KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[archaen]

Swarms are difficult, as swarms of tiny creatures are immune to weapon damage in Pathfinder and require special handling with fire, alchemical fire or AoE spells.

That's fair, but they shouldn't be immune to Magic Missile, Inflict Light Wounds, and other spells. It's either a bug or they implemented "weapon damage" as everything except elemental.

Swarms are immune to single target spells in pathfinder. They take 150% damage from area affect spells.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/creature-types/#TOC-Swarm-Subtype

edit: link to rules

 

[glass blackbird]

Valerie's shitty Dex is barely workable on Normal; on higher difficulties I'd imagine she may never hit an enemy at all, short of crits.

But isn't melee attack rating determined by strength bonus...

Yes it is and dps, that's not even her role. Stack as much AC you can on valerie,natural armor necklace + any buffs you have and send her charge in the middle of the enemy group , casters first. Nothing will damage her, she will tank any boss. The barbarian chick is a damage dealer, very squishy . Seems some people aren't even trying to understand how it works then they whine its too hard.

The combat AI is also probably causing people trouble, I would guess. If you leave it on (which we can expect someone who has never played Pathfinder to do, at least at first) then the barbarian will run right into enemy fire because she's the fastest character you'll have for a while. And then she'll probably die, yeah.

The AI is very, very stupid.

 

[Mortmal]

Swarms are difficult, as swarms of tiny creatures are immune to weapon damage in Pathfinder and require special handling with fire, alchemical fire or AoE spells.

That's fair, but they shouldn't be immune to Magic Missile, Inflict Light Wounds, and other spells. It's either a bug or they implemented "weapon damage" as everything except elemental.

Swarms are immune to single target spells in pathfinder. They take 150% damage from area affect spells.

They shouldn't have put this as side quest that early , or maybe add a description to tell casuals it might be too hard without AOE. After a few burning hands memorized its completely trivial. But a beginner party is very unlikely to have what it takes specially with so few available companions.

 

[Mortmal]

Valerie's shitty Dex is barely workable on Normal; on higher difficulties I'd imagine she may never hit an enemy at all, short of crits.

But isn't melee attack rating determined by strength bonus...

Yes it is and dps, that's not even her role. Stack as much AC you can on valerie,natural armor necklace + any buffs you have and send her charge in the middle of the enemy group , casters first. Nothing will damage her, she will tank any boss. The barbarian chick is a damage dealer, very squishy . Seems some people aren't even trying to understand how it works then they whine its too hard.

The combat AI is also probably causing people trouble, I would guess. If you leave it on (which we can expect someone who has never played Pathfinder to do, at least at first) then the barbarian will run right into enemy fire because she's the fastest character you'll have for a while. And then she'll probably die, yeah.

The AI is very, very stupid.

yeah turn that off else they will all charge like Allah fanatics.

 

[archaen]

Swarms are difficult, as swarms of tiny creatures are immune to weapon damage in Pathfinder and require special handling with fire, alchemical fire or AoE spells.

That's fair, but they shouldn't be immune to Magic Missile, Inflict Light Wounds, and other spells. It's either a bug or they implemented "weapon damage" as everything except elemental.

Swarms are immune to single target spells in pathfinder. They take 150% damage from area affect spells.

They shouldn't have put this as side quest that early , or maybe add a description to tell casuals it might be too hard without AOE. After a few burning hands memorized its completely trivial. But a beginner party is very unlikely to have what it takes specially with so few available companions.

I agree and said so earlier in the thread. To be fair to owlcats, that encounter is straight from the adventure path so are not solely to blame. That encounter was never play tested in the beta as they only had normal spiders in that cave.

 

[CarlosDanger]

Valerie's shitty Dex is barely workable on Normal; on higher difficulties I'd imagine she may never hit an enemy at all, short of crits.

Yeah she can't hit anything on challenging difficulty.

 

[Flint]

This is dissapointing because I played the original pencil/paper kingmaker, and it was nothing like this. We were excited to find fixed locations and encounters, yet in this game im forced to reload saves every time I visit one because my entire team gets 1 shot by enemies that I cant even land a single blow on.

Take it from someone who has played tabletop RPGS for near 30 years and has played kingmaker twice and DM'd it 3 times. If i had thrown these encounters at my players they would have quit and refused to ever play with me again. That's not fun.

The difficulty may very well be too high (I haven't played the game yet), but arguing that tabletop module has easier encounters is somewhat dishonest. You can't reload in pnp games and party wipe can be potentially campaign stopping, so usually encounters are not tuned for maximal difficulty. In computer game you have free reloads, so enemies can and should be harder as to make the game properly challenging.

 

[yes plz]

She really can't and it kinda broke her personal quest for me, where she goes to duel a paladin. Between her high AC and shitty dex I sat there for ten minutes watching:
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS
MISS

before finally saying fuck it and reloading and deciding to come back to it later

 

[glass blackbird]

One thing I absolutely do wish they would add is some way to speed up time when walking around. Lots of the areas are very large, and since you can't just exit from anywhere you have to walk all the way back out of the labyrinth again. It's a waste of time, and doesn't really accomplish anything but annoy people.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Owlcat had a quarter of the Kickstarter funding than Obsidian did with Pillars but is more of an IE successor? And Obsidian has employees that worked on the IE games. And this is more fun. I don't even...

the entire debacle of PoE is due to some dudes 7th grade notebook he has been carting around for 35 years where he made his own homemade RPG system during class periods instead of paying attention to the teacher. I did the same thing, but I just never made it to a position in life where I could whip out my old notebook and force the rules down the collective throats of unsuspecting CRPG players expecting a D&D game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

One thing I absolutely do wish they would add is some way to speed up time when walking around. Lots of the areas are very large, and since you can't just exit from anywhere you have to walk all the way back out of the labyrinth again. It's a waste of time, and doesn't really accomplish anything but annoy people.

install cheat engine
edit->settings->hotkeys
bind 'Speedhack speed 1' and 'Speedhack speed 2', make sure #1 is set a 1.00 and #2 is set at something like 2.00 or 3.00(I personally use 3, normal/fast(2.0)/very fast(5.0))

I can't play games without it anymore, too much pointless walking

 

[Fairfax]

Swarms are difficult, as swarms of tiny creatures are immune to weapon damage in Pathfinder and require special handling with fire, alchemical fire or AoE spells.

That's fair, but they shouldn't be immune to Magic Missile, Inflict Light Wounds, and other spells. It's either a bug or they implemented "weapon damage" as everything except elemental.

Swarms are immune to single target spells in pathfinder. They take 150% damage from area affect spells.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/creature-types/#TOC-Swarm-Subtype

edit: link to rules

Weird rule. It makes sense in some cases, but single-target projectiles would still do some damage to a swarm. Also, what about summoned weapons/forms like Bigby's Hand and Mordenkainen's Sword? Would the swarm still be immune?

 

[Serus]

This is dissapointing because I played the original pencil/paper kingmaker, and it was nothing like this. We were excited to find fixed locations and encounters, yet in this game im forced to reload saves every time I visit one because my entire team gets 1 shot by enemies that I cant even land a single blow on.

Take it from someone who has played tabletop RPGS for near 30 years and has played kingmaker twice and DM'd it 3 times. If i had thrown these encounters at my players they would have quit and refused to ever play with me again. That's not fun.

The difficulty may very well be too much (I haven't played the game yet), but arguing that tabletop module has easier encounters is somewhat dishonest. You can't reload in pnp games and party wipe can be potentially campaign stopping, so usually encounters are not tuned for maximal difficulty. In computer game you have free reloads, so enemies can and should be harder as to make the game properly challenging.

That's a good point. In a computer game you have as many reloads as you want, you can try as many different approaches to any encounter as your patience allows. Otoh in a pnp, sure the GM can occasionally manipulate the results but if he has to blatantly and constantly cheat to keep the players alive, he failed in his role (or the players are total morons). And outright "reload" is out of the question. So unless you are willing to balance your crpg around permadeath it should be more difficult than a pnp module would be. The question remains - how much harder though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Anyone know how to upgrade buildings?

 

[Shadenuat]

So far i finished tuturial dungeon + bandits both on normal and hard.
Hard is actually hard, but to constantly(or even occasionally) die on normal in those encouners one must be really, really special.

I mean seriously, just look at this shit:

"Poorly optimized companions" like
a fighter with 20 con
a barbarian with 18 str 16 con
a cleric with 18 wis 14-16 con and str
a rogue/wizard with 18 dex and 18 int

Valerie has 27 melee AC or something like that lvl 2 ffs.

On Normal last enemies in prologue are basically 15 AC banditos, I checked.

 

[Jezal_k23]

How do I heal permanent dex damage?

 

[Raghar]

This is dissapointing because I played the original pencil/paper kingmaker, and it was nothing like this. We were excited to find fixed locations and encounters, yet in this game im forced to reload saves every time I visit one because my entire team gets 1 shot by enemies that I cant even land a single blow on.

Take it from someone who has played tabletop RPGS for near 30 years and has played kingmaker twice and DM'd it 3 times. If i had thrown these encounters at my players they would have quit and refused to ever play with me again. That's not fun.

The difficulty may very well be too much (I haven't played the game yet), but arguing that tabletop module has easier encounters is somewhat dishonest. You can't reload in pnp games and party wipe can be potentially campaign stopping, so usually encounters are not tuned for maximal difficulty. In computer game you have free reloads, so enemies can and should be harder as to make the game properly challenging.

Actually it's more complicated.

- 1. In reality, dangerous encounters typically don't happen on commonly frequented roads.

- 2. Dangerous encounters also don't typically happen that much often.
Actually, I'd write a bit about theory. When dangerous encounters would happen every time, the game might be difficult, but they would prepare for every possible encounter. When some of these encounters are easy, they would drop the guard and as a consequence the dangerous encounter would be even more dangerous.

- 3. In well designed game worlds, problems should happen as consequences of heroes actions. (We kinda killed that person earlier, so we really can't ask him to vouch for us.)


Of course from point of view RPG theory, DnD has two problems. Massive HP growth per level, which causes problems for low level parties. And lack of skill point based skill system, the DnD skill system is level based and feels like Ad hoc addon. Levels are growing up exponentially slowly, skill points are growing linearly. Witcher I evaded that by using gold, silver, and bronze skill points, which allowed to keep OP skills to high levels. DnD is more restricted.

Well, I don't reload in RPG games, it kills immersion. And even when not viewed from story point of view, reloading makes health potions nearly useless, and resurrection scrolls are not that incredibly powerful stuff.

 

[Jenkem]

On Normal last enemies in prologue are basically 15 AC banditos, I checked.

on challenging if you go to either the bandit camp or ancient ruins second you fight 5-6 guys who are at least 28 AC and roll natural 20s

really don't understand why this shit is so ridiculous, but that's not even the worst of it

 

[rusty_shackleford]

hmm, has anyone else expanded their borders yet? When I do it a tutorial pops up that seems to bug the game out.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I bet the average Steam reviewer bombing this game is that type of dumbfuck who heavily insists on having his twitchy reflex skills be what carries him to the finish, blissfully unaware that the difficulty present in an RPG like Kingmaker is a valid type of difficulty despite all those effeminate cries of artificial challenge.

Researching and working around the system is how you should be forced to overcome it, things like Hard/Unfair should be a constant jawbreaker and only the most min/maxing geeks out there can make it happen. Shit, a lot of the enjoyment in RPG difficulty is precisely that RNG that everything could go to Hell in a moment. It's what keeps things exciting and fresh and ties in to the exploration and danger of delving.

I really hope they don't cave in to these pansies that want to change what Hard/Unfair should represent because they're too full of unearned arrogance to drop a difficulty level or two lower.

Anyways, I'm going to give this game a positive score because I'm genuinely having a fun time eight hours in. This is the sort of CRPG I want to see much more of.

 

[Yosharian]

People who haven't replied to my PM about Codex fundraiser keys yet:

4too Circuitbreaker313 fobia smileyninja John Yossarian

My name is similar to the last guy's, I will take his key

 

[Shadenuat]

How do I heal permanent dex damage?

Restoration spell (2d level)/potion/scroll.

 

[Shadenuat]

things like Hard/Unfair should be a constant jawbreaker and only the most min/maxing geeks out there can make it happen

You can also cast 2 webs / Entangles and shoot enemies with bows/spells, that works.

 

[Felix]

The trick is to have a circle around where the player starts the story and have most of the low level stuff to be on this circle, some sort of little sandbox so casual player get the taste of some fighting without things going too insane. Another trick is to label high level areas like: Forest of DOOM, The Evil Bad mountain and have NPCs talking how those areas are fucking no no so the casual player should no those are higher level areas and going in there won't be easy.

Another trick they could use was to change the names of the difficulties, make normal = easy, and hard = normal then have the real difficulty modes for decent player separated and along side stuff like iron man mode so the hordes of lazy shitty players can feel good about themselves without knowing how shit they are.

Then after this, you have a retarded proof game.

And when you reached appropriate level, have NPCs say something along the lines of: "Nobody ever got out of [place's name] alive, but you I think can handle it."

 

[Shadenuat]

on challenging if you go to either the bandit camp or ancient ruins second you fight 5-6 guys who are at least 28 AC and roll natural 20s

Make them lose DEX bonuses. Blind, paralyze, flat-footed, etc.