Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Game of the Year Edition

[Haplo]

Ten other things you discover as your build plan runs into them after investing fifty hours in a playthrough

Yeah, that's why I was asking.

Despite some outstanding issues (that you may not even notice of you don't play a Hunter for example), its a great game.
And a power gamer's wet dream...

Although rather combat heavy.

Mounted combat works well for me
At least with a medium sized mount.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Ten other things you discover as your build plan runs into them after investing fifty hours in a playthrough

Yeah, that's why I was asking.

Despite some outstanding issues (that you may not even notice of you don't play a Hunter for example), its a great game.
And a power gamer's wet dream...

Although rather combat heavy.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the formula and am looking forward to it. Sucks about hunter though since I thought that class looked interesting, but wasn't planning on starting with it anyway. Sounds like I should probably be more or less okay once I actually sit down with it instead of just using the Inevitable Excess DLC to screw around with build and mythic path ideas.

Actually, about the above since there was a discussion about lich battlemages awhile back...

If you go Eldritch Knight, grab martial proficiency manually, don't take fighter or whatever because going down to 18 caster levels will lock you out of level 10 merged spellbook spells and you'll have to take it with an unmerged book, but if you're at caster level 19 like by taking 10 levels of wizard and 10 levels of Eldritch Knight, you'll still get your level 10 slots in the merged book.

I spent awhile messing around with various ways of setting up the idea and noticed that during it. Which sucked because it takes forever and a day to spec out a max level character (especially a caster) in it.

 

[Haplo]

I think you need to be total CL 28 (therefore 2 non-caster levels are ok end-game wise). However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

 

[Daidre]

However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

Timing for Mythic Rank 9 is all over the place between different paths. Azata, Demon and Trickster could get theirs right in the beginning of chapter 5, but Angel needs to complete all 3 main story quests in chapter 5 and gets MR 9 super-late. I do not know about Aeon and Lich. Very curious about Lich too.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think you need to be total CL 28 (therefore 2 non-caster levels are ok end-game wise). However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

Well, you would know better than I if it's different in the main campaign. I'm telling you though that if you set up a CL28 multiclass in Inevitable Excess as a new character with the lich MP, it'll tell you you have 0 10th level spell slots when you cap out. Like unless that's buggy and it has to do with the specific way I got there (IIRC, it was a character that was like: Arcanist 6, Fighter 1, EK 10, Hellknight Signifier 3). I had level 10 spells, but no level 10 spell slots.

It's stuff like that that made me screw around with the DLC for theorycrafting purposes in the first place. I didn't want to have what I figured would be a solid build and then hit a wall in like hour 200.

 

[Haplo]

I think you need to be total CL 28 (therefore 2 non-caster levels are ok end-game wise). However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

Well, you would know better than I if it's different in the main campaign. I'm telling you though that if you set up a CL28 multiclass in Inevitable Excess as a new character with the lich MP, it'll tell you you have 0 10th level spell slots when you cap out. Like unless that's buggy and it has to do with the specific way I got there (IIRC, it was a character that was like: Arcanist 6, Fighter 1, EK 10, Hellknight Signifier 3). I had level 10 spells, but no level 10 spell slots.

It's stuff like that that made me screw around with the DLC for theorycrafting purposes in the first place. I didn't want to have what I figured would be a solid build and then hit a wall in like hour 200.

Oh, sadly I think Arcanists might still be bugged and never get the level 10 spells?
I think there was such a problem.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think you need to be total CL 28 (therefore 2 non-caster levels are ok end-game wise). However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

Well, you would know better than I if it's different in the main campaign. I'm telling you though that if you set up a CL28 multiclass in Inevitable Excess as a new character with the lich MP, it'll tell you you have 0 10th level spell slots when you cap out. Like unless that's buggy and it has to do with the specific way I got there (IIRC, it was a character that was like: Arcanist 6, Fighter 1, EK 10, Hellknight Signifier 3). I had level 10 spells, but no level 10 spell slots.

It's stuff like that that made me screw around with the DLC for theorycrafting purposes in the first place. I didn't want to have what I figured would be a solid build and then hit a wall in like hour 200.

Oh, sadly I think Arcanists might still be bugged and never get the level 10 spells?
I think there was such a problem.

That sucks, that particular character was supposed to go brown fur transmuter + master shapeshifter + self buffs and that to try and be versatile for casting or bashing. Not 100% sure if it would be viable or not, but that was one of the things I was mucking around with and most curious about.

 

[Desiderius]

Why would you EK a Brown Fur?

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think you need to be total CL 28 (therefore 2 non-caster levels are ok end-game wise). However you may get the final (or even final 2) Mythic Ranks very late, so maybe best not to set one's plans basing on those.

Well, you would know better than I if it's different in the main campaign. I'm telling you though that if you set up a CL28 multiclass in Inevitable Excess as a new character with the lich MP, it'll tell you you have 0 10th level spell slots when you cap out. Like unless that's buggy and it has to do with the specific way I got there (IIRC, it was a character that was like: Arcanist 6, Fighter 1, EK 10, Hellknight Signifier 3). I had level 10 spells, but no level 10 spell slots.

It's stuff like that that made me screw around with the DLC for theorycrafting purposes in the first place. I didn't want to have what I figured would be a solid build and then hit a wall in like hour 200.

Oh, sadly I think Arcanists might still be bugged and never get the level 10 spells?
I think there was such a problem.

That sucks, that particular character was supposed to go brown fur transmuter + master shapeshifter + self buffs and that to try and be versatile for casting or bashing. Not 100% sure if it would be viable or not, but that was one of the things I was mucking around with and most curious about.

Yeah that's it, arcanist 20 with CL 30, merged lich book, has no level 10 spell slots.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Why would you EK a Brown Fur?

Why wouldn't you EK a Brown Fur? I know you used to like that class, so I look forward to being illuminated.

 

[Desiderius]

Because your Arcane Pool stops growing, you lose all your Exploits (you can use Exploits for meta in TTT and a couple other useful things as well), your exploits stop improving, and don't get any Greater ones (they kick in at lvl 11) and you lose the Capstone which kicks everything up by another two.

Continue to be dumbfounded by the EK stuff. Do people not use class abilities at all?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Because your Arcane Pool stops growing, you lose all your Exploits (you can use Exploits for meta in TTT and a couple other useful things as well), your exploits stop improving, and don't get any Greater ones (they kick in at lvl 11) and you lose the Capstone which kicks everything up by another two.

Continue to be dumbfounded by the EK stuff. Do people not use class abilities at all?

Imo, there are like 2 good exploits. Some of the other good ones are redundant with mythic features I had intended (e.g. spell resistance).

Has it ever occurred to you that not everyone's trying to do the same thing with a build that you are?

 

[Desiderius]

No I give you credit for not trying to straight up suck. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

 

[mediocrepoet]

No I give you credit for not trying to straight up suck. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Thanks bud. Your magnanimity knows no bounds.

 

[Desiderius]

As a general principle, if you’re blowing off half of the abilities of a class your playing the wrong class for what you’re trying to accomplish.

As I said, TTT does a good job making up for Owlcat’s shitty implementation of the Exploits and even there having a non-spell touch + debuff option that scales with class level is better than it looks as I learned from Jewb in P:K.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Because your Arcane Pool stops growing, you lose all your Exploits (you can use Exploits for meta in TTT and a couple other useful things as well), your exploits stop improving, and don't get any Greater ones (they kick in at lvl 11) and you lose the Capstone which kicks everything up by another two.

Continue to be dumbfounded by the EK stuff. Do people not use class abilities at all?

Imo, there are like 2 good exploits. Some of the other good ones are redundant with mythic features I had intended (e.g. spell resistance).

Has it ever occurred to you that not everyone's trying to do the same thing with a build that you are?

Seriously though, I'm not sure that the EK will actually be any good, I was tooling around. But I really haven't been impressed by the arcanist features other than a few I think are useful. I was more looking to stack bonuses from the Brown Fur transmuter's basic transmutation feature (+2 to whatever stat bonus) + shape change master (+4 to all physical stats) + whatever buff suite in order to come up with an attacker that's not just a waste of time that can also trigger the EK capstone to get free quickened spells. Actually, I should clarify, I'm not sure a melee version of this will be any good. I think a bow version might be better... but again, not sure, just fiddling with stuff to see what it looks like.

But yeah, arcanists blow ass.

 

[mediocrepoet]

As a general principle, if you’re blowing off half of the abilities of a class your playing the wrong class.

I'm not. If you noticed, very little of that build is arcanist.

 

[Desiderius]

+2 for a stat is +1 AB out of what ends up being +100. There’s so many ways to get there that unless you want a full-fledged Arcanist I wouldn’t go that direction.

The nice thing about Arcanist is their Meta doesn’t make spells into full round actions. I’ve got a Phantasmal Mage playthrough slowly going along that uses Shadow Spells (they count as Illusion in TTT) to overcome the Arcanist lack of flexibility.

The quickened spells on Crit thing on EK is less valuable since there’s already so many Swift Actions in the game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

+2 for a stat is +1 AB out of what ends up being +100. There’s so many ways to get there that unless you want a full-fledged Arcanist I wouldn’t go that direction.

The nice thing about Arcanist is their Meta doesn’t make spells into full round actions. I’ve got a Phantasmal Mage playthrough slowly going along that uses Shadow Spells (they count as Illusion in TTT) to overcome the Arcanist lack of flexibility.

The quickened spells on Crit thing on EK is less valuable since there’s already so many Swift Actions in the game.

That could be, like I say, I'm mostly dicking around with ideas at this point and that thing was more just trying to see if I could think of a way to get Daidre's idea to work because I thought it was interesting.

Personally, I'd be more likely to do something like the build above (Brown Fur 6 / Fighter 1 / HKS 3 / EK 10) as a trickster for the expanded crit range and the ability to take the Athletics 3 trick that bumps your BAB to be equal to your Athletics ranks, giving you 20 BAB, full casting in armour with 30 off your spell failure chance, huge crit, and the ability to cast quickened spells on crit for free.

Either that or just give up on the EK and go all in on the HKS to bump the spell failure reduction to 50% (using Order of the Gate) if you wanted an armoured caster. Again though, I'm not necessarily convinced that this is optimal, just dicking around with tropes that people tend to find appealing. Personally, I've never been big on armoured arcane casters. YMMV

EDIT: I should note Desiderius that since the entire point of the character is to make a hybrid, appeals to you only get +2 in exchange for whatever casting stuff is irrelevant. The question is, in those 5-6 base class levels, what does any other class give you in exchange? I think you'll find that the answer is often nothing, so it's +2 for free.

 

[razvedchiki]

is EK cap stone actually usefull? like you get the crit and then cast meteor storm?

 

[mediocrepoet]

is EK cap stone actually usefull? like you get the crit and then cast meteor storm?

Theoretically, yes you could do that. You can quicken cast any spell with no increase to the level, so you could attack, crit, and start chucking mass icy prisons or whatever.

 

[Daidre]

The nice thing about Arcanist is their Meta doesn’t make spells into full round actions. I’ve got a Phantasmal Mage playthrough slowly going along that uses Shadow Spells (they count as Illusion in TTT) to overcome the Arcanist lack of flexibility.

I've respecced Nenio into pure Brown Fur in my last run and damn their spell slot count sucks. She was extraordinary buff bot but most of the time I did not even had the slots for fit in her CC spells. And it would probably hurt Lich even more since he would need the slots for his Mythic spells. TTT tweaks alleviates the problem a bit with Quick Study exploit to replace spells on the fly but it is still annoying. And all other decent exploits also comes from TTT - familiar, metamagic (only one feat) and craft feats. With Potent Magic and maybe wooden flesh, there are imho barely 5 or so exploits that is not an utter trash.

 

[Sarathiour]

If you really want to quicken spell, I gave a combo allowing to quicken all spell for free at the cost of armor slot and few hp.

 

[Mauman]

I've respecced Nenio into pure Brown Fur in my last run and damn their spell slot count sucks. She was extraordinary buff bot but most of the time I did not even had the slots for fit in her CC spells. And it would probably hurt Lich even more since he would need the slots for his Mythic spells. TTT tweaks alleviates the problem a bit with Quick Study exploit to replace spells on the fly but it is still annoying. And all other decent exploits also comes from TTT - familiar, metamagic (only one feat) and craft feats. With Potent Magic and maybe wooden flesh, there are imho barely 5 or so exploits that is not an utter trash.

Yup. I did this too.

As much as I was ambivalent to Nenio, she made my other characters/animal companions into combat gods. I posted a picture of of an animal companion dog a while back in this thread. The stats were absolutely nuts.

 

[Desiderius]

The power of Brown Fur is that it's not just +2 once but it's +2 on Bull's, and +2 on Enlarge, and +2 on Legendary, etc. Capstone doubles all of them.

But you need the Arcane Pool to upgrade every one. Splashing isn't really a thing.

And if you ever catch yourself saying "what would six levels of any another class add?" just stop. You know better than that. Opportunity cost can't just be wished away.

With Potent Magic and maybe wooden flesh, there are imho barely 5 or so exploits that is not an utter trash.

Yes we tried to tell them they needed to implement Counterspell to make the class generally worth it and they decided that hiring a bunch of useless wokels and rushing out the next game was a better investment.

That said once you take TTT into account there's enough with the Move Action teleport and one or two Bombs of your choice along with something else I'm forgetting.