Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

Yeah, I have no complaints about Nenio. She and Ember have permanent slots in my groups, and it has nothing to do with personality (hex plus jinx is juicy, especially when half of the enemies are on the floor because of Nenio's selective grease).

Can you please explain? The complaint about barrelmancy was already debunked as there isn't any of it in game anymore.

You don't have to target touch AC if you stack the numbers yourself, because bloating of stats is what Owlcat have used throughout the game; that is the point. A new player might miss out on Finnean and a might not get guarded hearth (from the companions only Sosiel can get it without multiclassing). Just like a new player might struggle with Nenio, because some of the illusion spells are bugged.

I don't use Nenio either, so I lack a full arcane caster, I just have a partial caster in my Eldritch Archer and a limited spellbook in Ember. I do have Nenio in my companion roster, but IIRC you're not allowed to change your party within that dungeon.

...I had no idea Mark of Justice Smite Evil was a thing. I should really go review my party's class features.

I was wondering why Arueshalae wasn't getting Favored Enemy bonuses against her. Either way I don't think my issue was really hitting her since I could stack enough modifiers to do it in theory, it was surviving long enough to take her down.

It was never "debunked".
It's just that a handful of Steam users started patting each other on the back mutually reassuring one another that the problem never existed. Which is bull.

That said, the issue was partially tuned down in the last patch when barrels were increased in weight and carry capacity for characters with low strength was severely limited.
This doesn't eliminate the potential for "barrelmancy-related" exploits, but it does make them inconvenient enough to not be an appealing option in most cases.

Doesnt seem much different compared to handful of Redit (or Forum) users patting each other on the back mutually reassuring one another that this *is* a problem in the first place.

I know you love to being a disingenuous nitpicker, because god forbid if for once you could NOT take the defense of a shitty idea playing devil's advocate, but incidentally you are somewhat right in this case.

It's not different, the point is precisely that it's an open issue with conflicting opinions, it was never "solved" or a "complete non-issue" as Alealexi and Funnyhobo loved to repeat each other on Steam for weeks.
The problem exists. The last patch made it less prevalent, but the exploit is still plenty abusable.

That certainly sounds like one way to look at it ...
I would say that Larian managed to find "Golden mean" (is that expression in english?).

One of my favourite quotes says:
Democracy only works if no one is satisfied.
Sadly i dont remember who said that.

Im just so glad in pathfinder encounters are actually encounters and not enemies waiting for you to out meme them with stupid game designs.

pf buffmancy as core combat feature not much better

This^.

The notion that spellcasters, and specifically arcane casters (so maybe it's true of divine casters), are weak just doesn't hold water. In any edition of D&D. No matter how much you are able to soup up your warrior, they cannot (by definition) put down multiple enemies all in one go the way a wizard can. They MAY be very good against a single target, but magical violence always dominates over physical violence in D&D. That's just how it is (and unfortunately so from my pov).

This has always how I've seen it, the shortfall of spellcasters was always resource management not efficacy, which is why managing when a party can rest is so important, all the more so in a cRPG because the player can theoretically just rest after every encounter if the game doesn't tax them in some way.

All the other fiddly mechanical differences aside, if we take one thing to compare BG3 and WotR by it should be how they try to deal with this problem.

Just as Kingmaker, I'm playing WOTR on "normal" (with enemy damage manually adjusted to 100%).

On the first few pages here, there was somebody arguing that the very first dungeon already had more enemies in it than the entire BG3 EA (last year it also depended on the character created who you could avoid to be turning hostile, which was interesting).

Whilst that sounds a bit of an exaggeration (even if it was on higher level difficulty presets which adjust the number of enemies also): I'm starting to become slightly worried already. NO matter whether I will prefer mostly RT or TB.

Kingmaker not only by the end had quite a few maps in it in which you would face the samish enemy mobs over and over, and at times it felt just like it was there to stretch play-time (the end with the just being the worst example). Now I understand this is a module that gets you going against an army of demons, including possibly fully on sieges, so lots of critters may be expected at some point. HOwever, I hope they've learned a few things from Kingmaker already too.

Games that are heavy on combat are very fine. However, encounter design is paramount. Kingmaker had quite a few decent setpieces (the defense of Oleg's comes to mind immediately from the early game). However, there needs to be more of such if WOTR is again such a combat heavy game. Even compared to the first Pillars game, which certainly wasn'T afraid of placing trash mobs onto its maps, in particular early on unpatched, there was plenty "busywork" to get through here.

And by the end, as said, to me it was the weakest part of an otherwise good and very recommendable game, as if they'd ran out of time and money and couldn't come up with anything more genuine than firing up their editor, seeing another empty spot on their maps, and placing the same mob there over and over. (Luckily the very last optional boss fight with multiple stages made up for that some again).

It's a fun game but Playful Darkness is a synodoche of the decisions owl cat has made. As you've said the AI is pretty dumb and he'll just hit whatever is closest so to deal with this they pumped up the armor class.

<edition warrior mode activated>

This is one the many reasons I like 2nd ed better. -10 AC is the limit you can't go any lower. (I know ToB did and they shouldn't have)

Many of the gods had armor classes around -8 or -9. In 2nd ed terms Playful Darkness has an armor class of -48 meaning it can only be hit on a natural 20. Luckily the weighted dice give you natural 20s more often than you guess but it's just a parody AC. It's tougher than any of the bosses in ToB-Ascension.

On mages in 3.5

3.5 did more than removing mage's ability to avoid all damage, it made spell failure a common occurrence. In 3.5 your mage can only operate like 1,2 or 5th edition mage about level 12 or so. They have a heavy feat tax. Go for that interesting feat instead of combat casting? Expect to be hit by arrows every time you start a spell. Want that spell to land? Why didn't you choose the spell penetration feat? Want a touch attach to land? Should probably take a "I can actually hit something" feat for or add another class. Mages don't get fun feats, they get feats that undo the nerfing that the 3.5 authors imposed on them.

This is my first time trying Pathfinder and does seem like they have un-nerfed spellcasters a great deal. Now with the abundant casting feat I'm actually having fun with a 3.75 caster.

But the game was designed for l33t gamers, it's a showcase for their mad skills. It's fun but the bloated stats will limit its audience and keep from becoming a classic.

The IA of the enemies need some improvements, but I`ve seen minotaurs and Chirs charging my casters in the back row ignoring the tank and the AoO, melee fighters ignoring the summons and targeting the summoners, Illusionists targeting the will saves of fighters, enemies ignore paralized or disabled targets, archers picking the enemies with the lowest AC and they seem to like bashing Ember and Nenio an a lot for some reason.
Have you tried to activate the "improved enemy behaviors" in the difficulty options? Even dretches could be annoying with those stinking clouds.


Ed: About the barrelmancy topic, I personally do not mind, there are not many games of this type that offer you options to use the environment in your favor. I agree it needed to be toned down because it was too easy to use. That said, I do not understand the problem. Neither DoS games or Bg3 have PVP, if you do not like that exploit, you simply do not use it, but let others that do enjoy it.

No, I'm playing on core. Many of the fights in the game are too difficult to be enjoyable at level. If darkness understood to take out my oracle I don't know that I could win that fight.

Oh, yes, I play on the core but I switched down the difficulty option to make it so the enemies and DCs are not that insane. I have one on pure core for the achievements and the challenge, but not the other characters.

The astounding DCs, saves and CMDs of the enemiesin core or above makes some abilities of the trickster path or some save-or-suck spells, for example, technically unusable unless you specialize your character on using them. We play tabletop PF and some of the stats above normal were not the ones I am used to.

I do not enjoy much the difficulty based on huge enemy stats (there are plenty of games that do that already) and it makes some abilities pointless. Luckily in Wotr you can lower that but keep the enemy increased numbers, more encounters, enemy damage, extra enemy behaviours etc in the difficulty options.

Oh, yes, I play on the core but I switched down the difficulty option to make it so the enemies and DCs are not that insane. I have one on pure core for the achievements and the challenge, but not the other characters.

The astounding DCs, saves and CMDs of the enemiesin core or above makes some abilities of the trickster path or some save-or-suck spells, for example, technically unusable unless you specialize your character on using them. We play tabletop PF and some of the stats above normal were not the ones I am used to.

I do not enjoy much the difficulty based on huge enemy stats (there are plenty of games that do that already) and it makes some abilities pointless. Luckily in Wotr you can lower that but keep the enemy increased numbers, more encounters, enemy damage, extra enemy behaviours etc in the difficulty options.

I still can't understand why people refuse to lower the difficulty for fights they say are "unfair", "un-fun", etc. You have total control over the difficulty of the fight. CHANGE IT (like Vic has above). I get that there's an element of ego there, but at some point, you'd think fun would win out over your own ego, but I guess if ego == fun, then keep beating your head against the wall.

Interesting that typed AC, e.g. vs Crushing, vs Slashing was unlimited so could go below -24 limit in the BG1 and 2 engine, so you could drink stacking Potions of Absorption (-10 bonus vs crushing) to have unlimited ac vs crushing.