A discussion video about the difficulties of Pathfinder! This is just my opinion on the system that I could talk about for hours, but let me know what you think about all this! Thank you for the support, and if you feel like, leave a like and a subscription for more cRPG content!
Such an important video. I’d never played a game like this, picked daring cause why not, and I spend turn after turn missing completely standard enemies. Turned it to normal and actually started having fun and learning the game. Thanks!
This is a very thorough and needed breakdown, thanks a lot! I played quite a few cRPGs and have surface-level knowledge of 5e and 2e so I'll go with custom using Normal as starting point
Brilliant take on owlcat's difficulty philosophy. I played through Core my first time because my ego wouldn't allow me to go lower. It was enjoyable but you'll soon realize many of the options given to you are just really bad, especially when enemies have such bloated stats.
After over 1000 hours of playing kingmaker I was quite confident going into wrath and started playing on core... and I kinda got my ass kicked but still made it to the 3rd chapter... though at that point I had made some severe mistakes in army management and my party was trapped somewhere near Areelu's lab... and the crusade got overrun. So I started again but this time changed the number of enemies from increased to standard and the experience was soooo much smoother. I can really recommend turning that down... you still have the full experience with full crits and stuff but a lot encounters are way easier... but you still have your few in between encounters that really kick your ass if you don't pay enough attention. Now after several hundred hours in the game (and still not finished it) I'm playing on core again... it's tough but I have fun and beyond some few challenges I come through really well.
The closest implementation of the ruleset to table top is core, but the actual enemies are vastly more difficult, with a huge number of class levels added to many enemies.
i used to play in hard and core.. Now I play in daring/core mix so with deaths door and slightly reduced stat.. i think this is the most balance/enjoyable setting. You will still reload here and there but you don't have to make all your characters with last stand and monk/oracle dip with crane.. It enables you to play your story with character variety...
You will either love or hate the difficulty in this game. I have finished one playthrough on core and it was pretty harsh. The most glaring problem is the difficulty spikes... At times you are just gonna run over anything you see and then suddenly you encounter one enemy that makes you reload the encounter 20 times LOL. But let's not cry about balance... I mean how do you balance a game with hundreds of spells and atound 60+ classes which can be multiclassed with almost no limitation outside of some alignment stuff... It;s impossible for a game that has 1 milion buff spells to be balanced. Because if you make the content interesting for buffed party, the party that doesnt have access to those buffs is going to suffer for no reason and vice versa... If you make the enemies scaled for unbuffed party, then the buffed one will walk over them...This is one of the reasons why I like DnD 5e more, because buffs are very limited there... Usually it's one concentration buff per character. Also what needs to be mentioned is that they are adjusting the stats constantly.... At launch on unfair the first monitor lizzard you encounter on level 2 had 29 AC LOL I mean you have like +5 attack it has 29 AC... good job. Now it has 22 on unfair. That is -7AC nerf...
I think there is another dimension to deciding the difficulty for you. This is the amount of work and research you are prepared to put in to how to build effective characters in the game. The issue is in Pathfinder you cannot intuitively build your characters as you play and realistically hope to avoid making a number of errors which will leave your characters falling behind the game's power curve. You won't know why. If you are completely new to classic cRPGs (Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity and everything in between) I recommend playing some of those games before you try WotR or Kingmaker - they are much easier to get your head around. But I wanted to address a category of player which I think is very common: a player who has played many classic cRPGs and beaten them, perhaps on high difficulty, but has little to no experience of Pathfinder specifically. Such a player faces a dilemma caused by what on the Steam forum folks are calling the "stat wall". This happens where they have made mistakes in their builds (which is easy to do in Pathfinder) and they find their attack bonuses are insufficient to overcome enemies defenses and their AC is insufficient to stop the enemy hitting them every swing. The required number to hit an enemy or a void being hit are outside the range available on a single D20 roll. However this will never apply to ALL enemies, only the elite, mini-boss and boss enemies. What this means in practice is that whereas on Core difficulty you may be unable to hit the bosses at all outside of natural 20 roll on Normal the multitude of standard strength enemies will just melt before you making the game far too easy (because of your tactical skill and experience from other cRPGs). This is why it is so difficult to pick the right, most satisfying, difficulty setting for this game. Note also that the situation can get worse as the game progresses since it is possible to make build error on top of build error as you go. The antidote for this problem is knowledge of the Pathfinder system, pure and simple, as this makes it possible for you to keep up with the game's power curve over 20 levels enabling you to thoroughly enjoy the game on Core (which I would say is the "gold standard" difficulty for experienced cRPG players). However the research you will need to do to achieve this is considerable, it's a lot of effort. Rewarding effort for a hard core cRPG fan but effort none the less. So my recommendation for the highly experienced cRPG fan with no Pathfinder experience is to play on Core if they are prepared to put in many hours of research into how to build their characters effectively and to play on Normal if they are not (accepting that many routine encounters will feel far too easy for them). For those players who have very limited experience of cRPGs at all I would recommend playing either Baldurs Gate EE or Pillars of Eternity first as these are very similar games in style, much easier to learn, are excellent games and easy to nab cheap now. Whatever your approach, though, do play this game. It is incredible. Certainly one of the best if not the best cRPG ever made Baldurs Gate 2 notwithstanding. A masterpiece. A Magnum Opus.
Thanks for the video. I'm a fan of TTRPGs but not a player myself, so I drifted to these games as I grew older. Now I've been playing games a loong time and my ego built on that was conflicting with my newfound playstyle of "fun first, challenge later" and this video put a lot into perpective. So thanks again!
Thanks for the vid. You’ve convinced me to play on a lower difficulty. I love challenges but in this game it really restricts the role playing options if you’re really just optimizing build options. Prebuffing before encounters is tedious and using spells for buffing and not nuking is boring. Having said that, I don’t like things to be easy. Is it better to increase enemy damage and numbers than to increase their stats? I feel like the stat adjustments really force you to buff and optimize.
I will go with Core but with the following changes: 1. Death's Door(because I don't want a reloading simulator) 2. Remove negative effects on rest(because from my experience from Kingmaker it becomes really cheesy without it) 3. Slightly weaker enemies (because the stats of the enemies in the videogame are higher than in the tabletop, plus I don't like the idea of having useless spells). 🤔 4. Character Retrain Enabled (I dont want to do something and then 2 chapters in I discover I destroyed a character in my party, especially since I NEVER use custom characters for my party)
Thanks for this video. Normally when I play a new game I pick "normal" difficulty first because it feels like the baseline for the game with easier and harder difficulties being modifiers of that and I like to experience what feels like the intended version is first before making it easier or harder for myself; but with WotR picking "normal" mentions stuff like 20% reduction from traps and enemies being weak, which gave me pause because those types of things normally only appear on easier difficulties, so maybe "normal" isn't the baseline/intended version of what the game is. Like maybe "normal is actually the easy mode and "core" is actually normal mode or something. So it's really helpful to hear a more indepth breakdown of each difficulty and thoughts on what sort of players they're intended for to help make my choice.
Exactly! The harder difficulties are like dark souls in the middle of a perfect character creation game. I like tweeking the difficulty of foes while leaving sleep healing on as I'm not good at getting rid of effects yet
Permanent effects is one of the most overbearing punitive things in the game imo. The debuffs are introduced at a pace that is faster than the spell progression of a full caster can even handle. My Seelah has had a permanent Sickened status since about lvl 5-6 that was cleared once when hitting a mythic level and then somehow reappeared soon after. She literally cannot clear this thing without cleanse or heal spells. Cleanse is self-cast only and heal is still above her level at 10. It's just so easy to run into a pack of ghosts with negative levels, demons or rat swarms with ability damage, plaguestorm or other diseases from demons etc that leave effects that not only are you forced to websearch to find what spell removes them, you also are unlikely to actually have them yet. The sheer amount of these must-have removal spells can also prevent you from investing in other fun or useful spells first or at all or face dealing with permanent debuffs. Maybe you will be lucky enough to find a few scrolls at the cleric. Maybe you can make some potions of this spell during rest. Yes these conditions are over the top buzzkills that you just have to try to prevent outright or suffer with if you can't. Maybe you will find you can have the removal spell on an alternate npc companion that you have to put into the party, travel outside the base to the nearest world map to cast on the afflicted, then travel back to the base to switch back to the normal party. It would be really nice if you could cast companion spells on one-another inside base.
First time I played the game with unoptimozed bard build and Azata mythic path on Normal difficulty and I had a lot of problems in act 5. Recently replayed with oracle build and Angel mythic path on Daring difficulty (with increased enemy numbers) and it was very easy. I believe that the mythic paths are not very balanced and not equal to each other.
In kingmaker I played challenging first for a couple partial runs and switched for most of my runs to hard mode, for my complete playthrough. This game I am playing 2 runs on core and hard. The challenge is way higher this time as the trick for buying a full custom party at level 1 is virtually impossible and I literally have enough money for 1 to 2 characters upon getting to Hilor, depending on whether I choose to buy a vendor item. Being largely forced to take the npc companions and deal with them as is adds a whole layer of difficulty over creating a nice synergized team of custom characters. At level 10 in core mode I have run into a decent bit of challenge including a fight tackled with many attempts at 10 with lucky positioning and rolls that people reach at 7 to 8. On hard mode I just beat the Defender's Heart fight in a protracted nearly 3 hour session which consisted of my first real use of turn-based mode. The fight ended up with minimal losses though it felt tenuous while playing it. I do like the challenge of core and hard. I draw the line at unfair. It's just not fun to get 1 shotted by basically anything that hits a crit when you have things like natural 20s in the game, especially when some of the fights may be as drawn out as they are in this game.
Also changing the difficulty of enemies also changes the challenge of rolls outside of combat too. That persuade check for more money? It's now a 25 instead of 15..ect.
Hmmmm I agree partially with these recommendations... the difference I have with them is that you also need to consider experience with other cRPGs as well. I think a veteran of cRPGs can start in core easily and have a good time even if they haven't played pathfinder before. This is because they'll most likely be able to figure out the system along the way. Experienced cRPG players will be bored with normal. I'd recommend starting with daring at the least.
Partially I agree - I 100% agree with Daring, but the problem with Core is that it already has multiple cheesy Owlcat style encounters that are just straight up NOT fun and will force you to do reloads, not to mention how unoptimized and under-designed Act 5 and 6 is right now. But I guess I can still agree, if you are experienced and a veteran Core can work!
This is something that bothers me, too. I played through Normal (I'm experienced with TB CRPGs) and was having a lot of fun, but when I started Core difficulty, the game became frustrating and I didn't like that I couldn't properly roleplay anymore. The naming of difficulty levels is off, if you ask me. Daring should be called Hard Core should be named Very Hard Hard should be Ultra Hard Challenge for me in future playthroughs will be to try out more classes, use more of the roleplaying options. But going for > Normal is a no-go for me. I know that I will miss out on the Steam Achievements, etc... but I can live with that.
Pathfinder wotr is such a good game. Maybe one of the best I've ever played. I agree with what you said: the mechanics, rich and can be appreciated on many different levels. I'm new, and have even found on daring mode that it is difficult hitting enemies at times. Do you have any recommendations for MC builds to increase hit chance for spells? Maybe something that decreases saves?
Witches and Shamans have Evil Eye curse to reduce enemy Saving Throws by up to -4! You can also increase DC with Spell Focus and items! There are tons of ways really, but those are probably the easiest!
@@HDHaZmY thank you this was the answer I was looking for, don't play tabletop games but I've played through DOS2, BG 1 and most of BG 2 (got bored) no problem
I agree/Casual to start off for a complete newb and then upgrade to Normal once you have a basic understanding although that will take a while. After around 150 hours and a basic understanding of the D&D ruleset to begin with, I find Core difficulty to offer the best balance between being challenging/fun and pulling my air out and having to reload countless times. I have played the game for long periods on hard but there were times where it took me 2 hours just to get past a fight. The challenge is cool to begin with but you soon get fed up with that. With Core difficulty, you'll be able to cope with the trash mobs easily enough but will be challenged on the boss/story important fights The problem with Hard/unfair, even for die hard veteran players who know the mechanics inside out is early game - pre level 10. You don't have enough feats in order to be able to overcome the dice rolls reliably and so you're having to rely a lot on the luck of the dice roll which is heavily stacked against you. Once you get beyond about level 10, the game starts to open up as you can hit things/get past resistances. I'd also recommend building an evil aligned team. The reason being that most of the enemies in this game are evil aligned and they'll smite the crap out of you if you are good aligned.
Does customs restrict your ability to earn all achievements, or does it only prevent you from obtaining the ones that specify "Core or Higher" required for achievement?
I'm playing my first playthrough on normal, and it was great until chapter 3. After that, things started getting gradually easier. Chapter 4 is where I started to turn off turn-based mode to get through encounters faster as they rarely posed a threat. Chapter 5 is completely trivial. It was disappointing beating the big bads they hyped from the beginning of the game in 2-3 turns. I've read around that angel is op, which is what I'm playing, so that might be contributing. Still, I don't regret picking normal for my first playthrough as it allowed me to learn the system and the game overall. Been looking around for info on what difficulty to do my next run on, and seems like core with death's door is pretty popular. I would also like to find some solution to cut down on the crusade filler without losing its benefits
Playing on Hard, myself, without cheese, and with all Story companions in their base classes, I am actually rather used to the massive stat bloat. (+40AB Ranger enemy, at level 11? Cool! :D) - Far more annoying is Owlcat`s general tunnel vision when it comes to encounter design: You either play their shoehorn-options-to -Touch-Attack-and-Reflex-spells minigame, or you can only be disappointed: E.g. Human Warpriest mini boss in Wintersun; out of pure principle, the guy has to be, like everybody else, immune to stat drain; for exactly NO other reason but to render 80% of the existing spells completely useless. - Wracking Ray is actually DESIGNED to be a boss killer, guys. And, if enemies have 50+ Str and Dex, allowing to drain some some amount of the time can not really mean the end of the world. :P Instead of using the given tabletop rules efficiently and creatively, they invite the player to abuse all kinds of crappy cheese; Elemental Barrage is the worst, stacking AC from e.g. Charisma, or from Magical Vestment (actually: trash spell; - wait, it completely incorrectly hands out up to 10 free AC...) , are, among quite some others, certainly not far behind: Triple Draconic bloodline?! Sure; makes totally sense; - why not!^^ TL;DR: The issue is not the difficulty by itself, but how limiting and unbalanced it is indeed implemented. It just becomes most flagrant on the high settings, though.
I agree with most of what you say, but I'd argue that the difficulty itself and the implementation are somewhat the same things and sadly could be improved upon!
Well i've just ended my playthrough through Hard, didnt have experience with PF or kingmaker. Didnt do any companion/MC class dips, all companions did 20lvl starting classes. It was very challenging, started game a few times and clocked over 200h. Prolly helped that MC was Mutation warrior 2h greatsword Angel, with Vital strike build. Did some research mailny checking Cohhcarnage build spreadsheet and some nubkeks stream tips. I guess if i didnt't take Last stand on everyone i would change diff to Core, but with Angel mega buffs and last stand hard was doable (still difficult first part of game) Played 95% game, partry played as heavy melee dmg very high buffs (almost all divination/arcane/druid buffs): MC 2h Mutation war Vital strike (cleave, Vstrike,full shatter def line) Seelah horse tank Camelia tank/24h buffer/trip+pet (this is 1 adanced build, still 20lvl in shaman) Aru - ranged dps Daean - Fire evocation/buffs/heal in that order Nenio - Buff/CC Starting Kingmaker now and i find it much harder on hard, mainly due to high number of enemies in battles and not busted companions.
I played a lot of hard mode in km but most of the time making full custom parties buying mercs at level 1 for the bargain basement costs. Generally getting past act1 was the big challenge. After that the difficulty would ease up as the mercs would mostly catch up to the exp leveling curve around level 5. I only beat the game on hard mode despite several starts and games between 5 and 15. I'm a bit of an altoholic. I've read that its possible to buy mercs in wotr in this game by keeping your mc at level 1 until you hit Hilor and skipping content in the shield maze. That's just far more cheese than suits me atm. And Hosilla was hard enough on hard without underleved characters.
I never played any pathifinder game and I am not very familiar with D&D either 'even though I used to play a bit of Ad&D 3rd which has similarities when in my teens), but I found normal very good for a first playthrough, as an experienced video game rpgs player. The class system was very intimidating and even now keeps requiring me to spend almsot as much time into levelling choice and rerolls than in actual play, but the difficulty always felt rather appropriate and the game actually kinda felt getting easier as I levelled up. Early levels were tougher. So even withotu any knowledge of this specific system, experience in video games rpgs (and hack&slash and mmorpgs) in general certainly help figuring out how to build somewhat decent teams :). I tend to set things a bit harder now although not core (I always use increased number of ennemies, and I set ennemy stat adjustement to slightly weaker 0.9 and lessened criticals. I keep the comfort stuff like remove negative conditions after sleep though, and death door, just to avoid loss of time and reloads). Will probably soon try my first Azlanta without death door though (but still with reduced crits and 0.9).
you know how to make the game 100 more hard? not monk dips. yisus christ, i bet there isnt a single build out there that doesnt use the monk, paladin, oracle dips.
Hmmm not including Instinctual Warrior or Witch Iceplant w/ring, or Vivisectionist, or Rowdy Rogue, or Crossblooded Sorc? I'm sure there are more we can find.
A discussion video about the difficulties of Pathfinder! This is just my opinion on the system that I could talk about for hours, but let me know what you think about all this!
Thank you for the support, and if you feel like, leave a like and a subscription for more cRPG content!
Such an important video. I’d never played a game like this, picked daring cause why not, and I spend turn after turn missing completely standard enemies. Turned it to normal and actually started having fun and learning the game. Thanks!
This is a very thorough and needed breakdown, thanks a lot! I played quite a few cRPGs and have surface-level knowledge of 5e and 2e so I'll go with custom using Normal as starting point
Brilliant take on owlcat's difficulty philosophy. I played through Core my first time because my ego wouldn't allow me to go lower. It was enjoyable but you'll soon realize many of the options given to you are just really bad, especially when enemies have such bloated stats.
There is a great option for difficulty which is additional enemy behaviour but overall I really don't like their higher difficulties.
After over 1000 hours of playing kingmaker I was quite confident going into wrath and started playing on core... and I kinda got my ass kicked but still made it to the 3rd chapter... though at that point I had made some severe mistakes in army management and my party was trapped somewhere near Areelu's lab... and the crusade got overrun.
So I started again but this time changed the number of enemies from increased to standard and the experience was soooo much smoother.
I can really recommend turning that down... you still have the full experience with full crits and stuff but a lot encounters are way easier... but you still have your few in between encounters that really kick your ass if you don't pay enough attention.
Now after several hundred hours in the game (and still not finished it) I'm playing on core again... it's tough but I have fun and beyond some few challenges I come through really well.
The closest implementation of the ruleset to table top is core, but the actual enemies are vastly more difficult, with a huge number of class levels added to many enemies.
i used to play in hard and core.. Now I play in daring/core mix so with deaths door and slightly reduced stat..
i think this is the most balance/enjoyable setting. You will still reload here and there but you don't have to make all your characters with last stand and monk/oracle dip with crane..
It enables you to play your story with character variety...
You will either love or hate the difficulty in this game. I have finished one playthrough on core and it was pretty harsh. The most glaring problem is the difficulty spikes... At times you are just gonna run over anything you see and then suddenly you encounter one enemy that makes you reload the encounter 20 times LOL. But let's not cry about balance... I mean how do you balance a game with hundreds of spells and atound 60+ classes which can be multiclassed with almost no limitation outside of some alignment stuff... It;s impossible for a game that has 1 milion buff spells to be balanced. Because if you make the content interesting for buffed party, the party that doesnt have access to those buffs is going to suffer for no reason and vice versa... If you make the enemies scaled for unbuffed party, then the buffed one will walk over them...This is one of the reasons why I like DnD 5e more, because buffs are very limited there... Usually it's one concentration buff per character. Also what needs to be mentioned is that they are adjusting the stats constantly.... At launch on unfair the first monitor lizzard you encounter on level 2 had 29 AC LOL I mean you have like +5 attack it has 29 AC... good job. Now it has 22 on unfair. That is -7AC nerf...
Excellent overview, props to you.
Great video, thanks for the insight helped a lot.
I think there is another dimension to deciding the difficulty for you. This is the amount of work and research you are prepared to put in to how to build effective characters in the game. The issue is in Pathfinder you cannot intuitively build your characters as you play and realistically hope to avoid making a number of errors which will leave your characters falling behind the game's power curve. You won't know why.
If you are completely new to classic cRPGs (Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity and everything in between) I recommend playing some of those games before you try WotR or Kingmaker - they are much easier to get your head around. But I wanted to address a category of player which I think is very common: a player who has played many classic cRPGs and beaten them, perhaps on high difficulty, but has little to no experience of Pathfinder specifically.
Such a player faces a dilemma caused by what on the Steam forum folks are calling the "stat wall". This happens where they have made mistakes in their builds (which is easy to do in Pathfinder) and they find their attack bonuses are insufficient to overcome enemies defenses and their AC is insufficient to stop the enemy hitting them every swing. The required number to hit an enemy or a void being hit are outside the range available on a single D20 roll.
However this will never apply to ALL enemies, only the elite, mini-boss and boss enemies. What this means in practice is that whereas on Core difficulty you may be unable to hit the bosses at all outside of natural 20 roll on Normal the multitude of standard strength enemies will just melt before you making the game far too easy (because of your tactical skill and experience from other cRPGs). This is why it is so difficult to pick the right, most satisfying, difficulty setting for this game. Note also that the situation can get worse as the game progresses since it is possible to make build error on top of build error as you go.
The antidote for this problem is knowledge of the Pathfinder system, pure and simple, as this makes it possible for you to keep up with the game's power curve over 20 levels enabling you to thoroughly enjoy the game on Core (which I would say is the "gold standard" difficulty for experienced cRPG players). However the research you will need to do to achieve this is considerable, it's a lot of effort. Rewarding effort for a hard core cRPG fan but effort none the less.
So my recommendation for the highly experienced cRPG fan with no Pathfinder experience is to play on Core if they are prepared to put in many hours of research into how to build their characters effectively and to play on Normal if they are not (accepting that many routine encounters will feel far too easy for them). For those players who have very limited experience of cRPGs at all I would recommend playing either Baldurs Gate EE or Pillars of Eternity first as these are very similar games in style, much easier to learn, are excellent games and easy to nab cheap now.
Whatever your approach, though, do play this game. It is incredible. Certainly one of the best if not the best cRPG ever made Baldurs Gate 2 notwithstanding. A masterpiece. A Magnum Opus.
Thanks for the video. I'm a fan of TTRPGs but not a player myself, so I drifted to these games as I grew older. Now I've been playing games a loong time and my ego built on that was conflicting with my newfound playstyle of "fun first, challenge later" and this video put a lot into perpective. So thanks again!
Yeah, especially nowadays we are too obsessed with difficulty settings and we forget to have fun out of ego.
Thanks for the vid. You’ve convinced me to play on a lower difficulty. I love challenges but in this game it really restricts the role playing options if you’re really just optimizing build options. Prebuffing before encounters is tedious and using spells for buffing and not nuking is boring. Having said that, I don’t like things to be easy. Is it better to increase enemy damage and numbers than to increase their stats? I feel like the stat adjustments really force you to buff and optimize.
Increase damage you recieve yeah I think is the better way if you really want challenge - Changing Difficulty Class numbers is just not fun.
Thank you this was very helpful.
Great video with good explanations and you taught me a few things. Thanks.
Thank you Wax! Glad you enjoyed it!
I will go with Core but with the following changes:
1. Death's Door(because I don't want a reloading simulator)
2. Remove negative effects on rest(because from my experience from Kingmaker it becomes really cheesy without it)
3. Slightly weaker enemies (because the stats of the enemies in the videogame are higher than in the tabletop, plus I don't like the idea of having useless spells). 🤔
4. Character Retrain Enabled (I dont want to do something and then 2 chapters in I discover I destroyed a character in my party, especially since I NEVER use custom characters for my party)
I really want to give Trickster a new mythic trick to allow only him to play with difficulty settings
Completely agree with you on Casual.
Thanks for this video. Normally when I play a new game I pick "normal" difficulty first because it feels like the baseline for the game with easier and harder difficulties being modifiers of that and I like to experience what feels like the intended version is first before making it easier or harder for myself; but with WotR picking "normal" mentions stuff like 20% reduction from traps and enemies being weak, which gave me pause because those types of things normally only appear on easier difficulties, so maybe "normal" isn't the baseline/intended version of what the game is. Like maybe "normal is actually the easy mode and "core" is actually normal mode or something. So it's really helpful to hear a more indepth breakdown of each difficulty and thoughts on what sort of players they're intended for to help make my choice.
I’d love to see your take on a healing focused azata build! Your kineticist knight was insanely good and a lot of fun
I am already thinking about a fun healer character! So Soon!
Exactly! The harder difficulties are like dark souls in the middle of a perfect character creation game. I like tweeking the difficulty of foes while leaving sleep healing on as I'm not good at getting rid of effects yet
Permanent effects is one of the most overbearing punitive things in the game imo. The debuffs are introduced at a pace that is faster than the spell progression of a full caster can even handle. My Seelah has had a permanent Sickened status since about lvl 5-6 that was cleared once when hitting a mythic level and then somehow reappeared soon after. She literally cannot clear this thing without cleanse or heal spells. Cleanse is self-cast only and heal is still above her level at 10. It's just so easy to run into a pack of ghosts with negative levels, demons or rat swarms with ability damage, plaguestorm or other diseases from demons etc that leave effects that not only are you forced to websearch to find what spell removes them, you also are unlikely to actually have them yet. The sheer amount of these must-have removal spells can also prevent you from investing in other fun or useful spells first or at all or face dealing with permanent debuffs. Maybe you will be lucky enough to find a few scrolls at the cleric. Maybe you can make some potions of this spell during rest. Yes these conditions are over the top buzzkills that you just have to try to prevent outright or suffer with if you can't. Maybe you will find you can have the removal spell on an alternate npc companion that you have to put into the party, travel outside the base to the nearest world map to cast on the afflicted, then travel back to the base to switch back to the normal party. It would be really nice if you could cast companion spells on one-another inside base.
First time I played the game with unoptimozed bard build and Azata mythic path on Normal difficulty and I had a lot of problems in act 5. Recently replayed with oracle build and Angel mythic path on Daring difficulty (with increased enemy numbers) and it was very easy. I believe that the mythic paths are not very balanced and not equal to each other.
In kingmaker I played challenging first for a couple partial runs and switched for most of my runs to hard mode, for my complete playthrough. This game I am playing 2 runs on core and hard. The challenge is way higher this time as the trick for buying a full custom party at level 1 is virtually impossible and I literally have enough money for 1 to 2 characters upon getting to Hilor, depending on whether I choose to buy a vendor item. Being largely forced to take the npc companions and deal with them as is adds a whole layer of difficulty over creating a nice synergized team of custom characters.
At level 10 in core mode I have run into a decent bit of challenge including a fight tackled with many attempts at 10 with lucky positioning and rolls that people reach at 7 to 8. On hard mode I just beat the Defender's Heart fight in a protracted nearly 3 hour session which consisted of my first real use of turn-based mode. The fight ended up with minimal losses though it felt tenuous while playing it. I do like the challenge of core and hard. I draw the line at unfair. It's just not fun to get 1 shotted by basically anything that hits a crit when you have things like natural 20s in the game, especially when some of the fights may be as drawn out as they are in this game.
Also changing the difficulty of enemies also changes the challenge of rolls outside of combat too. That persuade check for more money? It's now a 25 instead of 15..ect.
Hmmmm I agree partially with these recommendations... the difference I have with them is that you also need to consider experience with other cRPGs as well. I think a veteran of cRPGs can start in core easily and have a good time even if they haven't played pathfinder before. This is because they'll most likely be able to figure out the system along the way.
Experienced cRPG players will be bored with normal. I'd recommend starting with daring at the least.
Partially I agree - I 100% agree with Daring, but the problem with Core is that it already has multiple cheesy Owlcat style encounters that are just straight up NOT fun and will force you to do reloads, not to mention how unoptimized and under-designed Act 5 and 6 is right now.
But I guess I can still agree, if you are experienced and a veteran Core can work!
This is something that bothers me, too.
I played through Normal (I'm experienced with TB CRPGs) and was having a lot of fun, but when I started Core difficulty, the game became frustrating and I didn't like that I couldn't properly roleplay anymore.
The naming of difficulty levels is off, if you ask me.
Daring should be called Hard
Core should be named Very Hard
Hard should be Ultra Hard
Challenge for me in future playthroughs will be to try out more classes, use more of the roleplaying options. But going for > Normal is a no-go for me. I know that I will miss out on the Steam Achievements, etc... but I can live with that.
Pathfinder wotr is such a good game. Maybe one of the best I've ever played. I agree with what you said: the mechanics, rich and can be appreciated on many different levels.
I'm new, and have even found on daring mode that it is difficult hitting enemies at times. Do you have any recommendations for MC builds to increase hit chance for spells? Maybe something that decreases saves?
Witches and Shamans have Evil Eye curse to reduce enemy Saving Throws by up to -4!
You can also increase DC with Spell Focus and items!
There are tons of ways really, but those are probably the easiest!
I'm struggling between choosing normal and daring, which difficulty best reflects the actual enemy difficulty in the tabletop?
probably daring!
@@HDHaZmY thank you this was the answer I was looking for, don't play tabletop games but I've played through DOS2, BG 1 and most of BG 2 (got bored) no problem
I agree/Casual to start off for a complete newb and then upgrade to Normal once you have a basic understanding although that will take a while.
After around 150 hours and a basic understanding of the D&D ruleset to begin with, I find Core difficulty to offer the best balance between being challenging/fun and pulling my air out and having to reload countless times. I have played the game for long periods on hard but there were times where it took me 2 hours just to get past a fight. The challenge is cool to begin with but you soon get fed up with that. With Core difficulty, you'll be able to cope with the trash mobs easily enough but will be challenged on the boss/story important fights
The problem with Hard/unfair, even for die hard veteran players who know the mechanics inside out is early game - pre level 10. You don't have enough feats in order to be able to overcome the dice rolls reliably and so you're having to rely a lot on the luck of the dice roll which is heavily stacked against you. Once you get beyond about level 10, the game starts to open up as you can hit things/get past resistances. I'd also recommend building an evil aligned team. The reason being that most of the enemies in this game are evil aligned and they'll smite the crap out of you if you are good aligned.
Does customs restrict your ability to earn all achievements, or does it only prevent you from obtaining the ones that specify "Core or Higher" required for achievement?
I'm playing my first playthrough on normal, and it was great until chapter 3. After that, things started getting gradually easier. Chapter 4 is where I started to turn off turn-based mode to get through encounters faster as they rarely posed a threat. Chapter 5 is completely trivial. It was disappointing beating the big bads they hyped from the beginning of the game in 2-3 turns. I've read around that angel is op, which is what I'm playing, so that might be contributing.
Still, I don't regret picking normal for my first playthrough as it allowed me to learn the system and the game overall.
Been looking around for info on what difficulty to do my next run on, and seems like core with death's door is pretty popular.
I would also like to find some solution to cut down on the crusade filler without losing its benefits
Playing on Hard, myself, without cheese, and with all Story companions in their base classes, I am actually rather used to the massive stat bloat. (+40AB Ranger enemy, at level 11? Cool! :D)
- Far more annoying is Owlcat`s general tunnel vision when it comes to encounter design: You either play their shoehorn-options-to -Touch-Attack-and-Reflex-spells minigame,
or you can only be disappointed: E.g. Human Warpriest mini boss in Wintersun; out of pure principle, the guy has to be, like everybody else, immune to stat drain;
for exactly NO other reason but to render 80% of the existing spells completely useless.
- Wracking Ray is actually DESIGNED to be a boss killer, guys. And, if enemies have 50+ Str and Dex, allowing to drain some some amount of the time can not really mean the end of the world. :P
Instead of using the given tabletop rules efficiently and creatively, they invite the player to abuse all kinds of crappy cheese; Elemental Barrage is the worst, stacking AC from e.g. Charisma, or from Magical Vestment (actually: trash spell; - wait, it completely incorrectly hands out up to 10 free AC...) , are, among quite some others, certainly not far behind:
Triple Draconic bloodline?! Sure; makes totally sense; - why not!^^
TL;DR: The issue is not the difficulty by itself, but how limiting and unbalanced it is indeed implemented. It just becomes most flagrant on the high settings, though.
I agree with most of what you say, but I'd argue that the difficulty itself and the implementation are somewhat the same things and sadly could be improved upon!
I am watching because you are Hungarian and Hungarian is a blessed language.
Are Hungarians as fascist as Orbán?
I wish this game had some kind of MP so I could play with someone else that could teach me through gameplay
Well i've just ended my playthrough through Hard, didnt have experience with PF or kingmaker. Didnt do any companion/MC class dips, all companions did 20lvl starting classes.
It was very challenging, started game a few times and clocked over 200h. Prolly helped that MC was Mutation warrior 2h greatsword Angel, with Vital strike build. Did some research mailny checking Cohhcarnage build spreadsheet and some nubkeks stream tips.
I guess if i didnt't take Last stand on everyone i would change diff to Core, but with Angel mega buffs and last stand hard was doable (still difficult first part of game)
Played 95% game, partry played as heavy melee dmg very high buffs (almost all divination/arcane/druid buffs):
MC 2h Mutation war Vital strike (cleave, Vstrike,full shatter def line)
Seelah horse tank
Camelia tank/24h buffer/trip+pet (this is 1 adanced build, still 20lvl in shaman)
Aru - ranged dps
Daean - Fire evocation/buffs/heal in that order
Nenio - Buff/CC
Starting Kingmaker now and i find it much harder on hard, mainly due to high number of enemies in battles and not busted companions.
There are always exceptions, hope you enjoyed your playthrough!
Good luck with Kingmaker buddy!
I played a lot of hard mode in km but most of the time making full custom parties buying mercs at level 1 for the bargain basement costs. Generally getting past act1 was the big challenge. After that the difficulty would ease up as the mercs would mostly catch up to the exp leveling curve around level 5. I only beat the game on hard mode despite several starts and games between 5 and 15. I'm a bit of an altoholic. I've read that its possible to buy mercs in wotr in this game by keeping your mc at level 1 until you hit Hilor and skipping content in the shield maze. That's just far more cheese than suits me atm. And Hosilla was hard enough on hard without underleved characters.
I never played any pathifinder game and I am not very familiar with D&D either 'even though I used to play a bit of Ad&D 3rd which has similarities when in my teens), but I found normal very good for a first playthrough, as an experienced video game rpgs player. The class system was very intimidating and even now keeps requiring me to spend almsot as much time into levelling choice and rerolls than in actual play, but the difficulty always felt rather appropriate and the game actually kinda felt getting easier as I levelled up. Early levels were tougher. So even withotu any knowledge of this specific system, experience in video games rpgs (and hack&slash and mmorpgs) in general certainly help figuring out how to build somewhat decent teams :).
I tend to set things a bit harder now although not core (I always use increased number of ennemies, and I set ennemy stat adjustement to slightly weaker 0.9 and lessened criticals. I keep the comfort stuff like remove negative conditions after sleep though, and death door, just to avoid loss of time and reloads). Will probably soon try my first Azlanta without death door though (but still with reduced crits and 0.9).
🥂
Alex! Alex! Alex!
you know how to make the game 100 more hard? not monk dips. yisus christ, i bet there isnt a single build out there that doesnt use the monk, paladin, oracle dips.
Hahh, yep I have stopped myself from using dips all-together for my build guides.
Hmmm not including Instinctual Warrior or Witch Iceplant w/ring, or Vivisectionist, or Rowdy Rogue, or Crossblooded Sorc? I'm sure there are more we can find.
As I see I need to be on core at least to get achievements.
I just hate how you can't respect there...
insanely wild to have read your comment on a stoic stick video I have just watched
@@LeEnnyFace Creepy.
I hate multiple difficulty options, i want to play the game that the developer intended it to be played.
I started on core for first playthrough ever. Fng hell!!! Citadel Drezen is cheating trash!