I've recently purchased the Pathfinder Kingmaker videogame and I'm enjoying it thoroughly, and while it's a got a lot of similarities to our beloved PnP game, it's not exactly the same.
I've spent some time looking on the internet for builds and advice specific to the video game version but I'm wondering what other may have found.
Not just advice on how to build your main character but on the rest of your party too.
Currently I'm using mods to enhance the game play, with Call of the Wild (which adds lots of classes and feats to the game), the Re-specialization mod which allows you to recreate companions from level 1 (though I know some companions break if you try to change things, like changing Harrim's deity), Crafting mod, and Bag of Tricks for general life enhancements.
So...what builds does anyone have? Or any links to great repositories of builds?
Any suggestion on overall party composition and which characters you use?
|
Here's one I just found that's got info for building all the companions (though it's focused on the base game without mods), including the pre-genned mercenaries from Varnhold's Lot that no one uses. I'm definitely going to use it when I actually attempt to play through it instead of chickening out after the tutorial quest.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
BTW you may get better luck/answers posting in the Official Owlcat Pathfinder RPG subforum here on the boards. I have flagged your thread as "in wrong subforum" FYI, in case it gets moved.
Without mods, you should be able to level/relevel your companions in the game as you like, although I think retraining costs gold after the first three. Honestly, the party members have the classes subtypes they have for a reason and if you're playing the first time through I would recommend sticking with them (you still have a lot of control over them as they level). (Although as always, do as you like.) If you totally, with mods, rebuild NPCs, make sure you don't change their stats such that the ones who are advisors lose the stat they need to be good at their advisor job.
Honestly as it's set up you can really do whatever build you like and you'll have someone else to fill in other needs. They did a good job at creating characters with overlapping (but not fully redundant) abilities and skill sets. I've not felt short on what I've needed to get through, even when I tend to choose my companions based on whether I like them or not more than abilities. But a few things I've observed:
- Presuming vanilla builds for NPCs, there are NO full arcane casters. (There is one wizard who is multiclassed into rogue and optimized to go into Arcane Trickster--but this is good to encourage as her sneak attack damage with spells is insane. I have seen her drop major monsters with cantrips. The other arcane casters are a magus, bard, and alchemist.) So if you like to play casties, sorcerer or wizard would find a good niche.
- Apart from the characters who are obviously built for melee (e.g., Amiri), the other characters tend to have high Dex and low Str--which is sensible but it does mean depending on who you take with you you have a huge ranged/finesse group.
- Toward mid-late game the game the game seems to throw you huge amounts of great gear for monks. There are no NPC monks, so this stuff is only useful if your PC is a monk. That isn't a good reason alone to play a monk (and there's other decent gear for everyone) but they seemed to go out of their way to be sure monks were well equipped.
- Skills that are repeatedly important and good to max out: Athletics, Knowledge: Arcana (necessary for magic item id), Knowledge: World, Knowledge: Nature, Perception, Persuasion, Trickery. The others are also important but these are the ones where you can get much easier resolutions of various issues with them. I would strongly recommend having your PC be good at Persuasion especially as there are rare cases where you can only rely on your skills.
- If you want to romance a particular character you will want alignment close to theirs (but there are also reasons not to romance NPCs, not the least of which because you may not want to, and the dialogue is cheesy as f!#+).
- I wouldn't change any of the divine casters' deities as they are all deeply relevant to their stories.
FWIW I am playing a switch-hitter ranger with favored enemies human, vermin, and magical beast and getting good mileage out of that. My favorite party combo is usually Valerie, Amiri, Hargrim, Tristian, and Octavia OR Valerie, Amiri, Hargrim, Octavia, and Linzi. Valerie (She is set up as a Figher-Tower Shield Specialist and I prestiged her into Stalwart Defender) and Amiri (I leveled as pure Barbarian) tear through s%$$ very well on their own. But any number of other combinations will work; I mainly take them because I like their dialogue or they suit my alignment. At some point you may need to have a certain party member along for something so be prepared to swap out folks and work with different combinations of characters. Likewise there's a couple areas where a party member may temporarily leave and you may need to slot in someone else while they are gone.
Hint: note that once you have a capital, you access all your companions when going into the character/inventory screen whenever you are in the capital. Make sure you've equipped everyone with decent gear before selling off the excess so that if you need to take someone with you you don't usually use they aren't still in their default first level stuff.
There is No One True Way through the game. Some events have better results for chaotic characters, some for lawful, some neutral, some good, some evil, etc. It is designed for replayability. Don't sweat it if something seems like a mistake (as long as you're not dying constantly), other things may work out better for you in other places than if you'd used a different build. Do what you think is fun for you.
PS: If you don't care about the NPC stories you can also just hire generic adventurers from the Pathfinder Society. I am not sure but I assume you can level them as you like.
I used Hedwirg on my initial play through over a year ago and I decided to do another play through with the new update bringing official turn-based support (I used the turn-based mod on my first play through).
I decided I should play one of the classes not represented by a companion, which left the choice between Druid, Monk, Paladin, Slayer, and Sorcerer for this campaign. I opted for a Sorcerer as there were no full arcane casters among the companions and Sorcerers get a lot of spells/day (spell rationing is definitely a thing as many of the dungeons are huge and camping consumes precious time).
I just finished Act I at level 5 and I'm definitely enjoying my Sorcerer more than Hedwirg. Obviously, spell rationing is still required at this point, but I feel like I can at least use 1 spell per battle if necessary and still have enough resources left for the tough fights. I'm looking forward to see how she fares in Act II and beyond.
This is what I started with:
N Female Human Sorcerer 1
STR 7 (-2)
DEX 14 (+2)
CON 14 (+2)
INT 10 (0)
WIS 12 (+1)
CHA 20 (+5)
Bloodline: Arcane
Class Skill: Knowledge World
Bond: Hare Familiar
Skills:
Knowledge Arcana +4
Perception +2
Persuasion +9
Feats:
Point-Blank Shot
Precise Shot (Human bonus)
Combat Casting (Sorcerer bonus)
Spells:
Level 0: All
Level 1: Color Spray, Mage Armor
At level 5, she has increased DEX to 16, CHA to 23 and has added Enlarge Person, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Glitterdust, Invisibility, and Web to her list of spells known. Additional feats include Improved Initiative and Spell Focus Transmutation.
With a +11 initiative, she usually goes first in battle, which allows her to cast a battlefield control (grease, web) or mass debuff (glitterdust) spell before enemies can act.
BTW you may get better luck/answers posting in the Official Owlcat Pathfinder RPG subforum here on the boards. I have flagged your thread as "in wrong subforum" FYI, in case it gets moved.
Yeah, I didn't notice that Owlcat specific subforum until after i posted this. Thanks for flagging and your input.
So far I find Valirie very boring as a tower shield specialist. Everything I've read about the game specifically says "Yeah, focus her on AC she's great...." and coming from the actual table top I'm just sitting there thinking "these guys are stupid or insane". But I think I realized the reason is these suggestion apply to playing on Unfair difficulty, which I'm not doing. I guess on Unfair things are so stacked against you that you need a tank, and that the game actually will focus on the first on the first person to enter a room rather having more "intelligent" target selection like "kill the one who's doing the most damage".
I also see a lot of people suggesting that you build your PC character as a sorcerer dragon disciple and again coming from table top I can only think "why?". Sure if you want a gish, but you're not doing yourself favors. Casters are powerful (because of their spell selection) but spells options are pretty limited compared to table top. I think that's why I see sorcerers rated more highly than wizards, because there aren't that many good spells, but I still can't exactly understand why people want you to be a gish as your main character.
I actually switched to a low difficulty because I just wanted to focus on the story and kingdom building, which is why I am not offering very specific build advice. I like Valerie because she's hard to hit and packs a decent punch. But moreover because she looks and acts like young grumpy Paladin (but not a paladin) Julie Andrews. YMMV.
I expect a lot of folks like to play Dragon Disciples for the same reason folks did in 3.x... It looks cool.
I almost always play on normal difficulty for these kind of games, but Kingmaker's "normal" is veered toward "hard" -- it works more similarly PNP rules but has a LOT more encounters per "adventuring day" than you would at the table top (and I don't remember anywhere near so many fights happening in the actual AP) so it's easy to get worn down fast. I switched to story mode for this and began enjoying the game much more. This is weird for me because while I'm not the kind of gamer who needs to beat Ultimate Bloodmaster Difficulty (and I have no judgement against those who do--the difficulty levels are there foer a rason), but I generally like the challenge of the tactics and build strategy to some degree. But this was a game where the difficulty level was actively detracting from my enjoyment of the game--combats were long and sloggy and I had to rest a lot, and I just wanted to move the plot along. I have no regrets lowering the difficulty on this one.
I think something that contributes to the combat slog is not having enough ranged characters in a party.
I often feel like Harrim is dead weight, except when I need him as a cleric to heal and do condition removal. But the rest of the time he's so slow that he does nothing useful in combat.
I switched Jaethal to be a bow Inquisitor and that was a serious improvement in my opinion.
Valerie and Amiri are my only melee characters. Everyone else focus on spell or ranged weapons (or kinetic blasts).
Harrim packs plenty of wands of cure light wounds.
The fatigue mechanic combined with the number of encounters per day you have can make the combat challenging at times. But I've found if you have mostly ranged characters and start combat by you initiating an attack rather than waiting for the monsters to detect you, you can choose positioning (like a long hallway) and pick off monsters before they get to you. With Val and Amiri to block for your ranged characters. Conserve limited abilities for when things are really challenging and expect to have to heal after every combat, that's why you're packing lots of wands.
Getting the wands you need may require that you install a mod that adds crafting, I did, so you can have Harrim do something useful for the party.
You might also consider tweaking the resell value of stuff from 10% that the base game sets it to, to 50% like PNP does using the Bag of Tricks mod.
My party is usually four ranged to two melee. Sometimes three melee to three. My ranger is a switch hitter who usually stays ranged, but if someone teleports over to attack my casters, she can switch over to fight them off effectively.
I made Harrim a fighter/cleric (4 levels of fighter, rest cleric) and he is a f~&~ing beast in melee combat (this is on lower difficulty, mind). His destructive smite is nice and he can keep himself and anyone else meleeing with him buffed while the rear line focuses on ranged and spell damage. There's lot of items that boost base speed and I gave him a pair of boots that help him keep up. Jaethal's the one I generally never use. The problem with Inquisitors is they are all teamwork feats which just makes me feel like I have to feat tax everyone else so she can have someone to use her teamwork feats with.
As I am on a lower difficulty I have little need for the wands and the like, but the game seems to drop (and sell) plenty of useful wands.
I always recommend to folks to play unmodded first and then see what they feel like is missing first, rather than start from the getgo with mods and maybe actually accidentally mod out something that would work well for them or the mod actually complicates. Like I for one like the relatively shorter feat list to limit option paralysis.
Jaethal's the one I generally never use. The problem with Inquisitors is they are all teamwork feats which just makes me feel like I have to feat tax everyone else so she can have someone to use her teamwork feats with.
As I am on a lower difficulty I have little need for the wands and the like, but the game seems to drop (and sell) plenty of useful wands.
Does the game not correctly include the Inquisitors ability to use teamworks feats as though their allies had the feats, you know, the Solo Tactics ability?
In nay event, with the way flanking works in the game (two creature threatening same target) I imagine every melee character could benefit from high crit range weapons and Seize the Moment.
Maybe it does have Solo Tactics and I wasn't paying attention. That would probably make far more sense; she probably does. (The character build tooltips are hard to read, and I've never played/GMed an Inquisitor PNP so I don't remember how the class works well.) I wasn't using Jaethal anyway because she's weird and creepy. I just take her with me when she has a personal quest development.
The flanking rules are insane; characters that sneak attack can do ridiculous damage because of them.
Maybe it does have Solo Tactics and I wasn't paying attention. That would probably make far more sense; she probably does. (The character build tooltips are hard to read, and I've never played/GMed an Inquisitor PNP so I don't remember how the class works well.) I wasn't using Jaethal anyway because she's weird and creepy. I just take her with me when she has a personal quest development.
The flanking rules are insane; characters that sneak attack can do ridiculous damage because of them.
Indeed, sneak attack is really powerful in this video game because the flanking rules aren't implemented the same as table top.
I'm not sure if it's still true or not, but it used to be (from reading online) that every damage type got sneak attack applied to it.
So if you had a weapon that did elemental damage, your physical damage got sneak attack and then your different kinds of elemental damage would also get the same sneak attack applied, so you could dip multiple times on sneak attack. I haven't tested it out yet, but if it's still true I imagine it's just awaiting correction. But currently sneak attack builds will do insane damage if you get the right weapons.
I remember reading about some bow in the game that dealt a die of fire, cold, acid, shock damage and people building around that bow with sneak attack to deal 5 times the amount of sneak attack damage they should. Basically one shotting anything.
|
I keep restarting. Done a Cleric, Druid and now (sylvan) Sorcerer, and am now seriously considering starting as a Bard and switching when I get to Olegs to four mercenaries (all Huntsmaster Inquisitors with animal companions) and just let the pets tank, while the Inquisitors use bows and keep the pets healed and handle skills.
Now it's just a question of which animal companions and what Teamwork feats and Domains to mix it up with for the Inquis. Centipede poison sounds fun, and trip, from the Dog, Wolf or Leopard, perhaps. That Smilodon damage is tempting tho, and the Elk and Mastodon! have a certain charm. (No Dog tho. The incessant barking is maddening!)
The teamwork feats that give sneak attack, or extra AoOs, or Outflank, sound like solid bets for a front line of animal companions swarming the enemy.
Community and Nobility, among others, seem like decent Domains to enhance / support that front line, and I've heard that Liberation is handy, later in the game.
Pity there's no Rocs, or Velociraptors. I'd be all over that, cheesemonger that I am. :)
So far, in my limited experience, the Cleric and Druid did alright, but the Sorcerer dropped in almost every fight. So, so, squishy.
Still, I want my 'main' to be a Cha-class, so it's Bard, Sorcerer or (ick) Paladin. An archer Paladin would certainly fit the theme I've got going...
|
I decided I should play one of the classes not represented by a companion, which left the choice between Druid, Monk, Paladin, Slayer, and Sorcerer for this campaign. I opted for a Sorcerer as there were no full arcane casters among the companions and Sorcerers get a lot of spells/day (spell rationing is definitely a thing as many of the dungeons are huge and camping consumes precious time).
I just got this game for the PS4 within the last month, and I also opted for a sorcerer. Mine was an Aasimar (with the +2 for both WIS and CHA), draconic bloodline. Started off with a 20 CHA, I think a 16 WIS, and decent DEX, and the others were average (ish). Added two levels of monk to boost the AC, get some “evasion”, and give him a bit of physical attack option, and I’ve also invested four levels in Dragon Disciple.
So far, I’m really enjoyed how the character has turned out. Between him and Ekun, I’ve got plenty of ranged attack while my tanks and Nok-Nok hit them up close.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
May I present an abyssal abomination that will literally devour the game?
You see, in the CRPG one can have as many bite attacks as one wants, and at mythic tier 7, demons no longer treat attacks from natural weapons as secondary.
So:
Race:
Motherless Thiefling (one free bite attack)
Levels:
1:Wolf Scarred oracle (second bite attack) with natures whipsers (CHA instead of DEX).
2: Scaled Fist Monk (CHA to AC, Dodge, unlocks crane style)
3: Bloodrager Primalist
4: Bloodrager primalist
5: Bloodrager primalist
6: Bloodrager primalist. Choose 2 rage powers, pick animal fury (another bite attack) and Either Beast or Fiend totem (beat for pounce eventually, fiend for another gore).
Mythic one: Close to the abyss. We are going demon and its an always on gore. We also pick brutality incarnate, so all our bites go through DR.
7: We have enough knowledge arcane to double dip into dragon disciple, for +2 STR, natural army and yes another bite.
8: Second part of DD Dip.
9: We now double dip into vivi, and pick feral mutagen for +4 STR for 20 minutes a day and yet another bite attack.
: At some point we get mythic 2, limitless rage is good, deal your STR damage on misses is good too.
10: Second Vivi Dip.
11: You now have 3-4 attacks from the Kama in your main hand, one claw attack, 6 or so bites and 2 gores. Ember can get a hex which gives you another bite, with haste and stuff you may be looking at 13-14 attacks per full round action. In the fairly early mid game.
12: At some point, you can get another bite from picking up Serpentine bloodline from a mythic.
The world is no bascially your oister. The only fights that were semi hard were trying to ursurp Nocticula, and the demodand bossfight in act 4. Seelah smiting Baphomet and my omnomnom pouncing him actually forced noct to inverene/Kill steal earlier then she expected.
|
|
So I'm coming from the 3.5 DDO MMO (still going on, would recommend) and I notice 2 nerfs they had to introduce aren't in the game.
1: Evasion works in Heavy armor
2: Paladin Cha bonus to saves is all at once at level two, not limited to +1/level of Paladin.
This is nuts, right? My first build is Paladin 3 (fear immunity)/Rogue 2 (evasion)/ Paladin the rest (maybe another two levels of Rogue in there). However, I'm already wondering about a max Cha Paladin 2 (divine grace)/ Sorcerer 3/ Dragon disciple 10/ Eldritch knight 5 for max gish fun.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So I'm coming from the 3.5 DDO MMO (still going on, would recommend) and I notice 2 nerfs they had to introduce aren't in the game.
1: Evasion works in Heavy armor
2: Paladin Cha bonus to saves is all at once at level two, not limited to +1/level of Paladin.This is nuts, right? My first build is Paladin 3 (fear immunity)/Rogue 2 (evasion)/ Paladin the rest (maybe another two levels of Rogue in there). However, I'm already wondering about a max Cha Paladin 2 (divine grace)/ Sorcerer 3/ Dragon disciple 10/ Eldritch knight 5 for max gish fun.
I realize this is over year old at this point, but I just recently got the Wrath of the Righteous because it was on super sale on GOG for like $30 for all the DLC and everything (I love GOG).
I was cruising the forum for builds and so this old thread of mine for Kingmaker (and it looks like some people added some WoTR stuff here too) and happened to see this post.
1) How Evasion works depends on the source. For instance, Rogue Evasion limits you to light armor. Ranger evasion limits you to medium armor. And a ring of evasion has no limitation. Likely Owl Cat when creating the game decided that it wasn't worth the effort to try to separate out these versions of Evasion and gave one without restriction. To be honest, since Evasion is mostly going to protect against HP damage (the least scary thing that can happen to your character, though the most common) I honestly don't think a two level dip is worth it for evasion.
2) In Pathfinder (not PF2), Paladins really do get to add their charisma bonus all at once to their saves. Perhaps WoTC changed how divine grace works for their video game but Owl Cats's game is a single player experience and so the classes and abilities don't really need to be balanced. I imagine if DDO introduced a change it was because the perceived their to be a balance issue.