Pathfinder: Freedom to Botch Your Character Sheet | Castle Super Beast Clips

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@A_D_Art

[@AdamTheHedgehog]

Madalore's description of Pathfinder is the best one: Pathfinder is Protestant D&D

[@joedatius]

very accurate, both of them will argue which one is better but people outside of them assume they're just the same thing.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

And OSR is Orthodox D&D

[@Terra_Incognita115]

Or maybe Antipope DnD

[@marreco6347]

Can't wait for branch davidians' DnD.

[@kmoney890]

I remember I thought Valerie was like the most normal of the party members until she went on a three page long rant about how literally all art is bad and a waste of time

[@maggitPL]

Well, can you blame her with what she experienced?

[@postapocalypse0763]

How about her saying slavery is fine because it's the law?

[@Canadish]

That isn't all that weird. She was traumatised by a bunch of people that worshipped art.

[@citizencrimson201]

​@@Canadish Yeah. Traumatized by highest living standarts, unlike those lucky slaves. Spoiled brat who suffers because life was too good but not in all ways she desired and she had to deal with some mildly annoying people while living the life of elite.

[@Canadish]

@@citizencrimson201 Hey, being a Liberal arts student is the hardest possible thing imaginable, she had to work like, 3 while hours a day and be nice to people she didn't think were hot! That's demanding stuff right there, unlike the easy peasy life of those dirt farmers!

[@fillosof66689]

28:20 One of Disco Elysium's main achievements was proving that a video game can be such a fun-loving DM for its player and make the suboptimal characters interesting.

[@solomon9655]

Disco Elysium is a normal tabletop game but the DM is having way too much fun

[@Legacy0901]

That was one of the big things that made me fall in love with the game. Usually in video game rpgs making a suboptimal character means that you're gimped in combat or you get locked out of binary skill checks, I loved how DE managed to work around that

[@bloodyidit4506]

Legit I sometimes take over someone's character's internal thoughts when they fail a roll lol

[@JasoTheRed48F2]

Pat calling the Kingmaker module old aged me by three decades.

[@hurricane15664]

That's funny, it should only be adding 2

[@Canadish]

Kingmaker is now so old that it's near equivalent to talking about 'those old 80's' models back in the 00's. Remember how long ago the 80's seemed back then? Yeah, it's been 20 years now, same distance.

[@AnarchicArachnid]

@@Canadish "Those old batman cartoons from the 90s" *checks and see its been 30 years since it premiered* *turns to dust*

[@mazaariandrezzi4191]

It's old, and it remains like my favorite AP that Paizo every put out. So much replayability.

[@megamike15]

i keep forgetting the modules these games are based on are from like 2013.

[@pathfindersavant3988]

Pat at the beginning describing that Ivory Tower school of ttrpg design and Woolie looking absolutely incredulous at the description just fills me with something. Congrats Woolie, you now know what we've been dealing with ever since 3.5e D&D dropped.

[@ravensflockmate]

They stopped doing it after 3.5 though

[@ravensflockmate]

Unless you just mean pathfinder

[@pathfindersavant3988]

@@ravensflockmate Pathfinder 1e is essentially 3.75, same basic mechanics and systems, with just a few changes and minor streamlining but refusing ti actually improve on the system in any meaningful way. And 5e, while nowhere near as awful as 3.5/Pathfinder still has some traits and features doctored in from those older days of design. And then you have Pathfinder 2e, which swung way too hard in the opposite direction and ended up ruining half of the fun stuff from PF1e, like Alchemists. And remember, its not like 3.5 and PF were passing parts of game design. Those two systems existed for over two decades and informed a lot of overall game design policies and trends for the entire duration of the d20 Open Source era.

[@Revan058]

@@pathfindersavant3988 3.PF is what we call it, generally, in the circles I roll in.

[@oxybe]

@@ravensflockmate It does explain the beastmaster ranger in 5e tho.

[@thejackofalbatrosses3099]

"The bad choices should feel bad" quotes was actually probably from Monte Cook from working on DnD 3, not Pathfinder by Paizo, when he wrote an article about Ivory Tower Game Design. Paizo just continued in that trend.

[@datonkallandor8687]

Luckily Paizo fixed all that shit in PF2. PF2 is probably the best designed ttrpg on the market. If Owlcat keeps making PF1 games they're stupid.

[@Canadish]

@@datonkallandor8687 Pffffft. Good joke.

[@Haitch_Kay]

@@datonkallandor8687 PF2 is literally just DnD 5E but shitty

[@Revan058]

No, I'm pretty sure it's the human shitsmear supreme, SKR, Sean K Reynolds. God, that pissbaby did so much damage.

[@amadhollow635]

@@Haitch_Kay dnd5e is just dnd5e but shitty

[@TheAtlasReview]

The quickest way to say it is: if you're really roleplaying a character, their weaknesses and flaws can be just as interesting as their strengths. Video game RPGs too rarely take advantage of those opportunities.

[@111cvb111]

Part of that is how Fallout's SPECIAL system is supposed to work, if your character is REALLY good in one stat, he has to be below average in another stat. Then ya know, Fallout 4 happened and Bethesda shat all over that.

[@BonnieBoestar]

Pretty sure one of the only mainstream examples of this is having Low INT giving you a bunch of funny (and sometimes helpful) dialogue choices in Fallout

[@entertherussian6457]

@@111cvb111 it never worked in practice, for example the 1 charisma speech 100 builds of NV, SPECIAL needed the major overhaul of 4

[@acceptablecasualty5319]

@@entertherussian6457 by invalidating the entire concept?

[@quantras2673]

@@111cvb111 eh, it only really did that for Intelligence. In 1 and 2 it drastically changed some things because your character acted mentally challenged with completely different dialogue, while in New Vegas you just sometimes act like a brainlet. Such as Cannibal Johnson talking about the Grim Reaper coming for him soon and you ask "What do you owe this reaper guy?"

[@adams3627]

My favorite part of Kingmaker thus far has been the moment when I convinced the rival party's cleric to abandon his asshole leader and join me, and on the first round of combat he got two critical crossbow hits to the face and died instantly.

[@kratosaurion9041]

I remember going into the first Fallout blind and making a giant idiot with 10 strength, breezing through the game like nothing. Going into Fallout 2, I made a super nerd who had 1 strength and realized it was literally impossible to play the game as my hit chance with every weapon was negative and every enemy outside of rats were one shotting me. AND I LOVED IT.

[@rossman8919]

fun fact you can beat fallout 1 in under 20 minutes

[@starstudy8752]

There is something beautiful about playing a game always hanging onto that magic pixel and knowing any hit is death.

[@bunniusmaximus8184]

Glad Pat has been enjoying Kingmaker. Hope he has a fun time with Wrath of the Righteous in 1-2 years once all the DLC comes out and all the bugs are exterminated.

[@iddyvanzun1]

Can't wait, my first playthrough was about 120 hours with a legend build. I'm gonna go back to it once all the dlc's are out.

[@bunniusmaximus8184]

@@iddyvanzun1 I'm playing an Azata sorceror build right now for my first playthrough. A little over 30 hours in on Act 3 currently.

[@mikaelm5367]

All the bugs, unless you're the swarm...

[@Maioly]

@@iddyvanzun1 I still need to finish it myself when it came the time to pick the legend/gold dragon/late game mythic path I got paralized with choices (specially since I did not want to say goodbye to aivu, the azata exclusive companion/pet) so I just started the game over again, and am doing the crazy thing of 2 (technically three) simultaneous playthroughs aiming for specific mythic paths... at this rate I will only finish when the DLC comes out XD

[@dannydumlet]

it was my GOTY

[@MrGeremyTibbles]

In Traveller you can die during character creation, but most people just go into crippling medical debt.

[@RipOffProductionsLLC]

to be fair, the character creation death thing hasn't been a thing in multiple editions now...

[@VileVamp]

@@RipOffProductionsLLC Can your head still explode if you try to be a psychic in char creation?

[@ArcturusMinsk]

There should absolutely be bad options in any game, otherwise how am i supposed to humiliate you by kicking your ass with Dan Hibiki?

[@Maioly]

Its why I hate that Ratlings were out voted in wrath of the righteous... wanted to play (obviously on low difficulty) as a puny weak ratling paladin wanabe, sending all the demons running while barely able to swing a sword around.

[@luan.galaxy]

@@Maioly I misread that as Gatlings

[@punishedbrak4255]

@@luan.galaxy You're (not) Alone

[@sphealingit222]

I feel like he left out the best selling point, that you can join a polycule with a chaotic evil half orc dude and a chaotic good half elf lady. This game rules.

[@RenegadeSparks]

I do find it hilarious how they are absolute polar opposites down to even how useful they are, Octavia going arcane trickster is an absolute goddess of death, and a really good trapper, and using Regongar makes you feel all the pain eldritch scion magi feel playing that archetype, but with the addition of the moron being strength based with terrible dex for a class that can't wear heavy armor until a level mithral full plate is an option (assuming you're one of the rare non-kensai/bladebound magi) and having 12 con on top of that

[@josephbroseph3003]

I like the way Divinity: Original Sin 2 handles “pre-buffing” and resting at least on console where because a controller is a slower way of playing a CRPG, you can’t really pre buff with more than 2 spells. Pre summoning is more worth pre buffing in my opinion. I also really like that instead of having spells limited to a few uses per day before resting again they just have the spells on a cooldown since the combat is turn based anyways. Its not a pure adaptation of table top gaming, but i like the ease of use it has.

[@dannydumlet]

I don't like that the game is obsessed with making fights feel like stepping on legos

[@joedatius]

@@dannydumlet thats fair but there is pretty much always a way to not have to deal with that stuff. but even though i love Divinity 2 i can agree that sometimes its system makes things annoying in certain fights.

[@dannydumlet]

@@joedatius it turns a majority of mid to late game fights into "wait hold up? Gotta change the floor to not or less hurty. Like still better than stuff in Fire Emblem Echoes where you just have to tank it

[@joedatius]

@@dannydumlet thats true but its just as easy to negate that stuff or turn it into your favor, i mean the most fun stuff to do in the game is just trying out weird tactics and builds and creating your own way of doing something. its like a playground of using and abusing the mechanics or how the game rewards and allows you to just break it entirely is why its so popular. its something most CRPGs dont have is all that kind of world interactivity.

[@CaptainSexay]

this is a great episode of "pat tells story while woolie tries to make his eyebrows go as narrow as possible"

[@TomDwarfThrower]

As someone who has played pathfinder 1e A LOT, but not anything in the CRPG space using the system, there are 2 problems: 1: The system itself gives NUMEROUS options to tweak and specialize your character, but many are not complimentary or are sometimes worse than the default options. If you go off the beaten path, read a guide. 2: A (Decent) DM will curtail the experience to your character. You'll find magic weapons that your character can use, you won't deal with enemies that are always immune to your stuff, etc.

[@dannydumlet]

also a DM can look at their roll and be like "Hmmm my demon didn't just crit the cleric 3 times actually." not speaking from experience or anything

[@ukyoize]

You call it "cheating", I call it "homebrew".

[@NoNoNah306]

As someone who played Pathfinder tabletop for 4 or 5 years and watched my boyfriend play the CRPGs over his shoulder, it's fun to see the reaction other people have to how complicated it is when we were sitting there wishing our favourite ultra niche options were implemented too. Who wouldn't want to be a Siege Mage with a floating automatic catapult following them around? Get on that devs. Pathfinder did have the problem of dummy options, but for me the joy of the system wasn't in knowing not to take them, it was in using the endless sea of options to find ways to make it work anyway, it felt creative and like you were exploring some actual laws of magic and martial arts. Sure the Aldori Duelling Sword options are underpowered, but if you learn Crane Style kung-fu as well you actually can make the ultimate 1 on 1 specialised duellist. It was an acquired taste and probably got in the way of actually RPing, but it was fun.

[@Akaritomi]

Sending in an ultimate 1 on 1 Duelist. Then the 4 trolls attacking the tank decide to change target. Phase through the tank like ghosts. Then proceed to bum rush the Duelist or any squishy that was too close at the time. One thing I liked more in Pillars was that making a wall of tanks actually kept the back safe. The enemy couldn't magically walk through the tank like she wasn't there.

[@omegacloud99]

Im using the premaid builds and im still having fun on normal. I'm so glad there's that option so i dont have to waste hours preplanning my character.

[@maggitPL]

While true, exploring new options and builds is also fun. I'm no min-maxer by any means, I don't do crazy multiclassing stuff because I like my characters somewhat efficient but 'clean' and lore friendly. I recommend the roguelike mode for learning how to optimize builds.

[@omegacloud99]

@@maggitPL yeah while I agree this is also the literal first time i ever play pathfinder and unlike Pat I have never played D&D so all the stats are definitely extremely confusing for me, myabe i'll do something else when im more experienced but for my first time this is just fine for my enjoyment.

[@Canadish]

@@omegacloud99 Absolutely correct course for a first timer. One of the DLCs is a roguelike mega dungeon, which really should be in the base game because its amazing for testing build ideas due to faster leveling and lower stakes. Try that if you wanna push the boat out and experiment a bit, the creation system is a blast once you are confident with builds - it is THE most extensive there has ever been.

[@Raltin1]

Really glad to hear King Maker and Wrath getting love. those games are super great. Pat's warning is a good one be ready to turn a corner and get fucked up by some random legendary creature. like imagine that scene of Naruto opening the door and Kisame and Itatchi are there but Jirya aint comin to save ya ass.

[@CappuccinoSquid]

That quote on "there need to be bad choices for the good choices to matter" is psychotic to me, because as a game designer you can try to make every choice good and viable, and a meta will _still_ emerge once playtesting has explored and pushed the ideas to their limits, and it's such a divorced, all crunch no fluff way of looking at RPGs that completely sidesteps the question of "what fantasies do we want to fulfill, and what tools can we give the players to achieve them?"; the power fantasy of a bruiser-type who wants to get into big meaty brawls in melee is very different from the power fantasy of a diplomatic-type who can disarm and embolden with their words alone, and even within those two examples there are tons of subtype fantasies to realize them with e.g. in D&D5e a Totem Barbarian feels very different from an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, even though they both smash face very effectively, and even though Great Weapon Master is a fantastic feat to take on either class it's not a requirement, there are plenty of other ways to build either and still be effective.

[@joedatius]

yeah its really fucking stupid honestly. Pathfinder has a lot of great ideas and mechanics but there is a reason why alot of people just steal things from pathfinder and just homebrew them into 5E. the last thing i want to think about when making a character is if they're gonna be viable or if i should look up a build online to optimize them. ironically making your character creation more in depth and complex leads to them being more generic and then you're just making gimmick builds and it all can really take away from actually roleplaying them since you spent more time on stats then who the fuck you're actually playing's personality.

[@note4note804]

The hardest thing to consider regarding all of Pathfinder's items/builds/archetypes/etc. is that those are not just for the players, but for the DM. Half of these things come into being because they are extremely thematic for the setting the adventure is in, or because an NPC/villain/piece of lore makes the options exist, not because they're constantly trying to make balanced options for player characters.

[@PageofLegend]

I really do appreciate games that let you adjust different aspects of the difficulty independently. That, and of course, letting you change it DURING the game. I hate it when you are "locked in" to the difficulty you picked at the start of your game.

[@zachh2922]

My favourite encounter in kingmaker was when I was just walking on the road that I always did and then got ambushed by bandits. They they proceeded to get ambushed by wind elementals with my party caught in the middle. Thankfully the game autosaved right when I started the encounter since I hadn't saved in about an hour so that was fun. After 20 mins of watching the wind spinning thing I decided that was enough for the night and reloaded the ealrier save the next day. Good times

[@grandobsidian]

The only mod i cared about in kingmaker (which also got incorporated into WotR) was respeccing. Ive lost enough Pathfinder characters on paper to know whats bad, even with GMs that dont know how to keep parties stacking every buff in the world but being able to finally make some weird ass build that I put down almost a decade ago and never had the chance to play in a campaign and just let it live or die and go back to the drawing board is amazing to me.

[@Kezzeract]

This is one of the reasons I loved Dragon Age: Origins. Its character progression is very simple, but just enough that you still feel like you're becoming more powerful as you level.

[@Legacy0901]

I remember one of my first characters was an archer, and I fucking hated how that skill tree had so much garbage in it. Iirc every single mage spell looked amazing, but you only got a good archer skill once every four levels or so lol

[@adamriley9241]

High dex Rouge with max evasion? You won't deal damage because you'll be busy dodging. I loved that...

[@gato23]

@@adamriley9241 or a High Cunning Rouge which basically means you always Crit. especially in II and Inquisition.

[@megamike15]

i'm glad this new era of crpgs gives me options. you got the path finder games for the hardcode people that want to suffer and everyone else can enjoy larian's games and have fun.

[@joedatius]

we live in good times finally. no longer do we have to settle for the scraps of the barren corpse of old bioware

[@azarisLP]

Love hearing from someone who appreciated Kingmaker's design and doesn't just mindlessly complain about time limits and encounter design.

[@secretsofmyenigma]

Pathfinder 1 Rules set is D&D 3.5 with fan fixes. And It's fantastic.

[@Maioly]

29:55 you can even turn into a swarm-that-walks! but no one in your party... or everywhere really... likes you when you do that.

[@kurowasanabe]

I really wish I could play more than an hour of Pathinfder. The games look cool but as soon as I have to level up my party and add skillpoints and attribute points to my entire party I just shut down. It's probably a minmaxer's wet dream but it's just too much for my little Timmy brain.

[@maggitPL]

It really helps if you have prior experience with the 3rd edition of D&D and games like Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2, Temple of Elemental Evil or Icewind Dale 2. All of them use a variation of the system Pathfinder uses, NWN is not a looker but it might ease you in into the system.

[@ManiacYKT]

Play on easy. No, really that's all you have to do.

[@Nerevar5me]

That’s how I felt with pillars of eternity

[@Canadish]

Literally has an autolevel feature for timmy brains.

[@GuiltyKit]

It just depends on your background. For me that's crack cocaine.

[@jjrambles683]

27:49 In the podcast DiceFunk, one of the players rolled a character with a 3 intelligence and they just decided to go with it and it was great

[@adams3627]

That sort of thing is why people love the low-intelligence dialogue changes in Fallout and Outer Worlds. It's not so much that it's funny, it's that it's a gesture from the game that says "what you picked matters, more than just controlling what kind of weapon you'll be using to kill enemies for the next 50 hours" It's the kind of thing real GMs do all the time, when a player makes an obviously strange character choice, or plays a rare class or race, they react in a way that video games usually just... don't. In Mass Effect, Shepard is Shepard, no matter which class you picked. They even got rid of the dialogue skills so you couldn't even decide "my Shepard is a people person/scary mofo" as opposed to just a generically good leader. I popped off in the DLCs for 3, when they finally started working some of that class reactivity back in. Getting to actually put your engineering skills to use on Terminus, fighting the Shepard clone in a biotic battle, those are cool moments that pay off something YOU picked, they let you feel just a little bit more special.

[@TheMarg0r]

Pat, Kotor is LITERALLY DnD 3rd edition. It's basically Neverwinter Nights in Star Wars with a different camera angle. It's CRPG as shit.

[@majnic2]

As an almost entirely unrelated aside, if anyone else is bored as hell of the vancian casting system in DnD likes, I would strongly reccomend checking out Spheres of Power. It essentially allows more thematic casters, rather than the hodgepodge of nonsense normal casters are. If this interests you, there is a lovely wiki that should pop up as the first or second result when searching Spheres of Power, in both Pathfinder and 5e flavors.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

I love Spheres of Power, Arcane Weaponer is my favorite version of the Magus my second favorite is Owlcats Version of the Eldritch Scion

[@arthurgomes5188]

The face that Woolie made when Pat started explaining why the Pathfinder creators put bad options in the character creator is the face of someone who just heard *THE SWEATIEST* explanation for something that he has ever heard. I know that because i did the exact same face when i started hearing that explanation.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

I remember Monty Cook getting no end of shit when he suggested that to the point that the cuntwad behind 4E covertly called him a sexist over it. By now he's walked back his position on "Ivory Tower" Game Design

[@Canadish]

@@cyberninjazero5659 "It's sexist design because the maths is hard!" Oh fuck me, I'd forgotten that gem. The feminism Horse-shoe strikes again.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@Canadish fun fact I originally said "d1k head" instead of cuntwad but KZbin gave me one of those "yeah you can post this but we'll just shadowban and delete it" warnings

[@harlannguyen4048]

Timestamp?

[@arthurgomes5188]

@@harlannguyen4048 Around 1:24

[@arnoldoaad]

I never heard of this game before and now I want to play it

[@Canadish]

Mate, it is great. Get Kingmaker and play that while Wrath gets its DLC and patches, because it does take a while for them to get these things polished due to the size. Kingmaker is the true successor to BG, more than BG3 or Pillars.

[@Maioly]

Do it both of them just make sure your first playthrough is on easy, or that you take the time to mess around with the rather in dept difficulty options there is no shame in adjusting so it matches how you feel (its basically what a decent DM would do, to accomodate difficulties the players are having and such)

[@theawkwardpotato264]

Pathfinder is 3.5 for people who want a higher floor but lower ceiling. The absolute heights of stupidity of power in 3.5 are absurd and pierce the heavens. Pathfinder gets real close, but unless you add on Mythic, you kinda just poke into the heavens. Not to say there aren't some busted combinations out there but those are one use cases while 3.5 was littered with them.

[@zachfarrellEL]

As someone who loves both systems but prefers 3.5, that's the best description of Pathfinder I've ever heard.

[@ShepherdShang]

Dude What?! Wrath of the Righteous actually uses the freaking Mythic system?! For anyone who doesn't know, the Mythic system was a SUPER optional system for Pathfinder 1.0 that made your characters who are doing all this legendary stuff, actually feel like they're legendary characters with abilities that were better than just incremental improvements. But almost no one used it.

[@UltraValican]

The Pathfinder Videogames are basically their own animal in terms of rule/implementation. But Wrath of the Righeotus's(CRPG) mythic system is basically mythic in name only. There's very little overlap.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

I wouldn't say it uses the system more that it's inspired by it to make a Divine/Outsider Power system

[@Alice-May]

It used a different system that wasn't as horrendously unbalanced where some mythic feats were only slightly better than normal versions and others were game breakers.

[@NoNoNah306]

It is a heavily modified version of mythic. Tragically they don't include that power where other people can take levels in being a Cleric of You and get spells from it.

[@autumnlotus6250]

Yes. Its based off thr adventure path that playtested the mythic system

[@chesterstevens8870]

Our group recently had a session zero for an upcoming Pathfinder campaign. One of th guys at our table is a true ride-or-die fanatic for DnD, PF's character creation system made him so flustered that he almost had an honest, tableflip nerd meltdown moment. He literally had to come back the next day and get the shop owner of where we run our sessions to come and run his numbers through an algorithmic auto-generator. Really speaks to Wizard's target demo, that its those kinds of players they attract.

[@maggitPL]

Akshully, Pat. Pathfinder is what if we took 3RD Edition D&D and min-max the fuck out of it. Literally. It uses 3RD edition rules. 2:20 You're missing one point. Pathfinder is a PnP RPG. In no PnP RPG would you fight as many monsters and have as many opportunities to die as in a videogame. Let's not forget that you can bullshit your way out of any bad roll with a live GM as opposed to an indifferent game run by stat rolls. That's why the stats are "lowered" or normal. The real kicker is that a lot of the monsters are actually still buffed as opposed to the the monsters in the core rule books. That's because a lot of module players found that many encounters in the books were too easy.

[@fillosof66689]

I'm currently playing through Wrath of the Righteous on Hard and almost every time I look at the major enemy NPC's stat sheet I am very close to having an aneurysm. I have no idea how is the player supposed to handle the Ironman mode on any difficulty above normal, because at a certain point the sheer stat disparity leaves no room for your party to have a bad roll streak and survive.

[@papadoug4681]

Yep the video game assumes the peeps playing are gonna cheese save scum and minmax the fuck out of it. So in order to give you difficulty it's gonna MAKE you save scum. I personally don't like it myself. I say that as a guy that primarily dm's pathfinder 1e tabletop games on weekends.

[@maggitPL]

@@papadoug4681 Yeah, I remember my brother having a fit when he saw goblins with 30+ dex.

[@papadoug4681]

@@maggitPL or the level 5 party running into the level 15 barbarian lycanthrope with a +29 to hit before rage lmao

[@maggitPL]

@@fillosof66689 MONK DIPS are apparently the answer.

[@starwars90001]

Stuff like this is why I'm so amazed that Fallout 3 and New Vegas is able to fit almost any character that the player comes with. Almost ever skill is useful n some matter so you never feel like you created bad character it just feels like you need to find the other ways to progess. Fallout did a favor taking from GRPG.

[@xsoultillerx]

and then i remember my brother's friend who struggled in FO3 with this really jank "cripple people with darts and then run up and punch them" because 90% of enemies have guns.

[@WTFisTingispingis]

@@xsoultillerx Trying to be Naked Snake in that game is pain

[@Staringathesun]

These Pathfinder CRPGs have a tip in the loading screens that says, "When in doubt, save." And I hate that I have to quicksave every five minutes because I don't know when the game is just going wreck me because I didn't buff myself to hell and back.

[@dragonslaya16]

Play like a real man and never ever save

[@Trynt33]

It's just like Sierra games! Save early, save often. Back when games wrecked you and laughed because they already had your money

[@SirRule]

Kingmaker does do this insane thing though of having 100% of side quests be REQUIRED to get a good ending.

[@punishedbrak4255]

Screams in agony of FF10-2

[@ArcturusMinsk]

I went from Pathfinder Wrath to Solasta and I went ok, what's the spreadsheet for min maxing your character? Answer turns out to be, pick character, pick sub class and you're done.

[@Maioly]

32:50 wrath of the righteous too and I am damn proud of being a backer for it one of the very few things I ever backed alongside bloodstained.

[@disk3001]

I am glad Pat understands the suffering of the Owlcat Pathfinder games because he didn't seem to like Wrath of the righteous during his initial stream(which is a better game than kingmaker) Kingmaker is THE ass backwards cRPG that doesn't give a shit about being user friendly in any shape or form, which is a weird way of designing games in the modern age, but old school cRPG suffer a lot from this. Like the amount of quality of life mechanics in Wrath in astonishing, but guess what? That game is STILL super annoying and ass backwards in terms of design half the time, it's just easier since the new Mythic Path system make it so your character gets to be very broken in the mid game so half of your bad decision that you made don't really matter. I really hope that Owlcat as a developer will continue to grow and that by their next cRPG they would figure out how to strike a balance between the crazy minmax hardcore player(such as myself) and people who just want to enjoy an old school cRPG. I think Wrath comes close but is still very weird in a lot of departments, it's my Game Of The Year 2021, but man does it have a lot of problems. Glad to know that Pat likes it

[@theessenceofawesome1]

The balance is there. It's the difficulty system. People just don't understand that they are really, exceptionally bad at pathfinder and not that the game itself is super imbalanced. All of the people complaining about difficulty are either dipshits who complain about cool optional encounters or people who should have been playing on the lowest difficulty option with the game knowledge they have. I cruised through that game with a flavourful rp necromancer build on core difficulty, despite knowing how much harder I could have broken or min-maxed it because of how generally weak necromancy is in that game.

[@Maioly]

@@theessenceofawesome1 This, every time I recommend the game I always make sure to mention tweaking difficulty to their liking as I pointed out in another comment, its analogous to what a DM would do to accommodate struggling players, its just that you got to manually do it. Sadly, there is this weird shame around 'lowering the difficulty' that stops a lot of people from even considering that an option. My BF HATED the fuck out of kingmaker because he was dead set on playing on normal WITHOUT bothering to learn the system's nuances, when he did wrath he finally listened to me and adjusted difficulty accordingly and he actually started to learn how the game worked and had a much better experience.

[@TheDapperDragon]

Yeah, but I can count the amount of games that let me play as a literal dragon on one elbow, so, it could dispense flesh eating beetles every load screen and be made by CDPR, I'd still give it a shot

[@son0fgrim]

So i started playing table top Pathfinder for the very first time recently. i am very glad i had other people to help me figure out how to build my charcter.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

1st Edition or 2nd Edition?

[@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva]

Stack Persuasion and Charisma on Valerie then get her a level in the class that turns Shaken into Fear and Dazzling Display so she's a good advisor _and_ combat relevant then you can steamroll basically the whole game so long as you also have Blind Fighting on your whole endgame party. Doubly so if you use Jaethal and Amiri to back Valerie up to make a little 1x3 wedge of death running around the battlefield.

[@fillosof66689]

Does some late game enemy archtype in Kingmaker spam you with gaze attacks? Otherwise, Blind Fighting seems like an odd pick as a recommended must have perk.

[@KAPTAINmORGANnWo4eva]

@@fillosof66689 The endgame dungeon can be summarized as "Blindness, Swarms and Will Saves: The Movie"

[@Alice-May]

The first Kingmaker module released in 2010. Did Crazy Talk activate when Pat said it released in the early aughts?

[@devin5201]

You can(not) control your party members.

[@superturkle]

26:06 the ancient ritual of character making "back in the 90s!?" theres times i feel im too old for the internet; thanks a lot pat

[@rfast9678]

Ah yes, DND 3.5 edition

[@thatoneguy5969]

I always get a kick out of getting my 5th edition players to try and go through my 40 plus 3.5 books to make characters lol Once had a party that ranged from ninja flying gorilla to undead samurai mindflayer

[@papadoug4681]

Nothing quite like getting out of school friday and spending 8 hours that night pouring through your friend's 15 different books to build a character for that saturday one shot

[@Badgertailwarrior]

I'm not sure how pat has sold me on putting both Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath on my wishlist but he did. It weirdly sounds right up my alley! Can't wait to check it out whenever I can buy it

[@matthewexelby4940]

As far as buffs go my favorite style is it auto activates in a fight but it like uses a set percent of your max mp or spell slots to sustain it basically lowering your mp or slots to always have that buff on

[@chriswolfe351]

I never thought I would be saying this, but I'm shocked at how much Divinity Original Sin changed my mind about this, but if you have the choice, why would you play a game like Pathfinder: Kingmaker in anything other than turn based?

[@joedatius]

I mean i personally hate RTwP but i guess its just more about nostalgia. the only viable defense i've seen for it is that easy small fights are faster but just don't have pointless easy fights. the best things Divinity does is make sure just about every encounter is specifically designed and has unique value in some way. unless you're starting fights with random guards or something pretty much every fight is specially designed and more often then not has a unique mechanic or idea going with it. my biggest issue with games like kingmaker and the Pillers games is that their encounter design is pretty weak alot of the times

[@Bimblewort]

Speed. There are TONS of fights in both WotR and Kingmaker, and a lot of them are insanely simple to the point where you can have the party Standard/Full Attack and win in the whole thing in 2/3 turns, but that takes so much longer with Turn Based than Rtwp. Lots and lots of fodder fights

[@jtrost100]

Good old Ratnook Hill. The real final dungeon of CH 1

[@IcyDragonPolaris]

I'm surprised he got to make attacks in the first round. Half my party got instagibbed by those rat bastards

[@dawn2891]

As someone who just started Kingmaker I can personally say that it’s nearly impossible to play this game efficiently without being aware of the events and solutions beforehand. The game definitely benefits best from multiple play throughs.

[@Spootnik]

I kinda want to see a Woolie and Reggie playthrough of Divinity OS 2

[@luan.galaxy]

Woolie VS Divinity OS 2 (Part 368)

[@zztzgza]

Woolie should get into Divinity Original Sin 2. Or any of these other rpgs because a made up religion always plays into the central plot of the game. Woolie would have a great time exposing that shit lol

[@cyberninjazero5659]

I think he'd be much more for Pillars of Eternity

[@zztzgza]

@@cyberninjazero5659 Divinity 2 has co-op so he and Reggie could play together. Both are great games tho.

[@Maioly]

Considering you can become a literal angel in wrath of the righteous... yes also, spoilers under the cut... You literally meet A god, and have her right hand angel following you around for a bit.

[@hondshoven8477]

@@zztzgza They can play together until they find an encounter 2 level above them and get absolutly murdered... Then they can go play Pillar which has really interesting themes for someone born in a religious family

[@xxtz2007xx]

@@zztzgza Please don't call it that, it's misleading when a completely different Divinity II already exists.

[@Manny-Prime]

Woolie and Reggie NEED to play Divinity Original Sin 2.

[@TheDapperDragon]

I'll never watch it, but yeah. Woolie would love it

[@ascendedsleeper7820]

Welcome to Pathfinder, castellans of Superbeast. It's a dump, enjoy your stay!

[@Wanna_Be_Desu]

I've been playing it too for the first time recently. Got 15 hours in with 3 restarts. Was mad the whole time, with all the stupid mechanics like resting only healing with spells, time management, no proper indication on where to go and in what order, my characters being straight up deleted first round with a crit etc. BUT after getting a break from a game I had a literal fridge moment, realized I actually like all these annoying and inconvenient things, just got so used to games in the last decades being very nice and respectful to me I just forgot what the experience with oldschool rpgs is like. Having the time of my life with Kingmaker rn, feels like figuring out Morrowind or Wizardry or other rpgs for the first time all over again.

[@Offbeaten]

The kingmaker timers didn't start off as generous, back at release it was pretty rough.

[@Maioly]

29:30 and they affect the game in HUGE ways I mean, if you dont go azata path you dont get the best party member! your own companion havoc dragon pet Aivu and all the silliness and joy she brings! Aivu is so good I gave up becoming a gold dragon just to keep her around.

[@althesilly]

I straight up hated the idea of the spin camera. I played Wrath for a few hours and was not happy but after a little time it becomes great and really works

[@ApocApocrypha]

Kingmaker showed it was a Kickstarter game when it released but they worked hard to make it stable and improve things here and there since then, those patch notes were long. To the point it's now called the Enhanced Edition.

[@TonashDrahow]

I actually got into Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous because of Pat’s original WOTR video. Thanks, love it. Mind goblins and all!

[@americadrm]

Pathfinder is amazingggg the character creation gives you so many choices and us actually dope best rpg I played.

[@I3rigand]

I loved 4th edition, my own personal favorite edition and I wish it got more love and at least one CRPG with its system.

[@RevBlue360]

I played through Council of Thieves as a Mystic Theurge. All I did was sit back n cast buff spells on our Paladin , Warrior and Dragon Disciple in Late Game. Boss fights was like watching a blender go off. Still course I had a bunch of AOE spells Holy n Element

[@cozyafternoon7826]

woolie's looking really photogenic here. That's some good lighting.

[@Sir_Phobos]

It's been awhile since I played it, but I also remember the default pre made characters you could select had something like a 32 point spread where if you made yours it was 25 or 28. I remember using bag of tricks to give my character the same number of points.

[@trifontrifonov4297]

Cleric or Paladin. The two fallbacks for the people new to cRPGs. Cleric is really scary at first glance because of all the options, but if you just pick the most default archetype you will still have a very good build. Just pick healing or War domain. Hit lvl 10. Win the game. Paladin is good for first time players due to its survivability. Sorcerer is really strong in Kingmaker. Can make some of the tougher fight much easier. Just pick the biggest boom spells and spread your damage types to cover everything and you will be fine. Personally I played Alchemist, cuz I really like playing with mutations and discoveries. Also bombs.

[@BNik92]

Boomr or Conjure. Fireballs are fine and dandy but it turns out making inescapable death holes, grease puddlss and lethal fart clouds is really good

[@CompagnonDeMisere25]

11:20 had to check when this was uploaded because it started to sound topical.

[@smokey0111]

I tried the game - made a bard because fuck it, I want a bard hero. First party member I meet is another bard. Slight spoilers Then comes the time to split the party and the other bard comes with me. I stopped playing soon after. Edit: And somehow I tried again (and again), and eventually I got hooked. Lots of save scumming though.

[@joedatius]

The way i always seen it is that the Pathfinder games and Divinity OS/Baldurs Gate 3 are like a split path of the successors of Bioware. Owlcat is the path of sticking more closely to the "classic" style of crpg, lumps and all, with things that certainly might turn off many people but are appreciated by its fans and Larian is the path of somewhere closer to Dragon Age origins, that utilize more improvements of the genre that have been made over time while using the advantages of newer technology and story telling changes. and I think its great we have both these sides of the CRPG genre that are not only amazing in their own respects but also profitable and able to make their fanbases happy

[@fenris5932]

These kinds of games are the most likely ones to get me to turn down the difficulty one level for a SINGLE encounter. Especially Wrath of the Righteous. To whomever at Owlcat made the statline and abilities for the Vavakia Vanguard: EAT SHIT

[@kulbrez4884]

Being timed like that seems too close to my actual job, no thanks lol

[@JaitsuStudios]

"in a classic CRPG like Baldurs Gate, travel doesn't take time, you just click on a point and you're there, time doesn't pass" .... yes it does? Time passes between screens, and you need to travel to each screen on foot before you can fast travel. What the fuck are you talking about Pat?

[@Terramagu]

Most of Shadows of Amn took place in... well, Amn, which didn't have travel within its screens. You only leave Amn like MAYBE 5 times total the entire game, and Throne of Bhaal is mostly you jumping through portals. BG1 did have a lot of travel, and even had time between the districts of Baldur's Gate itself if I remember right, but BG1 isn't the game people remember.

[@Samm815]

I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous right now and if Kingmaker was Baldur's Gate mixed with Civilization, then Wrath is Baldur's Gate mixed with Heroes of Might and Magic. I'm beelining it to Chapter 4 to have sexy fun times in the Abyss. I'll probably go back to Kingmaker after I decide between Tower Shield, Tiefling, and Fae.

[@pwnyboy9714]

Yo, Woolie you working out again? 👀 You're looking healthy as fuck for some reason.

[@theangriestpigeon4403]

"Comparing BG3 and Pathfinder is unfair" I disagree for a couple reasons. CRPGs are held up by gameplay and writing. BG3 wins with visuals, but Wrath of the Righteous raised the bar so god damn high in terms of gameplay, characters and writing that BG3 is fighting an uphill battle. BG3 CAN be better, and most likely will since Larian is a pretty solid developer, but BG3 seems like it is building to be a game that is designed to exhaust rather than entice the player. A mistake that Kingmaker made with those long stretches of nothing but Kingdom Management. (Love Kingmaker, but man it got boring at times)

[@cyberninjazero5659]

I haven't played BG3 so I can't fully judge but WotR is no slouch in the visuals department it had a lot of epic cinematic moments. I'd agree BG3 has better character models hands down (it has to since it's using the bioware camera for convos) but I don't know if it reached the same heights for environments and effects

[@joedatius]

pretty sure its not fair because one of them is literally not finished. also a big part of it is that they're just incredibly different games with different goals and even comparing gameplay doesn't work because people who like one kind of gameplay and easily not like the other.

[@autumnlotus6250]

@@joedatius except that BG3 is in early access hell, and has been for a long time now. By a first party dev. This isnt an indie game. If anything it looks Worse becauae of that

[@joedatius]

@@autumnlotus6250 early access hell how? they just put out their release date. and they said before that it was going to take a while when it first came out because this is an actual EARLY access game and is very big. Not only that but it has been making steady and larger and larger updates, its almost likes its a game in development or something. sorry but its pretty clear that you don't have much understanding on the topic, so don't come making big claims when you're coming from an overt place of ignorance.

[@autumnlotus6250]

@@joedatius it's literally been in steam early access. Yes their is a release date, but its been in development hell for a while with mostly shallow platitudes to keep criticism away. The game is barren of content outside of new classes, and IS NOT worth its AAA price. Especially when WoTR is right there, for cheaper, and it's a full game that runs smooth with few glitches compared to BG3 constant crashing

[@quantras2673]

I like Pathfinder but god I can't play on higher difficulty without autobuffer. Playing both a Angel and Lich in Wrath and it's really fun.

[@e-rankluck2594]

The pathfinder games are fun as hell. I don't necessarily think you haaave to minmax optimize to pull through it. But it'd also that problem of like. Game knowledge makes it easier to not need to minmax. but minmax requires game knowledge knowledge usually.

[@Crouza]

What pat brings up is why I enjoy Pathfinder 2nd Edition. It's a TTRPG where you need to be like, the biggest pepega brained person or intentionally trying hard to make a bad character. Classes give you a free stat bonus to your classes "primary stat" to let you know at a glance what stat is important for your character to succeed. They give you free boosts for your stats, and the proficiency system tells you what you're going to be good at, and what you're not gonna be good at. So you'd need to pick a class, look at your class stat, and actively say "No, I won't invest in that stat." and then go even further to go "I refuse to use my class features OR my class feats" and then go even beyond that to "I Refuse to Use Skills" to get to the same bad place as you are if you play in 1st edition and, for example, decide to play Rogue and not the Unchained Rogue, which is a version of rogue that got a patched to be good.

[@TheDapperDragon]

Amd that sucks. Characters that are perfect ruin the entire point of parties. You cover one anothers weaknesses. Otherwise, you're not a party. You're [x] literal gods just running around all being perfect.

[@Crouza]

@@TheDapperDragon There's a huge gap between "Characters are competent" and "Characters are too perfect and trivialize everything". Especially since the entire world, due to having much more fixed stats, can be balanced around their power level much more accurately. Also PF 2e is all about team work, so Idk what you're talking about. Flanking with one another, debuffing the enemy or buffing allies, and doing knowledge checks to figure out enemy weaknesses and setting up allies for success is pivitol for the game. Much more so in 2e then in 1st edition where the answer is "Min Max and Munchkin until the DM cannot catch up" when it comes to difficulty.

[@AspiringDevil]

My favorite thing about the buff problem is because on table top time isn't kept like in game this problem doesn't exist. Also D&D buffs could last hours or days. I don't see how that didn't see this problem coming. Other problem with Kingmaker is the companions are built to survive or make a party in this campaign but the game kind of punishes you for using custom parts members.

[@zachfarrellEL]

The way I see it, Pathfinder and its sister system, D&D 3.5, are basically the Character Action games of the TTRPG world. If you just want to do the RPG equivalent of button-mashing, you're gonna have a bad time. If you engage with the mechanics, use your brain, and "do combo," the system blossoms into something deeply engaging and truly fascinating.

[@ElvenSonic]

disagree. you don’t have to read a fifteen page essay to grab someone in devil may cry 4. Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 are more equivalent to the SAT. If you didn’t spend several months taking practice tests, doing research in every subject and made multiple characters before showing up to even session 0, you’re going to fail the SAT and be unable to go to a good college/make a character that will do anything at the table. Getting good at an Action game comes from making mistakes and learning from them over the course of a couple of hours/days, and having that mastery be rewarded by looking cool and having a lot of fun. the game loves you for it. Getting good at 3.5 comes from months to years of research and reading and behind the scenes experimenting, and when you make your max bloodborne insight character, sure you have fun for a couple minutes, but nobody else is. and the gm hates you because he spent literally two months designing the one monster you just killed in one hit, because 3e’s monster design system is the literal worst shit ever in any ttrpg i’ve ever played. on a side note: making a ttrpg system built entirely around decisions the player makes outside of actually playing the game kinda sucks. it’s killed more games of mine than it has started, the extra prep work me and my players need to go through designing one character on the player side and designing every single character on the gm side kills all motivation to keep that story going.

[@zachfarrellEL]

​@@ElvenSonic Grappling; a 15 page-essay? You mean the 3-to-4 step process that takes maybe 15 *seconds* to go through if you've done it more than once or twice, right? If you're capable of getting *actually* good at DMC mere hours, then rolling a few dice and not getting AoOs should be a cakewalk for you. Admittedly, I do sort of see where you're coming from with the "nobody else is having fun" thing. If your group isn't all on the same page, that poses bigger issue for 3.5/PF than for most other system. However, that sort of mismatched group dynamic is an instant and irrevocable deal-breaker no matter the system, at least for me. I really don't get your gripe about a DM spending months designing a single monster that dies in one round, though. Combat in most editions of D&D is fast-paced like that, and as a DM, this whole situation is completely divorced from all my experiences in over a decade of running this system, I guess if putting a single encounter together takes someone two months, then I suppose it makes sense that they wouldn't understand that it's going to be done in a round or two, but that's 100% user error. It sucks that the poor balancing of 3.5/PF's character creation has killed some of your campaigns early on. However, my experience has been very much the opposite: Most campaigns I've been in with other systems didn't even make it through character creation in the first place, due to the near-ubiquity of the "class equals character" and "golden trinity" problems within the genre.

[@ElvenSonic]

@@zachfarrellEL ok first off, yea while i was exaggerating the size of 3e’s grapple rules, they are still absolutely terrible. If my player says “I want to grab that guy!” in combat, i should absolutely not have to pull out a flow chart of various sub systems and mechanics and ask him if he’s taken any of the numerous grappling related feats. And this isn’t even mentioning the wild unbalanced bullshit that came from attempts to improve the system in both Star Wars d20 (with its slightly less complicated rules that basically amount to you saying “No. you can’t grapple that guy, you’re not a wookiee”) and Pathfinders combat maneuver system that basically makes grappling completely unviable for almost all characters that aren’t built for it. grappling mechanics tend to be a sticking point in every group i play with due to how frequently players want to grab and throw, and it’s wild just how many games i’ve played where the core rules for grappling are like “Did you take all of the feats and build your character entirely around grappling? Then no you can’t grab this guy. Ever. And if you try it’ll either kill you or you’ll waste three turns.” Also on the topic of encounter design: I’m not bringing up specifically 3e’s general encounter design here. I’m specifically bringing up its fucking abysmal rules for designing monsters. In 1e, 2e, 4e, and 5e, designing a monster is really simple. You give it hit dice/hp, give it some attacks based on what it is or does, and then give it a couple special actions or abilities to make it unique. In 1e/2e, OD&D, BX and BECMI, that would be it. There’s no specific limitations to the system so making an encounter takes imagining a fun scenario or monster and spending ten minutes designing it. I like writing my monsters down on index cards too since there’s so little info i need and I can just make up rulings on the fly. In 4e, encounter design in general was a fucking blast. everything was so easy and fun, with codified language on everything so it’s really easy to just slap together a balanced encounter for a set piece in like an hour and it works. I only got to gm 4e a handful of times though, so there might be problems on the gm side of monsters i never learned about. But 5e carried a lot of stuff from old school d&d design over and mostly uses those same build ideas, even if the built in CR system doesn’t work. It’s easier to make monsters than it is to run official ones which works for me at least. In 3e, 3.5e, and Pathfinder, monsters are built by using the same rules as player character generation, meaning monsters CANNOT have access to feats or abilities that players dont have. This also means, when you’re creating monsters, they get access to a long list of skills with +numbers all over the place. All of this leads to your monster having a hilariously bloated stat block. and you better have all of this stuff written down because if you lose track of any of it, that one guy in your group who’s been playing 3E since 2000 will expose you to the entire table as a fraud who didn’t follow the rules. This also doesn’t mention the fuckery that is 3E’s monster manual, with its “On turn 4, this monster does this” bloat that almost never came up in any game i played, and the one time it did my experienced 3e players got really mad that i didn’t write down that the clay golem casts Haste on itself on turn 2 and they never ever lived it down. I got a reputation in college as “The gm that can’t follow the rules” for specifically that one instance where i didn’t have the clay golem cast haste, and it was the last game i would gm for a few years. the more i talk about 3e the more i realize that, you’re right, my experiences aren’t a monolith. a lot of these problems obviously come from bad play experiences i’ve had, with the system only being a part of the problem. While 3e technically still had it, 3.5e was basically the first D&D edition to drop rule 0, due to a push by wotc to make tournament and organized play more viable. That may be where a lot of my problems lie, more so than the rules themselves, as it came up in every 3e session i played. Those rules were tight, and if you missed one thing, players would know. Needless to say, I do not believe 3e is the Action Gamer’s™️ ttrpg. 3e is for the gamer who wants to design a crazy ass character build that they can share online with other people, like it’s diablo 2 or Dark Souls. And that’s a lot of fun for most people. Also, as a final point, I’m glad to discuss this with someone who obviously really loves this system. On a final note, i think it’s fascinating you bring up the “class equals character” problem, as it’s one that has only really come up in modern games of D&D i’ve played. In old school style games, characters aren’t their class or their character sheet, they’re the choices they’ve made and the interactions they’ve had with other characters. With no skills or abilities limiting who they can be, characters get really fleshed out, and idk if it’s because of or in spite of those systems lack of class abilities and options. Every fighter in every game of D&D 5e i’ve played has been the same character, and i wonder if it’s a problem with the rules not conveying that character doesn’t come from the character sheet.

[@ElvenSonic]

@@zachfarrellEL sorry for the big ass reply. i don’t see my criticisms of 3e reflected anywhere, so now felt like my chance to get them out there. in a silly youtube comment reply.

[@zachfarrellEL]

@@ElvenSonic No problem! I love 3.5, but I'd be delusional if I claimed it was anywhere near flawless. I feel like I did a pretty terrible job of explaining what I mean by the character action game comparison. It's about the way they reward system mastery; how the mechanics are like an iceberg, where the deeper you go, the more insane it gets. The "do something really cool really well" mentality that leads to minutes-long combos and S-ranked missions on high difficulties is, in my experience, very similar to the mindset behind things like "ubercharging" and Psions that use Schism+Synchronicity to play like blue control decks from MTG. Character action games are leagues better than 3.5 when it comes to on-boarding new players, that much is certain! I think I might have been lucky, getting into D&D when I did. 4e was already a few splatbooks in by the time I got to try 3.5, so I never had to deal with the system until long after "noncasters can pull their weight now" options like Boomerang Daze, Splitting, Penetrating Strike, and the Tome of Battle had already been around for a while. I have no intention of ever running a core-only 3.5 game, having already dodged that bullet before. Your point about organized play causing problems for the game at large is interesting. I've been hearing a lot of similar things from some of my 5e-playing friends lately, in regards to Adventurer's League and its impact on the way character options are designed. I guess with a company like WotC at the helm, history was bound to repeat itself. Honestly, "a silly youtube comment reply" that discusses a game in a reasonable, non-toxic manner is *infinitely* better than the sort of dumpster fire one usually finds in youtube comments. :)

[@newagecosmonaut8563]

God tier thumbnail.

[@Digsidian]

Pathfinder Kingmakers difficulty is for people who like to min max their characters. But they only let me min max my own character, and my party is made up of the most unoptimised build NPC's I've ever seen. Meaning the difficulty is completely fucked, and feels incredibly unsatisfying. Just let me retrain the NPC's, for crying out loud.

[@joedatius]

Kingmaker has main character syndrome. it uses a system where everyone in the party is supposed to be mostly on the same playing ground when it comes to power and optimization but treats its party members like they're supposed to be weaker then the player character

[@bennymountain1]

Yeah, that's my problem as well. I just started and every other guide on leveling named party members just says "meh, get a mercenary instead of him/her".

[@Postaldude__]

Pat got me into pathfinder cuz of this vid, thx pat

[@Svoorhout85]

I played Kingmaker untill I got to the kingdom part. Sent out some advisors everything seemed fine, had to pick up the herbalst guy back at the inn. By the time I got there my kingdom was. on. fire. It sapped my will to play completely.

[@Maioly]

32:30 there is another indie CRPG (sort of) out there called Solasta: Crown of the Magister it licensed and uses the exact same system as Baldurs gate 3 (the latest DnD)... it does it much better than BG 3 it has practically the same ammount of dept to the ammount of actions you can do, BUT it actually remembers verticality is a thing... a lot; Jumping, pushing, pulling, climbing, light and shadows, stealth, etc... are all much better used and integrated than in BG3 (where they kind of feel like fluff, in my opinion) you can do some absolute bullshit in solasta using its systems. the only problems is that, again, its an indie game, with nowhere near the ammount of budget BG 3 has, so its graphically and presentation wise extremely jank, and that sadly puts some people off. Unlike BG3 its also (technically) out of early access... its main campaign is finished and out, but the game also has a campaign builder in it, which is still a WIP, and content keeps getting added (including side campaigns) It released almost the same day as BG3 and got completely buried by its triple A 'cousin'

[@cyberninjazero5659]

Solasta is the Icewind Dale to Larians Baldurs Gate 3

[@joedatius]

as someone who plays a lot of TTRPGs the worst thing about the pathfinder games are that they aren't co-op and honestly the fact that they aren't is a damn crime. if there is ONE single aspect of TTRPGs are the most vital to the experience is that you're playing with other people and that means that the you aren't the hero with your supporting cast, You are an equally valuable group of adventurers. I can't express how much co-op would elevate the pathfinder games. I never realized this until I finished Divinity 2 with my friends. It really is something special to go through an entire adventure with your friends and it creates so much possibilities for roleplaying both mechanically but also story wise. They honestly have made massive mistake not trying to have co-op in these games. If they want to keep saying that these games are for TTRPG fans then they would be smart to do everything they can to add the aspect that makes tabletop games so beloved.

[@xxtz2007xx]

How do you finish a single player game with your friends?

[@joedatius]

@@xxtz2007xx I never saw your reply until now but im honestly a little confused on the question. games have solved that issue a long time ago, it just needs drop in and drop out co-op. games like Wasteland 3, the Divinity original sin games.

[@xxtz2007xx]

@@joedatius It wasn't really a question. I just get really annoyed when I see people call Original Sin 2 "Divinity 2", which is a much older and jankoer but still interesting game.

[@fernandozavaletabustos205]

Interesting episode as always!!

[@kingofbel6499]

Oh man, I love Pathfinder. It's the hardest and most complicated cRPG I ever played, but it's fucking amazing. Never in my gaming life have I spent longer customizing classes, trying them out and restarting to customize again. And all the cutscenes with skill checks really make use of all the skills you and your party have. Battles can get insanely hard at times, especially if you don't fully understand all the spells and status effects in the game like me. And I love the kingdom managing too. Its really good at making you feel like a leader, deciding how to deal with problems, choosing what gets built, who is going where to solve whatever, and my favorite part: sometimes taking the problem in my own hands and going to the area to clean it up by force. I guess some people disliked that part but I really enjoyed it. Everything about this game is peak cRPG to me, and I am glad they released another one recently.

[@TehLightraven]

Unrelated but Wenduag and Woljif are the best characters in wrath of the righteous just wanted to say that

[@Maioly]

Dont you mean Aivu and Woljif? :P

[@devontrolinger5120]

How appropriate that you put Valerie in the thumbnail. She's infamous for being one of/the most poorly built companion in the game.

[@RenegadeSparks]

basically the only way I could really salvage her was to get her int to 13 (thankfully a headband of vast intellect helps) to take combat expertise, and also take other feats to get her into stalwart defender, where at least she now has a passable str score when in her not-rage

[@Akaritomi]

Currently playing an air elemental sorcerer (party shifts depending on quest or necessity) on my kingmaker playthrough. Heard WoTR follows the 1e rules so im wondering if i can run a niche build rather than an optomised one (hard difficulty). Wonder how a Wesker build would do.

[@laflecack]

late to the party on this one but Pathfinder is the bath salts to D&D 3.5's meth

[@Akaritomi]

What's everyone's opinion on Pillars and its wacky stat system? Baldur's Gate 1+2 vs Icewind Dale + Planescape Torment vs Pillars 1+2?

[@iddyvanzun1]

I wish I liked pillers more.

[@Canadish]

Hate it. The stats are purely for game purposes and having no bearing on the characters as people. The stats don't inform the characters traits or personality at all. I prefer the D&D/Pathfinder approach.

[@Akaritomi]

@@Canadish i know what you mean. In Fallout having abysmal INT made your character actually retarded and barely able to talk or read.

[@iddyvanzun1]

Play on story mode or easy mode if you wanna role-play and have fun. Anything after that is for differing levels of min-maxing.

[@joedatius]

Thats fucking lame honestly is literally a roleplaying game.