Pathfinder: Kingmaker |OT| Pen and Paper Not Included

flyinj · Sep 30, 2018

Another thing that is great about this game- it has bar none the best inventory management system I have ever used.

It auto sorts intelligently in several tabs, and it gives you tons of sub-sorting options like highest to lowest on time item was acquired, weight of item, type of item, cost of item. It is a total breeze to use, and works great with how much loot you acquire in the game.

Shelbyville Milhouse · Sep 30, 2018

How's the writing in the game? I don't really have the time right now for another big RPG but if the story and writing is good I might just buy it for later

Vamphuntr · Sep 30, 2018

flyinj said:
I've put about 25 hours into the game now. Every fight I've had so far (other than things that were clearly too tough for me) had normal hits connect just fine. Criticals hitting the enemies are huge blows that often killed them.

This is on the normal diffuculty setting. Sometimes you run up against stuff that is really tough as you explore around maps. These enemies are never gating, and they are meant to give you a big risk reward if you can take them on at a lower level. You can come back later in the game and stomp them.

The beginning was a bit tough, as you needed to learn how to use your tank effectively (have whole team hold, walk tank towards monsters to get all aggro, then move in non tank fighters to flank).

The only battle that gave me trouble was the swarms mission in the beginning, which I agree was total BS because the game never properly explained to you how to deal with swarms. The devs did patch it to give you alchemist fire and explain you needed to use it. (Also, strangely enough, I haven't encountered a single swarm enemy since that mission)

Also, I'm not one to normally max difficulty on RPGs. I usually play on normal/medium difficulty. For reference I found the combat on normal difficulty in Divinity OS2 to be much harder than Pathfinder.

I can attest that it is totally false that you need to rely on criticals to hit anything.

What they are saying is not false. It's just they go into areas they were not supposed to go and the only way to know what is happening is to check the dice rolls because the game has no indicators to tell you if you should go or not. There is a bunch of times you go into the map and simply retreat. If they don't want to retreat and keep retrying then they will lose. As soon as you get the castle you could explore around and about half of the areas you will go will end with you getting destroyed and wasting time on the clock. I just learned to go away and try somewhere else. If you fight something with way too much AC you will miss all the time, it isn't surprising.

It's the same issues at the beginning of the game. An easy fix for now would be to have guide to play it if you don't want to waste time finding where you are supposed to go.

EDIT : For the person asking about Underrail. I was playing it just before this game and I had a much easier time but Underrail has so much possibilities. You can even stealth past the most annoying encounters.

texhnolyze · Sep 30, 2018

I love it that the writing is not so one-dimensional. There are times when it's all about serious matter, but there also times when it's so light-hearted and funny.

I particularly liked this little encounter with a group of bandit earlier. They were of the Stag Lord band, but now their leader is defeated they're kinda lost and asked me to join my kingdom as tax collectors lol. I can choose to kill them, exile them, or hire them.

Rayne · Sep 30, 2018

I have to agree about the writing. I'm enjoying it a lot. Though the companions are a bit hit or miss.

Elven_Star · Sep 30, 2018

Rayne said:
I have to agree about the writing. I'm enjoying it a lot. Though the companions are a bit hit or miss.

I wouldn't call it hit or miss. More like catering to different tastes ;)

sredgrin · Sep 30, 2018

The companions are pretty good in the moment, especially when interacting with each other.

Their backstories are all pretty bad though

Anoxida · Oct 1, 2018

Can't seem to get two of the party members Octavia and the other dude. There's suppose to be this camp around Elk temple but nothing there and no random encounter which triggers it either. I'm in chapter 2.

Remmy2112 · Oct 1, 2018

Anoxida said:
Can't seem to get two of the party members Octavia and the other dude. There's suppose to be this camp around Elk temple but nothing there and no random encounter which triggers it either. I'm in chapter 2.

It starts with a random encounter in that vicinity. Once the encounter happens you'll eventually be able to go to the camp.

Jader7777 · Oct 1, 2018

It's pretty amazing how close they got to the normal PF rules.

The problem is everyone is playing the hot new 5th edition so I wonder how badly people are going to trip over the feat list and prestige class mechanics.

Anoxida · Oct 1, 2018

Remmy2112 said:
It starts with a random encounter in that vicinity. Once the encounter happens you'll eventually be able to go to the camp.

Well I've been walking around the vicinity for about 20 minutes when should I start to get worried?

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

sredgrin said:
The companions are pretty good in the moment, especially when interacting with each other.

Their backstories are all pretty bad though

Yeah, I'll have to agree with that. Their backstories are boring, and mostly the same except maybe a couple.

Anoxida said:
Well I've been walking around the vicinity for about 20 minutes when should I start to get worried?

Have you met the slaver encounter? That's the initiator. You can send one of your party to them or simply beat them on the spot, and the quest will continue. You will then have to attack their camp in the area, where you'll meet Victoria and Regongar.

Anoxida · Oct 1, 2018

texhnolyze said:
Yeah, I'll have to agree with that. Their backstories are boring, and mostly the same except maybe a couple.

Have you met the slaver encounter? That's the initiator. You can send one of your party to them or simply beat them on the spot, and the quest will continue. You will then have to attack their camp in the area, where you'll meet Victoria and Regongar.

No, I can't get it to trigger. It's supposed to be around Elk temple right?

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

Anoxida said:
No, I can't get it to trigger. It's supposed to be around Elk temple right?

Yeah, you should encounter them in the area. South-eastern part of the temple, around the river.

Anoxida · Oct 1, 2018

texhnolyze said:
Yeah, you should encounter them in the area. South-eastern part of the temple, around the river.

Not happening. Sigh.

Chicken Wing · Oct 1, 2018

Can someone tell me if this is anything like Divinity 2? Been playing that and love it but am finishing up and looking for my next game.

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

Anoxida said:
Not happening. Sigh.

Is it probably because you've already in Act 2? Though I think it shouldn't be a factor for recruiting companions.

I encountered them quite often in Act 1. Before I reached level 4, I always reloaded a previous quick/auto save if I encounter them.

Chicken Wing said:
Can someone tell me if this is anything like Divinity 2? Been playing that and love it but am finishing up and looking for my next game.

Do you mean Original Sin 2? There's actually a game called Divinity 2 (from Larian too), but it's mediocre and is a 3rd person action RPG.

Anyway, it's not really close to both of them. It's more like Pillars of Eternity games with real-time with pause combat. The game is also open world in a sense, as in you're not moving to one map to another map for each act like in Original Sin 2.

jerfdr · Oct 1, 2018

Chicken Wing said:
Can someone tell me if this is anything like Divinity 2? Been playing that and love it but am finishing up and looking for my next game.

It's similar in the sense that you have a party of characters, and there is a solid focus both on the story and the combat.

The combat itself is quite different since it's real-time-with-pause as opposed to Divinity's turn-based approach. Also P:K might be a bit more difficult to master mechanically as it's based on the full-blown PnP Pathfinder rules (which is a tweaked version of D&D3.5).

Regarding the story and characters, I actually prefer P:K's ones so far, but YMMV (note that the story in P:K really opens up starting from Chapter 2).

All in all, I think that there is a solid chance that you might like P:K if you liked D:OS2.

Note that if you're not familiar with Pathfinder or D&D it might be a good idea to start P:K on "Easy" difficulty or at least on "Normal" with "Enemy Difficulty" set to "Easy". Regular "Normal" might be too punishing even if you played other CRPGs a lot. You can always crank the difficulty up later on at any time, when you feel that you bacame more experienced.

Also the character creation might be a bit overwhelming if you're new to Pathfinder and D&D, so it might be a good idea to go with one of the premade characters for your first playthrough.

Cugel · Oct 1, 2018

My favourite CRPG are Planescape Torment, Arcanum & BG2, is this somehow similar ?

jerfdr · Oct 1, 2018

Cugel said:
My favourite CRPG are Planescape Torment, Arcanum & BG2, is this somehow similar ?

It actually feels somewhat similar to BG2. In my opinion, there is a solid chance that you might like P:K if you enjoyed BG2.

ShinySunny · Oct 1, 2018

Wow, the artstyle is so good.

Wotkar · Oct 1, 2018

who knew managing a kingdom aptly named garbage lands could be this complicated

ShinySunny said:
Wow, the artstyle is so good.

yup yup

MrCinos · Oct 1, 2018

Does Charisma play a role that (high) persuasion can't replicate in dialogues? I'm still on the fence what build to pick for a serious playthrough. The most enticing build for me doesn't have use for CHA, but I also want to use Persuasion as much as possible.

DeepChord · Oct 1, 2018

Does changing equipment properly reflect on how you character looks? If so, is there a lot of variety?

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

Wotkar said:
who knew managing a kingdom aptly named garbage lands could be this complicated

Yeah, we're governing an actual kingdom here, which means more than one city. The gimmick from Pillars was nothing compared to this. I'm so surprised by the depth of the system.

MrCinos said:
Does Charisma play a role that (high) persuasion can't replicate in dialogues? I'm still on the fence what build to pick for a serious playthrough. The most enticing build for me doesn't have use for CHA, but I also want to use Persuasion as much as possible.

I'm not sure how Charisma and Persuasion check work, but my Paladin invested high points in both of them and so far I managed to pass most checks just fine.

DeepChord said:
Does changing equipment properly reflect on how you character looks? If so, is there a lot of variety?

Yes, especially weapon, armor, gauntlet, and some helmet. However, each character's attire still mainly visible.

jerfdr · Oct 1, 2018

MrCinos said:
Does Charisma play a role that (high) persuasion can't replicate in dialogues? I'm still on the fence what build to pick for a serious playthrough. The most enticing build for me doesn't have use for CHA, but I also want to use Persuasion as much as possible.

It seems that only skill checks are present, there are no ability score checks (at least I haven't seen any so far). So if you manage to have high Persuasion without the Charisma bonus, it'd work the same.

Barrel Cannon · Oct 1, 2018

That joyous moment when it's 2018 and you see a 5770 as the recommended spec

Primethius

Faith in Fate · Oct 1, 2018

Might be a dumb questions but:
I want to play a monk using just fists, will that use Str or Dex? (are there feats I can take to force it either way?)
Will two weapon fighting work for my other fist?

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

What's the best way to gain BP? I have lots of projects unattended due to the lack of BP.

Shake Appeal · Oct 1, 2018

MrCinos said:
Does Charisma play a role that (high) persuasion can't replicate in dialogues? I'm still on the fence what build to pick for a serious playthrough. The most enticing build for me doesn't have use for CHA, but I also want to use Persuasion as much as possible.

No, but as I understand it, your starting CHA bonus boosts Persuasion dramatically. So you'll be spending a lot of skill points on Persuasion if you don't start out with a hefty CHA bonus, and your skill points may be limited depending on the distribution of your other stats.

Faith in Fate · Oct 1, 2018

texhnolyze said:
What's the best way to gain BP? I have lots of projects unattended due to the lack of BP.

If you're swimming in gold you can buy BP from the merchant in the square

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

Faith in Fate said:
If you're swimming in gold you can buy BP from the merchant in the square

I never realized that a merchant is selling BP, even though I regularly check their stuff.

I buy armors/weapons every now and then for everyone. I still have like 20k gold right now though. Thanks.

Niahak · Oct 1, 2018

Faith in Fate said:
Might be a dumb questions but:
I want to play a monk using just fists, will that use Str or Dex? (are there feats I can take to force it either way?)
Will two weapon fighting work for my other fist?

Fists use Str for both hit and damage bonus. Most monk abilities (including the bonus AC) key off of Wis, and Dex/Con are useful too, so you may have to stretch your points pretty thin. You might be able to take a feat that lets it use dex for hitting, but not for the damage bonus IIRC.

Monks get "flurry of blows" which gives them more attacks per round than two weapon fighting.

I created a (mercenary) monk with 18 STR, 16 WIS since hitting more often and more powerful is more important to me than the special abilities right now. I can always have my wizard give her mage armor for a decently high-AC frontliner.

Deleted member 22070 · Oct 1, 2018

Bought the game, booted it, arrived on the menu and the computer turned off right there and then. My mini 1070 died.

Having to use the IGP from the i7-6700k in the meantime. FML.

Elven_Star · Oct 1, 2018

nitoo said:
Bought the game, booted it, arrived on the menu and the computer turned off right there and then. My mini 1070 died.

Having to use the IGP from the i7-6700k in the meantime. FML.

I really want to know how a card can die just like that, because I don't want it to happen to me :P Please let us know when/if you find out what happened.

Faith in Fate · Oct 1, 2018

Niahak said:
Fists use Str for both hit and damage bonus. Most monk abilities (including the bonus AC) key off of Wis, and Dex/Con are useful too, so you may have to stretch your points pretty thin. You might be able to take a feat that lets it use dex for hitting, but not for the damage bonus IIRC.

Monks get "flurry of blows" which gives them more attacks per round than two weapon fighting.

I created a (mercenary) monk with 18 STR, 16 WIS since hitting more often and more powerful is more important to me than the special abilities right now. I can always have my wizard give her mage armor for a decently high-AC frontliner.

Hmm ok thank you :)

Niahak · Oct 1, 2018

Faith in Fate said:
Hmm ok thank you :)

No problem!

Thought of other things that might be useful to know with a monk around -
* you can take Weapon Focus: Unarmed to get an extra +1 on all attack rolls
* Monks can use combat maneuvers as part of the flurry of blows (honestly no idea how they translated this to this game) - e.g. a monk can do a disarm as part of a flurry, which is really powerful against many foes
* Damage from fists goes up as you level and with size of your creature (use enlarge person on a monk, and you'll double their damage early on).
* I mentioned mage armor - it lasts a long time and gives +4 AC, with no encumbrance, so it's huge for a monk early on. eventually you might be able to find (make?) bracers of mage armor for the permanent effect.

PF: KM uses the unchained monk, though (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/monk-unchained/) and I'm more familiar with the "traditional" monk (the only PF class I'm familiar with :) ) - it looks like the unchained version may have less attacks in a flurry early on, but does more damage overall.

Deleted member 22070 · Oct 1, 2018

Elven_Star said:
I really want to know how a card can die just like that, because I don't want it to happen to me :P Please let us know when/if you find out what happened.

Yeah, definitely a first for me. Despite being quite knowledgeable with and really taking care of my hardware (would check / dust / clean everything very often), it's not really a surprise tbh : since I bought it in january last year, it's been behaving a bit weird from the beginning. If I touched the DP cable even very slightly on the card's end (as opposed to the monitor's), signal would be lost and screen would go black. I always told myself it was the cable, or maybe the monitor, or aliens or who the fuck knows but now it seems pretty obvious it's been the card all along. It really just stopped abruptly, like ZAP, like a power outtage except everything else was runing normally. Was so scared the whole PC was dead man :/

Anyway, considering the shop from which I bought it apparently just does a full refund when there's no repair for hardware like this, it might end up being a good excuse to get a RTX 2080. As a freelance designer, I'm even more excited to get one for using with Octane and stuff.

Chance Hale · Oct 1, 2018

I finally had to drop the difficulty from challenging to normal. Just couldn't get through the doomspider fight without a party member taking an insane crit that prevents raise dead. Spent nearly two hours trying different tactics, dropped it to normal and instantly beat it with no issues. The shame tho ;-;

jerfdr · Oct 1, 2018

PC Gamer gave this game 69/100.The review is quite short and not very in-depth. I actually have to somewhat agree with this guy from Redditregarding this review:

ShokTherapy said:
This isn't a very well written review, it's extremely opinion based. Having an opinion is perfectly fine as a reviewer, but you have to back it up with actual substance. If you can't justify why you hold an opinion, you shouldn't be a reviewer. 'I didn't like this game as much as Pillars or Divinity 2', is not a valid reason to give a game a low score unless you can actually explain what those games did better than this one.

Also the fact that he criticized it for not having as much prose as PoE makes me a little salty, because having prose is not an indicator of good writing, and in a game so heavily focused on writing that is an extremely vague and dismissive criticism. He couldn't even give a single example of where the writing falls short, just that it was 'flat'.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewer took one look at the steam reviews and didn't even bother to play the game, because there's actually no information in this review to indicate whether the reviewer even played it or not, that's how vague the criticism is.

Elven_Star · Oct 1, 2018

jerfdr said:
PC Gamer gave this game 69/100.The review is quite short and not very in-depth. I actually have to somewhat agree with this guy from Redditregarding this review:

The "plays it too safe" part was the funniest. With the recent IGN fiasco, I wouldn't be surprised if this guy has not played the game at all.

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

"Plays it too safe" lol. Pathfinder is the most ambitious Kickstarter CRPG ever, in my opinion. Probably on par with Original Sin 2, but they're doing different things. I still believe this is much better than the recent Obsidian RPGs.

Chance Hale said:
I finally had to drop the difficulty from challenging to normal. Just couldn't get through the doomspider fight without a party member taking an insane crit that prevents raise dead. Spent nearly two hours trying different tactics, dropped it to normal and instantly beat it with no issues. The shame tho ;-;

I use custom difficulty now. After reaching level 7, I'm starting to 1 hit most enemies so I turned it up to challenging, but still with weak critical and heal injuries with camping, etc. I'd love to take my time with the game, but I don't want to reload too many times.

oracledragon · Oct 1, 2018

So how is this looking so far? Love these kinds of games, With work, I don't have time for this one right now (not even close!) so best I can do is wishlist it for later. Was a bit surprised to see the PCG review and mixed reviews on Steam. I don't follow a lot of streamers but I check in on CohhCarnage now and then and he seems to be really enjoying the game, likes this type of game, and seems to be straightforward in clearly stating when games are a drag to play.

tekomandor · Oct 1, 2018

Chance Hale said:
I finally had to drop the difficulty from challenging to normal. Just couldn't get through the doomspider fight without a party member taking an insane crit that prevents raise dead. Spent nearly two hours trying different tactics, dropped it to normal and instantly beat it with no issues. The shame tho ;-;

Higher difficulties are actually completely broken. Even normal is pretty hardcore even by tabletop standards sometimes.

'Fight this CR11 Elder Air Elemental at level 5' as one random encounter tried to have me do, for example.

Gestahl · Oct 1, 2018

oracledragon said:
So how is this looking so far? Love these kinds of games, With work, I don't have time for this one right now (not even close!) so best I can do is wishlist it for later. Was a bit surprised to see the PCG review and mixed reviews on Steam. I don't follow a lot of streamers but I check in on CohhCarnage now and then and he seems to be really enjoying the game, likes this type of game, and seems to be straightforward in clearly stating when games are a drag to play.

I've played the game for five hours and probably 4 of those have been on character creation

So I'd consider that a thumbs up from me

Finally settled on an Abyssal sorcerer but now I have to figure out if I want to wait til level 7 for augmented summoning which would mean waiting even longer for superior summoning but I could get it earlier but most of the abyssal bonus feats are bleh aside from empowered and ahhhhhhhhhhh

Chance Hale · Oct 1, 2018

Nevermind

Bricktop · Oct 1, 2018

texhnolyze said:
"Plays it too safe" lol. Pathfinder is the most ambitious Kickstarter CRPG ever, in my opinion. Probably on par with Original Sin 2, but they're doing different things. I still believe this is much better than the recent Obsidian RPGs.

I'm not too far in, but I'm already getting heavy BG2 type vibes from the game. And also enjoying it a hell of a lot more than Pillars and Tyranny. Basically it is, so far, the best crpg not named DOS2 I've played in recent memory and I even think it does some things better.

They have some kinks to work out, but I think this game will be a classic when it's all said and done.

Remmy2112 · Oct 1, 2018

Niahak said:
No problem!

Thought of other things that might be useful to know with a monk around -
* you can take Weapon Focus: Unarmed to get an extra +1 on all attack rolls
* Monks can use combat maneuvers as part of the flurry of blows (honestly no idea how they translated this to this game) - e.g. a monk can do a disarm as part of a flurry, which is really powerful against many foes
* Damage from fists goes up as you level and with size of your creature (use enlarge person on a monk, and you'll double their damage early on).
* I mentioned mage armor - it lasts a long time and gives +4 AC, with no encumbrance, so it's huge for a monk early on. eventually you might be able to find (make?) bracers of mage armor for the permanent effect.

PF: KM uses the unchained monk, though (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/monk-unchained/) and I'm more familiar with the "traditional" monk (the only PF class I'm familiar with :) ) - it looks like the unchained version may have less attacks in a flurry early on, but does more damage overall.

There are indeed bracers of armor in the game of differing qualities, some fairly high. There are also some other useful magical items, like an amulet that allows you to add dex bonus to damage with unarmed, adds cold damage to bite attacks if you can get one, though I dunno if monks can. Amiri and other barbarians can, and I think sorcerers/eldritch scions can.

demondance · Oct 1, 2018

Elven_Star said:
The "plays it too safe" part was the funniest. With the recent IGN fiasco, I wouldn't be surprised if this guy has not played the game at all.

Yeah that's an extremely suspect take on a cRPG that rolls in city builder elements. It's not for everyone but "plays it too safe" is not really how I'd sum up this game.

texhnolyze · Oct 1, 2018

So I already have control over 3 towns/villages. How do I upgrade my kingdom now?

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