Can you play and finish without excessive buffing?

[Kreddi]

I know that Pathfinder features heavy uses of buffing as a means of min/maxing, but is it possible to beat the game without doing so?
Doesn't even have to be on normal difficulty, I don't mind turning it down to easy or lower if it means I don't have to optimize buff rotations for every encounter

[Tyrendian89]

depends on how willing you are to get into the system, and what you consider excessive... Buffs are quite helpful, but there are also some ways to make them much less tedious lategame (some can be made to last an entire day so you dont have to recast everything for each fight, for example)

[Kreddi]

Preferably I was hoping for maybe casting 2-3 buffs per rest.
On my first playthrough I just barely made it through the game mostly playing on normal, but it required so many buffs to be cast that it soured my experience.

And I was looking to play without any build help this time around, just me reading through the options and figuring out something that'll work.

[fourfourtwo79]

Should be doable on easier yeah. On the absolute easiest, you can auto-attack most of the time, tried it for fun once. Enemy stats are this nerfed, you'll hit them either way. I'd argue it's not merely the buffing, if that is an issue to you. It's Owlcat's policy of spamming enemy mobs all over their maps that makes this routine feel more repetitive than it would feel otherwise.

They are making cool games. But a simple tweak here would make their games shine even more. And that tweak goes something like this: "Quality over quantity." Not sure whether a critical mass would complain that their games then wouldn't take 150 hours to 100%, but half of it.

[Kinoringan]

If you don't mind downloading mods. You can download buffmod (like bubbles ultimate buffmod from nexus). It's a huge quality of life improvement for the game.

[Rake]

Most people just use BubbleBuff mod to just cast all of the important buffs in 1 second instead of 10 minutes plus maybe a mod to allow achievements while modding. Other than that just play on normal or below to compensate for all of the extra stats that you are missing.

[Drake]

Shield spell and mage armor are working fine. Shield spell provides +4 AC in pnp and blocks magic missile. It's exactly how it's supposed to work, and people use it like that in pnp, they buff themselves to get some AC as wizards.
Same with mage armor, it gives +4 to AC. They block normal attacks just fine. Just becasue the the AC works on touch attacks from ghosts doesn't mean it doesn't work against a regular sword.

And no banish doesn't work on mage armor. This is not how conjuration works. Banish works on conjuration (summoning) spells, mage armor is a conjuration (creation) spell, that's not the same thing. You need dispel magic to remove mage armor.

And just because bless counters bane doesn't you have to save your bless spells until someone casts bane... If you can get a +1 to attacks for the group, get it, even in pnp people use it like that, especially if there are no enemy clerics.

While it's accentuated in wotr because it's a video game AND a mythic campaign (you'll get some level of ridiculous overbuffing in a PF1e mythic campaign even on pnp), pathfinder has always been keen on using layers of buffs, even on pnp.
They even kept it as a core part of PF2e (you can stack buffs in pf2e, but you need actions to sustain some parts of the buffs, so you can have the full power of every buff if you have a lot of them) when D&D5E dropped it with the maintain mechanic.

[Elizabello]

Yes you can finish without excessive buffing up to core for sure. You can finish without excessive buffing on hard+ as well but by that time you have invested so much into the game - you wont care about spending time on buffing.
Also pick enduring spells and greater enduring spells - the latter will turn most of your buff spells into 24h duration.
The biggest thing you have to optimize arent buff rotations but rather your build.

[Kreddi]

Originally posted by Kinoringan:

If you don't mind downloading mods. You can download buffmod (like bubbles ultimate buffmod from nexus). It's a huge quality of life improvement for the game.

I'll look into this mod, cheers. I don't mind buffing as a concept, more-so the way it's been implemented. Too many clicks while watching my party stand still, doing nothing. Even with greater enduring spells.

I found normal practically impossible if it wasn't for the constant buffing I needed to perform. Following builds from cRPGBRO that should be high-difficulty viable.

[Riftweaver]

Originally posted by Kreddi:

Originally posted by Kinoringan:

If you don't mind downloading mods. You can download buffmod (like bubbles ultimate buffmod from nexus). It's a huge quality of life improvement for the game.

I'll look into this mod, cheers. I don't mind buffing as a concept, more-so the way it's been implemented. Too many clicks while watching my party stand still, doing nothing. Even with greater enduring spells.

I found normal practically impossible if it wasn't for the constant buffing I needed to perform. Following builds from cRPGBRO that should be high-difficulty viable.

100% recommend bubble buff mod. its super easy to use once you figure it out, such a massive quality of life thing and actually feels like im able to have a cleric druid and/or arcane caster in the part to their full potential

[Glimmer]

You still have to buff a lot on core, it's just the trash you can slice through without buffing.

[mbradtke]

buffs are only important for harder difficulties, you should be able to survive on normal or below, would need to test it myself but it also depends on the group you play with

[Mr Fred]

Learn how to properly buff in a proper rpg or stick to watered down 5e games like BG3 and Solasta really.

[Crusader993]

Originally posted by talemore:

The difficulty is harder than needed. Normal is not normal at all. It is very hard. And the higher difficulties can not make it harder because it is very hard to bleed blood out of a stone.

I can not confirm that.

"Normal" is not "very hard", the exact opposite is the case as it feels a bit too easy. In my first playtrough I had no idea about the Pathfinder rules and still had no problems on "normal"...

The second point is also not true. The difficulty level "Hard" is significantly harder than "Normal" because there are more opponents and the opponents are also more challenging.

[Kreddi]

Originally posted by mbradtke:

buffs are only important for harder difficulties, you should be able to survive on normal or below, would need to test it myself but it also depends on the group you play with

Maybe I was playing on core and ocasionally switching to normal, but I recall the enemies being so beefed up that my ranger couldn't put a dent in them unless I cast at least 5-6 buffs on her. Hopefully that was core, so I can enjoy normal without worrying about it.

[mbradtke]

you gonna need a good tank and a solid group that doesnt rely on buffs however,
the game is not easy and if u dont want to use buffs, you better gonna get something else to compensate, i think it could be possible on normal but u better have solid shields that have a good AC, a tower shield warrior like valerie in kingmaker doesnt need buffs and will still be effective, caster that debuff the enemies would be pretty helpful as well, a healer should also be there, if it is still too hard you could always lower the difficulty below normal