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Pathfinder: Kingmaker
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10-11-2018, 10:09 AM
(10-11-2018, 09:40 AM)Slamz Wrote: I'm touring with the storyline fighter and the barbarian and 3 mercs now. What is your total group make up? Going with the mercs does make a harder start but after a few levels it doesn't matter anymore. I would highly recommend you build your Storyline PC's to then maximize stats for your kingdom. Even if it isn't optimal for adventuring it will for the realm. 
10-11-2018, 10:39 AM
Right now I'm running with:
Storyline fighter Storyline barbarian Half-orc rogue (thug) Dwarf crusader Human paladin (the one that gets to pick a guard target and has bonuses for that target) Human evocation sorc with fire elemental bloodline (my character, basically I was going for a Warhammer Bright Wizard. All fire all the time.) Sidelined mercs: Human wizard (necro specialist) Half-elf ranger The original plan was to tank with the crusader backed up by the paladin and then sorc/necro/ranger/rogue with the rogue set to switch between ranged and melee as needed. Needing to bring storyline people has thrown off my intended plan and made me melee heavy. I think I'll boot the barbarian and bring back my necro. She's a specialist so her fears actually land. Sorc evocation specialist is kinda nice too. His piercing screams actually land as well, so I have decent crowd control capabilities.
How well does all the Necro stuff work? I am sure you aren't surprised but I don't really look at the spells that closely. The Necro stuff looked interesting but I would never pursue it.
Did you do a full Necro build? The most complicated spell stuff I do is cast the Entanglements that do damage then have my Sorc do a bunch of AOE while everyone is stuffed in poison entanglements. I don't do it that often since most of my DPS is melee related and those AOE's can kill your own guys just as quickly as the enemy.
10-11-2018, 02:15 PM
I made the necro as a vanilla wizard with a spell focus on necro and a specialization school of necro which makes you pick 2 opposition schools. I picked evocation and illusion as my opposition schools. If you pick that special sub-class of Wizard (I forget the name) then you get an additional bonus to not resist your specialization school but your opposition schools are completely closed to you. By going general wizard with a specialization you can still cast from the opposition school if you really want to but they take up two slots. So if there's some illusion spell I really really think I need for some encounter I can still technically use it. I figured with my main being an evocation sorcerer I didn't want my wizard to be so specialized that I leave big gaps in my spellcasting.
Necro specialization gives her some bonus necro abilities and the first one is a large PBAE Turn Undead which I figure might make up for my cleric crusader not being much of an undead fighter. Mainly she just casts Fear, which works great. If I don't need fear then I load her up with "whatever" -- usually Mage Armor for my tank and Summon Monster. Stuff where I don't have to worry about being resisted since I didn't put a spell focus point in it. Ray of enfeeblement should start getting good but it lasts for 1 round per level so kind of a waste at level 1-2. Necro has its own damage spells too so no real need for evocation on that character. Mage armor is a nice buff, btw. Straight up +4 AC on whoever and lasts for hours and has no downsides. I almost always keep 1 loaded up for nastier fights and put it on the main tank. BTW, I didn't do it in this loadout but I briefly had a Mad Dog Barbarian which seemed cool. Basically instead of a druid with a pet it's a barbarian with the same pet. So you can have your melee berserker also come with a mastadon. Or boar. Or whatever. When I remade the team, though, I decided I just didn't like pets that much and left him out.
10-11-2018, 08:42 PM
I went with some spell penetration to see if that helps against the higher resist mobs. I use web and fireball, fire & acid jars, The con hits are bad when dealing with poison. I just cleared out Hargrulka the troll king and Tartuk. It gave me an option to let him live as long as he doesn't eat people. I was ok with it but everyone in my party complained about it... so I killed him and took his loots. Spoiler alert: Linzi the bard stole money for a printing press for printing...... I ended up forgiving her but now have to go find the press since it hasn't been delivered... I hope she dies.
10-13-2018, 07:49 AM
Oh Hey I am doing really well! I took over another region and I am up to level 8. Oh wait, the people are rioting... oh and never mind the city has been destroyed and I lost.
I am finally starting over to try to get the city companions situated, I am starting with a wizard this time. I generally start with a caster for high dps. I use web to hold the enemies while I blast them with a fireball. At early levels its harder.
10-13-2018, 08:53 AM
I've restarted so much just to get a feel for pathfinder and the early story.
I've now settled down I'm enjoying the challenge of a evil necro sorcerer with a chosen group. Fighter merc (standard sword and board, LE), Story barb, Cleric merc (crusader, NE death domain), Story inquesitor, merc rogue, wiz, arcane trickster NE and my guy sorc, undead bloodline, feats of conjugation and necro. Lots of control with cause fear from me and the cleric. Cleric can heal the living and the dead (the inquesitor is undead). Fighter is an opportunist when fear hits. And rogue is just a sneak attack dps support, trap monkey. Taking evil options in the story but I can see this getting harder later. Sort of like a DM steering me.
10-14-2018, 07:24 PM
I considered an all evil alignment crew. Why not let the Trolls live and make them allies? Hmmm?
(10-13-2018, 07:49 AM)Crice Wrote: Hah, Yea this is how all of my games have gone so far. For me it is the relationships that have burned me. It usually starts with them sending me a dispatch but being too far away to answer it. If you don't get back or answer you take a -1 on the relationship. Once you fall below zero they start sending spies to fuck with you. If your military is too low and they have sewn enough discontent they then invade you and kill you to get you out of the way. Take enough relationship hits and you can be invaded if your military isn't up to snuff. In my last game my military was fine but then my dumb ass general lost two battles "in utter failure" in two straight battles so I lost 6 military. Next came the beating drums of my enemies. The events work as such. Every roll is a D20. You don't see the difficulty of the event, say it is 22. Say your general is +6. When you resolve a 22 difficulty event if your modified result is 14 or less you have an utter failure and lose 3 of whatever the event is (Military, Econ, Loyalty etc). 15 to 21 is just a failure and you lose one. 22 to 29 is a success and you gain 1. 30 or more and you gain 3. On a D20 a 1 always fails and a 20 always succeeds no matter the difficulty. Reach 20 unrest and your kingdom fails, get invaded with out successfully defending and your kingdom fails, lose a war with a rival and your kingdom fails, die in some horrible way and your kingdom fails. In general I would say be in your capitol at the start of every month. Deal with kingdom stuff then head out and advance the story. Just be back by the start of the next month. I am trying that and it works better but the quest get further and further away from the capitol so...
10-14-2018, 09:16 PM
Speaking of which I just got sunk by troll raids. 4 in one month with only one guy to resolve them sunk my stability to -9 and the unrest is about to kill me. I am starting to bleed military as well.
Not sure how you are supposed to deal with that.
10-15-2018, 10:34 AM
I just finally got to the end of the initial story and the start of the kingdom phase. I didn't realize I was so close on my last group or I'd have pressed on with what I had just to see it.
One noteworthy bug, though: I couldn't see the exit in the Stag Lord's fortress. I thought it was supposed to be like that and you had to do the whole thing in one go. I actually managed it but then still couldn't exit. Had to look it up online and found it's a common bug and the solution is to exit to main menu and reload, repeat as necessary, until you can see and click on the exit marker. I assume I could have done the fortress in stages. In the end I was using the following group: Evocation Sorc (my character) Necro focus wizard merc Paladin-bodyguard merc Storyline fighter Storyline bard Storyline cleric (the one you pick up in the elk ruins) The bodyguard Paladin is kinda interesting. He has an ability that gives the focus target +4 AC if he stands nearby. The description makes it sound like he gives up his attack to make that happen but it doesn't look like he's giving it up to me. He also has another toggle that gives him a chance to intercept attacks meant for his focus target. I leave that off because normally he's guarding the tank and doesn't need to be drawing hits on himself. I also made him a two-hander so he's less tanky than he could be. His focus ability is a bit buggy though -- he has a special lay hands ability for the focus target but it never works. If I had to do it again I might make my main tank a super tanky bodyguard type and have him set to guard a rogue. We did great against that zombie horde in the Fortress map. The cleric spamming his AE channel for damage undead and my necro doing her special AE turn undead kept things manageable. Her turn undead kinda sucks. No bonuses for it so mostly it fails but when there's that many zombies, getting a handful to turn around is handy. The real win with her is the AE "scare" (at least for normal fights -- I dunno if you can scare undead). That turns some fights into a joke as you can send a lot of enemies running around while you kill the few who resisted.
Using a focus would either be a free action or a minor action. Depends on the wording. In 3rdish edition D&D (what this is based on) You have a major action, a movement action, and a minor action you can take each round all on the same character. If you needed to do 2 minor actions in a turn then you could change your move action into a minor action. Thus Ending up with 1 Major 2 minor actions. You only get one major action per turn unless you have a feat, spell, item, and/or potion.
The game will also have "free actions" free actions can be taken as many times as is feasible or as specified in feat or spell. Certain feats will turn other actions that would have normally been a minor action, into a free action. Also it is best to skip any flavor text of abilities and just go straight to what they can do and what the action cost is.
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I am using my Wizard, Sorc, storyline Barbarian, fighter and barbarian and the healer guy Tristan or whatever. When you get a region and go to do the Troll Lair (old Dwarf castle) bring the storyline Dwarf and the little alchemist guy that you will meet. He becomes someone useful as well as the story teller in the throne room. Both will join up and help with BS events and stuff. One issue is you will see a cool forge that I assume would be great to make weapons in the castle. The Dwarf destroys it for some reason. I was going to load game and try that portion again because it doesn't make sense but decided to not spend the time on it. My kingdom will probably collapse soon anyway lol.
How are you building your town? I don't have a guard tower up but I do have the windmill. I have two other regions but its so time consuming to explore them. OH wait some asshole wants a meeting with me back at the castle........
I build a long house in the middle, put a tavern in the bottom middle, shop bottom right, barracks upper middle, Smith middle right, shrine middle left, monument top left. Walls and maybe a pier.
This was the optimal set up that gave me optimal bonuses pre-upgrade. I left the top right box open for a jail. The key is generating enough stability. For me personally that is the stat that sinks you. Yea I can't get enough done fast enough to explore without my kingdom collapsing. I wasn't given any kind of break from barely surviving Trolls to moving to the next phase. The ramp ups just get harder so I don't think I can make it past phase 3. I had to sit in my throne room just managing events to make sure I ended up with the results I needed to survive. If I had 12 stability I could afford to run off and go explore the 30 or so places I have never visited. On the difficulty I am playing exploring and content is a luxury. The way this is playing out is typically on a normal difficulty I assume the events come in slower, you get to level your characters so you can finish the main quest in relative safety. On higher difficulties you have to attack the end bosses in the story line faster than normal so the events don't kill you. So basically you are lower level and have greater difficulty dealing with AI events built for higher levels. The further I get into the story the further behind I get and the greater chance of my kingdom collapsing. 
10-16-2018, 10:54 AM
what would you recommend for a difficulty level setting for this game for someone just starting?
Skelas
Burnt to a crisp.
10-16-2018, 12:20 PM
(10-16-2018, 10:54 AM)Skelas Wrote: what would you recommend for a difficulty level setting for this game for someone just starting? would you learn faster crashing and burning or just having an easy time? I am playing on Hard with Death's Door turned on and I have 2 previous failed attempts at the game so far. However those failures taught me a lot. I also believe if you just have the AI run your Kingdom that automatically the Kingdom doesn't fail so... However running the Kingdom is really what is fun about this game. If it were just Bulders Gate I may not play it but because you can actually run a kingdom and FAIL at it this is the strong appeal for me. However you will fail Skelas and would probably have to restart. Hell I am on my third try and barely making it. I would highly recommend a medium setting and going through a few levels pre Kingdom set up. You probably won't like your first characters anyway. That way you have had some run through before you create your real character. Doing it on the harder settings is a hell of a lot of fun though. I may not ever beat this game.
10-16-2018, 01:20 PM
Yeah I think "normal" is a good starting location. You can change it on the fly, though.
"Challenging" - you-get-what-you-get with dice rolls. No modifiers. Characters are dead if they go negative by more than their constitution. "Normal" - damage against you is -20%. Characters are dead if they go negative by more than constitution two times in one outing ("death's door" is when they hit the first death and can be fixed by sleeping at an inn). I play challenging but I turned on death's door. Playing without that death's door is just aggravating because you're always one lucky crit away from having a dead character. And I think the #1 tip to take from everything in this thread is the idea to not accept your advancement to level 2 until you have purchased the mercenaries you want. It is nice to have a selection of characters to rotate in and if you wait to do it later it's super expensive to add mercs. I advise a dedicated magic user and a dedicated ranged guy of some sort. Storyline characters are short on those.
10-16-2018, 04:07 PM
Most people take the diverse route, I took another route with characters then everyone else. I went 4 Beserkers (Invul Ragers), 1 Cleric and 1 Druid or Bard. The group feats are very powerful but only if you can take advantage of them. Having a diverse party means you can't take advantage of multiple Outflanks, Precise Strikes etc, you need multiple melee's or multiple Range guys, not a mixture of both. If you go with a diverse party group feats should be ignored.
Their are only two Storyline characters that are built worth a damn, Ekun the Ranger and Nok Nok the Rogue. Both those guys are very well built and quite powerful but you don't get them until later chapters. I wouldn't even bother creating a Ranger unless that is your main character since Ekun will be better, the same goes for the Rogue, Nok Nok will have better stats than anything you can build to catch him. Finally, Skelas, I would build my Story line guys to fit the Kingdom roles better more so then to fit a party role. That will make it easier to run a Kingdom. i.e., Valerie the Tank, she isn't well built for a tank/fighter to begin with so I would suggest you just work on her Charisma. She runs an office for you that requires high Charisma not Str and Con. That isn't intuitive until you find out she sucks at her job since she has no Charisma, why? She is a Fighter for gods sake. Like Slamz said, you build a Merc group for your party and you always run around with at least one Story Line guy. Who that is will be determined by your quest and need. You should never have yourself and 5 mercs. You just need 5 Mercs built so you can swap out who you run with on the story line side of things.
10-16-2018, 04:37 PM
I actually don't have Valerie running an office for me. I had some choice so I put the other dude in there. Was that the general? I put the Aldori orc in there.
(10-16-2018, 04:37 PM)Slamz Wrote: I actually don't have Valerie running an office for me. I had some choice so I put the other dude in there. Was that the general? I put the Aldori orc in there. You have the option of putting the Aldori guy in there but he makes a better general then the Magnus guy since he is a hot head and loses more fights. If Valerie has some built up Charisma so she ends up being a better fit for that office. It isn't only the stats but their opinions and alignment compared to yourself that determine outcomes. One game Valerie might be good but the next she does poorly depending on your main character. Alignment does matter on execution.
10-16-2018, 07:52 PM
(10-14-2018, 07:24 PM)Crice Wrote: I considered an all evil alignment crew. Why not let the Trolls live and make them allies? Hmmm? I'm finding the evil alignment gives a few interesting options but nothing earth shattering. I may have to restart again and give it another go because I messed up my mercs. Its problematic with the storyline characters because you usually go against their wishes but I haven't seen any major consequences to that.
10-17-2018, 06:44 AM
(10-16-2018, 07:52 PM)Dharus Wrote:(10-14-2018, 07:24 PM)Crice Wrote: I considered an all evil alignment crew. Why not let the Trolls live and make them allies? Hmmm? The part where that hurts is in running the kingdom. It is skewed towards good. Running the Kingdom on the evil side is going to be harder.
10-17-2018, 06:51 AM
(10-17-2018, 06:44 AM)Vllad Wrote:(10-16-2018, 07:52 PM)Dharus Wrote:(10-14-2018, 07:24 PM)Crice Wrote: I considered an all evil alignment crew. Why not let the Trolls live and make them allies? Hmmm? Ya, that's what I'm getting at. You are almost forced to make good choices. I was doing well though as LE before I restarted. I had to make sure there were neutrals as advisors.
10-17-2018, 07:44 AM
(10-17-2018, 06:51 AM)Dharus Wrote:(10-17-2018, 06:44 AM)Vllad Wrote:(10-16-2018, 07:52 PM)Dharus Wrote:(10-14-2018, 07:24 PM)Crice Wrote: I considered an all evil alignment crew. Why not let the Trolls live and make them allies? Hmmm? You can run Evil but you will have to take a different set of Advisors. 1. You need the advisor from the Brivoy delegation no Swordlords guy. Even that Spoiled Kid is Neutral. 2. Ros and the Economy advisor are chaotic. 3. The Curio guy most certainly is Evil. It is the religious choices that gets tough. So it is doable, you just have to chose wisely. |
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