Is initiative the most important stat in a game of alpha strikes?

[Tech Enthusiast]

I am enjoying the game.Really do. Just this one thing makes me ponder, if I am fine with it,...
... starting in end of act 2 fights all seem to come down to alpha strikes.

I can kill almost every enemy in a single round. Even bosses. Lann is just crazy,... and don't get me started with the slayer dishing out 250+ damage a round without even giving him a weapon that is better than his default ones.

On the other hand, the enemy can also do this to me.
My Paladin has 38 AC and is usually dead before she can act a second time. Healing seems useless, if a level 5 heal does 30ish HP, while monster with +30 to attack and +30 to damage rolls attack 4-5 times a turn.

I tried CC,... but my team is usually dead by the time any form of CC sticks. A save means a wasted turn, which usually means another dead on my side of things.

I tried mass summoning stuff.
Up to act 3 this worked pretty well, but in act 3 my buffed (!) summons get killed by the dozen in a single turn. That is with all feats that push summons, including mythic. A random tiger thing just walks by, kills a summon per attack and does that 5 times a turn. Yeah, it does not kill me in that turn, but I also did not do any damage to it.

Buffs felt good up to act 2 as well. Making my tank actually tanky. But every enemy seems to have ridiculous +attack stats, so my AC basically means nothing. If the enemy hits just 2/5 attacks per turn, she just lost 50-120HP and is likely downed already.

I am really not trying to complain here. More like pondering,... there seem to be so many spells that SOUND great and fun, but I don't have the time to actually use them, because debuffs get saved against more often than not, buffs only have a meaning if they are damage boosting and fights are over by turn 2 or 3 at the latest.

Hell, I redid the act 2 end fight 5 times. 2 times I got crushed so badly that I barly made a dent in them. 2 times I ended the fight on turn 2 without taking any damage and one time I mass summoned dozens of things and tried to figure out of any of them can actually land a hit (spoiler: no.), before running out of spells to summon more.

There has to be something I am missing here, no?
It can't just be sneak attacks, hasted archers and damage buffing, right? How can I go about a build that does not feel like this for a second playtrough down the line?

[Lord_WC]

Not if you kill everything with a charge.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

Not if you kill everything with a charge.

You answered faster than you could possible have read the text, so I forgive the answer that flies straight in the wrong direction. ;-)

[Rainnd]

I'd say having a team that can attack different weaknesses are most important. And proper buffs is close second, there are many enemies that have sky high AC, so if you relly on team that's only good at physical attacks, you're going to have a bad time. Press "Y" and check enemy stats to see what tools will work best.

For CC you need someone who specializes in that, spell focus and spell penetration feats (+ greater and mythic variants).

Summoning is only good as a distraction for quite a while. Higher level summons, especialy if you specialize in summoning can do some damage too.

For tanks dying to early, you can give them "last stand" mythic ability, so they can stay a bit longer in a fight, it makes it so they can't die for (I think) 2 rounds even if their HP fall bellow 0.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Some good hints there.

Sadly, it seems to get worse the further I get into the game.
Really treid hard not to look up a min / max build or reduce the difficulty, but it really just gets ridicoulus. Monster that can only be hit by a natural 20 and reduce that crit damage close to zero,... meanwhile +25 fort and +35 spellshield. Nothing sticks but spells that ignore spell resist.

At the same time this same guy just wiped 2 tanks in one round and made the rest of the team fight each other.

Feeling like they went a little overboard here.
I know it is fun to beat these encounters with the right build,... but as a newcomer to the rulebook I don't enjoy this even a tiny bit right now. Just feels like I need to study builds and restart the game / respec my team to advance further.

[CHAO$$$]

Initiative is really really good in this game for sure.
In turn based its probably the only stat that will make you not die on every single encounter constantly on high end diff.

In rtwp you can kite until youre no longer flatfooted to engage most of the time.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Some good hints there.

Sadly, it seems to get worse the further I get into the game.
Really treid hard not to look up a min / max build or reduce the difficulty, but it really just gets ridicoulus. Monster that can only be hit by a natural 20 and reduce that crit damage close to zero,... meanwhile +25 fort and +35 spellshield. Nothing sticks but spells that ignore spell resist.

At the same time this same guy just wiped 2 tanks in one round and made the rest of the team fight each other.

Feeling like they went a little overboard here.
I know it is fun to beat these encounters with the right build,... but as a newcomer to the rulebook I don't enjoy this even a tiny bit right now. Just feels like I need to study builds and restart the game / respec my team to advance further.

Why are you so hard set against reducing difficulty?

[malkavius77]

The biggest thing to dealing with tough encounters is sky rocketing your tanks AC it's very much all in stat. Tanks with heavy armor and a shield don't come close to cutting it. You have to mix and match classes and feats to truly make a good tank. And even then they still need buffs to really survive while your damage tries to get through the enemies defenses.

[malkavius77]

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Some good hints there.

Sadly, it seems to get worse the further I get into the game.
Really treid hard not to look up a min / max build or reduce the difficulty, but it really just gets ridicoulus. Monster that can only be hit by a natural 20 and reduce that crit damage close to zero,... meanwhile +25 fort and +35 spellshield. Nothing sticks but spells that ignore spell resist.

At the same time this same guy just wiped 2 tanks in one round and made the rest of the team fight each other.

Feeling like they went a little overboard here.
I know it is fun to beat these encounters with the right build,... but as a newcomer to the rulebook I don't enjoy this even a tiny bit right now. Just feels like I need to study builds and restart the game / respec my team to advance further.

Why are you so hard set against reducing difficulty?

Because some people actually want to overcome a challenge?

[mbradtke]

pathfinder has always been like this, starting flat-fooded in combat can be very dangerous for your tanks, just as not getting first strike, starting combats with suprise rounds does help here, AC and ways to avoid DMG is the most efficient way, healing and DR is weak in comparison, u should always try to kill the enemy as fast as you can and use CC, buffed AC tanks and spells like cocelment or mirror, dont relay on healing or DR, it helps but it is not nearly as efficient

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by malkavius77:

The biggest thing to dealing with tough encounters is sky rocketing your tanks AC it's very much all in stat. Tanks with heavy armor and a shield don't come close to cutting it. You have to mix and match classes and feats to truly make a good tank. And even then they still need buffs to really survive while your damage tries to get through the enemies defenses.

First of all you need to build a party that can go around those defenses. Simple physical attacks are really strong early on when you focus on them, but you need more than just that as game progresses. One of the few really powerful option are those - Shatter Defenses feat that makes shaken enemies flat-footed for you. You should have it on ALL your characters that employ regular weapon attacks. You should also have at least one character capable on making enemies shaken, so additional Cornugon Smash feat and Dreadful Carnage later. Though just taking mythic upgrade for Dazzling Display on some class like Inquisitor that gets really good buffs for intimidation can be allright too. Then there is Finnean, that in chapter 3 can be upgraded to +3 Heartseeker Brilliant blade, meaning that you can have one weapon that will target touch AC instead of regular AC. Combine those two and you basically can hist almost anything. Doesn't work with undead, but those are very few and don't really have super powerful enemies with insane AC.

[Naked Granny]

Originally posted by malkavius77:

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Why are you so hard set against reducing difficulty?

Because some people actually want to overcome a challenge?

Do they...? Do they though? Because if that's true, then they shouldn't be complaining about how challenging the challenge is.

[Memnarch]

Originally posted by CHAO$$$:

In rtwp you can kite until youre no longer flatfooted to engage most of the time.

TeII that reaIIy reaIIy Ioud to aII the turnbased zombies.

[malkavius77]

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Originally posted by malkavius77:

Because some people actually want to overcome a challenge?

Do they...? Do they though? Because if that's true, then they shouldn't be complaining about how challenging the challenge is.

Oh get off your damn high horse this game is challenging for people who have little experience with the rules and this system. It can be frustrating for new players and I can understand why they are having a hard time considering pathfinder has a massive amount of rules and mechanics.

It's not like he was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over the game like some people do. His complaints are valid and he just needs some guidance.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Originally posted by Aunt Tony:

Why are you so hard set against reducing difficulty?

No idea. Always have been.
I don't mind "medium" difficulty for most games, but for RPGs like this I usually go balls to the wall and do pretty good, even on my first run.

I want the challenge. I want the feeling of beating strong encounters.

For some reason I just don't see that in this game. It does not feel like a strategical issue, but a strikt burst issue.
The fight I just mentioned,... I stomped it after resting and changing buffs to even more damage. Suddenly my paladin was hitting for 30-70 damage per ATTACK, sometimes 150damage a round... when before she was not even doing a single point of damage. Unable to hit....
The sad part is that I don't even know why she suddenly hit it. I just buffed the mythic 2d6 holy added damage on her and nothing else changed. It does not say that it adds attack roll bonus. But the enemy suddenly had 20 armor vs her and not 36. No change in alignment either... the weapon was lawful good before and was lawfull good when she suddenly hit the thing.

Summond 10 things as meat shields and had it down in 3 rounds.
More damage, more alpha always seems to be the answer. If a fight is stretching out, there is just no winning since defences don't seem to help even the slightest. ;-)

So, TLDR:
I want a high difficulty, I am just unhappy with the way the difficulty plays out here I guess. Usually a higher difficulty means you have to use MORE toys and combine MORE strategies. In Pathfinder it just seems backwards. The higher I put the difficulty, the more restricted I am on what I can do. ;-)

[phadin]

You have to depend on buffs a lot in this game as you get later in. My main tank is a monk (without the mage armor mythic ability). I buff the hell out of him with spells and effects, so he can hit around a 45 AC early in act 3. Even that isn't enough to survive the dragon, but a lot of the leadup to that fight is setting up a good sneak attack because it's designed around that.

Even the paladin can punch higher then 40 AC with a few buffs. When I'm facing a particularly tough opponent like the dragon, I'm dropping protection from evil, my sorcerer's holy aura (celestial bloodline), my druid's bear aspect, my sensei monk throws a mass Barkskin on everyone, my cleric and paladin's angelic aspect, haste, etc. Then when battle is engaged, you can also evil eye the enemy's attack, hit them with ray of exhastion (which will fatigue them for a -2 str/dex even if they save), etc. Likewise, I've also gone in with things like bless etc for buffing attacks already set up as well, and my sensei monk can Mass Truestrike everyone so their first hit each round is nearly guaranteed.

The really hard fights need these multi-layered buffs to make them manegable.