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ikanreed posted:Someone made the mistake of trying to be a blaster wizard. Blaster wizards are cool! Why shouldn't I want to be a blaster wizard? Especially when all the attack cantrips are vs ac
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Jul 10, 2020 13:33
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If you like blasty wizards, play Vermintide 2 and main Sienna. She might like fire a little too much
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Jul 10, 2020 15:05
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Phlegmish posted:If you like blasty wizards, play Vermintide 2 and main Sienna. She might like fire a little too much I have two characters above level 1 in Vermintide. A lvl 5 Markus, and a lvl 30 Sienna. She likes fire a perfectly appropriate and reasonable amount, it's everybody else who has the problem.
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Jul 10, 2020 15:32
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Phlegmish posted:If you like blasty wizards, play Vermintide 2 and main Sienna. She might like fire a little too much
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Jul 10, 2020 21:45
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Avalerion posted:Kingmaker can be a good game with liberal use of cheats and mods at least. And even then the last chapter I just turned down to easy becasue that's where the unfair bs gets turned up to 11. I did enjoy it though (mostly for the characters and story) but yea don't play this vanilla. I do not consider myself a highly skilled gamer yet I in no way remember kingmaker being this difficult during my first normal playthrough. mitochondritom posted:I tried to refund after this, but had spent too many hours in character creation (lol thanks pathfinder mechanics). I finally uninstalled after the next encounter which triggered when I rested on a nearby map. A blue flaming skull spawns and instakills your team. Kingmaker had these high level encounters spread across the maps that you were suppose to come back later to defeat. This one was extra challenging even later on but it was in no way required. I get that it was a little frustrating but holy moly. Sickening fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 22:15
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Mailer posted:
Hey! GURPS isn't that bad. Ok yes, I'm only using Dungeon Fantasy, the classic fantasy spin-off. Ok yes, I did 'nope' out half the rules. Ok yes, actual GURPS might be bad.
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Jul 10, 2020 22:56
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mitochondritom posted:I tried to refund after this, but had spent too many hours in character creation (lol thanks pathfinder mechanics). I finally uninstalled after the next encounter which triggered when I rested on a nearby map. A blue flaming skull spawns and instakills your team. To explain this to anyone not in the know, this is not some "you take a random rest and get murked by a super monster." Rather on one of the maps, you come across a campsite with dead bodies scattered all around, and if you examine them you get messages saying they died in sheer terror and are covered with electrical burns. The campsite offers you an option to rest at it. Why yes, the same thing that murdered them does in fact try to murder you if you actually do so - and yes, it's rather hard for most people when you first come across this (though people absolutely have beaten it at initial encounter, and it's completely trivialized by level 7). Specifically, it's a spellcasting will-o'-wisp which first attempts to cast Shield and then - you guessed it - Fear spells; then proceeds to attempt to electrocute your (possibly panicking if they failed their saves) party to death with its touch attack. It's absolutely possible to interrupt its starting routine in the first place, and even without that the only real damage it actually deals is via that touch attack... so just bring electrical resistance. And no, the camp does not go away - you can trigger this at whatever level you like. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about various aspects of Kingmaker - from certain encounter design (the late-game ones people keep referencing are absolutely an issue), to the information layout, to it using the PF/3.5 system and its flaws in general, etc. "This blatantly advertised schmuck bait that I can easily avoid" though... not so much.
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Jul 11, 2020 02:58
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I think "Shmuck bait" as you call it is one of the most iconic parts of the pen and paper experience. An encounter with something way out of your weight class blocked by doing something really greedy or dumb. Kangaxx from BG2 fits that description pretty well too, only starting the encounter is already gated behind mercing two liches, so you're probably closish to being able to take him.
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Jul 11, 2020 03:38
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Yeah, if you go into k8ngmaker expecting something fairly groggy then it's fine, at least for the first third which is as far as I've got. I think they've patched it a lot too. Def worth a play imo.
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Jul 11, 2020 05:41
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A lot of the worst stuff was before patches yeah, where it was pretty obviously they balanced even normal with feedback from people who were big into Pathfinder charop stuff so you had random bandits with like 25+ strength and poo poo.
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Jul 11, 2020 06:04
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Gorelab posted:A lot of the worst stuff was before patches yeah, where it was pretty obviously they balanced even normal with feedback from people who were big into Pathfinder charop stuff so you had random bandits with like 25+ strength and poo poo. They also just scaled the poo poo out of stats because, unsurprisingly, adapting a turn based combat system directly to real time made everything die super fast. Every game that's tried to directly adapt DnD into a real time game has had to grapple with that
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Jul 11, 2020 06:27
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Zore posted:unsurprisingly, adapting a turn based combat system directly to real time made everything die super fast. While the last two chapters are a hilariously bad hell, I think the rest of the game would have gained tons of improvement if it went the turn-based-with-fewer-fights route. Even something simple like Charge felt awful. *combat starts, Val stands there for ages while the enemies all simultaneously run in and it's a mess of melee* Val: "Ok, time to Charge! Except I can't because they're all in melee range" 
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Jul 11, 2020 07:16
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Mailer posted:While the last two chapters are a hilariously bad hell, I think the rest of the game would have gained tons of improvement if it went the turn-based-with-fewer-fights route. Even something simple like Charge felt awful. Yea, the turn based mod is so popular they are adding it to the sequel by default. I don't prefer turn based in general but dnd is blatantly designed for it with stuff like charge or buffs that last one turn/round.
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Jul 11, 2020 07:19
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Gorelab posted:A lot of the worst stuff was before patches yeah, where it was pretty obviously they balanced even normal with feedback from people who were big into Pathfinder charop stuff so you had random bandits with like 25+ strength and poo poo. Yea, while I didn't fall for "sleep and get killed by the skull" there's some bandits in that same zone that were unbelievably strong for no reason. They're not now, but anyone saying they beat Pathfinder on normal can't have been playing it when it was new or is a lot less annoyed by constantly having to reload after getting murked randomly by a +25 str owlbear at level 10.
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Jul 11, 2020 08:21
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Lord Koth posted:To explain this to anyone not in the know, this is not some "you take a random rest and get murked by a super monster." Rather on one of the maps, you come across a campsite with dead bodies scattered all around, and if you examine them you get messages saying they died in sheer terror and are covered with electrical burns. The campsite offers you an option to rest at it. Why yes, the same thing that murdered them does in fact try to murder you if you actually do so - and yes, it's rather hard for most people when you first come across this (though people absolutely have beaten it at initial encounter, and it's completely trivialized by level 7). Specifically, it's a spellcasting will-o'-wisp which first attempts to cast Shield and then - you guessed it - Fear spells; then proceeds to attempt to electrocute your (possibly panicking if they failed their saves) party to death with its touch attack. It's absolutely possible to interrupt its starting routine in the first place, and even without that the only real damage it actually deals is via that touch attack... so just bring electrical resistance. And no, the camp does not go away - you can trigger this at whatever level you like. The schmuck bait is the least of the problems with that guy: 1) Despite being a floating skull its not undead, so naturally you waste loads of time trying to Turn Undead or whatever 2) If you have Mass Lightning Resist or whatever the fight is absolutely trivial (although tedious, as it takes a while to get through his insane AC and magic resistance) and if you dont have it, he'll casually murder/panic/fear you all, you lose control of your entire party and have to watch for ages as they run around and die. Which is also tedious. Most isometric RPGs have some element of "oh I figured out how he works, so I'll reload and try this way" but the will-o-wisp fights are so completely binary - trivial if you know they're coming, impossible if you dont. Which is a really boring and frustrating way to play.
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Jul 11, 2020 08:55
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Most isometric RPGs have some element of "oh I figured out how he works, so I'll reload and try this way" but the will-o-wisp fights are so completely binary - trivial if you know they're coming, impossible if you dont. Which is a really boring and frustrating way to play. Loads of Pathfinder is this too - like they expect you to die, reload and then win. It's boring, even aside from it being frustrating.
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Jul 11, 2020 08:59
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It's not so much the individual encounter, but more it's part in the whole experience of the game. The abysmal reload times, frequent crashes on top of cheap "gotcha" encounters and uninspiring writing all come together to really put me off the game. I think I'll give it another shot after the turn based patch is added in because I'm a masochist and can't refund it at this point. I'll probably try Owlcats new one too, because I'm a sucker for isometric RPGs. The skull encounter is low level kobold land and the spider swarms are bullshit though and there's no defending them imo.
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Jul 11, 2020 09:14
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I started Kingmaker for the first time last week with the turn-based and closer to tabletop (which generally makes things easier because enemies rarely get to sneak attack you, but also makes it tougher to get use out of your own sneak attackers so I don't mind) mods and I've had fun on normal as a relative Pathfinder noob. But as someone who happily playes RTWP in these games I can't imagine doing it in this game. Between all the different abilities to keep track of, managing stuff like charges and (CTT) flanking, and finally the very wonky pathfinding I run into that can absolutely chunk you with AOOs but which you can at least stop with a timely end turn in turn-based, I can't imagine playing it real-time. Also I'm using cheat mods for QOL stuff but some of it is almost even more annoying than not doing it. Like I want to use Take X Out Of Combat cheat because infinite tries to disarm traps but only one to open locks breaks my poor 2nd edition raised brain, but then it also Takes X in kingdom events which I don't want because it makes the kingdom management feel kinda pointless. Also I added about 100 BP so I could have fun designing my first town without going to 0, but apparently if you do that directly through the mod the game doesn't recognize the extra BP properly and thinks you're in the negative so despite sitting at 20+ BP the whole time my Kingdom dropped to Troubled because of negative BP. I didn't feel bad about cheating in another 200 to pay for the feast after that...
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Jul 11, 2020 09:29
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I played Pathfinder Kingmaker for the first time a week ago and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I mean, it was groggy as hell and not especially great in any way, but it was still pretty good. The story was huge and epic but prone to bizarre moments where character knowledge and player knowledge didn't line up. Like, the cast is all 'Hmm, who could be behind all these weird events hitting the kingdom?' But something like ten hours ago, my PC got brought to this abandoned keep filled with monsters and the lady who would go on to be the main antagonist who promptly tries to assassinate him and there wasn't any option to ever say 'Hey, I think it was this person' and I had to wait for the NPCs to solve it. Would've been much better turn-based, though.
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Jul 11, 2020 10:38
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a official turn based mode for king maker is coming next month
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Jul 11, 2020 10:59
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The one thing I just dislike about turn-based kingmaker is that you're flat-footed until your turn comes up even if there's no ambush or anything, turning a good many fights where you spawn next to/near the enemies into just reload fests so that your high-AC tank that would otherwise barely get hit isn't instagibbed before their turn comes around.
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Jul 11, 2020 11:03
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Insurrectionist posted:I started Kingmaker for the first time last week with the turn-based and closer to tabletop (which generally makes things easier because enemies rarely get to sneak attack you, but also makes it tougher to get use out of your own sneak attackers so I don't mind) mods and I've had fun on normal as a relative Pathfinder noob. But as someone who happily playes RTWP in these games I can't imagine doing it in this game. Between all the different abilities to keep track of, managing stuff like charges and (CTT) flanking, and finally the very wonky pathfinding I run into that can absolutely chunk you with AOOs but which you can at least stop with a timely end turn in turn-based, I can't imagine playing it real-time. Its not really all that different from playing Baldurs Gate 2 nowadays. There are more statuses to keep track off for sure, but there also aren't all the different levels of spell shields and immunities to strip mid-combat. You shouldn't really bother with charging, its not needed in most cases outside of some builds. With careful micromanaging and pausing during important fights and auto-piloted murder-stomping easy ones its a great RTWP experience imo. The biggest thing to causes tedious play in my experience was juggling aggro. Since theres no taunt mechanics enemies will just target the best thing they can in range so you really do have to micromanage your squishy guys. But again, you get the same thing with BG2. Since I still love the way BG2 plays I'm fine with that. Until the actual BG3 comes out I'll consider Kingmaker probably the closest and best spiritual sequel we've gotten so far, except its even grander and has more to do so its even better. For a lot of people though that includes 'out-dated' mechanics which can cause frustration. Nephthys fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 11:13
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Insurrectionist posted:The one thing I just dislike about turn-based kingmaker is that you're flat-footed until your turn comes up even if there's no ambush or anything, turning a good many fights where you spawn next to/near the enemies into just reload fests so that your high-AC tank that would otherwise barely get hit isn't instagibbed before their turn comes around. If your heavy armor user gets hit because they are flat-footed, you've not given them heavy enough armor. It's your rogues and low-armor, high Dex characters that will be hit while flat-footed.
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Jul 11, 2020 11:51
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Mordaedil posted:If your heavy armor user gets hit because they are flat-footed, you've not given them heavy enough armor. It's your rogues and low-armor, high Dex characters that will be hit while flat-footed. Yeah I'm using a dex-based monk as tank atm. Much better AC than Valerie with buffs up - except for the aforementioned start of combat. E: Also Valerie won't get chunked but when the enemy comes in with a bunch of attacks she generally takes a good amount of damage too. She has better AC flatfooted but the dangerous enemies still hit on like ~8 - 12 with their high AB (just regular dangerous enemies not the crazy strong ones) while she's flatfooted, so with enough attacks she takes a punishment. For my monk it's like 2+ to hit flatfooted vs 18+ regularly. Insurrectionist fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 12:01
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Heavy armor in kingmaker is kind of a trap anyway because the main thing you have to worry about (especially at endgame) are touch attacks.
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Jul 11, 2020 12:02
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Avalerion posted:Heavy armor in kingmaker is kind of a trap anyway because
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Jul 11, 2020 16:27
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rope kid posted:Actually that's not exactly true. Medium armor is the true trap. Please stop inventing fictional armor classes.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:51
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hide and full plate have the same speed penalty? sure
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Jul 11, 2020 16:54
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Strom Cuzewon posted:The schmuck bait is the least of the problems with that guy: Your first point is something of a joke, because Turn Undead virtually never works against very powerful undead (comparative to your current level) in the first place anyways - particularly in the early levels before you can grab feats/class features/whatever to improve it. And I'm struggling to think of many more extremely early specifically anti-undead tools that you could be fooled into using. So unless you're bringing in some incredibly screwy and super-focused party that somehow has huge amounts of anti-undead features by ~level 3-5, that's really not relevant. The second point is more relevant, and comes back to something that I brought up (combined with various patches scaling back the stats) - it IS possible to interrupt the Shield cast, at which point the AC is going to be high, but reachable, by parties in that level range. It's the Shield specifically that pushes it high enough to really drag the fight out. Incidentally, Will-o'-wisps don't actually have SR, they're just immune to all spells that require it... other than Magic Missile which Shield blocks. So if you interrupt or dispel the Shield, you can Magic Missile it down fairly quickly as it doesn't exactly have the greatest health pool. This IS a legitimate point that people not at least familiar with the system might not know (and you could easily fail the Know check to pick that piece of knowledge up) Finally, my post was in response to someone being incredibly disingenuous in the first place, as opposed to bringing up the real flaws with the game. They implied it was out of nowhere (it's not), they said it was an insta-kill (it's not) and, uh, let's see... mitochondritom posted:
I know exactly when in the game this encounter happens, and at that point there's exactly one encounter that's both truly unpleasant and that you could unknowingly walk into (it's the Spider cave, which is a lot better than it used to be but I still wouldn't defend it). So complaining THIS was the breaking point, when compared to a game where you could walk through a loving completely unadvertised random inn door and run into a Time Stop/Gate Lich, was ridiculous.
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Jul 11, 2020 16:56
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I just wasted a lot of time trying to Turn it, and having floating skulls be not-undead is a seriously dumb move even if it only has a minor impact.
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Jul 11, 2020 17:05
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I just wasted a lot of time trying to Turn it, and having floating skulls be not-undead is a seriously dumb move even if it only has a minor impact. That's literally just an aesthetic paizo adopted so their will o the wisp art couldn't be deemed copyright infringement of wizard's
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Jul 11, 2020 17:20
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Chairchucker posted:Kingmaker had a bunch of annoying and bad design features like time limits and cheating on encounters. Time limits? You have to be going out of your way or be the kind of spaz who rests every 10 steps for 72 hours to come close to reaching any of the sensible main story times events. It's a game about managing your DnD kingdom over time, it's also got a great fortress management system compared to most cRPG. Like, I'm 197 hours in Pathfinder and I've not even gotten to the last two acts of the game yet, safe to say I play slow as loving hell and go around doing every bit of content, and still, not once even came close to a time limit issue at any point. Don't know what you mean by cheating on encounters, frankly, my party is unstoppable, but "cheating in encounters" just sounds like basic DM editorial control. Mailer posted:I'm not going to defend 2nd edition, but at the time it was what I knew so BG being wrapped in it didn't cause me any distress. The point was it's probably always been bad but 3.5/Pathfinder was when I noticed it. When 3rd edition came out I remember reading the rulebook and rolling my eyes at all the stuff in there because it felt like a game designed by and for rules lawyers. I'm definitely the min/maxing that guy in videogames but keep that poo poo off of my table. I do concede I would never go out of my way to play 2E or 3.5 Tabletop, and really, the thing I love about 3.5/Pathfinder is is breadth of classes, not the mechanical complexity. In tabletop I'm happiest just winging it, last few sessions I didn't even bring my character sheet and folder and I should probably level myself up the two levels I keep forgetting to do, but it's been mostly fine. In a cRPG where the computer does all the hard work, I like what gives me more options and customization. 5E classes are unfortunately very boring and basic, theme-wise. In tabletop you can kind of work around it, you can use the Paladin rules but make your character be a Socialist Avatar that fights for and is empowered by their belief and faith in the common man. Someone else in my party is a parking lot trash bird using rogue rules and arrokroa or something. Even 2E had a lot of exciting classes and kits that made you want to figure out how to work them in. Meanwhile 5E has not a single class to do dancing, let alone shadowdancing. Strom Cuzewon posted:Most isometric RPGs have some element of "oh I figured out how he works, so I'll reload and try this way" but the will-o-wisp fights are so completely binary - trivial if you know they're coming, impossible if you don't. Which is a really boring and frustrating way to play. These enemies pop like balloons to magic missile, like, free kills if you've got a caster or carry around your hoard of wands and scrolls. ikanreed posted:That's literally just an aesthetic paizo adopted so their will o the wisp art couldn't be deemed copyright infringement of wizard's Pathfinder wisps are aberrations and in DnD they are undead, kind of wonky to use a symbol often associated directly with undead, but also just the anatomy of a normal living being, to be the visual component for an aberration, known for having hosed-up not-normal anatomy. Personally I'm not sure what I'd call a wisp myself, seems closest to ghost, and I don't think ghosts should be considered undead, just dead. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 19:13
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Are touch spells worth using in BG? What would be the best class to make use of them? I was leaning on fighter/mage, but then why would I use touch spells when I'm in the range to whack enemies with a weapon.
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Jul 11, 2020 19:54
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Captain Oblivious posted:Please stop inventing fictional armor classes. So you can have concept artists, modelers, texture artists, and riggers create 1/3 of your armor options as trash that players are supposed to ignore. Cool!!!!
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Jul 11, 2020 20:04
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Anything except the best possible option is complete garbage imo
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Jul 11, 2020 20:08
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rope kid posted:As a game developer, the most annoying thing about trap options is that to implement them, people actually have to put time and effort into the art, description, bug-fixing, etc. If you go too far that way, you end up with one of pillars 1's most subtle gameplay drawbacks, that build choices rarely seem decisive. It can seem like you're trying to do matrix multiplication and trying to optimize the determinant of the result by shifting numbers around, rather than doing two meaningfully distinct kinds of things. -10% action speed but 12% penetration and 5% damage? I'd have to drop that into a spreadsheet to see what it actually means against different enemies. It's probably balanced and a fair representation of what the item would do in a real world, but much tougher to appreciate.
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Jul 11, 2020 20:52
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I really appreciate combat systems with simple math and mechanics. It's nice really to have something like Fire Emblem where I can tell exactly how good an unit is, how much damage it's going to do, etc. with just a glance. Andrast fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jul 12, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 21:07
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Andrast posted:I really appreciate combat systems with simple math and mechanics. I also think Paper Mario was the best RPG.
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Jul 11, 2020 21:38
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rope kid posted:As a game developer, the most annoying thing about trap options is that to implement them, people actually have to put time and effort into the art, description, bug-fixing, etc. It really sucks as even a cursory look over them in random loot tables for 3.5 reveals that the designers even considered medium armor to be garbage as the only armor to appear more than 1% of the time is hide armor and breastplate, of which only breastplate sees any use, but only as mithril armor on a wizard.
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Jul 11, 2020 21:45
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 19:32 |
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Armor should just be cosmetic, part of dressing up your character or showing off stuff you pried off a cool monster or whatever. Roll the armor or damage mitigation stuff into their class. Always feels bad to make your character look worse when you get better loot, the boons of looting don't have to be tied to our paper doll.
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Jul 11, 2020 21:57
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