Pathfinder Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition - now with turn-based combat

[dutchwench]

Well, that could prove a problem. I've basically blown through all my crisis points and the War of the River Kings chapter already started, so I guess I'm kind of fucked. Not to mention all the companion quests that started popping up suddenly I'm inundated with timed quests. Teleportation circles are a godsend, but I still don't really have the time for the 14 day rank ups. Am I not supposed to do every rank up and claim every region? How am I supposed to have time for projects too with all the events and shit popping up?

Also did the Ancient Curse Part Five fight, spent a couple days in-game, when is the next conversation going to happen? Kind of worried that it's bugged because every time I did Bald Hilltop, a conversation happened within 2 days.

River Kings is when I started having the same problems as well. Kinda had to save scum to get out of a bunch of sticky situations. It got even worse towards the end.
I am genuinely not sure what to say. I had time to get all regions and a fair amount of upgrades. I didn't get to do all the companion quests because I was perfectly okay with some getting the "bad" endings.
I think the game is straight up trying to kill you. At the moment it's mostly doing that in-game, but unless you switch to a lower diff for kingdom management, your fan might start spinning at an unsafe speed at night.

 

[Cael]

In my one ever run through, I was playing a LG kingdom and had bonuses from buildings. None of the bonuses seemed to work, and my crew, who were decked out with +stat gear had about the same 40-60% chance of success.

The game is fucked up beyond all belief.

 

[Yosharian]

Nothing baffles me on this forum as much as Kingdom Management defenders, it's like we played two different games

 

[Haplo]

Nothing baffles me on this forum as much as Kingdom Management defenders, it's like we played two different games

Eh, I think it does enrich the game overall. You're building a kingdom after all.

That said, set it on Easy to avoid headaches.

 

[Nas92]

Kingdom management is a good idea, but I'm fairly certain it didn't receive much playtesting in the context of the actual game as in how it plays. They really needed to think through the amount of events and how long the ruler is occupied with this project or that. Not to mention the other projects you have zero chance of doing due to the constant rank-ups and territory claiming and the random problems.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm fairly certain it didn't receive much playtesting

Given how cumbersome, unwieldy and unfriendly the UI and mechanics of it are I can only imagine that no one wanted to playtest it much. The simple fact that the loading screens are so bad makes you dread needing to interact with it every time you return to the capitol.

 

[Nas92]

So I basically found the Menagerie at random, do I still need to do the On the trail of monsters project?

Also set the kingdom management to easy, the percentage chances have dropped as low as 20-50%, I get events where some advisors have 0% to complete stuff. I'm fairly certain I'm not that shit at this, pretty sure it's bugged or broken in some way.

 

[Yosharian]

So I basically found the Menagerie at random, do I still need to do the On the trail of monsters project?

Also set the kingdom management to easy, the percentage chances have dropped as low as 20-50%, I get events where some advisors have 0% to complete stuff. I'm fairly certain I'm not that shit at this, pretty sure it's bugged or broken in some way.

It's not bugged or broken, that's just how it's designed.

 

[Nas92]

Had to reload because of that ghost wizard's Curse of Deterioration, I couldn't remove it, I used literally a hundred Remove Curse scrolls and still couldn't. Fortunately, I anticipated this and had a save just before that fight and I don't have to redo too much content, basically barely any.

Also, what's supposed to happen after coming out of the palace in Pitax? There's the Academy situation and finishing up Linzi's quest but I feel like something should happen after that but nothing's happening. The game said I get to choose the fate of Pitax, so what's gonna happen? Don't I automatically get the territory like with Varnhold?

 

[Cael]

Had to reload because of that ghost wizard's Curse of Deterioration, I couldn't remove it, I used literally a hundred Remove Curse scrolls and still couldn't. Fortunately, I anticipated this and had a save just before that fight and I don't have to redo too much content, basically barely any.

Also, what's supposed to happen after coming out of the palace in Pitax? There's the Academy situation and finishing up Linzi's quest but I feel like something should happen after that but nothing's happening. The game said I get to choose the fate of Pitax, so what's gonna happen? Don't I automatically get the territory like with Varnhold?

Don't recall that one. Not sure if I ran into it.

 

[Üstad]

The boggard cave is fucking awful. An endless tunnel of copy pasted boggard barbarians with tons of hp. Monotonous as fuck, and shit loot.

Exemplifies the worst of Owlcat design

Owlcat does overuse encounters, but the encounters themselves were good. At least better than most of kingmaker.
Tons of HP is irrelevant there. You're not supposed to tank and spank, just disable them/slow them, they have weak will and especially reflex saves.

Thrash or repetitive hp tank encounters are simply bad design especially for spellcasters who rely on rest to use their abilities. You know you can deal with them, there is no doubt, yet the game make you fight with them for meh exp and items. I'd rather have less classes but more balanced and enjoyable encounters and dungeons. But even the most hardcore RPG fans enjoy class and ability bloat.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Thrash or repetitive hp tank encounters are simply bad design especially for spellcasters who rely on rest to use their abilities. You know you can deal with them, there is no doubt, yet the game make you fight with them for meh exp and items. I'd rather have less classes but more balanced and enjoyable encounters and dungeons. But even the most hardcore RPG fans enjoy class and ability bloat.

I mean forcing your mages to use their full arsenal to survive is a good design.

The bad design is not restricting resting so your mages can blow all their repertoire for one fight in the cave, rest, and do it all over again.

D&D 3E and PF1E casters are insanely powerful, but they are supposed to be limited by the constraint of how much you can rest. In some short P&P sessions I had you probably have 1 short rest and 1 long rest per dungeon by the GM. In some urgent scenarios, the GM outright banned long rest even, so the party needs to pool up resources for wands, scrolls, and shits to survive the dungeon.

Most CRPGs completely failed in this regard. Older D&D games just don't even try for a solution. Pillars tried to fix it by limiting rest through "firewood" mechanic, the problem is there is no stopping you from just running back to town. Owlcat tried to fix this by making Camping supply weigh a ton but you can just cast Bull Strength or bring an Animal Companion to solve the issue. Qeen's Wish (vogel) tried by making dungeons respawn enemies when you leave midway through. Owlcat in WOTR tried to fix it by Corruption mechanic but copt out by the fact they provided a shit ton of Corruption removal objects on map (but even then some mega dungeon, especially Siege of Drezden was pretty gruelling still).

This is why, in a way, Soulslike works from design perspective: simulating attrition. Estus Flask mechanic hard limit how much you can bring into one section of dungeon and/or boss fight (altho lately they just went lazy and put bonfire right before bosses). Soulslike is a tense game not only because of the fight but also due to the fact that attrition is real and you have limited resources to pull back from mistakes.

So long CRPG doesn't fix this issue it will still feels bad for any Vancian system. But even for "mana" system, unless you extremely limit restoring your mana then you will still have the same issue.

 

[Üstad]

Thrash or repetitive hp tank encounters are simply bad design especially for spellcasters who rely on rest to use their abilities. You know you can deal with them, there is no doubt, yet the game make you fight with them for meh exp and items. I'd rather have less classes but more balanced and enjoyable encounters and dungeons. But even the most hardcore RPG fans enjoy class and ability bloat.

I mean forcing your mages to use their full arsenal to survive is a good design.

The bad design is not restricting resting so your mages can blow all their repertoire for one fight in the cave, rest, and do it all over again.

D&D 3E and PF1E casters are insanely powerful, but they are supposed to be limited by the constraint of how much you can rest. In some short P&P sessions I had you probably have 1 short rest and 1 long rest per dungeon by the GM. In some urgent scenarios, the GM outright banned long rest even, so the party needs to pool up resources for wands, scrolls, and shits to survive the dungeon.

Most CRPGs completely failed in this regard. Older D&D games just don't even try for a solution. Pillars tried to fix it by limiting rest through "firewood" mechanic, the problem is there is no stopping you from just running back to town. Owlcat tried to fix this by making Camping supply weigh a ton but you can just cast Bull Strength or bring an Animal Companion to solve the issue. Qeen's Wish (vogel) tried by making dungeons respawn enemies when you leave midway through. Owlcat in WOTR tried to fix it by Corruption mechanic but copt out by the fact they provided a shit ton of Corruption removal objects on map (but even then some mega dungeon, especially Siege of Drezden was pretty gruelling still).

This is why, in a way, Soulslike works from design perspective: simulating attrition. Estus Flask mechanic hard limit how much you can bring into one section of dungeon and/or boss fight (altho lately they just went lazy and put bonfire right before bosses). Soulslike is a tense game not only because of the fight but also due to the fact that attrition is real and you have limited resources to pull back from mistakes.

So long CRPG doesn't fix this issue it will still feels bad for any Vancian system. But even for "mana" system, unless you extremely limit restoring your mana then you will still have the same issue.

Look I get the logic behind it, but resting is either tedious and cheesy or not being able to rest is just justifies and even encourages shitty encounters with "but that's for attrition approach". Just create some mana system where you limit both buff stacking and being overly conservative with your spells, such as not making you think twice about casting a snowball in a thrash encounter. The current system might work in PnP, but it quite does not in the video game.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I personally advocate more or less Queen's Wish Approach even though it is incredibly unpopular. Make the game do a big, un-overwriteable Autosave before entering ALL dungeon. Makes resting only possible in certain areas of the map so that your encounter design should be taking account of how many resources you want the player to stretch before the player can rest. If player failed, they will need to return to their auto-save, approach the dungeon differently, and maybe do some side quest to get more level or gold to buy resources.

This also fundamentally fix dogshit trash mob design (altho you can do attrition with trash mobs, but not just everytime).

Not CRPG but a Japenese doujin/indie game tried also to emulate PnP attrition design through more or less what I explained above (game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1483370/The_Use_of_Life/).

I conisder this game through that approach to be very superior. You have campsites with limited use, you can use them anytime of course but all dungeon is "limited", you can't get out to repenslish resources, there are limited opportunities for resting. This means when you explore and find a resting place you need to evaluate on how far to push and when I played in higher difficulties it actually makes me consider on when to use the resting spots

KOTC 1 and 2 is superb on this point and is one reason they are extremely good D&D games. How may you can rest should always be tied to the dungeon and encounter design. They can't be separate.

 

[Pathfinder: WoTR]

Thrash or repetitive hp tank encounters are simply bad design especially for spellcasters who rely on rest to use their abilities. You know you can deal with them, there is no doubt, yet the game make you fight with them for meh exp and items. I'd rather have less classes but more balanced and enjoyable encounters and dungeons. But even the most hardcore RPG fans enjoy class and ability bloat.

I mean forcing your mages to use their full arsenal to survive is a good design.

The bad design is not restricting resting so your mages can blow all their repertoire for one fight in the cave, rest, and do it all over again.

D&D 3E and PF1E casters are insanely powerful, but they are supposed to be limited by the constraint of how much you can rest. In some short P&P sessions I had you probably have 1 short rest and 1 long rest per dungeon by the GM. In some urgent scenarios, the GM outright banned long rest even, so the party needs to pool up resources for wands, scrolls, and shits to survive the dungeon.

Most CRPGs completely failed in this regard. Older D&D games just don't even try for a solution. Pillars tried to fix it by limiting rest through "firewood" mechanic, the problem is there is no stopping you from just running back to town. Owlcat tried to fix this by making Camping supply weigh a ton but you can just cast Bull Strength or bring an Animal Companion to solve the issue. Qeen's Wish (vogel) tried by making dungeons respawn enemies when you leave midway through. Owlcat in WOTR tried to fix it by Corruption mechanic but copt out by the fact they provided a shit ton of Corruption removal objects on map (but even then some mega dungeon, especially Siege of Drezden was pretty gruelling still).

This is why, in a way, Soulslike works from design perspective: simulating attrition. Estus Flask mechanic hard limit how much you can bring into one section of dungeon and/or boss fight (altho lately they just went lazy and put bonfire right before bosses). Soulslike is a tense game not only because of the fight but also due to the fact that attrition is real and you have limited resources to pull back from mistakes.

So long CRPG doesn't fix this issue it will still feels bad for any Vancian system. But even for "mana" system, unless you extremely limit restoring your mana then you will still have the same issue.

Good design is the game that allows you to have fun whichever way you want. Owlcat's game are pretty close to perfect in that regard with the extremely customizable difficulty settings.

Yes, you can rest anytime and as often as you want (despite the time limits in Kingmaker and corruption bar in WoTR) but the thing is - you don't have to. This might be an alien mindset to people who overoptimize and min-max everything, but the most fun you can have in games is creating your own story and challenge.

Personally I hate resting abuse in party-based RPGs so I try to play with as little resting as possible: preferably no more than once per dungeon and not doing it if the time and place thematically doesn't allow it. But it still nice to have the ability to pop an extra rest before an especially challenging boss fight, just because it's a more dignified way to overcome that challenge than to just outright lower the difficulty or reload 10 times until you find a way to cheese the AI.

TLDR: abundant resting is not a problem if you don't play the game as a munchkin.

 

[Yosharian]

It's absolutely obvious that the issue is not with tough encounters that force spellcasters to use their abilities, nor with gruelling dungeons that have lots of encounters, but rather boring copy paste encounters that artificially pad out the dungeon and offer no variety to the player.

In the Boggard cave you encounter these barbarian Boggards that are tough as hell and they hit hard, forcing you to think about how you're going to disable them. They're not a bad little encounter. (Well, actually you first encounter them outside the cave, but whatever) Then the rest of the cave is just the same encounter copy pasted about 20 times. This isn't interesting dungeon design. Owlcat uses this approach all the time. HATEOT is similar, but at least you have more advanced tools available to you, such as Weird, by that point.

 

[Üstad]

It's absolutely obvious that the issue is not with tough encounters that force spellcasters to use their abilities, nor with gruelling dungeons that have lots of encounters, but rather boring copy paste encounters that artificially pad out the dungeon and offer no variety to the player.

In the Boggard cave you encounter these barbarian Boggards that are tough as hell and they hit hard, forcing you to think about how you're going to disable them. They're not a bad little encounter. (Well, actually you first encounter them outside the cave, but whatever) Then the rest of the cave is just the same encounter copy pasted about 20 times. This isn't interesting dungeon design. Owlcat uses this approach all the time. HATEOT is similar, but at least you have more advanced tools available to you, such as Weird, by that point.

To clarify tough encounters isn't the problem in fact I like them. But the attrition pproach justifies lazy dungeon designs that's the problem.

 

[Nas92]

To interject, I actually like the idea of attrition, but it kind of misses the mark if you can just rest in dungeons. Yeah, I know, you use rations and you can be ambushed, leaving you worse off than before, but still, then the whole thing is just annoying. Not to mention the temptation is too great to overdo attrition. The fight before the Pitax throneroom with a million Irovetti loyalist werecreatures, trolls, wardens, etc, that was just insane especially after doing the whole dungeon with a couple of mini boss fights which were easily tougher than Irovetti and the trash mobs. Honestly, though I actually grew to like Kingmaker more than Pillars, I have to say Raedric's Castle was better in this regard. You could choose a frontal assault, then you skip a dungeon but have to fight an army to get to Raedric or you could do the dungeon and the skulking around and make the Raedric fight a bit easier.

Anyhow, a question: which one should I use for my sorcerer Robe of the True Master or Dark Master's Robe? Dark Master's Robe gives much bigger attribute buffs, but Robe of the True Master has the AC, spell resistance, spell penetration, resistance, all that good stuff.

 

[volklore]

It's absolutely obvious that the issue is not with tough encounters that force spellcasters to use their abilities, nor with gruelling dungeons that have lots of encounters, but rather boring copy paste encounters that artificially pad out the dungeon and offer no variety to the player.

In the Boggard cave you encounter these barbarian Boggards that are tough as hell and they hit hard, forcing you to think about how you're going to disable them. They're not a bad little encounter. (Well, actually you first encounter them outside the cave, but whatever) Then the rest of the cave is just the same encounter copy pasted about 20 times. This isn't interesting dungeon design. Owlcat uses this approach all the time. HATEOT is similar, but at least you have more advanced tools available to you, such as Weird, by that point.

To clarify tough encounters isn't the problem in fact I like them. But the attrition pproach justifies lazy dungeon designs that's the problem.

It's clearly an end of act1 area. There's no actual attrition since act1 has a very generous time limit... just a gauntlet of tough fights for you to blow all of your load on while trying to survive, and react to RNG shit like the big dudes passing their saves. When I ran through it at lvl 5, I had to CC some, tank some, lower their saves/AB with intimidate and archon's aura, heal my tank that when he was taking a hit, use difficult terrain to my advantage etc... I constantly had to chose between options as dice rolls were going my way or not, I think that's exactly what a turn-based d20 RPG encounter should be about. I agree that the loot is terrible although it does sell for a lot which is always great for buying items and BPs in early act2, the exp is also nice.

I really liked that area, and I don't think the encounters are even really that copy-pasted :
There's three*2 charging boggard encounters outisde where you can practice fighting those properly, understand their mechanics.
Then you have the cave entrance in which they are all clumped for aoe CC. In the cave, you start by fighting them in a wide area and totally split off from each other which are very nicely solved by difficult terrain/web, then there is the encounter with the two prophet fire mages in the backline which makes you have to do something to deal with them rather than hiding behind difficult terrain/web and deal with them as they come at you. The unnecesarry ones are the couple of patrols and the boss fight of the area isn't particularly great (same as the cave entrance they are clumped for grease/color spray). There's enough difference, variety of option and variance introduced by dice rolls to make them fun to play.

I find it weird that people would complain about copy-pasted encounters in this area of all places where this is a game where old sycamore and womb of lamashtu exist, where you are litterally spammed with waves upon waves of the exact same enemy all accross the dungeon. In old Sycamore you have an entire dungeon floor (and more) of fucking centipedes and spiders that are all functionally the same (low hp poison on hit you can't grease, vs higher hp poison on hit you can grease).

 

[Üstad]

I find it weird that people would complain about copy-pasted encounters in this area of all places where this is a game where old sycamore and womb of lamashtu exist, where you are litterally spammed with waves upon waves of the exact same enemy all accross the dungeon. In old Sycamore you have an entire dungeon floor (and more) of fucking centipedes and spiders that are all functionally the same (low hp poison on hit you can't grease, vs higher hp poison on hit you can grease).

Candlemere Tower also has the same issue, just buy scrolls and cast protection from lighting and it's solved, it's pitifully lazy design. Much simpler RPGs like Dungeon Rats never had that problem, you couldn't ace a fight simply with consumable they're still helpful and auxilliary and due to games economy more valuable. I really wouldnt mind if half of the map was cut to make dungeons better, the encounters and dungeons in this game feels bloated.

 

[Yosharian]

> The fight before the Pitax throneroom with a million Irovetti loyalist werecreatures, trolls, wardens, etc, that was just insane especially after doing the whole dungeon with a couple of mini boss fights which were easily tougher than Irovetti and the trash mobs.

Insane because of difficulty? I remember finding that whole section piss-easy last time I was there

 

[Yosharian]

> Anyhow, a question: which one should I use for my sorcerer Robe of the True Master or Dark Master's Robe? Dark Master's Robe gives much bigger attribute buffs, but Robe of the True Master has the AC, spell resistance, spell penetration, resistance, all that good stuff.

Imagine not using the Robe of Water.

 

[volklore]

I find it weird that people would complain about copy-pasted encounters in this area of all places where this is a game where old sycamore and womb of lamashtu exist, where you are litterally spammed with waves upon waves of the exact same enemy all accross the dungeon. In old Sycamore you have an entire dungeon floor (and more) of fucking centipedes and spiders that are all functionally the same (low hp poison on hit you can't grease, vs higher hp poison on hit you can grease).

Candlemere Tower also has the same issue, just buy scrolls and cast protection from lighting and it's solved, it's pitifully lazy design. Much simpler RPGs like Dungeon Rats never had that problem, you couldn't ace a fight simply with consumable they're still helpful and auxilliary and due to games economy more valuable. I really wouldnt mind if half of the map was cut to make dungeons better, the encounters and dungeons in this game feels bloated.

Candlemere is terrible yes. I still like to play the game turn-based but I litterally just turn the AI on in realtime, cast resist and protect communal and right click the whole area, stopping just to recast haste and resist... At least it is mostly a short area.

 

[Nas92]

> The fight before the Pitax throneroom with a million Irovetti loyalist werecreatures, trolls, wardens, etc, that was just insane especially after doing the whole dungeon with a couple of mini boss fights which were easily tougher than Irovetti and the trash mobs.

Insane because of difficulty? I remember finding that whole section piss-easy last time I was there

Insane because I wasn't expecting a million creatures bum rushing me. Not to mention I walked in completely drained, had to rest before the fight. Afterwards it was easy, also one of the alarms actually drew a couple of trash mobs away if I'm right, that also made it easier. It was just annoying as hell especially the archers harassing my sorcerer main character. Should remember to cast blur, displacement, invisibility, I always think Mirror Image would be enough and it never is.

 

[volklore]

Thrash or repetitive hp tank encounters are simply bad design especially for spellcasters who rely on rest to use their abilities. You know you can deal with them, there is no doubt, yet the game make you fight with them for meh exp and items. I'd rather have less classes but more balanced and enjoyable encounters and dungeons. But even the most hardcore RPG fans enjoy class and ability bloat.

Most CRPGs completely failed in this regard. Older D&D games just don't even try for a solution. Pillars tried to fix it by limiting rest through "firewood" mechanic, the problem is there is no stopping you from just running back to town. Owlcat tried to fix this by making Camping supply weigh a ton but you can just cast Bull Strength or bring an Animal Companion to solve the issue. Qeen's Wish (vogel) tried by making dungeons respawn enemies when you leave midway through. Owlcat in WOTR tried to fix it by Corruption mechanic but copt out by the fact they provided a shit ton of Corruption removal objects on map (but even then some mega dungeon, especially Siege of Drezden was pretty gruelling still).

Rest restrictions in Kingmaker are all about kingdom management, not about carrying rations (you can rest without rations out of dungeons, you just need to spend more time, which you can lower quite a lot by using feats to buff lore:nature) or whatnot. Kingdom management is quite snowbally, the more time you can spend at the capital ranking up advisors, upgrading and annexing the better you will fare. Even when you are done with the main quest of the act, there is plenty of incentive to be as efficient as possible while doing side content since upgrading your kingdom as fast as possible is a massive advantage for later (Artisan upgrades, being more resilient to bad events etc...) and fucking up kingdom management can be game over.
Wrath was a total cop out, not an attempted fix. The ''fix'' would have been to improve on the kingmaker idea and execution rather than making the management layer of the game completely irrelevant to the RPG game. There is no rest restriction at all in wrath when not in main story dungeons since there is no time constraint at all, and in dungeons as you say, corruption is easy to beat, even without a toon with high lore : religion. And similarly nothing preventing you to go back to town to clear corruption anyways, since once again there is no time limits whatsoever.
The comparison with soulslike doesn't work because there is like 2 builds in souls like melee and mage, there is not so many tools, builds and whatever stuff the character can have access to, there is no rolls, your estus flask always heals the same, and enemies can't make 5 saves in a row even though they fail on 15+ making your spellslots wasted etc... Reloading because of chains of nat20 is already annoying enough to, on top of that, having to reload a whole section of encounters you already beat because enemies made more saves than they should have during the dungeon.

That's why the kingmaker way was the best idea so far - an ever looming threat pushing you towards lowering your resting time and being efficient with your resources. Basically punish or reward the player for good/bad time management in way that is impactfull enough to make strategies too reliant on rest spamming crash and burn, not enough to strongly impact a party that is slightly more attrition prone, and enough to reward good resource management.