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

Do the difficulty presets also now affect enemy DR?

I've had a couple fights now against demons with a DR5 / cold iron, good. However, when Wenduag attacks them with a long bow (no cold iron arrows), the reduction always seems to be but -2 from the damage roll.

(Playing on normal presets, with the exception of adjusting enemy damage to 100% and disabling companion auto-leveling).

Interesting. I never knew about that exploit.

Yes, well said! It's limitation of resources and a meaningful obstacle to replenishing those resources that keeps casters (esp. wizards) from being over-the-top powerful. And that's why any D&D game that eliminates or significantly weakens this cost for wizards is making things rather ridiculous. The Owlcat forum is filled with wizard fans whining about the need to rest in the Pathfinder games. Thank God Owlcat has thus far refused to back down on resting.

100% agree with you on this. I also just don't get why there is so much ego invested in this, especially when it is a single-player situation. I routinely and often lower the difficulty setting on any and all games I play because aggravation, frustration, and tedium are not fun.

There are no penalties for frequent resting in this game. You may as well rest as you fight, it doesn't matter in the long run. There is probably only one quest that can spoil a few things if you rest too much (the very beginning of the game).
Later, the more often you rest, the better because then there are more events.
There is a mechanic of abbysal corruption but to be honest it doesn't matter. Most maps are too small to require more than one rest, and in larger locations you often find objects that remove them.

yeah, and you can always rest in your camp or your castle and it takes away your corruption levels if you want to check all the "companionship" events by resting a lot. I mean, you cannot rest forever after Kenabres and the enemies keep attacking your fortresses but you have a very wide margin. You usually run out of things to do before.

Sometimes you get extra loot rewards for a fast competition of the chapter, but you have to decide if it´s worth it or not.

It's not that hard to understand, actually. It's simply finding joy in overcoming challenges. From my own experience, someone saying "omg this boss is so **** broken wtf were they thinking?" may be just a simple outburst and that doesn't necessarily mean they're not having fun or that they've actually given up on trying to overcome the challenge. Ultimately, overcoming harsh challenges more often than not involves some degree of "bashing one's head against a wall". It can't be helped.

Clearly, lowering the difficulty is one approach. But in the majority of cases, there exist other answers beside "lowering the difficulty". It may be perceived as "ego", but, I believe in most cases, it is really the belief that "it can be done", and not giving up. And finding the answer after wracking your brain, is fun. I have no doubt that I can finish the game on this difficulty. I know it can be done, I know the answer exists. The fun here is to find that answer, the "how". How can it be done? It's not important that "omg I just want to win this", because I know I will win it, eventually.

I'm playing WotR blind on Hard, and just earlier I cleared Wintersun with a L11 party. It was brutal. Not even "meh it wasn't that hard". I couldn't beat several fights when I first got there. But I knew it was possible; I just didn't have the right party setup. I just went back to base, respec'd my Mutation Fighter into a Magus, bought Jinx, formed a different party, then came back for the second round. And most everything worked out as I suspected it would. You could say I found my answer to a problem I couldn't solve before, even though other players may have even simpler answers. In fact, the fight with the tree was really, really close. My anticipation was quite off and I was forced to improvise and use everything I possibly could from my inventory - all the Alchemist Fire and low level scrolls that had been collecting dust. In my last attack I was lucky to land the attack and roll just high enough for a SR bypass check, and wrapped up the fight before everything went to shit. If I had simply lowered the difficulty, I would never have had so much fun.

This is not to sound elitist or anything. I'm just trying to explain what it's like in my case, because admittedly I'm one of those "unwilling to lower the difficulty". The summary here is that, yes, I may get frustrated sometimes, I may get mad sometimes, but it's the belief that it can be done that keeps me going, and knowing that finding the answer in the end will feel great.

As for the "unfun" part... Personally, if I ever say something is "unfun", then it would be more about the design, than the actual difficulty. I can lower the difficulty and that still wouldn't make certain encounters any more "fun". They're still unfun. They're just less of a bother.

Theres a big difference between this - whic his a great approach to difficulty problem solving - and the stereotype of the person who puts it on hard, hits a wall, then rages that it is too hard and makes an angry post on steam.

At higher difficulties the game can be like a puzzle to be cracked.

I'm guilty of having an ego and I think a number of the battles are beyond what one would expect for a 'core' setting. I've played all the related games at core setting, I've DMed for 3.5 games and while I'm new to pathfinder I understand the base rules pretty well. The ACs / DCs and the like are just absurdly high for a setting that putatively reproduces a tabletop experience. The devs would do themselves a favor to rename that setting.

Still, I'm having fun with the game. It plays like a modded version of a DnD game and that's fun. But some of the battles I don't like -- I also disliked the Endless Paths dragon from PoE1 and the titan from PoE2. These bosses are built with a similar mindset.

For me the best bosses from the related games were the red dragon from BG2 and the demon doctor from DOS2. In both cases you needed to have a good understanding of the ruleset to win but the difficulty wasn't turned up to 64.

There's a three bears place with difficult battles. Those two were just right.

I am enjoying my current difficulty settings, but as I said before I only have one game in the hardest difficulties for the achievements, I lowered a little the stat bloat of the enemies in the others because unfair is like:





I mean, they killed Nenio and her ten next reincarnations in one sweep.

Wich I could enjoy, but not all the time =P (There are another 7 difficulties tho).

I hadn't thought of it like that before but a modded version of a RPG is exactly how both the Pathfinder games feel like to me, they are like some of the modules and mods for Neverwinter Nights and BG:II I've seen, they're suped up versions of the basic game that use every trick in the book to beat you because they assume only old-hands are playing, and also they're hardly playtested so a lot of what they think theoretically works doesn't fair well.

Couple more questions about WOTR. Sorry don't feel like asking on that board. Lot of people complaining and wanting refunds.

Anyway
Why does it sometimes say saving the game is impossible?

If there's a shared stash why do some people in the party get encumbered, or whatever it's called, when their personal inventory hasn't changed? Like Camellia was encumbered when I didn't add anything to her personal equipment.

Also if I drop items can I still get them when leaving the map? Noticed when I left the Grey Garrison the first time I didn't loot Hosilla's body and was able to get it when leaving. One time I couldn't leave the market square because I had too many items. So if I dropped the items until I could move would I be able to get them in the same way?

Ah, you went to the owlcat or the steam forum. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. If you have quick questions I advise you to ask in discord or Reddit. Faster, more reliable, less /runting.

You can be over-encumbered if you have too much weight in your shared inventory, you can check that in the inventory tab or she could be affected by a debuff. But if you checked that and it's not the case it could also be a bug. Unequip everything, go to Hilor and respec that character.

the items would be there unless you are in a random encounter.

What I'm saying is that stat bloating is available on both sides, which makes certain boss fights not necessarily a "puzzle fight" as some people claim - but more so a test of system knowledge. Do I love it? No. Do I think Owlcat relies way too much on stat bloat to inflate difficulty (instead of using clever AI or design)? Yes. It's been my biggest criticism of the game (I've mentioned it on multiple posts in this thread).

In terms of new players struggling with Playful Darkness, I think that's understandable though considering that he is a optional boss. Per above, I do think that relying on bloated stats is lazy design because his AI is so dumb and it's not really challenging once you familiarize yourself with the system, but I do give them credit for providing the player solutions from the start.

Specifically regarding Finnean and Guarded Heath: while it is entirely possible for someone to miss Finnean, most newbies should have access Seelah and as a Paladin, she can confer the same brilliant energy buff to any weapon she uses. In regards to Guarded Heath - per my original post - Sosiel comes with a default alternative via his Good Domain (though I totally brain farted and said Nobility instead of Community):


I guess what I'm saying is, Owlcat does a pretty good job in terms of making sure that if you just stick with what they give you, the tools are there for you to get through most fights. Obviously there's a chance someone might have multi-classed Seelah and Sosiel out of their default classes, but in that case really that's something Owlcat simply can't plan for.

And remember these are specific buffs that works in a sea of many that can be applicable. While the PF system can be extremely bloated (sometimes to the detriment of the game), the one thing that is guaranteed is that there will be hundreds of ways for the player to be absolutely broken and OP in the game.



Totally fair.

Improving survivability is a little bit more biased towards having the right build IMO too, hence the popularity of all those meme-dip builds (I think to the detriment of the game). Having good CC and defensive buffs definitely help, but all those work even better when you have an astronomically high AC.

Specifically for Playful Darkness, if you're not sporting a rock-solid AC, the best way to deal with him IMO is actually to exploit the terrible melee rules in Pathfinder against him. A lot of his damage output stems from him being able to make 6 or 7 attacks when doing a full round attack.

However, if you actually pull away more than 5 ft from his melee reach each round, he's actually limited to to his standard action, thus 1 attack per round (+ the opportunity attack he gets when you pull away). You can try to avoid the Opp attack via Grace or just a Mobility check (pretty hard IIRC). This is most easily done in TB mode, but slowmo RTwP worked pretty well for me too.

Note, mirror image also works against him, so that stacked on top of the above has been a pretty safe way to deal with him in my experience. True seeing is also a must - because he has concealment, so this denies him auto-sneak attack (which is what he uses to drain your STR, like a Rogue). He'll still be able to sneak attack if he flanks though. Obviously Death Ward is also required to counter his level drain.

If you have the offensive output, Last Stand is absolutely fantastic against him too, since you can just slug away with impunity for a few rounds, which should be enough to straight up kill him.

Great. Thanks for the info.

I rest my case.

A thing of beauty

Picking up from this RE: DAMAGE RESISTANCE.


I've now posted this on several places and nobody could answer. However, recently somebody took a closer look in his save (on "normal") and replied he'd encounter much the same.

He faced enemies with DR of 10, actually. Yet, the DR applied would be only 5.


So I'm suspecting there is a difficulty setting which basically slashes the DR actually applied in half -- and that setting is set like that on "Normal". (It's not the enemy damage modifier, which I've manually increased to 100%, as said).

Claps. In the end, things like this are only possible in Larian's games. Regardless of how players may disapprove of "barrelmancy", that stunt in the video is amusing. Creative problem solving, even. Definitely one of the things this game will be remembered for.

I dont see your point here ...
I say if someone wish to spend 60€ for Bomberman 3D ... its his choice. :P