Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ndkid]

I can't decide if I've gotten really bad at min-maxing in D&D, or if this game is meant to start in an absurdly frustrating way. I've got people who are level 2 in my party when we finally chase down Tartuccio.  First thing he does, before any of us can get through the pile of kobolds between us and him? Tosses a fireball at us that is pretty much guarenteed to insta-kill party members. Not just KO, mind you, I'd just suck that up... dead-dead if you have that option turned on. (And didn't he just, as part of his evil villain cackling, admit that the kobold thing is a disguise? Why are you lot kobolds still being his meatshield before he fireballs you in the back?)

If the game wants me to go grind every killable thing I can before I head into the old tree, fine, but then don't stick a time limit on getting to the tree and make it sound like it's the most important thing ever!

[scriver]

I was level 3 or 4 when I did that, I think. Based on how difficult it was for me, I'd say it would be too early at level 2. I also never noticed a time limit on that quest. Maybe it appears only after encountering the mite/kobold confrontation that starts the whole questline?

Now, I think I ended up just taking the fireball and fighting through it (god bless Amiri) but I noticed in one of my attempts that the Tartucci either targets the PC or the area where he stands. I was thinking that if it's targeted on the PC then maybe one might be able to exploit the custom formation system to put the PC over on the side away from the rest of the party? It's just a thought I had, though, I don't know if it works.

Something I would suggest though is sending a fighter up through the kobold pawns, risking a few AoO, to be able to stop Tartuccio from casting more spells, though.

[ndkid]

I was level 3 or 4 when I did that, I think. Based on how difficult it was for me, I'd say it would be too early at level 2. I also never noticed a time limit on that quest. Maybe it appears only after encountering the mite/kobold confrontation that starts the whole questline?

Now, I think I ended up just taking the fireball and fighting through it (god bless Amiri) but I noticed in one of my attempts that the Tartucci either targets the PC or the area where he stands. I was thinking that if it's targeted on the PC then maybe one might be able to exploit the custom formation system to put the PC over on the side away from the rest of the party? It's just a thought I had, though, I don't know if it works.

Something I would suggest though is sending a fighter up through the kobold pawns, risking a few AoO, to be able to stop Tartuccio from casting more spells, though.

Ultimately, I save-scrummed until I got lucky on the chargethrough and the weakest party members were outside the range of the fireball he eventually let loose (not targeted on the PC). I still boggle at the poor design, though. If this were PnP, the DM decided what he wanted to do with a party of mixed 2nd to 4th level characters was have them face a mage with a meat shield such that, on round one of the combat, the mage could insta-kill multiple party members, I'd probably not want to play with that DM anymore. :-)

[ChairmanPoo]

I am hesitating between an alchemist, an archeologist, and a sorcerer. Thlughts?

[Kanil]

This game seems pretty damn hard. Playing on 'custom' with everything set to normal, and most stuff seems to just destroy me. Fighting the bear-like treant, it basically one shots anyone who isn't my two meatiest fighter types. Loaded save more than a few times, then Amiri just randomly crits it to death in one swing.

Dunno if it's just because your characters are low level so they suck at everything, or if I'm not supposed to be here yet, or if the game just likes murdering your dudes.

[scriver]

I am hesitating between an alchemist, an archeologist, and a sorcerer. Thlughts?

Magus

[Biowraith]

Dunno if it's just because your characters are low level so they suck at everything, or if I'm not supposed to be here yet, or if the game just likes murdering your dudes.

Bit of all three I think. 

A lot of RPGs are rough on low level characters since the smaller numbers mean spikes are more significant - a few (un)lucky rolls will see you dead (or winning) in an instant; doubly true for games like this with crits.  So it's partly to be expected.

But the game is also very scattershot in its difficulty, with trivial encounters right next to super difficult ones.  I cleared one zone at level 2 and had little difficult with the fights there, one-shotting many of the enemies and generally not falling much below half health on any given fight.  But then I rest in that zone and get ambushed by some super-charged floating glowy skull that has a +21 to hit (vs my +5ish) and fears my entire party at the start of the fight.  No way I'm getting through that fight, even with a lot of luck.  Yet previous rests in the same zone had just yielded some mildly sturdy but quite killable lizards.  And then a couple game-hours walk down the road there's the innocuous looking zone containing the "mature leopard"...

[Farce]

Yeah it's pretty bullshit.  All the other people I've been chatting about this game with seem to agree that your buddy NPCs are built for roleplay, but almost every encounter is built for rollplay.

Like, what's this goofy fighter with 14 Str and 15 Cha?  What's this barbarian with 16 Str.  Mechanically there's that weird 'let's add +2 to everything!' option that seems standard on Challenging (maybe normal too?) which I'm told is like double dipping, since it'll give a +2 to stats AND to other attributes like AC and to-hit.  And then there are just weirdly designed encounters, like swarms at level 2.

It doesn't help that I'm not really experienced with D&D or PF either.  I personally went for Enchantment-Wizard because quadratic wizards and because it gives a bonus to Persuasion and 'Kingmaker' seems like a campaign that would be pretty into Persuasion, only to later have someone tell me that Enchantment spells are super weak.  So I've got weird weak party members, but I can't really compensate with my PC either.  And even with like 20 int shit makes their saving throws like a l l the time.  Like, I JUST made level 4 and I removed the weird aforementioned +2 option, so how is everything so good at all their dang saves?  Nevermind that tons of stuff are just straight up immune to lots of my spells, like those weird big-faced grey midgets being immune to hideous laughter.

[scriver]

Dunno if it's just because your characters are low level so they suck at everything, or if I'm not supposed to be here yet, or if the game just likes murdering your dudes.

Bit of all three I think. 

A lot of RPGs are rough on low level characters since the smaller numbers mean spikes are more significant - a few (un)lucky rolls will see you dead (or winning) in an instant; doubly true for games like this with crits.  So it's partly to be expected.

But the game is also very scattershot in its difficulty, with trivial encounters right next to super difficult ones.  I cleared one zone at level 2 and had little difficult with the fights there, one-shotting many of the enemies and generally not falling much below half health on any given fight.  But then I rest in that zone and get ambushed by some super-charged floating glowy skull that has a +21 to hit (vs my +5ish) and fears my entire party at the start of the fight.  No way I'm getting through that fight, even with a lot of luck.  Yet previous rests in the same zone had just yielded some mildly sturdy but quite killable lizards.  And then a couple game-hours walk down the road there's the innocuous looking zone containing the "mature leopard"...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Said skull is a special event that always happens when you rest in the already existing campsite on that map. Successfully nspecting the nearby corpses that's strewn around that area yields hints that something pretty bad got to them.

[Majestic7]

The enchanter build is equally bad in PnP D&D/Pathfinder combat, because basically everything that isn't a player character race is resistant or immune to many mind-affecting effects. On the other hand, in urban/intrigue campaign it would be an excellent diplomat/spy build. Unfortunately the computer game doesn't recognize it and you do fuck all with magic while governing the lands.

[Biowraith]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Said skull is a special event that always happens when you rest in the already existing campsite on that map. Successfully nspecting the nearby corpses that's strewn around that area yields hints that something pretty bad got to them.

I see, that makes sense.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, to an extent - I'm pretty sure I've come across other corpses elsewhere that just yielded level appropriate enemies, or none at all, but I guess they didn't have the video game indicators of a special inspect description.

[ChairmanPoo]

Is it just me or the new update fucked chargen?

[Biowraith]

Seems to have screwed up spell selection at least - whether it's creating a brand new character or leveling an existing one, the list of spells to choose from appears blank (though you can still select them and the mouseover tooltip still works so you can 'see' them that way).

[ChairmanPoo]

Ok so its not just me

I am hesitating between an alchemist, an archeologist, and a sorcerer. Thlughts?

Magus

Spell scion?

[scriver]

Yeah I got that spell selection thing too. Happened with 1.04.

Ok so its not just me

I am hesitating between an alchemist, an archeologist, and a sorcerer. Thlughts?

Magus

Spell scion?

Yes!