kindly pile in through three or so specific bottlenecks, and a judicious use of control spells will stop most threats. In particular, Nenio should be able to hold three Selective Grease spells, and one in each bottleneck will easily ensure the fight never becomes too much of a risk. No, the real slog is that there's a million friendly NPCs...who never move from their place. so each round has you waiting...and waiting...and WAITING...all so they can each individually pass on their turn. Nightmare. It's also normally your first look at a minotaur! It promptly falls horns over rear end thanks to my grease. Selective spell is hilarious.
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Mar 19, 2024 03:48
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Oh yeah, we never went back to kill that Vraak. That fucker's another potential run ender if you don't take it seriously! Sadly, it drops a shield, and shields are useless.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:22
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To be fair, in Minagho's favor, this should work. She dramatically outlevels everyone around her, last time we faced her she wiped the floor with us, and so far she's batting all home runs when it comes to loving up the Crusade. This method has never failed her before. Her only mistake was not realizing that this is a game, and that we're the protagonists. She should've gone into Trickster.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:35
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MonsterEnvy posted:Nah Devil’s are straight up super fascists. Demons are just assholes who want to wreck everything for everyone. No, kvx had it right. The idea that fascists are super orderly and make things work at great cost is, to be frank, fascist propaganda. They're not "hard men making hard decisions." At the end of the day, they're just another raider/slaving culture with a higher opinion of themselves.
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Mar 20, 2024 00:40
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Mechanically speaking, Master Shapeshifter is potent to the point where you probably want it on every front liner, and possibly most of your ranged characters too, along with some means to unlock it on them, usually via alchemist (who can share their personal spells with others with an alchemist talent) or brown-fur transmuter arcanist (who can cast personal transmutation spells on others, have I mentioned that class is utterly insane yet?). Mythic powers, like feats themselves, run the gamut from character defining to...just sorta eh. I've mentioned before that animal companions can become neigh untouchable with defenses, and non-frontliners typically just need to five foot step away from stuff, so things that prevent opportunity attacks aren't the most ideal. Likewise, Ever Ready hits the problem of...mostly being a normal feat, and mythic powers are way more valuable then feats. On the other hand, Abundant Spellcasting is, so potent that you will get it and it's upgrades for every spellcaster eventually, it's only a question of when, cleaving shot is a must-have for ranged characters, and...well, I've already talked about the glories of Master Shapeshifter. I'll admit I'm surprised you didn't get Ascended Element for Ember - that's another character maker, for anyone who's going to be blasting. As for first level mythic ascension, none of them tend to be all that important. Demon is good for eventually giving you an extra natural attack, Aeon is good for giving you a strong dispel (and at higher difficulties, you're going to have some fights where you absolutely need to spend some time stripping away enemy buffs - hey, it's Baldur's Gate 2 all over again!), and Trickster is a great fall-back for anyone, with a mirror image variant to keep you alive, and a bonus to all your skills, because skills are always useful. Azata and Angel both suffer from giving you a power that's rarely better then other options to use your action on, and lich is just very specialized for liches only. But like, it's all fairly minor in the long run, even on harder difficulties. Narratively, yeah, Staunton doesn't want forgiveness from other people. He wants to suffer, because he ultimately feels he deserves it. He can't be "redeemed" because he doesn't think it's possible. He doesn't necessarily want to die, not yet, but he also doesn't think he could ever be a good person again. He won't be the only character who has truly given up on the very idea of "redemption," but not all of them fair quite so poorly as ol' Staunton does. Or they do, because you gently caress up, try to redeem them, and they in turn think you're full of poo poo, just like every other would-be "good guy" who ultimately only made their life worse! Nobody has hurt the Crusades more then the Crusades have. That's not to say the 70 years of everyone treating Staunton like poo poo has nothing to do with it, mind you; Staunton's problem is ultimately that the system around him has only ever reinforced his own negative beliefs about himself. A few good people won't change the fact that, according to the Crusades at large, Staunton is irredeemably evil, and the only reason the Queen let him live was so that he could die in battle and at least make his death useful. Galfrey's writing woes come down to literally a singular moment where the writers were stuck on how to connect two major plotlines, and making the queen kinda gently caress up was their best way to do it. I don't entirely blame them - she's been at this for five Crusades now, and it's entirely believable that hey, maybe you need five because she's actually not that good at this. Also, not to get too political about things, but an elder being who refuses to relinquish leadership to anyone younger, despite their failings? Yeah, that's not a hard one to believe. Areelu here is pretty great. It's your first look into the ideas that 1) Areelu's got bigger plans at work here then Deskari's would-be invasion, 2) those plans involve you, and 3) your memories aren't fully adding up. I'll say upfront that I'm a big fan of her character as written by Owlcat, and their revisions are a major step up from the tabletop version where she's...just kind of an evil wizard lady, and that's about it.
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Mar 21, 2024 07:44
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Quackles posted:I see what you did there.  CommissarMega posted:I'm gonna stick my hand in the dark hole here and say that as good as Master Shapeshifter is, it's not all that great even for a frontliner; a +1 to Strength-related checks, and a +2 to AC and HP/level are useful, but I find abilities like Thundering Blows, Leading Strike and Unrelenting Assault work better as wrecking enemies, as opposed to 'I'll die a little slower, nice!'. For a bard, I'll agree that they aren't as immediately useful as some others might be, but it's still worthwhile (especially since those bonuses are premanent for a kitsune), and for your given frontliner? +2 attack, +2-4 damage (which gets multiplied on crits), +2 HP/level, +2 AC, +2 fort saves, +2 reflex saves, and +2 to all strength and dex checks, and this stacks with everything. The damage is great and is boosted by crits; more important is the accuracy bonus, and far more important is the survivability that comes with it. And you get it all! Master Shapeshifter is the complete package. Especially this early on, all those boosts matter a whole lot; most of our party have, maybe, a +1 to one or two of those stats from items. Consider Yua's stats; not to go full loving math nerd on this, but it's increased Fortitude (a very important save!) by 2/3rds, and +10 HP is more then two full levels worth of extra HP. That's just from the Constitution bonus! Higher difficulties get dangerous, and it's not for nothing that every character gets Last Stand sooner or later in my games. I'll note, at this level, if you're using a two hander (like you should!), Master Shapeshifter actually outdamages all the feats you mentioned, and then gives that accuracy bonus AND all those defensive bonuses on top of that. This early on, there's no question - Master Shapeshifter is incredible. And because its bonuses stack with everything, it never gets bad. At max level, sure, Leading Strike and Unrelenting Assault will do more damage on average (Thundering Blows will not, it's utterly terrible and I dunno why you'd ever take something that does piddling damage and only activates on a miss). But, at those higher levels, they aren't going to add enough damage to matter too much, whereas Master Shapeshifter's accuracy and defensive boosts are still going to be going strong. And hell, it's +4 damage applies to every attack, and gets increased by crits! CommissarMega posted:Ascension The main thing that sticks out to me here is how none of these have any narrative connection at all. They don't really feel "mythic." Oh, you get a few nice numbers, but there's no comparing "defensive dude" vs "radiant angel from the Heavens" or "archmage" vs "chaotic good romantic hero from the wilds of Elysium, empowered by the Song of Freedom."
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Mar 21, 2024 10:27
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Poil posted:Thanks for spoiling that that's a thing... As the first post says, be prepared for a very liberal attitude towards spoilers. This isn't an LP where the story is slowly revealed as we play through the game. I'm going to say in fact that, if you haven't played the game and plan on doing so, this is the wrong LP to be at.
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Mar 21, 2024 14:45
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Aeon is very painful to play through because you are asked to be inhuman (and because, well, it just kinda isn't good mechanically). It's also very cool and I'm glad it works the way it does, because you are asked to be inhuman. I actually wonder if the Aeon specifically took more work then the other paths, and if it's possibly the reason the later paths are so truncated; the ideal would've been every path diverging as much as the Aeon does.
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Mar 21, 2024 18:54
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