What the hell is the balance in this game

[Nanerpus]

Hey, I've finished Kingmaker and played dozens of other D&D style games.
This one has the most terrible enemy balance and slog encounters of any of them, by a huge margin. I started on normal but had to drop down to casual to pass the first boss, and now a few hours later am ready to give up.

The first boss attacks multiple times a round and can easily one-shot your tank? Sounds good!

A terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE base defense mission that takes over two hours on turn based mode? Awesome!

Having to fight a level THIRTEEN palandin + adds at LEVEL TWO just not to be evil? Great!

Enemies that just *get* mage armor and shield permanently, putting their AC at 30 for a beginner party? Smart thinking!

Every. Single. Enemy. has a library of multiple permanent buffs just for existing, Jazzed!

Oh, you didn't perfectly balance your party for every conceivable kind of damage type, attack type, or energy type? Enjoy wiping!

♥♥♥♥ this game

[fourfourtwo79]

Astral Projection の投稿を引用：

Game is tough on Normal if you don't have much Pathfinder experience. System is super deep. Definitely look up some build guides.

Not really, in particular not this early on. On "Normal" enemies are even put to a level that slashes their Damage Resistance actually APPLIED in half (If they have shown to have a DR of 5, only 2 or 3 are actually applied). As soon as I realized this, I put the enemy slieder a notch higher in the custom settings. Against demons, you're dealing with DR A LOT. When I was finished with Kenabres after a good deal of hours, I was worrying whether even that would be an appropriate setting. There may have been one or two fights that in isolatioin proved an above average challenge. But unless they've massively tweaked the starting areas since, not seeing it.

The exceptions are mostly optional fights, which are put into the game for an optional challenge. AFAIR there is a tutorial pop-up telling you such. Don't remember this specific fight though. Chances usually are if you're meeting an enemy early on with extremely high defensive stats, it's an optional one (either side quest or else). Later on the game becomes more open anyways, so there's oft stuff to do to level up and return.

Kingmaker early game is more challenging, imo. That said, this isn't your "average D&D game". The likes of Neverwinter NIghts et all tried to bring D&D gaming to the masses of gamers. Your standard goblin in NWN, BG et all has an armor class of 10. At Owlcat he can easily have an AC of 20 -- and that's on normal, and just his armor class as defensive stat. In other words, in NWN et all it didn't mean overly much even if you weren't familiar even with the basics (what stats increases melee / ranged / spell hit chances).

Don't see how anybody would struggle THIS badly early game though, in particular if familiar with D&D basics from other games. They're the same. Never played any Pathfinder myself before this game/s. And always leveled character up myself. Pathfinder is wildly unbalanced as the gap between the "worst" and "best" characters is as wide as the ocean., So naturally "optimum builds" from guides can make things MASSIVELY easier. But those are for the higher difficulties, meant to challenge such builds. Which is why I've never taken a look, and never will.

[fourfourtwo79]

PS: On highest levels of difficulties on such optional fights, whilst a single spell may turn this one trivial on normal (protection from evil!) -- expect to use every trick in the book. :D

Saw this posted somewhere and am still in awe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ppu59OALY

[yo_pisski]

precombat buff solve tons of problems

[Accon]

The game can be quite hard, especially at the beginning. Later on you'll get more tools to circumvent problems and even later you'll laugh those demons in their ugly faces. As far as I remember I had a rough start as well until I realized the importance of certain buffs. Protection from Evil and/or Chaos will be lifesavers against demons, especially the charming kinds like the sucubus since with it up they can shove their domination spells, where the sun doesn't shine.

Also you should buff before fights. The consumables are there to be used. You'll want healing potions, barskin potions, mage armor potions, Protection from Evil/Chaos, Shield Potions (unless you have a shield), relevant attribute buffs and for really hard fights bless weapon/align weapon (and blur/mirror image for melees). If you can get haste running all the better.

The most problematic factors you'll face are multiattacks, overpowered spells, damage reduction and spell resistance. Damage resistance can be overcome by using the correct weapons (study your enemies!) for the most part you'll want cold iron and/or good aligned weapons. Also do not use spells your enemy is immune against (poison etc.). You'll be wasting your time.
Spell resistance is hard to overcome at lower levels. If you want to use direct damage spells try to use spells where spell resistance doesn't apply (see spell description) and ideally no damage reduction or saving throws kick in. This will limit your options though.

Against multiattacking slaughter-demons you'll want layers of defense. Evasive buffs like blur and mirror image can lessen the pain (unless true sight is used). Another effective layer of defense are summons. Even low level summon spells put more bodies on the field the enemy needs to go through to get at you. So let those summons take the initial beating and hope to get some good hits in. Since your spell casters will have a hard time getting serious damage done, they can use summons to be useful.


If you have access to the Grease spell this can more or less trivialize many encounters. Basically it puts an area of slippery ground on the floor. Everyone entering it has to roll a reflex saving throw (which isn't great on demons most of the time) or fall flat on the nose, lose their actions this round and be quite vulnerable to everyone standing on solid ground. You can even stack several instances of Grease on each other for hilarious outcomes. And it lasts for minutes.

Pit type spells can be useful in this regard too.

I remember several instances of me scouting out an encounter, setting a grease area up on a choke point, pulling the enemies over with a range attack and lean back while dropping a dozen summons on them to keep them busy while plinging away with a bow until they where dead. This even worked well on certain huge and very grumpy demons in Act 2 who where flagged as hard optional content.

Early on you'll be fighting stuff no sane DM who'd want to play with his PnP-Group for a longer time would or should usually throw at you. That's part of the game though which is actually based on a PnP-Campaign - Setting. It's also part of the later power fantasy you'll experience. You'll have your revenge for all the Kenabres pains later on.

[Axonteer]

Im someone that prefers to finely tune the games difficulty to my liking, i dont want easy but i also dont want to first make a third education with an engineering degree to know what builds work best (and i have some pnp expirience from playing about 15 years of dark eye, dnd 4 etc. ) plus obviously baldurs gate games. So i roughly just read up certain "good to know" interactions and roll with it. Started with normal and after i arrived at drezen i found that crits tend to sometimes (Bad luck roll) onehit often my main (caster xD ) or even my tank so i just lowered the crits, and later when i had more issues either hitting them with having an "ok+" build i simply put the "slightly lower" stat bonuses and reduced the damage taken by 0.1

im no pro nor do i want to invest many hours into reading up optimal builds to play at core nor do i have the time to play the same scene like 5 times over to get the best result.

but, and this is the greatest strengh in my book in this game: the game lets you be your own DM - Like any good DM, the DM wants the group to have fun, but still feel challanged - so i do exactly that and tune the game so its fun, but still not a cakewalk.

Same goes for deaths door, unless you agree on a suicide "sudden death" campaign, a good dm will always find a plan B to get you somehow out of jail if the group gets ganked . The game doesnt have that so simply shut deaths door off etc.

This might come over elitist but... im playing on ajusted to my liking normal and i find the game to be easy and only have peaks here and there where you encounter a enemy with like 2x the usual AC making it... annoying to deal with. And yes in a pnp adventure you dont buff before each encounter because you cant reaload and dont know when an encounter happens, but... if you play on casual and get dunked then you must be doing something seriously wrong. At casual even my sorcerer could go melee rambo with his two daggers xD just all touch cone spells and flamethrower the enemy hordes away xD

Also Kingmaker i had to correctly finetune and honestly: I applaude Owlcat for implementing that many options to tune your difficulty, from the hit chance to basically a near godmode.

On the other hand: CRPG's never have been easy if you come with an action game mindset.


toptip: the grease spell is one of the most usefull, also the F5 and F8 key's


and for anybody else reading, all im saying is this: "ZIPPY (f_cking) Magic"

[fourfourtwo79]

Axonteer の投稿を引用：

im no pro nor do i want to invest many hours into reading up optimal builds to play at core nor do i have the time to play the same scene like 5 times over to get the best result.

Core and upwards are meant to challenge Pathfinder P&P players who know how to build inside out. The wording may be wrong, suggesting that "This is just like in the Pen&Paper". There's a warning including a confirmation check for a reason though, plus, switching through difficulties on the fly it's pretty apparent how the enemy stats increasingly scale skywards (far beyond anything BG, NWN, et all). Unlike BG, enemy stats here eventually become transparent, and are even stored in the in-game encyclopedia.

On standard difficulties, the crits are lowered by default. On Baldur's Gate they actually solved the possible one-shot this way: If you are wearing helmets, they avoid crits altogether. That is, exclusively on the own party, of course. :D

[Sidian]

Alt の投稿を引用：

Dont know if it even possible to defeat water elemental without its help. Elemental just one shots anything otherwise.

I just use real time combat and let someone with 30 speed run around the table with the elemental chasing them, while the others shoot it with bows or spells. Works 100% of the time and i can use the cold protection stuff for the shadow demon at the market place.

[Lightning]

attila-le-hun の投稿を引用：

It's just only the beginning...you'll see so much more :p

Yeah I know i deleted my 80+ hour first playthrough which I never even finished the game on yet since of the game breaking bugs in the past, decided to just delete it and restart with the new updates since they even added a new movement stat perk as well.

[t]

Suck at the game?
Get good!

[Rizilliant]

This one is only slightly worse than Kingmaker with the absurd encounters.. Some of the reandom world map encounters here, are definitely insane.. But I ran into several poorly designed, out of place encounters in Kingmaker also. Thankfully, those were designed encounters, and you learned where they were after a single play through. That is THE reason I dont recommend these games, despite still trying to enjoy them.. I hate having to savescum, to know what I have to be ready for,.

Im also not too proud to drop down difficulty, as I like to actually role play my characters.. I do not enjoy the min/max style of play. But I honestly dont understand how people are even capable of winning on the higher difficulties.

[Raikon]

Lets Go Brandon! FJB の投稿を引用：

This one is only slightly worse than Kingmaker with the absurd encounters.. Some of the reandom world map encounters here, are definitely insane.. But I ran into several poorly designed, out of place encounters in Kingmaker also. Thankfully, those were designed encounters, and you learned where they were after a single play through. That is THE reason I dont recommend these games, despite still trying to enjoy them.. I hate having to savescum, to know what I have to be ready for,.

Im also not too proud to drop down difficulty, as I like to actually role play my characters.. I do not enjoy the min/max style of play. But I honestly dont understand how people are even capable of winning on the higher difficulties.

I didnt quote you to respond to anything you said. Or acknolwedge any of your points as write or wrong. No. I only did it because you have such a provacative name, and I wanted to make sure to capture it, incase you deleted your post.

Your name is kinda in your face isnt it?

[no_idea_for_a_name]

In case you can't actually progress in the game, you could cheat. Install the Toybox mod and change the stats (and everything else) of your MC ( and your companions) as you want and make the game as easy as you like. Then, in a second playthrough (if you liked the game), after you've learned the mechanics, you could abandon cheats and play normally. You'll see that it's not as difficult as you think, at least on normal.

[Lightning]

Yeah I struggle even on Core, I wonder how many can actually do Unfair with ease, especially in a game of pure rng where each hit has its own chance of missing or hitting.

Reloaded my game 10+ times in a row where those kicking guys in the beginning would 1 shot my tank, then after awhile the rng cooled down and they started to miss more often and was able to handle them.

[malkavius77]

Lightning の投稿を引用：

Yeah I struggle even on Core, I wonder how many can actually do Unfair with ease, especially in a game of pure rng where each hit has its own chance of missing or hitting.

Reloaded my game 10+ times in a row where those kicking guys in the beginning would 1 shot my tank, then after awhile the rng cooled down and they started to miss more often and was able to handle them.

They don't do it with ease they usually run 4-6 pets and minmax with merc companions.

[Sidian]

Lightning の投稿を引用：

Yeah I struggle even on Core, I wonder how many can actually do Unfair with ease, especially in a game of pure rng where each hit has its own chance of missing or hitting.

Reloaded my game 10+ times in a row where those kicking guys in the beginning would 1 shot my tank, then after awhile the rng cooled down and they started to miss more often and was able to handle them.

Get Camilla the Protective Luck hex and spam it on your tank.