Stat Bloat

[Gorwe]

Do you think it exists apart from random "lulz git gud" encounters(Playful Darkness et al)? If you think it does exist, how'd you go about it? Do you think that it makes sense that random enemies have inbuilt(=no dispel) Displacement, True Sight, 40+ AC(on Normal)...? Should non optional bosses like Darazzand have that same stat bloat or ... ?

[Eclipse]

Difficulty spike is even worse in threshold (end of act 5). But I guess this makes sense. Demons are throwing everything they have in the last desperate attempt to stop you.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by Eclipse:

Difficulty spike is even worse in threshold (end of act 5). But I guess this makes sense. Demons are throwing everything they have in the last desperate attempt to stop you.

This is a good example. It does make sense for it to exist, but...honestly? Couldn't it have been handled differently? Lopsided encounters, creative encounters etc. I get it that you're now FULLY on their territory, but, what exactly gives them these huge stat buffs?

Basically, it kinda don't make sense(=better alternatives out there) and it feels awful(=RIP). WoTR should be, basically, Diablo of D&D games. Aka absolute power fantasy. But it don't feel like that, that's my problem. Sure, my Sader 2 shot Darazzand, but that's after a lot of misses. Nat 20 = VERY likely Crit = DEAD enemy. But it feels awful to have, basically, sub 50% chance to hit.

Just allow us our Power Fantasy with some challenge. Perhaps allowing us to modify enemy stats piecemeal? Like "Defense", "Offense" etc multipliers? Idk.

[claiminglight]

Near everything I've come across is dispel-able, even if it's often BS that they could be in the middle of a business meeting and have permanent mid-war buffs on. But even if it seems inherent, it's usually removable.

Dex and Natural Armor bloat, on the other hand... D&D and Pathfinder are basically hands free on that. I suppose they assume that the DM won't be adversarial.

But as far as Darazzand goes, I dispelled the everloving crap out of him. By the end of the fight, I was hitting with my archers on a 9 in Core, without using any exploits. He's doable for sure. But you certainly have to make sure you've got a wealth of greater dispels and the like.

Arcanist is good for that. I added a white mage arcanist that can raise his CL by 2- which counts for dispel checks.
--
For me, the sweet spot for TTRPG combat is when you have to use your brain to win- and if you're thinking and playing well, then luck is mostly not going to win the day either way. That can be challenging to design around, because you're gonna have players like me that like to make "real people". And you'll have players that want to make stat blocks. I'd trivialize more fights if I made more unstable maniacs that can shoot well.

But when things are bad-- like with the Playful Darkness-- that's when you HAVE to have known the fight was going to be there in order to stand a chance, and the foreshadowing was essentially non-existent. Which is absolutely *terrible* design. God awful.

[Conquista]

story wise nahyndrian crystals give demons mythic levels and thats cause for their additional stats

and gameplay wise it makes sense if you consider that with a good mythic path, you can just orbital strike demons back into the stone age

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by claiminglight:

Near everything I've come across is dispel-able, even if it's often BS that they could be in the middle of a business meeting and have permanent mid-war buffs on. But even if it seems inherent, it's usually removable.

Dex and Natural Armor bloat, on the other hand... D&D and Pathfinder are basically hands free on that. I suppose they assume that the DM won't be adversarial.

But as far as Darazzand goes, I dispelled the everloving crap out of him. By the end of the fight, I was hitting with my archers on a 9 in Core, without using any exploits. He's doable for sure. But you certainly have to make sure you've got a wealth of greater dispels and the like.

Arcanist is good for that. I added a white mage arcanist that can raise his CL by 2- which counts for dispel checks.
--
For me, the sweet spot for TTRPG combat is when you have to use your brain to win- and if you're thinking and playing well, then luck is mostly not going to win the day either way. That can be challenging to design around, because you're gonna have players like me that like to make "real people". And you'll have players that want to make stat blocks. I'd trivialize more fights if I made more unstable maniacs that can shoot well.

But when things are bad-- like with the Playful Darkness-- that's when you HAVE to have known the fight was going to be there in order to stand a chance, and the foreshadowing was essentially non-existent. Which is absolutely *terrible* design. God awful.

Huh, you learn something new every day. Thanks! That makes Abjuration even more powerful than I originally thought. With that said, I wish we could target specific (de)buffs to dispel. Oh well.

As for Playful, the foreshadowing was there. The entire area is full of Undead(which is weird for Fane if you better think about it) and then there is that text that basically says "even a Balor would be proud of this slaughter". And other enviromental cues. With that said, I expected...something else. A huge, ugly shadow or what have you. What I did not expect is hyper jacked up, crazy OP Kitsune. Or at the very least it looks like one. I mean, ok? And it's not even that hard(just super stats, nothing to it I'd prefer if it involved additional mech as opposed to super stats), just save scum until Slumber(or something of the kind) kicks in then go to town. Reward is also :/ . What, 10k? For that? I expect at least a level. Or customizable weapon or what have you. Otherwise, fk off.

Originally posted by Conquista:

story wise nahyndrian crystals give demons mythic levels and thats cause for their additional stats

and gameplay wise it makes sense if you consider that with a good mythic path, you can just orbital strike demons back into the stone age

Aha, Act 5 demons are Tiberium infused? So to speak. If so, everything checks out. Except it feeling awful. But...whatever can be done? /shrug

[Eclipse]

Yes,demons are empowered by demon lord blood via crystals. So to speak they are closer to demon lords in act 4 and 5 than to average joe. Not all demons are mythical though. But a lot in acts 4 and 5 are.

[Gorwe]

My following question would be: "how's it in TT?". Are the stats similarily bloated due to presence of Mythic Paths or are they more reasonable? Nahydrian aside.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Gorwe:

Do you think it exists

No it doesn't. The game has been very carefully balanced (there are the odd exceptions but these are being fine tuned as patches are released).

What can exists, for an individual player, is a "stat wall". This is usually where their builds are not up the standard required for the difficulty they are playing on but it can also be where they are not aware of tools available to them or don't use them properly. The "stat wall" manifests when you are basically unable to hit and/or damage enemies outside of a natural 20 roll.

The difference between Pathfinder and pretty much all other RPG systems is that character build options are very far from from being equal in strength and it is possible to make big mistakes. Furthermore you can make mistake on top of mistake which means you can fall further and further behind the game's power curve as the game progresses.

Josh Sawyer, Obsidian's chief game designer, has the precise opposite philosophy to this. In games such as Pillars of Eternity you have several build options for each class but those are deliberately balanced to be of equal power and it is virtually impossible to build an non-viable character. Therefore players can play games like PoE intuitively from the get go and succeed just fine.

But you can't do that in Pathfinder, you will be punished severely for making too many mistakes, certainly on Core and even on Normal. You have to either learn more about the Pathfinder rules and build options or you have to turn the difficulty down. Fortunately once in Act 3 you get a number of free respecs and if you take advantage of this you can dramatically improve your character's combat performance such that any "stat wall" will disappear and the monsters will start melting before you. This requires no min-maxing or munchkin building, just competent accurate single class building is absolutely fine up to Core difficulty and even Hard.

It is also important to understand the mechanics of the tools at your disposal and implement them in battle in the way they are designed to be used. Sometimes these tools and how they should be used are not obvious and significantly more complex than the average cRPG but understanding them properly can make a huge difference to your ability to slaughter monsters and a void taking damage from them. This applies to both offensive and defensive capabilities.

I am pretty experienced with cRPG in general but I have limited experience of Pathfinder. I make mistakes and don't fully understand half of it yet, less really. I was having some trouble with certain monsters towards the end of the Drezen siege. Now I'm in Act 3, playing on Core, and I've made two big changes that have massively improved my combat performance which I'll briefly outline to illustrate the sort of thing that fixes this "stat wall" problem and also how relatively easy it is to fix.

The first mistake I made was giving Nenio Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. But Nenio doesn't need those as her main thing is Illusion spells like Phantasmal Killer. Her hit rate with Phanrasmal Killer was abysmal because I had chosen the wrong feats. I chose those feats 'cos I thought it would be nice if Nenio could cast ray spells like Scorching Ray as well, right? Wrong. Big mistake. So I respeced Nenio at L9 to replace these feats with Greater Spell Focus (Illusion) and Greater Spell Penetration. Nenio is now landing Phantasmal Killer much more reliably. Bye bye stat wall. Poor monsters.

The second thing I've done is to spend some time looking up details about and experimenting with how to use Arueshalae effectively, especially in relation to her Ranger's Bond ability, how it interacts with her Instant Enemy spell etc and which feats/favoured enemy to give her. As a result of this I can now activate this Rangers Bond thing efficiently, monitor it and refresh it when necessary etc and check if my current "problem monster" is or is not considered one of Arue's favoured enemies, casting Instant Enemy on it is necessary. As a result of this already at L10 Arue is getting a +6 bonus against Demons of Magic and, this is the big one, she's distributing a +3 bonus to everyone else in the party.

The impact of these two changes on the overall combat effectiveness of my party has been massive. Five uber-Vrocks? Pah! I can now just swat them aside without taking a scratch. Early-ish Act 3 on Core I feel in control now. Monsters are melting before me, it feels almost too easy. They weren't before and it didn't before.

So the answer to your question is the game balance is generally speaking absolutely fine but if you personally are hitting stat wall problems you've either got to fix your builds and learn more about your tool set, which takes some effort it is true, or you have to lower the difficulty so the monster's stats come within range of your party's capabilities as they are currently built and equipped. This is why you will get answer after answer on a thread like this along the lines of "git gud" or "turn down the difficulty" or both.

[Uzkin]

stat blyat

[Eclipse]

With some builds even unfair isn’t a problem (aside from may be 1-2 areas). You always can use dimension strike/shattered defenses+display of force/merged mythic spellbook/trickster/lich stat drain spell. But if you really want to play something fitting your play style and unique this might be a problem on unfair. But for core and below anything is viable I guess.

[Wraith]

When random mob # 3 has better stats and is more annoying then their respective demon lord then yes this game has some poor balancing issue.
To be honest it not really the bloat the the issue.

It the bad balancing.

[Gorwe]

Also, why does "Persistent Spell" Feat function like it does? The way I remember it(thought I was crazy, I was not) is that it made a (de)buff last for 24h. What's this double save nonsense? And why don't they call it different, it causes needless confusion. Because I overlooked that due to its name.

Originally posted by Wraith:

When random mob # 3 has better stats and is more annoying then their respective demon lord then yes this game has some poor balancing issue.
To be honest it not really the bloat the the issue.

It the bad balancing.

I haven't noticed this. Stuff like Darazzand was properly at the top of its respective Act's foodchain. Note: I don't take half serious crap like Playful into consideration - AS LONG AS IT'S CLEARLY SEPARATED. It's a clear outlier. But I have noticed that mobs, while still melting rather easily, have suspiciously high CR and stats in general.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Gorwe:

Do you think it exists

No it doesn't. The game has been very carefully balanced (there are the odd exceptions but these are being fine tuned as patches are released).

What can exists, for an individual player, is a "stat wall". This is usually where their builds are not up the standard required for the difficulty they are playing on but it can also be where they are not aware of tools available to them or don't use them properly. The "stat wall" manifests when you are basically unable to hit and/or damage enemies outside of a natural 20 roll.

The difference between Pathfinder and pretty much all other RPG systems is that character build options are very far from from being equal in strength and it is possible to make big mistakes. Furthermore you can make mistake on top of mistake which means you can fall further and further behind the game's power curve as the game progresses.

Josh Sawyer, Obsidian's chief game designer, has the precise opposite philosophy to this. In games such as Pillars of Eternity you have several build options for each class but those are deliberately balanced to be of equal power and it is virtually impossible to build an non-viable character. Therefore players can play games like PoE intuitively from the get go and succeed just fine.

But you can't do that in Pathfinder, you will be punished severely for making too many mistakes, certainly on Core and even on Normal. You have to either learn more about the Pathfinder rules and build options or you have to turn the difficulty down. Fortunately once in Act 3 you get a number of free respecs and if you take advantage of this you can dramatically improve your character's combat performance such that any "stat wall" will disappear and the monsters will start melting before you. This requires no min-maxing or munchkin building, just competent accurate single class building is absolutely fine up to Core difficulty and even Hard.

It is also important to understand the mechanics of the tools at your disposal and implement them in battle in the way they are designed to be used. Sometimes these tools and how they should be used are not obvious and significantly more complex than the average cRPG but understanding them properly can make a huge difference to your ability to slaughter monsters and a void taking damage from them. This applies to both offensive and defensive capabilities.

I am pretty experienced with cRPG in general but I have limited experience of Pathfinder. I make mistakes and don't fully understand half of it yet, less really. I was having some trouble with certain monsters towards the end of the Drezen siege. Now I'm in Act 3, playing on Core, and I've made two big changes that have massively improved my combat performance which I'll briefly outline to illustrate the sort of thing that fixes this "stat wall" problem and also how relatively easy it is to fix.

The first mistake I made was giving Nenio Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. But Nenio doesn't need those as her main thing is Illusion spells like Phantasmal Killer. Her hit rate with Phanrasmal Killer was abysmal because I had chosen the wrong feats. I chose those feats 'cos I thought it would be nice if Nenio could cast ray spells like Scorching Ray as well, right? Wrong. Big mistake. So I respeced Nenio at L9 to replace these feats with Greater Spell Focus (Illusion) and Greater Spell Penetration. Nenio is now landing Phantasmal Killer much more reliably. Bye bye stat wall. Poor monsters.

The second thing I've done is to spend some time looking up details about and experimenting with how to use Arueshalae effectively, especially in relation to her Ranger's Bond ability, how it interacts with her Instant Enemy spell etc and which feats/favoured enemy to give her. As a result of this I can now activate this Rangers Bond thing efficiently, monitor it and refresh it when necessary etc and check if my current "problem monster" is or is not considered one of Arue's favoured enemies, casting Instant Enemy on it is necessary. As a result of this already at L10 Arue is getting a +6 bonus against Demons of Magic and, this is the big one, she's distributing a +3 bonus to everyone else in the party.

The impact of these two changes on the overall combat effectiveness of my party has been massive. Five uber-Vrocks? Pah! I can now just swat them aside without taking a scratch. Early-ish Act 3 on Core I feel in control now. Monsters are melting before me, it feels almost too easy. They weren't before and it didn't before.

So the answer to your question is the game balance is generally speaking absolutely fine but if you personally are hitting stat wall problems you've either got to fix your builds and learn more about your tool set, which takes some effort it is true, or you have to lower the difficulty so the monster's stats come within range of your party's capabilities as they are currently built and equipped. This is why you will get answer after answer on a thread like this along the lines of "git gud" or "turn down the difficulty" or both.

I just wanted to say that the only thing I'm truly missing from PoE, more specifically Deadfire, is the "per Encounter spell system". That's just beautiful and such an improvement from Vancian 90s crap(Vancian is fine by itself, but it's pretty much Vintage right now - imo). But I can recreate it here with Toybox and should I want, I can set other limitations etc.

Also, let's see whether you change your tune by the time game ends. I've a nose you will once you meet Lord Dar etc. Does it require tactics? Yes, that's fine. But even then, sometimes too much's too much. Note: Dar is simply an example. It makes 100% sense for him to be at his power level. I'd argue it's a bit too much, but he is a named Balor, after all. That don't bode well.

[Boomstar]

I've basically come to the conclusion pathfinder is a bad game system. And to play this game on higher difficulties you have to have intimate knowledge of the needlessly complicated and un-intuitive aspects of game. It took me awhile to realize magical vestments actually still did something on already magical armor. That ranged touch attacks get bonus from things like point blank shot. The whole pathfinder system is just a myriad of bad choices masquerading as complexity.

Or maybe owlcat are just terrible DM's. PoE 2 was a bit too easy but id take it anyday over this. Shame that series seems to be dead though.

[Stink Bug]

⬆️ Better and more accurate mechanic and ability descriptions help a lot with that; as someone who’s become quite familiar with 3.X mechanics they are intuitive as long as the exceptions are clearly spelled out; this game has the double whammy of bugs and homebrew mechanic changes which are often not clearly documented.

Towards the topic, I’ve finally hit Act 4 and the bloat (level bloat especially) is really starting to hit hard. It could be bad in Act 3 too but now there are regular level 19+ “trash” mobs. Stuff like that straight up makes HD-based spells useless (except for the few mythic merge combos) and forces hyper specialization for piercing SR and saves, especially since Owlcat implemented so few of the available non-SR spells. The bloated HP makes combat take much longer than it should too.

I’ll again point to Act 1 as proof that Owlcat can make challenging combat with little to no stat/level bloat through careful encounter design and enemy diversity.