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Made in gb
Storm Trooper with Maglight





I appreciate that I'm starting a thread for a pretty old game. I imagine a thread already exists, I tried searching for it and just got an error message back. Scrolling through the threads of the last couple of years (there aren't that many in this particular sub forum) I found a thread for Wrath of the Righteous, but not one for Kingmaker.

I never knew what Pathfinder (the tabletop RPG) was. Having looked into it a bit since buying the CRPG it seems to be a ripped off version of D&D 3rd edition, with not many modifications. I'm no expert on D&D tabletop so I might be over simplifying things a lot, for the first few hours of the game I assumed it was a D&D license with a different name. It also seems that older versions of D&D are basically open source, and the Evil Corporation (sound familiar to any GW fans out there?) Wizards of the Coast is trying to remove the open source nature of old D&D versions and start charging royalties for them. Anyway, rather than go further down this rabbit hole I'll try to focus on the PC Pathfinder games now.

So I decided to take the plunge with Kingmaker rather than go straight to the newer Wrath of the Righteous. Mainly because I like to play games once they're complete and WotR has at least 3 more DLC coming out, who knows if any more than that are planned. I'm enjoying it so far, though I'm only 13 hours in and still pretty much bumbling my way along. I'm pretty much avoiding walkthroughs and tips, just doing what I think seems like the right thing to do, at least for my Neutral Good character. This might mean that my Barony will come crashing down around my ears over the coming in-game months, time will tell.

I created this thread in the hope to provoke some discussion about this 4+ year old game. Some questions from me, if anyone feels inclined to answer any of them:


If you've played both Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous am I right in trying Kingmaker first? Or is WotR simply a superior game and I will be put off playing it by doing this?

Are there any classes which the main character should be? The great thing about a party of 6 (as I see it) is that the other 5 party members can pretty much fill any gaps. My current main character is a Level 5 Fighter, might branch him out into a Cleric later on, or might just keep him as a pure Fighter. I'm wondering if this was a good idea though, especially for a Neutral Good character. Amiri and Valerie already play this role quite nicely (though Amiri seems to die a lot, at least for me). Can't help but feel I should have made him a Mage instead.

Any tips on what I must do to keep my kingdom alive? The Kingdom difficulty is set to Normal for my run through, so I'm hoping that I can make the occasional silly mistake and not lose my kingdom in the process.

   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




I'd advise Kingmaker first. Wrath has a lot more systems bolted on top. And on the sides. And diagonally.

----
I hate the Kingdom management aspect- it gets in the way. There are quite a few timers that you have to juggle, which makes things worse. The difficulty of it is toned down, happily - it was very easy to enter a death spiral on the kingdom side.

Main tip is save often, especially when starting long training projects for your advisors or expansion. You can't stop once you start the two week cycle and this can screw you if major events pop up.
---

Class is tricky. It depends on playstyle, build and how much system mastery you have or want to have. (There are classes that aren't represented by NPCs, if not taking someone else's role is appealing)

Switching from fighter to cleric at level 5 (or beyond) is... really bad. Multiclassing is one of those things that needs to be planned with system mastery in mind.

I can go into specifics (and on the NPCs, who trickle in over time, which is annoying), but yeah. Its a lot.

And yes, Amiri is an issue, especially early on. She has a lot gear needed to be functional.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/06 22:00:52


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in gb
Storm Trooper with Maglight





Regarding kingdom management, it seems to be a mechanic that players either hate or dislike, haven’t come across anyone who actually likes it yet. Some have even suggested sticking that on auto and be done with it. I’ll stick with it for now, just hope I don’t get a Game Over as a result.

Not really sure what you mean by system mastery (I guess that means I don’t have it). I’ll take your advice about not multi classing my main character, was just an idea. These days I tend to play CRPGs as a pure fighter anyway. I always have my eye on a Cleric though, since my Baldur’s Gate trilogy character was a pure Cleric (not multi classed or dual classed).
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




El Torro wrote:
Regarding kingdom management, it seems to be a mechanic that players either hate or dislike, haven’t come across anyone who actually likes it yet. Some have even suggested sticking that on auto and be done with it. I’ll stick with it for now, just hope I don’t get a Game Over as a result.

Unfortunately with auto, you miss out on a few things, particularly crafting people in the villages who give you random items every couple months. Some are really good. Auto basically spoils a few things- and in places used to break the story, not sure if that's still true (but with Owlcat, it would not surprise me).

Not really sure what you mean by system mastery (I guess that means I don’t have it). I’ll take your advice about not multi classing my main character, was just an idea. These days I tend to play CRPGs as a pure fighter anyway. I always have my eye on a Cleric though, since my Baldur’s Gate trilogy character was a pure Cleric (not multi classed or dual classed).

Mastery of the game system mechanics- how to avoid the trap choices in the pathfinder rules (some of which are left over from 3rd edition D&D, and yes, according to the designers were intentional, and some of which were added by the paizo devs) and building optimized characters. It isn't strictly necessary, but there are really bad choices that can build on themselves as you get higher in level.

The problem with multiclassing spellcasters is you simply lose too much- higher level spells, caster levels, and your stats probably won't be good for spell DCs. It gets to be a mess real quick.
For non-spellcasters it isn't as bad, especially with the really liberal adaption Kingmaker (and wrath) use for sneak attack. Its really exploitable and easy compared to tabletop (you just have to have another character engaged with the target, rather than flanking, and ranged attackers don't need to be hidden if the target is in melee).

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/02/07 00:40:49


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in de
Huge Bone Giant






I'm currently playing with a chaotic good fighter (with longsword and heavy shield) and I'm pretty happy with the choice. I'm traditionally not into the murder hobo aspect of RPGs, but Kingmaker repeatedly leans very hard into that aspect. Having someone with high base attack bonus, various damage bonuses and good tankiness comes in very handy in my opinion. So much so that I'm not sure how some encounters are supposed to be overcome with less combat oriented characters like a rogue, or some weedy nightgown. I also suspect that enemy AI has some situational target priority on either weak characters and the main character, and I don't think having both combined in one character will make for a fun game experience.

This is on top of having Valerie, mind. Valerie is great as a tank and with the right feat selection she's decent at whacking people, too. I'm quite happy to have both her and my main character share much the same strengths. As for Amiri, I like having her around for the hitting power (bad dice rolls aside, which I get way too often) but as a barbarian you don't want to go beyond medium armor so as not to lose mobility, and that makes her prone to taking damage. High health can only do so much to help and you really benefit from loading her up to increase her armor class via Dex and deflection bonuses, as well as natural armor. Barbarians get and can select further, stacking damage reduction over time, which makes her a little less frustrating at higher levels. This is colored by my like of mobility which helps engaging back line supporters. Selecting the heavy armor proficiency feat and giving her a full plate might just push her AC high enough to get through encounters better. I've never tried that myself, mostly because my other two full plate characters have shields on top of that, so Amiri is never going to reach their AC. Still, if I played the game again I might give that a try as it seems viable.

As Voss said, multi-classing spellcasters isn't something you should do casually. The power of a spellcaster is in getting the most out of the class's spells, both by getting higher level ones and raising the difficulty level for enemies to resist, and compromising that isn't something to be done without weighing the benefits. On clerics specifically, on the one hand clerics are pretty handy in the game, on the other hand so much so apparently that you get a lot of cleric and cleric adjacent NPCs to choose from. It's a niche filled pretty well and you gain little extra from doubling up with your main character, in my opinion. It does of course depend on how you want to compose your party. Obviously if your main character is the cleric that can handle buffs and healing you have a slot free for something else. Though a multi-classed cleric doesn't seem like a good fit for that.

Kingdom management. Technically I like kingdom management. There are two aspects to it that I find pretty dubious, though. First, ticking timers telling you to progress the main quest or it's game over. I've found the timers to be reasonable enough to solve the related quests and avert disaster, but found that between the kingdom's impending demise and the projects that require your personal presence, I don't have time to upgrade the kingdom properly, much less to explore the map, explore side locations and get some XP on the side to tackle the main quest maybe one level higher than I ended up doing. That made the difficulty of the murder hobo slogs the main quest entails a bit frustrating. Second, you do get a bit of a death spiral feeling because you can't be in two places at once and leveling up your kingdom and advisors takes a pretty long time. Time that you are rarely afforded. And while your game progresses, the difficulty level of problems increases from the moderate DC around 20 you get in the beginning to a rather bogus 30 to 35. Bogus because to solve those problems without too many setbacks, you need to level up your advisors (which takes time), level up your kingdom stats via expansion (which costs money, which takes time), and juggle catastrophic events connected to the main quest (which don't leave you much time). My kingdom has yet to fail, but it always feels like I have too little of everything and the kingdom is constantly on fire because the increase in difficulty tends to outpace your ability to keep up. Worse still, in some cases failure to deal with problems comes with a heavy cost and makes dealing with similar problems in the future even harder. It feels a bit like a survival sim where you have to play like a robot and not deviate from the ideal build order or else it's game over. I think it's a bit overdone, especially since the appeal of the Kingmaker campaign over a classic adventure path should be that you set up a functional kingdom. There's appeal to a bit of struggle in establishing your kingdom, but I think what the developers call normal difficulty is pretty idiotic for a first time player who has to learn kingdom management on the fly.

Though I haven't tried myself and don't know the exact changes, if you struggle too much I think you should dial back kingdom management difficulty instead of skipping straight to auto management. It's a unique and fun aspect (at least ideally) of the campaign and the game is poorer for skipping it entirely, in my opinion. Plus as mentioned you get cool stuff from your craftsmen. If you lose that in auto mode, I'd say you're missing out.

Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone? 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




Barbarians get and can select further, stacking damage reduction over time, which makes her a little less frustrating at higher levels.
It scales poorly compared to enemy damage, however. Not as badly as tabletop, since in Kingmaker and Wrath different sources of DR stack (and they shouldn't, but afaik they never patched that), but its still not great.

Amiri's biggest problem is she's a Paizo Iconic Character, and Owlcat had to use her as is. Their own characters had more (but narrow) optimization or just flat out more stat points. Amiri is, iirc, a 20 point buy character and several of the NPCs hover around 30 (though some, like Valerie, have pretty wasted points).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/02/07 14:35:17


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in de
Huge Bone Giant






It's not great against high powered attacks, but I appreciate it against splash damage and the odd mook getting a lucky(ish) hit. With lower armor one of her problems for me is getting worn down over time. Against boss level fighters it pretty much doesn't matter how much armor or damage reduction she has, so I'm happy for ever hit point she has left in case she gets targeted. I say that playing a lower combat difficulty, though. RNG in the game is crap and I couldn't stand fights if they used unmodified rules with dice rolls so heavily weighted against me. As a side effect my characters get more use out of low DR.

But yeah, being generated with 20 points isn't great in the context of the game.

Nehekhara lives! Sort of!
Why is the rum always gone? 
   
Made in se
Willing Inquisitorial Excruciator






El Torro wrote:
Regarding kingdom management, it seems to be a mechanic that players either hate or dislike, haven’t come across anyone who actually likes it yet. Some have even suggested sticking that on auto and be done with it. I’ll stick with it for now, just hope I don’t get a Game Over as a result.

Not really sure what you mean by system mastery (I guess that means I don’t have it). I’ll take your advice about not multi classing my main character, was just an idea. These days I tend to play CRPGs as a pure fighter anyway. I always have my eye on a Cleric though, since my Baldur’s Gate trilogy character was a pure Cleric (not multi classed or dual classed).


I actually love the kingdom management. But then again I’m a sucker for city management games and this definitely fits that bill. Sometimes I get bored with the dungeon crawling and just want to go back to the kingdom management haha.

Also made a multiclass Druid/barbarian as my first (and only) character. Big mistake. My idea was to combine rage with animal forms. Turns out I’ve fallen behind my party quite a bit. It was pretty strong at first but then got weaker and weaker. At least I can beat any and all encounters through enough planning. Using summons and weird OP spells like… what’s it called. Mud pool? The one that makes everyone fall. Also my pet is pretty strong.

I’m very close to the end of the game and I’ve played it on and off for years. Progressing the story a little bit each time. I think I’m on the second to last chapter, the one involving King Irovetti. I actually got two very surprising scenes that apparently only play if you’re on track to unlocking the secret lover. No spoilers but that was a surprise.

Anyway I really like this game. I will not replay it once I’ve finished it and I really spend a lot of time messing around with my kingdom. Also going to go into wrath of the righteous once I’m done. I’m building a kingdom full of kobolts, goblins and barbarians. What more could one ask for? haha.

Edit: Also quick question, which version of wrath of the righteous should one get? There seems to be plenty floating around.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2023/02/09 17:32:43


His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary. 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




Edit: Also quick question, which version of wrath of the righteous should one get? There seems to be plenty floating around.


Um? There shouldn't be.

The 'enhanced edition' is just the current version of the base game (same as kingmaker is currently sold as the enhanced edition). Various bugfixes and Quality of Life improvements that everyone (on PC) got. It was essentially the announcement that the base game was actually complete and relatively bug free.

Steam has a 'mythic edition' but its just a bundle of the game, the commander pack (soundtrack, a couple trivial in-game items, mostly junk, don't buy) and DLC season pass 1.

Season Pass 2 is for sale, but the first piece doesn't come out for another month.


------
Season Pass 1 was... mostly junk. There's
1 -a side story which... is basically just high level nonsense that doesn't mean anything,

2- a short story adventure with an unrelated low level party that tries to force stealth & puzzle gameplay into an engine where it doesn't really work.

3- and a roguelite adventure that can be played independently or in the main campaign (much like the dungeon in kingmaker).

I never got around to the roguelite, but wasn't keen on the version in kingmaker. The rest of DLC 1 was, imo, kinda trash.

-----
Season pass 2 starts with a new class, but the Shifter was the absolute _worst_ class Paizo ever developed. Its a monk/bard but with all the good bits taken out. Just unarmored defense, level based damage claw attack and a strictly worse version of wild shape. (I hate these type of 'innate progression' classes, at low to mid level they're strictly inferior to just going to a store and buying normal equipment).

It looks like owlcat is going all out an archetypes that are vastly superior to the base class though, so it might be worth something. But sometimes their rules understanding just fails them- definitely don't buy until it gets thoroughly reviewed.

-----

I'd just buy the base game, but I'd wait - its well into steam sale territory and the next steam sale is about week after the next bit of DLC (march 7), which _will_ absolutely cause major bugs that will take a couple weeks to fix.
-----
tl;dr- wait until the next steam sale to buy the base game. Don't get any of the extras, as they aren't worth it.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2023/02/10 02:39:40


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in se
Willing Inquisitorial Excruciator






Thank you @Voss. Very informative.

His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary. 
   
 
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