Sometimes you stumble into stuff you shouldn't fight. That's when you run away. Just like in PnP, not everything you encounter should be a battle you can win.
A GM in tabletop who sends that monster against a level 2 party who camps in a kobold zone without an obvious out is an asshole that I don't want to play with.
Like, if you go into the Demonweb Pits at level 2, sure, you're gonna die. Suicide by Lloth. But, like, the worst I had seen in this zone was a giant frog. Even with some vaguely ominous portents, I'd expect a difficult fight at most, not a completely one-sided slaughter.
Like, I'm not stupid. I heard about a manticore in a different area. "I'm not going to go to the manticore area, because a manticore will ruin my shit." That's fair. But this is resting in a low-level area the plot directed me to and suggested that it was important for me to do reasonably quickly.
I stand by my "bullshit" response, especially since apparently running isn't an option.
This game has several moments like that. It also has an encounter structure that assumes you're going to do certain things, and you wind up getting punished hard if you don't. It gets much more fun once you've got Delay Poison and Protection from Energy.
You didn't notice all the bodies from the last group who decided to use the camp and think "hmm, maybe I shouldn't rest there?"
I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
You didn't notice all the bodies from the last group who decided to use the camp and think "hmm, maybe I shouldn't rest there?"
I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
Yeah, I found that part to be bullshit as well.
That said, I did come back for revenge on that fucker later on. Reward: A diamond... woo.
I just cleared Bald Hill for the first time and this game is really not pulling any punches. It took me 4 tries and my successful attempt took over 30 minutes. Spoiler for fight details
I show up with my level 4 party to deal with the spiders here. Giant spiders go down a single hit from my buffed Amiri with Enlarge Person/Bull's Strength, Greater Giant Spiders take 2 hits. The problem is the final wave with the deathspider and the sorcerer that chain casts hold person and hideous laughter. My fighter types fail their will save 90% of the time and once they're helpless, the spider kills them in 2 rounds. I can't kill the spider without Amiri and the caster is smart enough to prioritize her with the hold person effects.
The eventual solution I found was to throw out grease and web at the spot where the caster is going to appear. They failed their reflex save enough that it gave me enough time to kill the giant spider with some good rolls. Now the problem is that Amiri can't make it to the caster either and I spent the next 30 rounds slowly whittling down her HP with ranged touch spells as she alternated between casting disabling spells and falling prone in the greased up web.
Battlenet ID: NullPointer
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
In a lot of ways, this game is a bloated over-designed mess. There's some good stuff in there, but often it will come at you like a poorly placed swarm of spiders.
+2
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
I mean, no one is saying they game is perfect. But there’s a lot of fun to be had with it if you can accept its problems.
In a lot of ways, this game is a bloated over-designed mess. There's some good stuff in there, but often it will come at you like a poorly placed swarm of spiders.
I will say that I really appreciate turn-based mode when it comes to fighting swarms.
As someone who bounced off the game when I first played it, I'm really enjoying the tun based mode. It makes managing aoe and micro classes really easy. Plus it's a toggle, so you can flip to regular if you're just crushing some kobolds real quick
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The toggle is the biggest strength IMO. You don’t need turn based for trash fights that your party can auto attack through, all turn based does then is slow you down.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
I think you can just respec, I don't think you have to start all the way over.
This Kinetic Knight stuff isn't doing it for me. I think I'm going to start over and do my research this time. Either a Scaled Fist Monk/Sorcerer/Dragon Disciple or a Druid/Barbarian that turns into a bear and rages. I was disappointed to learn that Feral Combat Training didn't make it into the game, so no druid/monk kung fu panda shenanigans.
I think you can just respec, I don't think you have to start all the way over.
I am playing on Challenging. The NPC wasn't giving me the respec option.
I got this for Xbox and am playing on challenging and it seems pretty easy with huge spikes from time to time. I kinda want to bump to hard but the spikes are very spikey.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
''The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.''
+6
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
Started playing this over the weekend. Played a chunk of 3.5 back in the day, so Pathfinder is hitting all that goodness. Unfortunately it's also hitting a lot of the bad elements, with the usual issue with my ultimate badass fighter underwhelming due to the usual issues of enemy BAB and STR bonuses increasing faster than my AC, my damage being limited by equipment, and of course the good equipment costing $TEXAS. It's a fighter, I knew what I was getting into, but it's sad.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
Yeah, I googled around and there's some stuff where you dip into monk and duelist and some other shiz so that you can apply all sorts of stat bonuses to your AC. I can appreciate that level of min-maxing, but it's not really something I want to roll with myself, not on this character at least. Honestly, it's not really a problem with the game specifically, the whole thing with fighter types growing linearly while magic types go exponential has been around for ages.
The swarms aren't the worst. It's more the crappy rolls that were bugging me. There have been some sweet rolls for some of the other characters. Undead scythe lady has gotten some very timely crits for nearly 40 damage a few times, but my guy just has been underperforming.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Reminder that if you are playing on the default "Challenging" difficulty, you are handing all the baddies the equivalent of +4 to every single d20 roll the baddies make, because they receive a raw +2 bonus Just Because, then an additional +4 to all of their abilities.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
Reminder that if you are playing on the default "Challenging" difficulty, you are handing all the baddies the equivalent of +4 to every single d20 roll the baddies make, because they receive a raw +2 bonus Just Because, then an additional +4 to all of their abilities.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
I'm playing on the normal setting (or something like that), which is what shows up as the default. It slaps some debuffs on the enemy and gives you ME style combat deaths where everyone is just 'resting' not dead as long as you don't TPK. I scoped out the higher level difficulties and... screw that. I don't even want to think about the slog of trying to play on the super unpossible level. Maybe a few levels in with ultimate min-maxing it becomes something you can manage, but getting going sounds like an exercise in save scumming.
Yeah, AC Fuckery is probably a good idea. At least now I managed to pick up some legitimate arcane spell casters for the group. It's just somewhat annoying to be reduced to a meatshield, and not even a particularly effective one at that since AC doesn't scale particularly well. Somewhat sad that much ink has been spent trying to make fighters more effective and yet here we still are.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Also keep in mind that late game is really rough on armor tanks.
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
About the spider swarms. It’s worth repeating:
You don’t have to fight them.
What you are sent into that cave for can be acquired without fighting them. Hug the bottom of the cave and move towards the back and you shouldn’t aggro any on your way to the plant you need to get stuff from.
Careful planning from before character creation, or clever use of respec.
Multiclassing.
Dipping into Monk (1 or 2, Scaled Fist is good) and/or Paladin (2, maybe Divine Hunter).
Dipping into Rogue (Thug 4 is nice) if you want to be better at melee (Dazzling Display and a bunch of little stuff adds up to +5AB).
Dipping into Stalwart Defender (+1 AC, Defensive Stance).
Oh and also you want to turn Defensive Stance on and never off again.
The General Theory of PF:KM AC Fuckery is...
AC from stats > AC from armor.
Your tank needs around 50-55 touch AC to survive the endgame.
So if you spend some time googling about how to spec PF:KM tanks, you'll see a lot of goofball multi-classes that exist to pile on AC from stats: Scaled Fist for CHA->AC, Duelist for Int->AC, etc., etc.
Hey boys and girls , so I’m doing a challenging difficulty run and was wondering if there was a guide to min maxing the kingdom building events and side quests . I’ve beaten the game a few times so I spoilers are fine , I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything this time around.
Hey boys and girls , so I’m doing a challenging difficulty run and was wondering if there was a guide to min maxing the kingdom building events and side quests . I’ve beaten the game a few times so I spoilers are fine , I just want to make sure I don’t miss anything this time around.
I used a guide from the Steam forums. TBH, on a second playthrough, I'd probably just set it to easy and/or use a mod that makes sure you can't fail any of them.
+2
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Man I need to pick my run back up. I’m about half way through Mother of Monsters and got distracted.
The amount of times I fail a 2-5 roll and the enemy passes a 15+ ( including two consecutive 19+ rolls that caused a game over) is going to make me lose it. Other then that challenging run going swell. Really hope some news for the sequel is shown soon.
0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The amount of times I fail a 2-5 roll and the enemy passes a 15+ ( including two consecutive 19+ rolls that caused a game over) is going to make me lose it. Other then that challenging run going swell. Really hope some news for the sequel is shown soon.
Posts
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I did. What I wanted to do was take the supplies and go rest somewhere else. Game wouldn't let me.
It is reasonable to think that you might get attacked there...the game even has mechanics for camping in such a way that you are ready for an attack, but this one used none of them, and just fast forwards to the fight.
It's also simply bad game design to put that fight in that area at that time. The fight should be challenging, but not completely impossible for characters who are likely to be adventuring in the area. Maybe have it spawn at a later level as a bonus challenge fight for folks that go back to earlier areas to see if they missed anything.
Remember, this is Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu or Hunter: the Reckoning. The default assumption should not be "make one mistake based on incomplete information, die."
Yeah, I found that part to be bullshit as well.
That said, I did come back for revenge on that fucker later on. Reward: A diamond... woo.
The eventual solution I found was to throw out grease and web at the spot where the caster is going to appear. They failed their reflex save enough that it gave me enough time to kill the giant spider with some good rolls. Now the problem is that Amiri can't make it to the caster either and I spent the next 30 rounds slowly whittling down her HP with ranged touch spells as she alternated between casting disabling spells and falling prone in the greased up web.
First time running into War Wisps:
Chain lightning
Chain lightning
Chain lightning
Chain...
Party dead.
Second time, after making sure someone has communal Resist Energy:
Chain...
Hahaha fuck you war wisps.
I will say that I really appreciate turn-based mode when it comes to fighting swarms.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I am playing on Challenging. The NPC wasn't giving me the respec option.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The assassin in the tutorial fight didn't even last through my bear's first two claw attacks.
And I've been shouting obscenities at the TV as the party can't seem to roll above a 5 or 6 when attempting to throw alchemical fire at the thrice cursed spider swarms. That's in addition to the obscenities shouted when the badass fighter couldn't roll above a 10 over the course of four combat rounds. So much hate.
The spider swarms are kind of infamous for being an early game roadblock. I think you can also equip torches and use those to attack them? Should be better than swords. Or just hold off on that area until you get a caster with a couple levels.
AC really shouldn't be a problem. I only play on Easy difficulty so I didn't have to worry about min-maxing, but I know I heard about builds that get you to like 30+ AC by level 5. It seems like non-full casters (i.e. not Wizards, Clerics, etc) get a lot of benefit out of multiclassing.
I jumped back to the main storyline afterwards and the change in difficulty, even at the same character level, was markedly noticeable.
Yeah, I googled around and there's some stuff where you dip into monk and duelist and some other shiz so that you can apply all sorts of stat bonuses to your AC. I can appreciate that level of min-maxing, but it's not really something I want to roll with myself, not on this character at least. Honestly, it's not really a problem with the game specifically, the whole thing with fighter types growing linearly while magic types go exponential has been around for ages.
The swarms aren't the worst. It's more the crappy rolls that were bugging me. There have been some sweet rolls for some of the other characters. Undead scythe lady has gotten some very timely crits for nearly 40 damage a few times, but my guy just has been underperforming.
If you want to play at something more sane, make sure to turn off those stat boosts.
AC Fuckery includes, but is not limited to:
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I'm playing on the normal setting (or something like that), which is what shows up as the default. It slaps some debuffs on the enemy and gives you ME style combat deaths where everyone is just 'resting' not dead as long as you don't TPK. I scoped out the higher level difficulties and... screw that. I don't even want to think about the slog of trying to play on the super unpossible level. Maybe a few levels in with ultimate min-maxing it becomes something you can manage, but getting going sounds like an exercise in save scumming.
Yeah, AC Fuckery is probably a good idea. At least now I managed to pick up some legitimate arcane spell casters for the group. It's just somewhat annoying to be reduced to a meatshield, and not even a particularly effective one at that since AC doesn't scale particularly well. Somewhat sad that much ink has been spent trying to make fighters more effective and yet here we still are.
You don’t have to fight them.
What you are sent into that cave for can be acquired without fighting them. Hug the bottom of the cave and move towards the back and you shouldn’t aggro any on your way to the plant you need to get stuff from.
The General Theory of PF:KM AC Fuckery is...
AC from stats > AC from armor.
Your tank needs around 50-55 touch AC to survive the endgame.
So if you spend some time googling about how to spec PF:KM tanks, you'll see a lot of goofball multi-classes that exist to pile on AC from stats: Scaled Fist for CHA->AC, Duelist for Int->AC, etc., etc.
I used a guide from the Steam forums. TBH, on a second playthrough, I'd probably just set it to easy and/or use a mod that makes sure you can't fail any of them.
Ah, the XCom curse.
Also using a wizard on this run for something different and cloud kill /stinking cloud really do make sections much easier.