Owlcat is a bad DM #9001

[Boner Storm]

So I was wondering if anyone else noticed that the "Core" difficulty is BS and bears zero resemblance to actual core Pathfinder rules encounter design. That mobs routinely have massive buffs to all their stats for no reason.

So I wrote a negative review after a really annoying encounter with some skeletons that had +10 Natural Armor for no reason at all... and I found that a bunch of other people noticed the same thing. Apparently there's a no-name mob with EIGHTY ONE AC in the late game. (EDIT to explain: by Core rules Skeletal Champions are supposed to have +2 Nat Armor but these had +12 - the difference between Lann the Zen Archer hitting 5% of the time vs 40% of the time)
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197971589114/recommended/1184370

So... what kind of BS min-max builds are people running to keep up with the bad game design?

I'm running a Scaled Fist 2/Paladin 3/Aldori Swordlord 5/Aldori Defender 10 build (I'm three levels into the latter) with Crane Style, Cornugon Smash and Shatter Defenses.

Everyone is buffed with all the usuals including Good Hope... what am I missing? What kind of nonsense cheese should I be running to make this game playable?

[Boner Storm]

Gregorovitch eredeti hozzászólása:

Elminster eredeti hozzászólása:

I wonder what prompted this. The golden age rpg games BG/BG2/IWD were not like that, nor were the now very old gold box games from the nineties.

As I recall the IE games were exactly like that. I recall this only too well 'cos BG1 was the first cRPG I played really when it came out in 1998. It did not go well for me. I struggled and struggled, unable to beat quite a few enemies. Eventually I gave up altogether after meeting basilisks. I had not the faintest idea how to deal with them. Knowing next to nothing about D&D at that point the game was totally bewildering.

But I had nowhere to whine about it back then. That's the only thing that's different today. The ability to whine endlessly on Steam forums. Of course that cuts both ways. The forums also provide new players with a massive amount of help. Had I had a Steam forum back in '98 I'd have found out how to deal with basilisks in minutes. And THACO and all the rest of it.

I would wager a very tidy sum that the % of players who have finished WotR (about 12.5%) is significantly higher than the % who managed to finish BG1 back in 1998 because of this.

Haha I will admit the irony that the "you'll have problems if you don't know the ruleset" nonsense from Owlcat actually applied to BG. There were no tooltips explaining how THAC0 or spells or saves or anything worked.

If you try it again now, I'm sure you'll do better. And I recommend you do - if you catch the remastered version on sale. But when I went into it as a kid it was with experience from previous AD&D games that were even less user-friendly.

[Boner Storm]

Conquista eredeti hozzászólása:

tbf its not really different to BG2, first time you run unprepared into an lich you probably die, but as soon you prepare they turn into a non issue, and even if you don't prepare they can turn into one because their greatest bane is a door and nearly every lich is close to one

Of course. The white knight saying that difficulty doesn't matter because you can cheese.

Not everybody likes the taste of cheese, bro.

[Raikon]

out of curiosity is a whiteknight a paladin?

[Boner Storm]

Raikon eredeti hozzászólása:

out of curiosity is a whiteknight a paladin?

If "good" is defined as the faith that the game is perfect and "evil" is everyone complaining about the game, then yes.

[Conquista]

i am a knight in shining armor

edit: bg2 is pretty much perfect even with all the cheese, but not the remaster version, somehow they messed up pathfinding in party and never corrected that

[titanopteryx]

Boner Storm eredeti hozzászólása:

Drake eredeti hozzászólása:

There is also the party size consideration. Mosnters in pathfinder rules are generated based on a 4 people party. Since this is a 6 people mythic party, they just adjusted the mobs.
That's not an issue. A mob doesn't have do be the exact same as in the monster manual. A GM is allowed to tweak them, i tweak my mobs all the time depending the party.

If you tweak like Owlcat tweaks, then you're a bad DM.

You adjust APL by +! if it's a 6-person party and by +1 for every two mythic ranks, rounded down. If you make significant changes to a mob, you need to adjust CR as necessary. It's in the damn book and it's not rocket science.

Did you read my breakdown of what they did with Viscount Smoulderburn? Will o Wisp plus 4 class levels, pre-buff shield and something like THIRTY extra ability points. Roughly a CR10 encounter In an area you get to at level 3. There's no justification for that.

The enemies get stronger or weaker depending on the difficulty settings. Did you check those will o wisps on different difficulty settings to see if any of the settings had the will o wisp's stats set correctly?

[Elminster]

Conquista eredeti hozzászólása:

tbf its not really different to BG2, first time you run unprepared into an lich you probably die, but as soon you prepare they turn into a non issue, and even if you don't prepare they can turn into one because their greatest bane is a door and nearly every lich is close to one

Every hard fight in BG2, from Firkrag and the shadow dragon to the liches and demilich are optional and amply advertized like that. In the main campaign you can basically cruise through without much effort, provided you are decently equipped.

[Elminster]

Gregorovitch eredeti hozzászólása:

Elminster eredeti hozzászólása:

I wonder what prompted this. The golden age rpg games BG/BG2/IWD were not like that, nor were the now very old gold box games from the nineties.

As I recall the IE games were exactly like that. I recall this only too well 'cos BG1 was the first cRPG I played really when it came out in 1998. It did not go well for me. I struggled and struggled, unable to beat quite a few enemies. Eventually I gave up altogether after meeting basilisks. I had not the faintest idea how to deal with them. Knowing next to nothing about D&D at that point the game was totally bewildering.

But I had nowhere to whine about it back then. That's the only thing that's different today. The ability to whine endlessly on Steam forums. Of course that cuts both ways. The forums also provide new players with a massive amount of help. Had I had a Steam forum back in '98 I'd have found out how to deal with basilisks in minutes. And THACO and all the rest of it.

I would wager a very tidy sum that the % of players who have finished WotR (about 12.5%) is significantly higher than the % who managed to finish BG1 back in 1998 because of this.

Basilisks and level draining will get you by surprise the first time around, everything else is pretty run of the mill. With the notable exceptions of dragons and liches (and a few others, like demogorgon) in BG2 which are all optional and amply marked as such.

This is quite different from wotr, kingmaker or BG3 (Underdark) where you have main fights that need a planed out team, use of environment and consumable and are still challenging... or cheese.

[Elminster]

Mr Fred eredeti hozzászólása:

Elminster eredeti hozzászólása:

It is interesting though to see the same discussions here as in the BG3 forum. It seems that developer these days cater to the players that like mostly to beat impossible fights by thinking strategically and using all possible tools in the character build and in the environment to do so.

I wonder what prompted this. The golden age rpg games BG/BG2/IWD were not like that, nor were the now very old gold box games from the nineties. The games that followed, up until 5-8 years ago also did not have this arms race between player and encounters at least not to this level.

My personal theory is that developers are trying to find something more engaging from the mechanics and combat point of view because, just rolling out default PF/D&D mechanics seems boring. This might of course cater to a certain group of players but it does not to those players like me or the OP who are perfectly fine with a PnP rules balanced encounter and value primarily the story and the RPG factor.

Again its just people being terrible and not doing the simplest things like buffing properly. There are zero enemy that require nat 20 to hit, if it EVER happened its 100% on you. A normal user experience on core is simply letting your team rampage through everything automatically in rtwp. There is ZERO cheese needed sorry to burst your bubble.

People complaining about the difficulty in BG3 that is 5e so dnd lite with sidewheels are even worst. You can play a wizard with 8 int that never cast a spell AND challenge yourself to start every fights in the worst possible way on purpose and still breeze through that game... wish I was exagerating but I did exactly that on my 2nd playthrough to prove a point.

I am playing a legend scaled fist/oracle/dragon disciple/mistic theurge/paladin/hellknight I can solo pretty much anything.

I dont believe this is the way this game should be played though... stop trolling, start reading

[Conquista]

Elminster eredeti hozzászólása:

Conquista eredeti hozzászólása:

tbf its not really different to BG2, first time you run unprepared into an lich you probably die, but as soon you prepare they turn into a non issue, and even if you don't prepare they can turn into one because their greatest bane is a door and nearly every lich is close to one

Every hard fight in BG2, from Firkrag and the shadow dragon to the liches and demilich are optional and amply advertized like that. In the main campaign you can basically cruise through without much effort, provided you are decently equipped.

i mean every hard fight in wotr is also optional, unless you count the red dragon as hard fight, but even if he follows pretty much the same rules as any videogame boss, unprepared you might die, prepared its not an problem, if that is too much trouble you can also just cheese him

i mean i get why the comparison with an bg2 lich works, like in bg2 you can enter a random room in a inn and run into an lich, its as random as moving to the west and getting an encounter with a dragon

[Withmir]

Elminster eredeti hozzászólása:

I am playing a legend scaled fist/oracle/dragon disciple/mistic theurge/paladin/hellknight I can solo pretty much anything.

I dont believe this is the way this game should be played though... stop trolling, start reading

Good thing no one is forcing you to play that way

[Valthejean]

Boner Storm eredeti hozzászólása:

Haha I will admit the irony that the "you'll have problems if you don't know the ruleset" nonsense from Owlcat actually applied to BG. There were no tooltips explaining how THAC0 or spells or saves or anything worked.

If you try it again now, I'm sure you'll do better. And I recommend you do - if you catch the remastered version on sale. But when I went into it as a kid it was with experience from previous AD&D games that were even less user-friendly.

He's insanely wrong, to the point that it's just not funny. I grew up with those games, and they taught me TERRIBLE behavior for DnD. With the exception of Basilisks in 1, I sold my potions and scrolls, because shocker, summon monster and animate dead are a huge crutch that can give you the impression you're a lot better than you are. BG2 actually got me to learn a few things, but even then it wasn't until the EE came out and I was much older and actually read up on how things worked (since I had gotten too used to 3e and pathfinder) that I actually learned things. I was rather embarrassed at how badly I built my characters, but I'm exceedingly glad that's what it was balanced around, because I might have thrown it away had it done so.

[Boner Storm]

titanopteryx eredeti hozzászólása:

Boner Storm eredeti hozzászólása:

If you tweak like Owlcat tweaks, then you're a bad DM.

You adjust APL by +! if it's a 6-person party and by +1 for every two mythic ranks, rounded down. If you make significant changes to a mob, you need to adjust CR as necessary. It's in the damn book and it's not rocket science.

Did you read my breakdown of what they did with Viscount Smoulderburn? Will o Wisp plus 4 class levels, pre-buff shield and something like THIRTY extra ability points. Roughly a CR10 encounter In an area you get to at level 3. There's no justification for that.

The enemies get stronger or weaker depending on the difficulty settings. Did you check those will o wisps on different difficulty settings to see if any of the settings had the will o wisp's stats set correctly?

Dude just stop. You don't even know what you're talking about. You're just reflexively white-knighting.

Read the stat blocks with the two brain cells you have to rub together or STFU.
https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Viscount_Smoulderburn
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/will-o-wisp/

[Withmir]

Boner Storm eredeti hozzászólása:

Dude just stop. You don't even know what you're talking about. You're just reflexively white-knighting.

Read the stat blocks with the two brain cells you have to rub together or STFU.
https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Viscount_Smoulderburn
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/will-o-wisp/

Why are we comparing an optional boss to a generic will o wisp stat block. Also his point was that stat blocks change based of difficulty settings and you linked a stat block without any reference to what difficulty that it is from. It's ok though you can just insult someone that surely means you have successfully won the argument.

[Straph]

Two things Owlcat should have done to solve 99% of these types of complaints. No permanent spells on mobs, period, end of story. This move is such a bad design choice that it boarders on "you really never played pathfinder table top with good players have you" idiocy. Something Owlcat claims they do "played the game extensively," but clearly haven't with all the newb GM mistakes they make. Instead, if the boss knows the player groups is coming in to attack allow three buff spells with minutes/level duration on the boss to be active. The first round the boss should casts a rounds/level duration buff to start the fight. This gives players the chance to figure out tactics before the BBEG attempts to wreck faces. Things like knowledge rolls, and other things like buffing the party. Groups rarely have full buffs on before an encounter, and must carefully weigh options on what spells they use for which fights during a dungeon crawl.

The other thing Owlcat should have done, and to be honest this is a no-brainer. Core difficulty should be the normal setting. No advanced templates on mobs, no mythic add-on templates to regular mobs, and no additional hidden BS on mob character sheets that they clearly pulled in this game. Every encounter should be designed around Average Party Level. This would allow players to on normal mode be able to clear just about every fight without their back-line archers having a 5% hit chance on a boss. It's the difference between Baphomet having a 70 AC in the game, and a 45 AC in the tabletop adventure path (correct me if I'm wrong on the AC).

In closing, Owlcat employees are likely the types of GM's and players that would get banned from most groups I've played in for min/max play styles. Making completely douche like GM rulings, clearly misreading the rules, or forgetting to read the entirety of the rule in question. They are the GM that says, "I changed x to make the game more challenging for players." Which is a cop out, and they know it. If you wanna say something is Core rules, then please stick to what the word core rules means. Otherwise, you're just saying one thing, but showing how dishonest you are on the back end.

If they want a player's experience to be min/max, save scum, rest before every boss fight, then I'll gladly do that. I was hoping for a more mythic player experience though. Wading through normal mobs like it ain't no thang, but struggling a bit with the demon lords, and other major bosses. Sadly, Owlcat and many players disagree with their interpretation of core pathfinder. This is pretty common even at different gamer's tables.