Dang Bro, Paizo's at it again with a CRPG Kickstarter

[GâtFromKI]

Kingmaker seeks to solve your established problem by preventing you from travelling too much. There's a time limit and the problems won't wait for you to make ten trips from dungeon to home.

OK, so in this case it can work. This is similar to the Grandia example: your party has to settle the camp in the middle of nowhere, and the game manages to use it in the narrative.

In the other hand, D&D/Path has a quick travel system: it's called teleportation. It has also rope trick to avoid the camp system. And since you're not a moron, you don't cast rope trick inside the dungeon: you exit the dungeon, go 2 km away and cast rope trick. This also requires a quick travel system (just to transport the party 2 km away) (in a tabletop game, this takes only one sentence), and I'm still unconvinced the camp system is a useful addition to the game.

... In the other hand, I guess Kingmaker doesn't feature TP nor rope trick (nor fly nor stone shape nor...). The whole philosophy of those game is "we follow exactly the rules, except when we don't". Baldur's Gate had a very good balance for its time between the rules they kept and the rules they ignored to make the game better, but this balance can be improved - 20 years latter, this balance should be improved, not degraded.

Edit: and there's also the reload issue. In tabletop game, you're quite ensured you won't be killed during a random encounter during the night - because the MC isn't a moron: if he sees the party need a rest, he will luckily roll "no encounter" - even if he roll an encounter, the PCs will have an opportunity to fly away or the encounter will be balanced against exhausted PCs (it will be designed to make the fighter "who can swing his sword all day long" shine)... In a video game, this kind of soft balance is called "reload until there's no encounter".

[K]

The camping system seems to be entirely for comic relief. I'm pretty impressed the the sheer number of character-on-character interactions that were recorded by voice actors.

The food crafting is definitely for comic relief.

Overall, the game is a little boring. The game seriously encourages save-and-reload because because they pretty faithfully reproduced the way that skill checks are failure theater most of the time.

The companions are fine if you ignore their base class and just take levels in the good classes.

[sake]

There's also the issue of no crafting what so ever. Not even the basics like scroll and wand crafting (despite including all of the magus' wand monkey shit, and the scroll savant archetype for the wizard). When you'd think all the time tracking, quest time limits, and weeks worth of forced down time during kingdom events would make an excellent opportunity to actually try having pnp style magic item crafting in a CRPG for a change. If nothing else it could give you something extra you could be set to be done during those annoying "forced to burn two weeks while an adviser does a single project" kingdom events, so that mechanic feels less annoying.

But the devs would rather use the magic item merchant trope like it's a damn jrpg. Having random bumfuck village merchants, who apparently are too damn poor to even afford a store, selling half a dozen rings of protection +3 right in the street, give the very first damn inn keeper you meet an entire armory of low level magic weapons and armor, or fill the kingdom with multiple traveling clerics who happily sell anyone who has the gold an unlimited amounts of high level buff scrolls.

Oddly enough, no CLW wands for sale though. There is literally only one CLW wand to be found in the entire game, and I'm pretty sure it's there just to mock the trope.

That and the lack of the metamagic still spell feat would be super annoying if the game actually gave a crap if you have a hand free while casting arcane spells or not. I'm honestly not sure on that part. I've had people tell me the game is suppose to track it, at least for the magus' class gimmick, and it's just bugged.


And oh lord the companion npcs are so poorly built, even by PF pregen standards. Some just for weak RP reasons (the fighter who's stat bloc was designed for a paladin due to her back story, the sub 20 point buy cleric with super low CHA, because he's such a downer, you see.) some in intentional ways just to keep you from unfucking them later on (the cloth only cleric with poor physical stats who's NG just so you can't do a monk dip, the spontaneous casting str based magus that didn't even pick one of the good sorcerer bloodlines) And or course everyone's favorite, the halfling bard that literally can't be killed or removed from the party, even when you'll want to after she outright steals money from your cities' treasury, because the game uses her a narrator.

[Slade]

There's also the issue of no crafting what so ever. Not even the basics like scroll and wand crafting (despite including all of the magus' wand monkey shit, and the scroll savant archetype for the wizard). When you'd think all the time tracking, quest time limits, and weeks worth of forced down time during kingdom events would make an excellent opportunity to actually try having pnp style magic item crafting in a CRPG for a change. If nothing else it could give you something extra you could be set to be done during those annoying "forced to burn two weeks while an adviser does a single project" kingdom events, so that mechanic feels less annoying.

But the devs would rather use the magic item merchant trope like it's a damn jrpg. Having random bumfuck village merchants, who apparently are too damn poor to even afford a store, selling half a dozen rings of protection +3 right in the street, give the very first damn inn keeper you meet an entire armory of low level magic weapons and armor, or fill the kingdom with multiple traveling clerics who happily sell anyone who has the gold an unlimited amounts of high level buff scrolls.

Oddly enough, no CLW wands for sale though. There is literally only one CLW wand to be found in the entire game, and I'm pretty sure it's there just to mock the trope.

That and the lack of the metamagic still spell feat would be super annoying if the game actually gave a crap if you have a hand free while casting arcane spells or not. I'm honestly not sure on that part. I've had people tell me the game is suppose to track it, at least for the magus' class gimmick, and it's just bugged.


And oh lord the companion npcs are so poorly built, even by PF pregen standards. Some just for weak RP reasons (the fighter who's stat bloc was designed for a paladin due to her back story, the sub 20 point buy cleric with super low CHA, because he's such a downer, you see.) some in intentional ways just to keep you from unfucking them later on (the cloth only cleric with poor physical stats who's NG just so you can't do a monk dip, the spontaneous casting str based magus that didn't even pick one of the good sorcerer bloodlines) And or course everyone's favorite, the halfling bard that literally can't be killed or removed from the party, even when you'll want to after she outright steals money from your cities' treasury, because the game uses her a narrator.

Before L steals, she is pretty great party member being a bard so force multiplier.

The Ranger, the undead Inquisitor, the Rogue/mage, and goblin rogue are built decent.

Yes, H has no Cha so you'll want extra channel if you want him for extra healing, but other than low Cha and Dex he isn't a bad cleric.

In fact, the Inquisitor seems to have dumped con before losing it.

Amri is built pretty bad though (why does she has decent Cha, low dex, etc) which is why she keeps being hurt.

[Whipstitch]

RPGs always have positive cha modifiers on anyone who bares their midriff.

Ecclesitheurge is admittedly kinda lame but seriously, Mage Armor>Monk dip.

[sake]

RPGs always have positive cha modifiers on anyone who bares their midriff.

Ecclesitheurge is admittedly kinda lame but seriously, Mage Armor>Monk dip.

Generally yeah, but I already had the dwarf for my full cleric slot, and Tristan kind of annoyed me once I realized that he was a romance option and that, aside from being male, he was literally every bad JRPG love interest cliche rolled into one (defenseless, wears only a robe/dress, virginal, has a secret deeper connect to some divine magic source than initially lets on, etc) So I decided to force level him into the weird pseudo bard monk class far enough to get the ac bonus and 'use WIS for attack with monk weapons' ability and with the game showering me in more bracers of armor, monk items, and agility belts than i could ever use, I eventually turned him into a surprising durable tank that saved my ass on a few occasions.

I don't get why they doubled up on clerics while they still lacked npc representation for sorcerer, monk, and druid. The dwarf cleric doesn't even channel negative energy (despite everything about him screaming that he should) to at least make them feel a little different and to make emo dwarf a natural choice to pair with the zombie elf. Maybe they had planned on adding the Oracle class at some point but cut it mid way through the writing process and just defaulted Tristan to cleric.

[Harshax]

The dwarf and undead elf have difficult synergies, because both of the cleric’s channel abilities hurt the elf and the dwarf doesn’t qualify for selective channeling without a charisma boost item. Prerequisite: 13, dwarf starts with 10.

The emo cleric + monk dip sounds workable and might try it on this play through.

I’ve been running character combos with a memory editor, because I’m not at all familiar with the dizzying number of options, feat combos, team feats and bloodlines. I’ve found multiclassing to be overall weak, but that’s just true for d20 in general. Mystic Thurges have too many spells for me to manage, but I am getting a kick out of ranger/vivisectionist ... that said a freebooter/vivisectionist would work well with the inquisitor elf who also gets team feats.

[Harshax]

So I decided to force level him into the weird pseudo bard monk

How did you qualify for monk? I think he fails the alignment restriction? Doesn’t appear as an option in the game I’m currently playing.

[Pariah Dog]

By fixing your tags. Not really, but please do so anyways.

[sake]

Cheat engine and a "ignore alignment" pointer , because this was before the handy respec mod had been made, and I was already running CE because all those blocked off alignment specific dialog options I started seeing were pissing me off. The way the game handles dialog options and alignment shifts can be a bit annoying. It falls into the trap of having how you say something matter more than what you're choosing to do. And many times the same decision will have a different themed version for each alignment. Which can be handy when you get to make a generally "good" choice while still reminding the game you're actually evil and just doing this because it's the most tactically sensible choice, but also it felt like the game was slowly shoving me toward lawful/neutral good not for my actions, but simply because I didn't want to _openly_ treat every random stranger I met as a pathetic, unworthy peon who I intend to enslave one day.

Even the developers must have realized this was being an issue, because a recent patch added "atonement" scrolls to the cleric venders that reset player alignment back to it's original state.

I've been told a popular alt option for the emo dwarf to have him go druid instead. Probably for wild shape to make up for his lack luster physical stats, or the fact that the sabretooth tiger animal companion is stupidly overpowered, even by PnP standards, to the point it can solo some encounters even without buffing it. Apparently any class archetype in this game that can get the cat as a companion option is considered a high tier choice due to this.

[Harshax]

By fixing your tags. Not really, but please do so anyways.

Posted from my phone, now fixed.

Cheat engine and a "ignore alignment" pointer , because this was before the handy respec mod had been made

Ah! Makes sense. Should look for mods, because the game doesn't offer suggestions when they're sorely needed. eg: First start, gave Amiri weapon focus in Great Sword not realizing her oversized weapon is actually a Bastard Sword. The game should suggest the character's preferred weapon, or the ones equipped when Weapon Focus is chosen.

[RelentlessImp]

How to shatter it: 4 Rog1/Sylvan Sorc4/Arcane Tricksters with Smilodon ACs, 2 of them Knife Fighters other 2 bows, and 2 clerics. Feats easy enough to figure out. Outnumber literally everything and erase all difficulty.

[Axebird]

How to shatter it: 4 Rog1/Sylvan Sorc4/Arcane Tricksters with Smilodon ACs, 2 of them Knife Fighters other 2 bows, and 2 clerics. Feats easy enough to figure out. Outnumber literally everything and erase all difficulty.

A bunch of animal companions that forever have 2 hit dice (or 5 with Boon Companion) doesn't sound very impressive.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, I got sidetracked into rerolling as sylvan sorcerer and don't see any reason to ever leave the class. You get a murder kitty and spontaneous casting is never as onerous in CRPGs as it is in tabletop.

I mean, I get that people really like tacking on sneak attack dice to their rays and arcane trickster is pretty neat, but a big part of the reason for doing that is because as a caster you view having the damage available to finish off your crippled opponents to be an unfunded mandate that you personally resent. I sympathize, bit consider the problem largely solved thanks to murder kitty.

[Mask_De_H]

Sylvan Sorcerers are honestly pretty cool in the tabletop game, too.

[sake]

Yeah, I got sidetracked into rerolling as sylvan sorcerer and don't see any reason to ever leave the class. You get a murder kitty and spontaneous casting is never as onerous in CRPGs as it is in tabletop.

I mean, I get that people really like tacking on sneak attack dice to their rays and arcane trickster is pretty neat, but a big part of the reason for doing that is because as a caster you view having the damage available to finish off your crippled opponents to be an unfunded mandate that you personally resent. I sympathize, bit consider the problem largely solved thanks to murder kitty.

I think the love for arcane trickster is just a general annoyance at the game lacking all those fun and actually effective blaster spells from the old Neverwinter nights games like missile storm or fire arrow that were entirely Bioware's own inventions, , discovering that all the good save or dies have been neutered into the dust by pathfinder, and high level monsters seems to be suspiciously good at saving against save or sucks due to the wonky monster stats unless you're minmaxing your caster levels as high as possible.

So after level 8 or so, it feels like either chainsaw kitty pet or AT are the only viable damage options a wiz/sorc has. That and the way the game handles ranged flanking and stacking sneak attack damage on ray spells, makes a maximized scorching ray into something actually worth casting even at high levels.

[RelentlessImp]

How to shatter it: 4 Rog1/Sylvan Sorc4/Arcane Tricksters with Smilodon ACs, 2 of them Knife Fighters other 2 bows, and 2 clerics. Feats easy enough to figure out. Outnumber literally everything and erase all difficulty.

A bunch of animal companions that forever have 2 hit dice (or 5 with Boon Companion) doesn't sound very impressive.

It gets you through the early game which is annoying as fuck, then later they're extra targets other than your more valuable party members unloading TWF sneak attacks into things.

That said, just going straight 3 Sylvan Sorcerer/1 TWF Knife Fighter/2 Clerics would probably work even better.

Also, I really hate that this game gives you a whole 25 points to work with (fuck your odd number fetish, Pathfinder) while your hired companions have 20 points, while the special snowflakes have point-buys ranging from 20 to 34. Can we get some FUCKING CONSISTENCY. I don't want to play with your annoying goddamned NPCs, don't punish me for that.

Thankfully, save editors exist and I can just jump all the companions to 26 points because fuck odd number fetishists.

[Longes]

What's with all the companion-hating? They are all great except for Lindzi.

[RelentlessImp]

What's with all the companion-hating? They are all great except for Lindzi.

They have stat allocations that are somewhere between "This guy is useless" (The Ecclesitheurge with his sub-20 points) and "Haha, fuck you, player" (Valerie, with her 30+ points). Additionally, they're shallow as everloving fuck, and their stories are retreads of other, better characters done elsewhere.

Valerie? Oh no, my beauty means I have to hate people because they don't know no means no, oh wait, now I have a scar, everything's fine now. Oh wait, divine retribution, whoops.

Amiri? Random cultural sexism means I am angry and can rage out, also I have to murder people, additionally you're my Chief and the party is my tribe, fuck my old tribe, except not really cause they're all fucked by changing circumstances let's help them.

Octavia and Reongar, and you can't even separate the two because they were designed as a fucking pair so their personalities play off each other in a vacuum and they're not even good personalities. Reongar's rage at the Technic League feels old and stale even first time through because there's no goddamned nuance to it and the voice actor sounds half-asleep to me, and Octavia is literally just Sera from DA:I.

Harrim is a retread of the goddamned dwarf monk from Neverwinter Nights.

Jaethal is a special snowflake that sucks at her job because she has no CON score and is Undead so fuck you.

Nok-Nok is just ... I want to call it racist but I can't, even in light of how the goblin civilization is presented in this game, because goblins be goblins, yo, yea even unto the Fifth Edition, and at this point it's more remembered as 'monstrous species' than 'allegory for real-world ethnic groups'.

And Jubilost Narthropple is literally every racist thing the original Gnome write-up had, dialed down a tiny bit.

Honestly, Linzi is the only one I actually fucking like, because she has a motivation that is reasonable, even if she's a Volo retread. Then she goes and steals money from the goddamned treasury...

I don't want these fuckers in the next kingdom over, much less my Barony, and especially not in my fucking adventuring party. Their 'quirks' are irritating and if actual PLAYERS pulled some of the shit these NPCs pull in a sit-down tabletop game they'd probably get smacked with a PHB. But I can't hit the designers in the head with a PHB, all I can do is keep them well fucking away from my party.

Oh, and another thing. The recurring villain that you kick the shit out of but keeps coming back? Yeah, that's annoying, fucking stop doing that game designers. Tartuccio lasts two chapters more than necessary.

Editing to Add: Yeah, I'm harping on stats a lot. Baldur's Gate NPCs never had good stat distributions, either. Oh wait, they fucking did. The ones people used the most had nothing to do with their character (which was paper-thin in BG1, referenced once or twice, maybe a mini-arc for them) but they were taken because they had good stats. Minsc would have been thrown away if he'd been a Ranger with 15 Strength instead of 18/73. Khalid wouldn't be exceptional at all except he was the only pure Fighter you ever got with a decent Dexterity so he became a missile weapon using-god because of how BG1's combat system was set up and interacted with stuff like, say, Summon Monster spells and his ability to achieve Grandmastery in Bows was huge. Jaheira was only memorable because she was ostensibly a package deal with Khalid. Viconia was your best Cleric, bar none. Kagain was another pure fighter who could axe things to death, sure, but he was memorable for his illegal CON score that gave him fucking regeneration. Edwin for being the only worthwhile fucking Mage for Evil parties, and Dynaheir for Good parties, it helped that they had solid statlines for their roles.

Basically, cRPG NPCs aren't memorable for their personalities, they're memorable for their goddamned stats, and making shitty characters in this day and goddamned age is no excuse when there were stand-outs in 1990 cRPGs.

[Longes]

This is so insanely off base that I have to wonder if we played the same game.

Valerie? Oh no, my beauty means I have to hate people because they don't know no means no, oh wait, now I have a scar, everything's fine now. Oh wait, divine retribution, whoops.

Valerie got forced into being a paladin of Shelin, had a teenage rebellion and overcompensated into "all art is useless". "People don't know no means no" appears to have been a problem zero times for Valerie until a paladin of Shelin came to 'redeem' Valerie.

Amiri? Random cultural sexism means I am angry and can rage out, also I have to murder people, additionally you're my Chief and the party is my tribe, fuck my old tribe, except not really cause they're all fucked by changing circumstances let's help them.

And as Amiri's quest shows, Amiri flipping out was completely counterproductive and helped no one.

Octavia and Reongar, and you can't even separate the two because they were designed as a fucking pair so their personalities play off each other in a vacuum and they're not even good personalities. Reongar's rage at the Technic League feels old and stale even first time through because there's no goddamned nuance to it and the voice actor sounds half-asleep to me, and Octavia is literally just Sera from DA:I.

Lol wut.

Harrim is a retread of the goddamned dwarf monk from Neverwinter Nights.

Double lol wut. Khelgar has way more in common with Amiri than with Harrim.

Nok-Nok is just ... I want to call it racist but I can't, even in light of how the goblin civilization is presented in this game, because goblins be goblins, yo, yea even unto the Fifth Edition, and at this point it's more remembered as 'monstrous species' than 'allegory for real-world ethnic groups'.

So what's actually wrong with Nok-Nok?

And Jubilost Narthropple is literally every racist thing the original Gnome write-up had, dialed down a tiny bit.

??????
What is racist about him? That he's a successful writer? Or that he's a dick? He's not even a gnome sterotype kind of a dick, since he doesn't steal or pull pranks - he's the "I'm not an asshole I'm just honest" kind of a dick.

Oh, and another thing. The recurring villain that you kick the shit out of but keeps coming back? Yeah, that's annoying, fucking stop doing that game designers. Tartuccio lasts two chapters more than necessary.

Tartuccio is in two chapters. He doesn't "keep coming back", he's resurrected once and becomes a sidekick to the troll king.

You have the single shittiest take on Kingmaker I've ever seen.

[Axebird]

I don't know what's up with Valerie. Her first companion quest never fired for me and I don't use her in my party.

Amiri pretty clearly doesn't care about her old tribe at any point, so I'm not sure where you got that from.

I've been using Octavia without Regongar and she hasn't seemed awkward "in a vacuum". She's a playful sage and Regongar is a pun-lord with a hard-on for making things explode. They're fine.

Harrim... I have no fucking clue how you connected him, a nihilist struggling with cultural isolation and alcoholism, to a brash thrill-seeker that wants to become a monk purely because he thinks they're all about punching people.

Jaethal being undead means she uses Charisma for her hp and Fort save. She's plenty good at killing things and especially trip lockdown with Solo Tactics.

Nok-Nok is a last minute joke character that was a stretch goal, so yeah, pretty much.

Erudite, joyless, and deathly serious about popular perception are definitely not racist gnome traits. The fuck?

---

Your understanding of the characters are incredibly distant from reality. It's like you decided who they were based off of portrait and class and then skipped 100% of their dialogue thereafter.

And... CRPG characters being remembered only for their stats? You're on your own on that. CRPGs are generally piss-easy, to the point where most of them can be beaten solo even if not designed for it. Their stats aren't important at all.

[Longes]

And... CRPG characters being remembered only for their stats? You're on your own on that. CRPGs are generally piss-easy, to the point where most of them can be beaten solo even if not designed for it. Their stats aren't important at all.

I mean, just look at this:

Jaheira was only memorable because she was ostensibly a package deal with Khalid.

Hey, guess which one of them was popular enough to be in the sequel.

[shlominus]

I don't know what's up with Valerie. Her first companion quest never fired for me and I don't use her in my party.

you're supposed to get a letter about her and if i am not mistaken there is a window of only a few days to receive it. if you are out of town and don't get back in time you only get a message telling you a letter could not be delivered. not sure if they fixed it yet, pretty sure that missing a companion-questline isn't intentional.

[Iduno]

Jaheira was only memorable because she was ostensibly a package deal with Khalid.

Hey, guess which one of them was popular enough to be in the sequel.

I'm disappointed they didn't have Khalid show up and then get gibbed by a goblin. That's 100% of what he's remembered for: "Hey, I got a fighter with decent stats, I'll just have him tank for...and he's dead."

[Koumei]

Harrim... I have no fucking clue how you connected him, a nihilist struggling with cultural isolation and alcoholism, to a brash thrill-seeker that wants to become a monk purely because he thinks they're all about punching people.

No, you're thinking of Khelgar, the Dwarf Fighter who wants to be a Monk, in NWN2 (You don't want him to become a Monk because even Fighters are better and the artefact hammer he gets is actually a good late-game class feature). NWN1 actually did have a Dwarf Monk, who is so relevant that I can't remember his name. He follows the Long Death, tries to explain to you how they follow death and oblivion and not "a god of death". Then in Hordes of the Underpants, he isn't one of the ones you can revive in Undermountain to join you for a little bit, instead he and his gang of epic villains all give you a bunch of high-level equipment attack you very late on.