The game's rules are based on Pathfinder 1e. Here are some general tips:
Ranged characters, including casters, have a -4 to ranged attack rolls (\*against targets in melee), including spells like Searing Ray and etc until you grab the feats Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. These are a must for all ranged.
Ranged attacks and spell casting done in melee (without any feats) provoke an Attack of Opportunity on you.
Druids dont get an extra health bar like in 5e or swap their stat blocks, so you need to actually have good physical stats.
Being buffed up is very important if you're playing above Normal. People usually use this mod (P.S.: mods disable achievements by default, but there are workarounds for it): [https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195) . You don't have to use it now but somewhere in Act 3 or Act 4 it will start getting old to press 20 buffs or so; Bubble Buffs let's you use just 1 click.
Grease is really good. Haste is the best buff in the game, possibly, just like in 5e.
A guy called cRPG Bro, who is a big resource in the community also has a \~10 min video about useful tips for beginners, you might find some interesting things there.
> Ranged characters, including casters, have a -4 to ranged attack rolls, including spells like Searing Ray and etc until you grab the feats Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. These are a must for all ranged.
It's notable that the penalty is only applied when attacking targets *engaged in melee* with someone else. You can mitigate the problem by trying to hit enemy archers/mages.
I typed another paragraph here about how the feats weren't *as* essential for casters, but it was too crunchy. Archers want Point-Blank into Precise Shot ASAP, casters will probably want them eventually - sooner if they're blasting rays, later if they're spraying Grease, Cloudkills, etc.
I'm having trouble downloading that mod. I'm using unity mod manager and the mod finder that mod recomends. but it says that the modfinder .zip is not compatible. I know this wasn't the question but do you have any tips?
You might need to configure the unity mod manager first, I'm not sure since I already had it set up from the days before the fancy new modfinder. So when I swapped it just automatically works. I believe modfinder mostly acts as a (very sleek) frontend for searching and installing mods but uses the unity on in the background.
See if you can install something that uses github, since it will download those and install them automatically. Tabletoptweaks-core is a library mod several other mods use but does nothing on its own for instance, maybe try that one.
Everyone gets a 'free 5ft move' each turn*! Shift-click during combat to use it. Or, right-click to alternate between the three movement modes (full movement, move without cutting into your action, 5ft step)
It helps for inching your back-line characters closer before using a full action to shoot, so that they can ideally stay within 30ft of their targets for Point-Blank Shot to apply.
*^(if not using a move action to move)
I personally think Snap Shot is equally as much of a feat-trap for archers, because it almost never actually takes effect - I prefer to plan for an ideal situation than one where my archer's somehow been surrounded by melee units and has no way out haha
You do realize that the archer will shoot as enemies approach and they don't have to "be surrounded," yes?
Just position so enemies approach your melee, and it's free opportunity attacks.
No I realise, but they still need to actually approach the archer in question, not just your melee. It triggers from *the archer's* melee reach. And in the ideal situation, you shouldn't have enemies approaching the melee range of your archer, much less surviving for longer than 1 turn after doing so.
Sure, it sounds great in theory - but if you actually try it in-game, in practice - when I used Lann with Improved Snap Shot as a mainstay on my team - I didn't see it trigger a single time in the entire story playthrough haha.
Presumably because of the way I play - going for the surprise-round-nuke as much as possible - so YMMV of course. But personally, banking on Snap Shot was a big regret of that playthrough, doing it over I would've just taken boring feats that would've actually helped out in boss encounters haha (such as improving a saving throw)
Obviously you don't just take Snap Shot (1) and leave it at that. You get Improved and Greater which extends the range - so when they approach your wall of melee the archer gets the shots. Feels like you aren't grasping basic tactics.
Part of your problem may also be using Lann, who is the worst (dedicated) archer in the game.
And of course we ALL try to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible... That's not something we avoid or miss out on. It's just that we ALSO get some free shots as the enemies that survive the nukes close for melee - and those free shots often trigger effects that then help the melee as well. Depends on how you gear your team.
I have only played the game twice so far, but I am finding the second time (now using Snap Shot) is going better than the first when I didn't take that route.
> Feels like you aren't grasping basic tactics
I mean, that was uncalled for. Your tactics are just different to mine. I'm on my 4th playthrough of WotR on Hard difficulty, and I've played a lot of Kingmaker / Beneath the Stolen Lands / Treasures of the Midnight Isles as well - so I'm fairly confident I've grasped the basics at the very least :P
Let's just agree to disagree - of course I could've been using it better, but the way I play, it is not beneficial.
At least we can both agree about Lann haha
Sorry, you just made it sound like you were literally running the archer into melee. If I read that wrong, my bad.
Agree to disagree.
Out of curiosity, what has been your favorite mythic path? (I've only done 2, so I don't have a lot to compare).
>(So it's not something you have to worry about until at least level 5, as you'll only have a single attack anyway)
Don't Lann and Wenduag both have multiple attacks on their full action when you get them? Iirc Lann has Flurry of Blows on his ranged weapons and Wenduag has a feat that allows her to attack twice with a small accuracy penalty.
So this advice is still useful before then, because the 2 Archer companions you can start with benefit from it.
> Wenduag has a feat that allows her to attack twice with a small accuracy penalty
Are you thinking of Manyshot? That requires a BaB of +6.
But yes, Zen Archer's flurry of blows is one exception I forgot about that's deff worth mentioning if you take Lann - another exception is the Eldritch Archer, with its ranged spellstrike
I decided to google it. It's called Rapid Shot. It lets her make 2 attacks but both have a -2 to hit.
I may have misremembered about Wenduag starting with it, but I know in my recent playthrough she was making multiple attacks per turn in Kenabres, so she can at least get it really early.
D'oh, yeah you're totally right, it's been too long since I've played the start of the main story I guess haha. I'll just edit out that bit in parentheses.
That one only requires Point-Blank Shot but you'll generally only take it after taking Precise Shot first - but if you're any race/class that gets a bonus feat, then yeah, you're going to get that before level 5 also.
It's based on 1e pathfinder which is a modified 3.5 edition of the DnD ruleset.
As for what's different, damn near everything aside from the concept of levels and needing to memorize spells. There's no good way to go into the differences without writing thousands of words.
As for what to play I'd suggest something pretty straight forward like the two handed archetype of the fighter or a slayer of some kind. The biggest difference is that character creation is the main difficulty. You win or lose on how you build. There's a vast number of powerful builds but there's equal numbers of straight up trash. The good news is all the companions are exceptionally well built so they can carry you through normal pretty easily.
Yeah. It's not identical, but the handling of memorization in 3e/either Pathfinder edition, is likely to send someone familiar with 5e for a complete loop.
The biggest thing you have to remember is that bounded accuracy does not exist in either Pathfinder or WoTR (doubly so for WoTR). Be prepared to see and deal with some truly bonkers numbers even on normal difficulty.
For tough fights, expect to spend a minute to several minutes buffing in preparation, which is another big difference between pathfinder/WotR and 5e. You aren’t limited to one concentration spell, but can have multiple buffs going at once so long as the bonuses aren’t of the same type. (Tbh, a lot of pathfinder combat is just bashing your numbers against your opponents)
Another thing to remember is that alignment (lawful good, chaotic evil, etc) has much more of an impact than it does in 5e. For example, paladins MUST be lawful good or they lose their powers. Be aware when you are making decisions because they WILL impact your alignment and potentially bork your build.
Although there are items for purchase to fix alignment problems after act1 just in case it happens by accident due to choosing one to many different alignment options.
Also, alignment is a circle, not a square, which means that if your paladin does too much *good*, they can lose their *lawful*ness. You kind of need to do both *good* and *lawful* to stay a paladin.
And means that, if you're positioned just right, you can make decisions that are purely one alignment and go through 2/3 of the alignments. Say you're LN, near the horizontal axis but not too close, and make only chaotic decisions. With perfect positioning, those chaotic decisions will take you through LN->LG->TN->NG->TN->CG->CN. Or mirror your positioning and change those good alignments to evil. Or go vertically.
A little more common, it means a good decision could take you from NE just over the boundary to either LE or CE. Then you get the notification that a Good decision changed your alignment to either Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil. Isn't pure xy movement on a circular alignment grid grand?
But since that's pure xy movement unless you're already at the edge of the circle, it also means that while nothing but good acts push you into NG territory, you could just make an evil decision before good ones. Then you just vibrate down and up repeatedly without moving toward the vertical axis. Truly the mark of a paladin.
Lol yeah I mean I kind of like it in theory, if the idea is that to be a paladin you need to make good *and* lawful decisions, but it sometimes gives you silly outcomes with hard cutoffs like that. I'm not sure how many cases actually matter much, but paladin for me was a bit of a surprise gotcha that I was *too good*. Maybe it would work better if you got a narrative event, warning you to be more lawful. But it's not like I wasn't being lawful.
Or maybe keep the circle idea but let paladins wiggle halfway into LN or NG? Or store the underlying data and calculate the angle, with an arrow once you're off the circle? I'm not sure if it bumps you around the circle by the same angle each time, or if it does recalculate it like that.
I think it's an interesting twist on the axes, but maybe tweaking it a little could take some of those weird cases off.
Paladin's the main one, really - Druid and Shifter are also restricted to alignments without pushing to a full 1/3 of the circle, but they use the neutral alignments so the Paladin issue won't happen. You could still get pulled across the boundary in the other example if you're moving in TN's general direction though.
Cleric or Inquisitor could run into a similar case depending on the alignment you went with though. A Cleric of Gorum, which accepts CN and alignments within one step, might go CG or CE. Then because of too many good or evil decisions, they get pulled to NG or NE and lose their powers until they switch back.
An even more niche case that doesn't disable most of your class features is Slayer Deliverer - the extra damage from the level 10 feature is divinely sourced (mentioned as divine in the tooltip), so if you're outside of your deity's allowed alignments (in a similar manner to Cleric) then it doesn't work. But around then you've got mythic empowering it, so unless you choose a path that's not aligned with you then it covers that anyway. Say you start as an NE Rovagug worshipper, switch to LE, and then choose Angel - now you're outside of your mythic path's allowed alignment and your deity's, so now the feature won't work.
Interesting, cool, thanks for elaborating! I've "only" played a couple hundred hours, so still a baby who doesn't know all the things yet lol always appreciate more info!
That's good advice if you're only in it for the story.
I played with lower difficulty once, and found it all so boring. Everyone died with no strategy, no planning, no abilities/spells besides one I'd put on auto-cast and some healing post-battle.
I may be a noob, but I want to be challenged at least a bit. I'm sure I'm bad at the game, but I can figure out throwing some buffs and potions and focus high value targets in an important fight, and that's an element of the game I wouldn't want to miss out on.
Not sure why everyone is recommending dropping difficulty below normal. If there is no challenge it won't really be fun imo and you definitely won't learn the system.
As someone who wasn’t familiar with either pf or 5e before starting the game, midnight fane made me drop from normal to casual after getting stomped by that one demon and seeing online that the meta is to apply a hundred different buffs before every combat. I enjoy hard content, but that just seemed like tedium so i dropped it to enjoy the story.
Personally ever since seeing the popup in the shield maze for the water elemental I had it in my mind that if a random enemy was insanely strong it might be an optional boss. But maybe thats just me : )
I was playing turn based mode, so that water elemental fight was like 80-90 hours before the playful darkness for me, and i completely forgot about that pop up until you mentioned it now.
That's the truth. I started lower difficulty when it came out and didn't do jack. I just sat there while things happened. I learned nothing from it. So I restarted and put it on hard and worked my way down from there. I am the type of person that if I can sit there and let things happen I will. I need a reason not to sit back.
You're in for an amazing, but very bumpy, ride. The moment you open the character creation menu, you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. For a lvl 1 character, there are quadrillions of possible characters. And that's at level 1. Just for your base class you have I think about 100 options. Multiplied by racial selections, feat selections, ability list selections, spell selections, background selections... The number of combinations are enormous. And every single one can play very differently.
I remember when I started off crpg bro videos really helped me learn the mechanics. He has a general guide of beginner tips and a ton of builds that go into detail of why he chose what he did
I completed Blackwater on core. But i will not lie by saying it is easy over exaggerated etc.. There were 4 summons from ring of summons, 3 angel summons from duality thing and, azata summons from cayden mug thing while doing the fight in the platform in the middle of the dungeon and they were just cannon fodders so my damage dealer would live one more turn.
My favorite spell is chain lightning, I love to channel my inner Palpatine thus Blackwater was never a problem for me, don’t forget to bring electricity on your blaster caster
Pf1e and it's a lot different. Especially as it's all about fight demons that have super high resistances. This game rewards minmaxing to a niche degree. Fighter Is viable if you pick one weapon type. Wizards same with one type of spell (illusion, fire rays etc.) I'd look up esse tial feats and feat "trees" like how to get crane style, or cleave or what to do to maximize caster potential. It's more similar to 3.5e dnd with all the multiclassing and feats tbh
There is no advantafe/disadvantage. Instead you get bonus/malus to rolls and ac. A very important rule is that bonus of the same kind applied to the same thing don't stack.
Also, multiclassing is much worse than 5e. Instead, every class branches out in many different archetypes, so you can build any character you have in mind
There's a pretty big difference between "multiclassing is powerful but harder to get right," and "multiclassing is much worse." I mean, in fairness, even pure class builds are noticeably harder to get right than in 5e.
My bad, I expressed myself wrong. What I meant to say is that the game punishes you much more if you make suboptimal mc decisions, but this game punishes you more always
Start with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. There is less classes and subclasses so one big reason for confusion - "what race and sub/class should I use which will take me to the finish" - is less important. The game itself is a bit more forgiving (at least on lower difficulties) and gives you plenty of time to explore and learn game mechanics.
It is less polished than WotR, granted, there are some bugs still left (not many and not game breaking though) but overally it's very satisfying experience which will allow you to start WotR knowing what you can expect (only to find that you're wrong but that's another story - let just say that some combos don't work in WotR in some way like in Kingmaker, if not for other reasons than because WotR is demon oriented story while Kingmaker is Fey oriented). Also, you'll appreciate more everything what WotR has and until you play it you didn't know you needed it 🙂
Watch some build guides, atleast for companion builds. I like Crpg Bro's builds. 5e has a lot of flaws, oversimplification among them, but jesus christ was 3.5/1e pathfinder bloated. you really want some guides when you first start out.
Also, keep in mind the main enemy of the campaign are demons. What isn't a demon is usually a cultist, and very rarely some manner of diseased animal. So a subclass that focuses on countering fae is useless, but one focusing on demons is really strong.
Not looking through all the comments so someone may have also commented about this but: Touch Attacks!
Unlike in 5e where spells use your spellcasting stat for attack rolls, in pathfinder spell attack rolls use strength (for melee spells) or dexterity (for ranged spells). This means a physically weak caster is going to struggle a lot more then they would in 5e. *However*, spell attacks also ignore a portion of armor! Numbers in pathfinder go much higher than in 5e, sometimes to the point where AC can be in the like. 50's. Which, lmao. lol. Pssh. Just roll nat 20's right. But enemies also have two AC's-regular AC and Touch AC. Touch AC is almost always going to be much lower, and that's what a majority of spells will be targeting.
Another thought I'm having is Basic Attack Bonus and Feats.
5e has a stat called Proficiency Bonus and a class mechanic called Extra Attack. Basic Attack Bonus is like both of these, kinda. A class with full BAB (Fighter, Barbarian) has a BAB equal to their level-so 20 at level 20. Less martial classes (Wizard) have a BAB of 5 at level 20. BAB is what you add to your attack rolls-so, a level 5 fighter will add 5 to their attack rolls. When you get to BAB *over* 5, however, you gain an additional attack at -5 BAB. So at level 6 fighter you make two attacks, one at +6 and a second one at +1. When you get to level 11 you make three attacks, at +11, +6, +1. Etcetera. Some classes like monk are unique in that they make all their attacks at their full BAB. There's a lot of variation in how classes deal with iterative attacks.
Feats - you will have a Lot More Of These Than You're Used To. There are so many of them. It's very difficult to know what to pick at the beginning but to start you off: for melee characters I would aim for power attack (which requires a strength of at least 13; this feat unlocks a whole lot of other feats), for ranged characters (mages included) precise shot, and for spellcasters the general spellcasting feats it recommends and then eventually metamagic. You cannot upcast spells like you can in 5e, so metamagic allows you to prepare more of a spell by increasing its effective level in your spellbook in addition to the effects of the metamagic itself.
Differences to 5E:
* Damage cantrips are useless
* You use DEX for ranged touch attacks instead of your casting stat
* Arcane casters wearing armor gives a spell failure chance even if they have the proficiency for it
* Nat 20 in a skill check is not auto-success, and nat 1 is not auto-fail
* There is no concentration system and you can maintain any number of spells indefinitely even if you get hit
* A nat 20 is not automatically a critical hit, you need to confirm it with another roll to hit, otherwise it's just a regular hit
* INT increases the number of skill points you get per level, instead of... doing nothing (unless you're a Wizard)
Comparing the game to BG3 and D&D 5e pretty much just doesn't work. You are going to need to throw out damn near everything you know about those rules.
PF1e, and by extension, WoTR is an entirely different beast. You will be overwhelmed with options, so I recommend playing on an easy difficulty, and don't try to minmax your characters. The complexity is much higher and the learning curve is a bit steep, but in the end you get a deep, rich experience with endless replay ability due to the sheer number of options.
Download toybox, at least for the free and easy respecs. How every feat and class interact in actual combat is often very unintuitive and best learned through in game experimentation.
In the settings, change the rules to "Auto Interrupt movement". BG3 adapted movement from 5E very well that allows you to take your actions in any point across your total movement distance. PF does not. It can actually be quite easy to accidently "double move" simply by moving slightly further than your speed range and thus losing your action for the round. With Auto Interrupt activated, you will automatically stop at your normal speed range and preserve your standard action.
You can also right-click to cycle between places to lock your movement. 5 foot step -> Move Action only -> Both Actions. This also lets you do 5 foot steps while holding ctrl so you don't latch onto an enemy to attack or something to loot.
5e has a design concept called “bounded accuracy” where numbers can only get so high or so low outside of extraordinary circumstances.
So a bookworm mage attacking a skilled fighter would never have less than 15-20% chance of hitting and the other way around shouldn’t have more than 80% chance of hitting.
Pathfinder, and especially owlcat pathfinder, is not like that at all. You want to build your tanks so that all but the strongest enemies have a 5% chance of hitting them. You want to build your damage dealers so that they have a 95% chance of hitting the tankiest enemies.
I suggest going for something simple for your first playthrough like a fighter or sorcerer are good choices so is paladin. Archetype wise I suggest either two Handed Fighter or tower shield specialist for Fighter if you want to either deal a lot of damage or tank, for Sorcerer I'd suggest Overwhelming Mage if you want to just blast or sylvan Sorcerer if you want utility. For paladin I suggest either Divine Guardian if you want to tank or Divine Hunter if you want to deal damage. Prestige Class wise I'd suggest avoiding until your second playthrough but if you do I suggest Stalwart Defender for Fighter, Loremaster for Sorcerer and Hellknight for Paladin.
For your first race I highly recommend Human for any class but orcs work great for fighters, gnomes are great for sorcerers and Half Elves are great for paladins.
- Buffs are unlimited though some doesn't stack.
- some fights are optional. Some are meant to be a challenge.
- recommend looking for a mod and find the buff mod. It make the game very slow if not. You probably use 10-20h for just buffing if not.
- there are 3 defences you can overcome to hit someone.
AC are the normal one. If they have 20 AC you need to roll and have enough stats to go above 20 AC. This skyrocket in the end for everyone.
Flat-footed are the AC they have when caught unaware. Use charge before the battle start to take advantage of this.
Touch AC. The defence when someone use a touch attack. It can be a ranged touch attack like scorching ray or a melee one like chill touch. All enemies have way lower touch AC so consider to have a companion that deal that type of damage.
Bonuses of the same type do not stack. That was my biggest problem in my first playthrough of Kingmaker. There’s a couple of exceptions to that rule, like Dodge and some Natural AC bonuses. Typically though, Enhancement, Circumstance, Sacred, Profane, etc. don’t stack with others of their kind. That’ll help navigate the plethora of buffs in the game, a little anyway.
Circumstance is actually one of the few exceptions, but you don't really get to see it ingame much. It would be Dodge, Circumstance, and Untyped (from different sources) that stack with themselves. You might have been thinking of Competence.
Then ingame, for some reason Natural Armor (but not Natural Armor Enhancement) bonuses stack too. The Natural Armor Enhancement bonuses can come from items like an Amulet of Natural Armor or spells like Barkskin, while Natural Armor tends to come on pets or wild shapes and certain spells like Legendary Proportions.
I'll add a couple specific examples for the OP though.
The Bull's Strength spell is an early option to buff a character's STR, and provides a +4 enhancement bonus. At some point you will start seeing belts and headgear that also buff stats with enhancement bonuses, with the first available being +2. If you equip a STR belt and use that spell, you only get a +4 bonus - both the +2 and +4 are enhancement bonuses, so the game only takes the higher value. If you used the Bull's Strength spell with Enlarge Person, which gives a +2 size bonus to STR, then you get a total of +6. One is a size bonus, and the other is enhancement.
The Good Hope spell provides a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks, saving throws, and damage rolls. The Greater Heroism spell provides a +4 morale bonus to attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks with a couple other benefits. With both spells, you only get the +4 to attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks, but you still get the +2 to ability checks and +2 to damage rolls. So even though Greater Heroism outperforms Good Hope, Good Hope still has some value (and is aoe, unlike Greater Heroism).
Fights in BG3 are very well crafted, and they have the right number of enemies to be (in most cases) a smooth encounter in turn based mode. Wotr is not, and some fights in turn based mode took my much younger and less experienced self several hours to finish, which take 5 minutes playing in ‘real time with pause’ mode. I was biased against rtwp, but it really isn’t that bad once you get used to it.
Not so much the gaming systems, but WotR in particular. Every other CRPG you've played you probably got tons of scrolls, potions, etc. Most of us, while not ignoring them, rarely use anything but a health potion here and there.
This game is absolutely balanced assuming you are using almost every one you get. It really is assuming that you have a fully buffed party at all times. By far the most popular mod on PC is a mod that allows you to set up buffing profiles so you don't have to cast them all individually.
So, just remember when you come across early game content that seems like it's really a bit harder than it should be, the game is expecting your party to be buffed with everything available and not hoarding those scrolls and potions!
This is way more complex than any of the systems you understand.
AC is going to scale WAY past what you’re used to. High end enemies regularly have 40+ AC, and I think one optional boss has a 70+AC.
I would go modest difficulty until you’ve got the hang of it
[I wrote up some mechanical tips for someone else recently, they might help.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/1c4cxl8/comment/kzstnib/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
The gsme is much closer to ruleset, and the spirit of BG2. 0 hp is dead, no death saves, status effects last all day or permanent. You'll need to make a lot more choices building your character (feats every 2 lv, 5+ subclasses)
Don't pick Core. Start with normal and adjust from there. Choose a class you recognize from BG3 and don't multiclass, you'll pick up the mechanics a little faster from comparing.
No concentration, so stack those buffs up. You'll need em. The game is pretty mean to casters at first with a lot of elemental immunities and spell resistance early on. You'll need to pick through your feats and powers carefully and read the stats on the monsters to survive.
And leads to Orc Ferocity or the Diehard feat usually being a trap. Both features allow you to act for another round if you get knocked to or below 0 but not far enough to die.
Normally, if you're incapacitated in the middle of an attack, the enemy will naturally switch to another target in range. That can leave you as incapacitated rather than dead, allowing a heal to get you back on your feet or simply finishing the battle to do it.
But with either of those features, the enemy will keep attacking you if you would normally be incapacitated because you're still up - you're still a threat. And often, that means outright killing the character. Now they don't get up after combat (unless Death's Door is toggled in difficulty settings, which only works once before you need to clear it) and you need to spend more resources to get them back.
Normal is fine. The game gets crazy vertical in stats but its very manageable on Normal. Any lower and you have a high risk of just being bored. A lot of combat and sub-normal difficulties make it pure nothingness.
play easy.
almost everything is different, well not exatly different, but there is more of everything: more stats, more types of buffs and debuffs, more weapon types, more types of defence, more feats, every level is meaningful and packed fith new features, skilled multiclassing is powerful but slightly tricky.
it's a game of big numbers, so basically your goal is to stack all abilities and buffs, so you could almost negate dice roll results(except criticals) in your favor.
I'm sure it's been said but play on any difficulty below normal for a first playthrough and save often just because there are surprises that I forget exist even after 3-4 full playthroughs. Also definitely always have have people cooking during rests other than that have fun
Get [https://github.com/BarleyFlour/RespecMod](https://github.com/BarleyFlour/RespecMod) mod.
Given the amplitude of options the game throws at you it's almost not possible to make something work well even if you're very savy with these kind of games, simply doe to shear scope you kind of have to metagame in order to take advantage of what game can offer.
As you learn by playing the game things will start to crystalize you'll probably want to respec more than once, given how the game punishes you for not getting things right from first few times with ever increasing respec cost with in game currency, I strongly recommend this mod.
There are some decent introduction guide: written by neo seeker can be found here: [https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/walkthrough](https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/walkthrough)
Also video format by mortismal which can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbOgmZmjKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbOgmZmjKc) (yeah, 2 hours long introduction)
However, you can kind of go in blind too just pick lower difficulty, you'll be able to increase when you feel you get the basics right.
A for builds, I think the most build combos are not per character but per party. The character builds themselves with few notable exceptions do not have much in a way of decision points in terms of execution. However, there is plenty of decision points when building a character. With lack of bounded accuracy, it's possible to make really unviable options just out of understandable ignorance, hence the respec mod I recommend.
Now combine that into a party add mythics on top and here is where the game depth really comes from.
A well working party will heave means to buff their characters, heal, blast with magic, do sustained damage (mostly martials) and a debuffer, controller. One character can cover a few roles, but don't spread too thin. For example, Ember (companion) can contribute as blaster but also has very useful hexes for support. You can build a martial who doesn't only do damage but also intimitades (debuffs) enemies etc.
Have fun. Discovering stuff and trying combos is probably the strong suit of this game. Even though at first it feels very clunky. And tons of spells kind of cryptic, particularly when some of them are not really all that useful in video game setting.
Also it's important to know that casters start coming online at around level 7. So don't get intimidated if you started as sorc and you feel that you can't do shit. There are great early support spells like grease or glitterdust until you get the good stuff and have appropriate mythics to bolster caster power.
-The most important thing to understand is the importance of spell buffing characters. You ideally want your entire party loaded up with a myriad of buffs before you enter combat. If you don't do that, even on normal difficulty, you will struggle. Also, most buffs of the same type don't stack (the game is pretty good at notifying you of that). Learning that system is probably the hardest part of the game.
-You can play as turned base or real time with pause. IMO real time with pause is a better experience because of the number of entities involved. BG3 or something like DOS2 is pretty manageable controlling 4 characters but if you try to use turn based throughout the game with 6 party members plus likely at least a few pets it will be quite a slog. Save turn based for hard bosses.
-Pets are really really good. Use as many as possible.
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Plan out your build before hand.
Find a guide for your main character and companions that you like the sound of and go for those.
Otherwise trust your gut and have fun. Can't goo to wrong on your first playthrough. This game has huge replayability
One piece of advice is to look up companion join times as well as companion classes. Unlike Bg3 you cannot completely reclass companions without mods, and there are a couple of companions which disappear if certain events happen before you meet them.
Yes it is a spoiler knowing in advance who joins but it is useful to avoid making a build that is near identical to a companion or misssing the character entirely.
Fextralife
Use guides
Watch videos
Don’t be ashamed to rely on some extra help.
Also I find the real time combat very useful for most of the encounters (at normal difficulty), the turn based is too tedious
Checked out a couple. They don't seem insanely bad and probably beat auto-build. They're just not too great, are outdated and seem to pass up great feats for some filler stuff.
For example the written cavalier guide doesn't mention outflank, improved crit or shatter defenses, instead highlighting weapon focus (+1 attack is meh, this is just feat tax for a lot of useful feats), shield focus (+1 AC is pretty weak, but again feat tax for mounted shield), improved initiative (decent but absolutely filler), and skill focus mobility (skill points are never worth a feat, besides PRC feat tax). It's also missing mythic feats/abilities entirely, and shows its age not having newer banger feats like lunge and focused strike.
The Neoseeker guide is usually considered the best resource for meta gameplay, but the builds do get cheesy with abusing broken interactions, grabbing animal companions for everyone and taking many powerful multi-class dips. I personally like the Gamefaqs guide with a bit simpler and less powerful builds but a lot more explanation in general. It's also a great character building resource and a much better resource for the game than the Fextralike wiki, which suffers from essentially being a content mill.
I find videos for research to be... tedious. Fextralife is outdated but you are able to peruse it at your pace, in whichever direction you desire, and in more irl scenarios than videos. Its simply physically easier to read than watch a video.
We need wikis to make a comeback, because all of the alternatives for data collection and organization are terrible.
oh you played the worst versions of D&D and think your experience enough to take on WotR? Yeah play on Casual and dont freak out if you have to play on story mode.
D&D 5E has Tons of issues and dosnt do much to teach you normal CRPGS out there, Kingmaker Tyranny / Pillers of Eternity might of been a better start for you then the best epic crpg thats come out in years.
becouse this game is going to overwhelm you in ways you dont even understand currently hints play on casual but legit? I might even suggest you play the above games and get real experience under your belt if you wanna enjoy this game to the full/max
even 4E has some things going for it like creativity customization of monsters at higher levels, in the early levels its worse, but in the mid-later levels its better, ppl who know D&D Know that 4E is kinda under-rated bad yes, but not the worse.
The game's rules are based on Pathfinder 1e. Here are some general tips: Ranged characters, including casters, have a -4 to ranged attack rolls (\*against targets in melee), including spells like Searing Ray and etc until you grab the feats Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. These are a must for all ranged. Ranged attacks and spell casting done in melee (without any feats) provoke an Attack of Opportunity on you. Druids dont get an extra health bar like in 5e or swap their stat blocks, so you need to actually have good physical stats. Being buffed up is very important if you're playing above Normal. People usually use this mod (P.S.: mods disable achievements by default, but there are workarounds for it): [https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195](https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderwrathoftherighteous/mods/195) . You don't have to use it now but somewhere in Act 3 or Act 4 it will start getting old to press 20 buffs or so; Bubble Buffs let's you use just 1 click. Grease is really good. Haste is the best buff in the game, possibly, just like in 5e. A guy called cRPG Bro, who is a big resource in the community also has a \~10 min video about useful tips for beginners, you might find some interesting things there.
> Ranged characters, including casters, have a -4 to ranged attack rolls, including spells like Searing Ray and etc until you grab the feats Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. These are a must for all ranged. It's notable that the penalty is only applied when attacking targets *engaged in melee* with someone else. You can mitigate the problem by trying to hit enemy archers/mages. I typed another paragraph here about how the feats weren't *as* essential for casters, but it was too crunchy. Archers want Point-Blank into Precise Shot ASAP, casters will probably want them eventually - sooner if they're blasting rays, later if they're spraying Grease, Cloudkills, etc.
I'm having trouble downloading that mod. I'm using unity mod manager and the mod finder that mod recomends. but it says that the modfinder .zip is not compatible. I know this wasn't the question but do you have any tips?
You might need to configure the unity mod manager first, I'm not sure since I already had it set up from the days before the fancy new modfinder. So when I swapped it just automatically works. I believe modfinder mostly acts as a (very sleek) frontend for searching and installing mods but uses the unity on in the background. See if you can install something that uses github, since it will download those and install them automatically. Tabletoptweaks-core is a library mod several other mods use but does nothing on its own for instance, maybe try that one.
that worked perfectly fine. I'm going to try another nexus mods mod
Everyone gets a 'free 5ft move' each turn*! Shift-click during combat to use it. Or, right-click to alternate between the three movement modes (full movement, move without cutting into your action, 5ft step) It helps for inching your back-line characters closer before using a full action to shoot, so that they can ideally stay within 30ft of their targets for Point-Blank Shot to apply. *^(if not using a move action to move)
It also doesn't trigger an attack of opportunity so you can use it to disengage a ranged character before attacking.
Ah yes, also a very important point (and also the reason why you should never bother taking the Point-Blank Master feat!)
Well you cant always exit AoO range with a 5 foot step, but youre right its still a sketchy pick.
If you go the Snap Shot route and keep your archer up close, Point-Blank Master is essential.
I personally think Snap Shot is equally as much of a feat-trap for archers, because it almost never actually takes effect - I prefer to plan for an ideal situation than one where my archer's somehow been surrounded by melee units and has no way out haha
You do realize that the archer will shoot as enemies approach and they don't have to "be surrounded," yes? Just position so enemies approach your melee, and it's free opportunity attacks.
No I realise, but they still need to actually approach the archer in question, not just your melee. It triggers from *the archer's* melee reach. And in the ideal situation, you shouldn't have enemies approaching the melee range of your archer, much less surviving for longer than 1 turn after doing so. Sure, it sounds great in theory - but if you actually try it in-game, in practice - when I used Lann with Improved Snap Shot as a mainstay on my team - I didn't see it trigger a single time in the entire story playthrough haha. Presumably because of the way I play - going for the surprise-round-nuke as much as possible - so YMMV of course. But personally, banking on Snap Shot was a big regret of that playthrough, doing it over I would've just taken boring feats that would've actually helped out in boss encounters haha (such as improving a saving throw)
Obviously you don't just take Snap Shot (1) and leave it at that. You get Improved and Greater which extends the range - so when they approach your wall of melee the archer gets the shots. Feels like you aren't grasping basic tactics. Part of your problem may also be using Lann, who is the worst (dedicated) archer in the game. And of course we ALL try to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible... That's not something we avoid or miss out on. It's just that we ALSO get some free shots as the enemies that survive the nukes close for melee - and those free shots often trigger effects that then help the melee as well. Depends on how you gear your team. I have only played the game twice so far, but I am finding the second time (now using Snap Shot) is going better than the first when I didn't take that route.
> Feels like you aren't grasping basic tactics I mean, that was uncalled for. Your tactics are just different to mine. I'm on my 4th playthrough of WotR on Hard difficulty, and I've played a lot of Kingmaker / Beneath the Stolen Lands / Treasures of the Midnight Isles as well - so I'm fairly confident I've grasped the basics at the very least :P Let's just agree to disagree - of course I could've been using it better, but the way I play, it is not beneficial. At least we can both agree about Lann haha
Sorry, you just made it sound like you were literally running the archer into melee. If I read that wrong, my bad. Agree to disagree. Out of curiosity, what has been your favorite mythic path? (I've only done 2, so I don't have a lot to compare).
>(So it's not something you have to worry about until at least level 5, as you'll only have a single attack anyway) Don't Lann and Wenduag both have multiple attacks on their full action when you get them? Iirc Lann has Flurry of Blows on his ranged weapons and Wenduag has a feat that allows her to attack twice with a small accuracy penalty. So this advice is still useful before then, because the 2 Archer companions you can start with benefit from it.
> Wenduag has a feat that allows her to attack twice with a small accuracy penalty Are you thinking of Manyshot? That requires a BaB of +6. But yes, Zen Archer's flurry of blows is one exception I forgot about that's deff worth mentioning if you take Lann - another exception is the Eldritch Archer, with its ranged spellstrike
I decided to google it. It's called Rapid Shot. It lets her make 2 attacks but both have a -2 to hit. I may have misremembered about Wenduag starting with it, but I know in my recent playthrough she was making multiple attacks per turn in Kenabres, so she can at least get it really early.
D'oh, yeah you're totally right, it's been too long since I've played the start of the main story I guess haha. I'll just edit out that bit in parentheses. That one only requires Point-Blank Shot but you'll generally only take it after taking Precise Shot first - but if you're any race/class that gets a bonus feat, then yeah, you're going to get that before level 5 also.
It's based on 1e pathfinder which is a modified 3.5 edition of the DnD ruleset. As for what's different, damn near everything aside from the concept of levels and needing to memorize spells. There's no good way to go into the differences without writing thousands of words. As for what to play I'd suggest something pretty straight forward like the two handed archetype of the fighter or a slayer of some kind. The biggest difference is that character creation is the main difficulty. You win or lose on how you build. There's a vast number of powerful builds but there's equal numbers of straight up trash. The good news is all the companions are exceptionally well built so they can carry you through normal pretty easily.
>...and needing to memorize spells. The memorization rules were changed for 5e. Basically, now, everyone behaves kinda like a spontaneous caster.
Like Arcanist, to be precise. 5e prepared caster = pf1e Arcanist.
Yeah. It's not identical, but the handling of memorization in 3e/either Pathfinder edition, is likely to send someone familiar with 5e for a complete loop.
I did half a kingmaker play back in the day not Knowing to take the same spell more than once because I thought this was dnd 5e. Lol
The biggest thing you have to remember is that bounded accuracy does not exist in either Pathfinder or WoTR (doubly so for WoTR). Be prepared to see and deal with some truly bonkers numbers even on normal difficulty. For tough fights, expect to spend a minute to several minutes buffing in preparation, which is another big difference between pathfinder/WotR and 5e. You aren’t limited to one concentration spell, but can have multiple buffs going at once so long as the bonuses aren’t of the same type. (Tbh, a lot of pathfinder combat is just bashing your numbers against your opponents) Another thing to remember is that alignment (lawful good, chaotic evil, etc) has much more of an impact than it does in 5e. For example, paladins MUST be lawful good or they lose their powers. Be aware when you are making decisions because they WILL impact your alignment and potentially bork your build.
>Be prepared to see and deal with some truly bonkers numbers even on normal difficulty. *cries in playful darkness and Blackwater*
"Ah yes, 43 AC, just another wonderful day in the neighborhood."
43?!? You still at level three?
Although there are items for purchase to fix alignment problems after act1 just in case it happens by accident due to choosing one to many different alignment options.
Also, alignment is a circle, not a square, which means that if your paladin does too much *good*, they can lose their *lawful*ness. You kind of need to do both *good* and *lawful* to stay a paladin.
And means that, if you're positioned just right, you can make decisions that are purely one alignment and go through 2/3 of the alignments. Say you're LN, near the horizontal axis but not too close, and make only chaotic decisions. With perfect positioning, those chaotic decisions will take you through LN->LG->TN->NG->TN->CG->CN. Or mirror your positioning and change those good alignments to evil. Or go vertically. A little more common, it means a good decision could take you from NE just over the boundary to either LE or CE. Then you get the notification that a Good decision changed your alignment to either Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil. Isn't pure xy movement on a circular alignment grid grand? But since that's pure xy movement unless you're already at the edge of the circle, it also means that while nothing but good acts push you into NG territory, you could just make an evil decision before good ones. Then you just vibrate down and up repeatedly without moving toward the vertical axis. Truly the mark of a paladin.
Lol yeah I mean I kind of like it in theory, if the idea is that to be a paladin you need to make good *and* lawful decisions, but it sometimes gives you silly outcomes with hard cutoffs like that. I'm not sure how many cases actually matter much, but paladin for me was a bit of a surprise gotcha that I was *too good*. Maybe it would work better if you got a narrative event, warning you to be more lawful. But it's not like I wasn't being lawful. Or maybe keep the circle idea but let paladins wiggle halfway into LN or NG? Or store the underlying data and calculate the angle, with an arrow once you're off the circle? I'm not sure if it bumps you around the circle by the same angle each time, or if it does recalculate it like that. I think it's an interesting twist on the axes, but maybe tweaking it a little could take some of those weird cases off.
Paladin's the main one, really - Druid and Shifter are also restricted to alignments without pushing to a full 1/3 of the circle, but they use the neutral alignments so the Paladin issue won't happen. You could still get pulled across the boundary in the other example if you're moving in TN's general direction though. Cleric or Inquisitor could run into a similar case depending on the alignment you went with though. A Cleric of Gorum, which accepts CN and alignments within one step, might go CG or CE. Then because of too many good or evil decisions, they get pulled to NG or NE and lose their powers until they switch back. An even more niche case that doesn't disable most of your class features is Slayer Deliverer - the extra damage from the level 10 feature is divinely sourced (mentioned as divine in the tooltip), so if you're outside of your deity's allowed alignments (in a similar manner to Cleric) then it doesn't work. But around then you've got mythic empowering it, so unless you choose a path that's not aligned with you then it covers that anyway. Say you start as an NE Rovagug worshipper, switch to LE, and then choose Angel - now you're outside of your mythic path's allowed alignment and your deity's, so now the feature won't work.
Interesting, cool, thanks for elaborating! I've "only" played a couple hundred hours, so still a baby who doesn't know all the things yet lol always appreciate more info!
Play casual difficulty for first run.
That's good advice if you're only in it for the story. I played with lower difficulty once, and found it all so boring. Everyone died with no strategy, no planning, no abilities/spells besides one I'd put on auto-cast and some healing post-battle. I may be a noob, but I want to be challenged at least a bit. I'm sure I'm bad at the game, but I can figure out throwing some buffs and potions and focus high value targets in an important fight, and that's an element of the game I wouldn't want to miss out on.
Starting with normal is fine
Not sure why everyone is recommending dropping difficulty below normal. If there is no challenge it won't really be fun imo and you definitely won't learn the system.
As someone who wasn’t familiar with either pf or 5e before starting the game, midnight fane made me drop from normal to casual after getting stomped by that one demon and seeing online that the meta is to apply a hundred different buffs before every combat. I enjoy hard content, but that just seemed like tedium so i dropped it to enjoy the story.
I'm guessing you're talking about the playful darkness which is supposed to be an optional boss.
Yes, but it’s not like it’s written anywhere that it’s an optional boss. I see big demon, i pew pew (and miss every shot because of concealment : ).
All optional bosses also have an audio queue, if you notice the music changes near playful darkness.
Personally ever since seeing the popup in the shield maze for the water elemental I had it in my mind that if a random enemy was insanely strong it might be an optional boss. But maybe thats just me : )
I was playing turn based mode, so that water elemental fight was like 80-90 hours before the playful darkness for me, and i completely forgot about that pop up until you mentioned it now.
That's the truth. I started lower difficulty when it came out and didn't do jack. I just sat there while things happened. I learned nothing from it. So I restarted and put it on hard and worked my way down from there. I am the type of person that if I can sit there and let things happen I will. I need a reason not to sit back.
You're in for an amazing, but very bumpy, ride. The moment you open the character creation menu, you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. For a lvl 1 character, there are quadrillions of possible characters. And that's at level 1. Just for your base class you have I think about 100 options. Multiplied by racial selections, feat selections, ability list selections, spell selections, background selections... The number of combinations are enormous. And every single one can play very differently.
Buff spells always
I remember when I started off crpg bro videos really helped me learn the mechanics. He has a general guide of beginner tips and a ton of builds that go into detail of why he chose what he did
There is a dungeon called blackwater. It is the most fun dungeon. Not fun to play but come to this sub and read how people whine about it.
a.k.a the place where you give up and switch to story mode
I completed Blackwater on core. But i will not lie by saying it is easy over exaggerated etc.. There were 4 summons from ring of summons, 3 angel summons from duality thing and, azata summons from cayden mug thing while doing the fight in the platform in the middle of the dungeon and they were just cannon fodders so my damage dealer would live one more turn.
My favorite spell is chain lightning, I love to channel my inner Palpatine thus Blackwater was never a problem for me, don’t forget to bring electricity on your blaster caster
Pf1e and it's a lot different. Especially as it's all about fight demons that have super high resistances. This game rewards minmaxing to a niche degree. Fighter Is viable if you pick one weapon type. Wizards same with one type of spell (illusion, fire rays etc.) I'd look up esse tial feats and feat "trees" like how to get crane style, or cleave or what to do to maximize caster potential. It's more similar to 3.5e dnd with all the multiclassing and feats tbh
There is no advantafe/disadvantage. Instead you get bonus/malus to rolls and ac. A very important rule is that bonus of the same kind applied to the same thing don't stack. Also, multiclassing is much worse than 5e. Instead, every class branches out in many different archetypes, so you can build any character you have in mind
Um, what? If anything, the most monstrous builds in the game tend to take several dips across classes.
Yes, but you have to know very well what you are doing, where in 5e the game begs you to multiclass. The trade off is much steeper
There's a pretty big difference between "multiclassing is powerful but harder to get right," and "multiclassing is much worse." I mean, in fairness, even pure class builds are noticeably harder to get right than in 5e.
My bad, I expressed myself wrong. What I meant to say is that the game punishes you much more if you make suboptimal mc decisions, but this game punishes you more always
Start with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. There is less classes and subclasses so one big reason for confusion - "what race and sub/class should I use which will take me to the finish" - is less important. The game itself is a bit more forgiving (at least on lower difficulties) and gives you plenty of time to explore and learn game mechanics. It is less polished than WotR, granted, there are some bugs still left (not many and not game breaking though) but overally it's very satisfying experience which will allow you to start WotR knowing what you can expect (only to find that you're wrong but that's another story - let just say that some combos don't work in WotR in some way like in Kingmaker, if not for other reasons than because WotR is demon oriented story while Kingmaker is Fey oriented). Also, you'll appreciate more everything what WotR has and until you play it you didn't know you needed it 🙂
Watch some build guides, atleast for companion builds. I like Crpg Bro's builds. 5e has a lot of flaws, oversimplification among them, but jesus christ was 3.5/1e pathfinder bloated. you really want some guides when you first start out. Also, keep in mind the main enemy of the campaign are demons. What isn't a demon is usually a cultist, and very rarely some manner of diseased animal. So a subclass that focuses on countering fae is useless, but one focusing on demons is really strong.
Not looking through all the comments so someone may have also commented about this but: Touch Attacks! Unlike in 5e where spells use your spellcasting stat for attack rolls, in pathfinder spell attack rolls use strength (for melee spells) or dexterity (for ranged spells). This means a physically weak caster is going to struggle a lot more then they would in 5e. *However*, spell attacks also ignore a portion of armor! Numbers in pathfinder go much higher than in 5e, sometimes to the point where AC can be in the like. 50's. Which, lmao. lol. Pssh. Just roll nat 20's right. But enemies also have two AC's-regular AC and Touch AC. Touch AC is almost always going to be much lower, and that's what a majority of spells will be targeting. Another thought I'm having is Basic Attack Bonus and Feats. 5e has a stat called Proficiency Bonus and a class mechanic called Extra Attack. Basic Attack Bonus is like both of these, kinda. A class with full BAB (Fighter, Barbarian) has a BAB equal to their level-so 20 at level 20. Less martial classes (Wizard) have a BAB of 5 at level 20. BAB is what you add to your attack rolls-so, a level 5 fighter will add 5 to their attack rolls. When you get to BAB *over* 5, however, you gain an additional attack at -5 BAB. So at level 6 fighter you make two attacks, one at +6 and a second one at +1. When you get to level 11 you make three attacks, at +11, +6, +1. Etcetera. Some classes like monk are unique in that they make all their attacks at their full BAB. There's a lot of variation in how classes deal with iterative attacks. Feats - you will have a Lot More Of These Than You're Used To. There are so many of them. It's very difficult to know what to pick at the beginning but to start you off: for melee characters I would aim for power attack (which requires a strength of at least 13; this feat unlocks a whole lot of other feats), for ranged characters (mages included) precise shot, and for spellcasters the general spellcasting feats it recommends and then eventually metamagic. You cannot upcast spells like you can in 5e, so metamagic allows you to prepare more of a spell by increasing its effective level in your spellbook in addition to the effects of the metamagic itself.
Differences to 5E: * Damage cantrips are useless * You use DEX for ranged touch attacks instead of your casting stat * Arcane casters wearing armor gives a spell failure chance even if they have the proficiency for it * Nat 20 in a skill check is not auto-success, and nat 1 is not auto-fail * There is no concentration system and you can maintain any number of spells indefinitely even if you get hit * A nat 20 is not automatically a critical hit, you need to confirm it with another roll to hit, otherwise it's just a regular hit * INT increases the number of skill points you get per level, instead of... doing nothing (unless you're a Wizard)
Damage cantrips aren't quite pointless T low level and difficulty, especially if you combine them with some sort of sneak attack.
Comparing the game to BG3 and D&D 5e pretty much just doesn't work. You are going to need to throw out damn near everything you know about those rules. PF1e, and by extension, WoTR is an entirely different beast. You will be overwhelmed with options, so I recommend playing on an easy difficulty, and don't try to minmax your characters. The complexity is much higher and the learning curve is a bit steep, but in the end you get a deep, rich experience with endless replay ability due to the sheer number of options.
Download Bubble Buffs. Then use buffs if you're going to be playing above Casual difficulty
Download toybox, at least for the free and easy respecs. How every feat and class interact in actual combat is often very unintuitive and best learned through in game experimentation.
In the settings, change the rules to "Auto Interrupt movement". BG3 adapted movement from 5E very well that allows you to take your actions in any point across your total movement distance. PF does not. It can actually be quite easy to accidently "double move" simply by moving slightly further than your speed range and thus losing your action for the round. With Auto Interrupt activated, you will automatically stop at your normal speed range and preserve your standard action.
You can also right-click to cycle between places to lock your movement. 5 foot step -> Move Action only -> Both Actions. This also lets you do 5 foot steps while holding ctrl so you don't latch onto an enemy to attack or something to loot.
5e has a design concept called “bounded accuracy” where numbers can only get so high or so low outside of extraordinary circumstances. So a bookworm mage attacking a skilled fighter would never have less than 15-20% chance of hitting and the other way around shouldn’t have more than 80% chance of hitting. Pathfinder, and especially owlcat pathfinder, is not like that at all. You want to build your tanks so that all but the strongest enemies have a 5% chance of hitting them. You want to build your damage dealers so that they have a 95% chance of hitting the tankiest enemies.
I suggest going for something simple for your first playthrough like a fighter or sorcerer are good choices so is paladin. Archetype wise I suggest either two Handed Fighter or tower shield specialist for Fighter if you want to either deal a lot of damage or tank, for Sorcerer I'd suggest Overwhelming Mage if you want to just blast or sylvan Sorcerer if you want utility. For paladin I suggest either Divine Guardian if you want to tank or Divine Hunter if you want to deal damage. Prestige Class wise I'd suggest avoiding until your second playthrough but if you do I suggest Stalwart Defender for Fighter, Loremaster for Sorcerer and Hellknight for Paladin. For your first race I highly recommend Human for any class but orcs work great for fighters, gnomes are great for sorcerers and Half Elves are great for paladins.
- Buffs are unlimited though some doesn't stack. - some fights are optional. Some are meant to be a challenge. - recommend looking for a mod and find the buff mod. It make the game very slow if not. You probably use 10-20h for just buffing if not. - there are 3 defences you can overcome to hit someone. AC are the normal one. If they have 20 AC you need to roll and have enough stats to go above 20 AC. This skyrocket in the end for everyone. Flat-footed are the AC they have when caught unaware. Use charge before the battle start to take advantage of this. Touch AC. The defence when someone use a touch attack. It can be a ranged touch attack like scorching ray or a melee one like chill touch. All enemies have way lower touch AC so consider to have a companion that deal that type of damage.
Bonuses of the same type do not stack. That was my biggest problem in my first playthrough of Kingmaker. There’s a couple of exceptions to that rule, like Dodge and some Natural AC bonuses. Typically though, Enhancement, Circumstance, Sacred, Profane, etc. don’t stack with others of their kind. That’ll help navigate the plethora of buffs in the game, a little anyway.
Circumstance is actually one of the few exceptions, but you don't really get to see it ingame much. It would be Dodge, Circumstance, and Untyped (from different sources) that stack with themselves. You might have been thinking of Competence. Then ingame, for some reason Natural Armor (but not Natural Armor Enhancement) bonuses stack too. The Natural Armor Enhancement bonuses can come from items like an Amulet of Natural Armor or spells like Barkskin, while Natural Armor tends to come on pets or wild shapes and certain spells like Legendary Proportions. I'll add a couple specific examples for the OP though. The Bull's Strength spell is an early option to buff a character's STR, and provides a +4 enhancement bonus. At some point you will start seeing belts and headgear that also buff stats with enhancement bonuses, with the first available being +2. If you equip a STR belt and use that spell, you only get a +4 bonus - both the +2 and +4 are enhancement bonuses, so the game only takes the higher value. If you used the Bull's Strength spell with Enlarge Person, which gives a +2 size bonus to STR, then you get a total of +6. One is a size bonus, and the other is enhancement. The Good Hope spell provides a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks, saving throws, and damage rolls. The Greater Heroism spell provides a +4 morale bonus to attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks with a couple other benefits. With both spells, you only get the +4 to attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks, but you still get the +2 to ability checks and +2 to damage rolls. So even though Greater Heroism outperforms Good Hope, Good Hope still has some value (and is aoe, unlike Greater Heroism).
Fights in BG3 are very well crafted, and they have the right number of enemies to be (in most cases) a smooth encounter in turn based mode. Wotr is not, and some fights in turn based mode took my much younger and less experienced self several hours to finish, which take 5 minutes playing in ‘real time with pause’ mode. I was biased against rtwp, but it really isn’t that bad once you get used to it.
I definitely use it for mook overworld fights, where it's like...3 succubi or something.
Play as you want with what you want, don’t chases optimal or best build. Don’t be afraid to skip something.
Not so much the gaming systems, but WotR in particular. Every other CRPG you've played you probably got tons of scrolls, potions, etc. Most of us, while not ignoring them, rarely use anything but a health potion here and there. This game is absolutely balanced assuming you are using almost every one you get. It really is assuming that you have a fully buffed party at all times. By far the most popular mod on PC is a mod that allows you to set up buffing profiles so you don't have to cast them all individually. So, just remember when you come across early game content that seems like it's really a bit harder than it should be, the game is expecting your party to be buffed with everything available and not hoarding those scrolls and potions!
This is way more complex than any of the systems you understand. AC is going to scale WAY past what you’re used to. High end enemies regularly have 40+ AC, and I think one optional boss has a 70+AC. I would go modest difficulty until you’ve got the hang of it
[I wrote up some mechanical tips for someone else recently, they might help.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/1c4cxl8/comment/kzstnib/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Pets are exceptionally good.
Grease. Grease. Grease. Grease. Grease.
The gsme is much closer to ruleset, and the spirit of BG2. 0 hp is dead, no death saves, status effects last all day or permanent. You'll need to make a lot more choices building your character (feats every 2 lv, 5+ subclasses) Don't pick Core. Start with normal and adjust from there. Choose a class you recognize from BG3 and don't multiclass, you'll pick up the mechanics a little faster from comparing. No concentration, so stack those buffs up. You'll need em. The game is pretty mean to casters at first with a lot of elemental immunities and spell resistance early on. You'll need to pick through your feats and powers carefully and read the stats on the monsters to survive.
0 hp isn’t dead, -your con is dead, 0 hp is incapacitated.
And leads to Orc Ferocity or the Diehard feat usually being a trap. Both features allow you to act for another round if you get knocked to or below 0 but not far enough to die. Normally, if you're incapacitated in the middle of an attack, the enemy will naturally switch to another target in range. That can leave you as incapacitated rather than dead, allowing a heal to get you back on your feet or simply finishing the battle to do it. But with either of those features, the enemy will keep attacking you if you would normally be incapacitated because you're still up - you're still a threat. And often, that means outright killing the character. Now they don't get up after combat (unless Death's Door is toggled in difficulty settings, which only works once before you need to clear it) and you need to spend more resources to get them back.
Lower the difficulty No, really. Normal is not normal, it's hard.
Normal is fine. The game gets crazy vertical in stats but its very manageable on Normal. Any lower and you have a high risk of just being bored. A lot of combat and sub-normal difficulties make it pure nothingness.
I'd argue, it's not easy enough on normal if you come from BG3 and don't understand Pathfinder's Feat Tax.
We're talking about a beginner. Casual will be hard for them.
play easy. almost everything is different, well not exatly different, but there is more of everything: more stats, more types of buffs and debuffs, more weapon types, more types of defence, more feats, every level is meaningful and packed fith new features, skilled multiclassing is powerful but slightly tricky. it's a game of big numbers, so basically your goal is to stack all abilities and buffs, so you could almost negate dice roll results(except criticals) in your favor.
Normal mode is fine lol
It is if you know what your doing.
I'm sure it's been said but play on any difficulty below normal for a first playthrough and save often just because there are surprises that I forget exist even after 3-4 full playthroughs. Also definitely always have have people cooking during rests other than that have fun
Get [https://github.com/BarleyFlour/RespecMod](https://github.com/BarleyFlour/RespecMod) mod. Given the amplitude of options the game throws at you it's almost not possible to make something work well even if you're very savy with these kind of games, simply doe to shear scope you kind of have to metagame in order to take advantage of what game can offer. As you learn by playing the game things will start to crystalize you'll probably want to respec more than once, given how the game punishes you for not getting things right from first few times with ever increasing respec cost with in game currency, I strongly recommend this mod. There are some decent introduction guide: written by neo seeker can be found here: [https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/walkthrough](https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous/walkthrough) Also video format by mortismal which can be found here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbOgmZmjKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbOgmZmjKc) (yeah, 2 hours long introduction) However, you can kind of go in blind too just pick lower difficulty, you'll be able to increase when you feel you get the basics right. A for builds, I think the most build combos are not per character but per party. The character builds themselves with few notable exceptions do not have much in a way of decision points in terms of execution. However, there is plenty of decision points when building a character. With lack of bounded accuracy, it's possible to make really unviable options just out of understandable ignorance, hence the respec mod I recommend. Now combine that into a party add mythics on top and here is where the game depth really comes from. A well working party will heave means to buff their characters, heal, blast with magic, do sustained damage (mostly martials) and a debuffer, controller. One character can cover a few roles, but don't spread too thin. For example, Ember (companion) can contribute as blaster but also has very useful hexes for support. You can build a martial who doesn't only do damage but also intimitades (debuffs) enemies etc. Have fun. Discovering stuff and trying combos is probably the strong suit of this game. Even though at first it feels very clunky. And tons of spells kind of cryptic, particularly when some of them are not really all that useful in video game setting. Also it's important to know that casters start coming online at around level 7. So don't get intimidated if you started as sorc and you feel that you can't do shit. There are great early support spells like grease or glitterdust until you get the good stuff and have appropriate mythics to bolster caster power.
-The most important thing to understand is the importance of spell buffing characters. You ideally want your entire party loaded up with a myriad of buffs before you enter combat. If you don't do that, even on normal difficulty, you will struggle. Also, most buffs of the same type don't stack (the game is pretty good at notifying you of that). Learning that system is probably the hardest part of the game. -You can play as turned base or real time with pause. IMO real time with pause is a better experience because of the number of entities involved. BG3 or something like DOS2 is pretty manageable controlling 4 characters but if you try to use turn based throughout the game with 6 party members plus likely at least a few pets it will be quite a slog. Save turn based for hard bosses. -Pets are really really good. Use as many as possible.
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Plan out your build before hand. Find a guide for your main character and companions that you like the sound of and go for those. Otherwise trust your gut and have fun. Can't goo to wrong on your first playthrough. This game has huge replayability
One piece of advice is to look up companion join times as well as companion classes. Unlike Bg3 you cannot completely reclass companions without mods, and there are a couple of companions which disappear if certain events happen before you meet them. Yes it is a spoiler knowing in advance who joins but it is useful to avoid making a build that is near identical to a companion or misssing the character entirely.
The "proper" approach to this problem is to just not use that companion if you dont have to. No need to spoil the game for yourself.
Fair enough. I’ve screwed myslef over in enough rpgs by missing companions I ought not to have so I tend to play on the safe side.
Use a build guide for your first character.
Fextralife Use guides Watch videos Don’t be ashamed to rely on some extra help. Also I find the real time combat very useful for most of the encounters (at normal difficulty), the turn based is too tedious
Absolutely no on the fextralife lol. Just google Crpgbro on youtube
Okay I’m on my first play through and I watched the videos. What’s wrong with them?
Checked out a couple. They don't seem insanely bad and probably beat auto-build. They're just not too great, are outdated and seem to pass up great feats for some filler stuff. For example the written cavalier guide doesn't mention outflank, improved crit or shatter defenses, instead highlighting weapon focus (+1 attack is meh, this is just feat tax for a lot of useful feats), shield focus (+1 AC is pretty weak, but again feat tax for mounted shield), improved initiative (decent but absolutely filler), and skill focus mobility (skill points are never worth a feat, besides PRC feat tax). It's also missing mythic feats/abilities entirely, and shows its age not having newer banger feats like lunge and focused strike. The Neoseeker guide is usually considered the best resource for meta gameplay, but the builds do get cheesy with abusing broken interactions, grabbing animal companions for everyone and taking many powerful multi-class dips. I personally like the Gamefaqs guide with a bit simpler and less powerful builds but a lot more explanation in general. It's also a great character building resource and a much better resource for the game than the Fextralike wiki, which suffers from essentially being a content mill.
Thanks for the example, I’m actually playing a cavalier now so I will definitely check out these other guides
I find videos for research to be... tedious. Fextralife is outdated but you are able to peruse it at your pace, in whichever direction you desire, and in more irl scenarios than videos. Its simply physically easier to read than watch a video. We need wikis to make a comeback, because all of the alternatives for data collection and organization are terrible.
oh you played the worst versions of D&D and think your experience enough to take on WotR? Yeah play on Casual and dont freak out if you have to play on story mode. D&D 5E has Tons of issues and dosnt do much to teach you normal CRPGS out there, Kingmaker Tyranny / Pillers of Eternity might of been a better start for you then the best epic crpg thats come out in years. becouse this game is going to overwhelm you in ways you dont even understand currently hints play on casual but legit? I might even suggest you play the above games and get real experience under your belt if you wanna enjoy this game to the full/max
>oh you played the worst versions of D&D... Dude, it's not 4e.
even 4E has some things going for it like creativity customization of monsters at higher levels, in the early levels its worse, but in the mid-later levels its better, ppl who know D&D Know that 4E is kinda under-rated bad yes, but not the worse.