Updated build guides?

[CaimDark]

I restarted my abandoned playthrough from years ago and I'm using these guides for each character: https://www.thegamer.com/pathfinder-wrath-of-the-righteous-woljif-builds/

I like them because they're straightforward and lore-friendly, which exactly what I want, I don't play above core, don't need need to min-max.

But it seems a lot has changed. Some spells just don't seem to work as they did anymore, or how I think I remember they did (are greater magic weapon and magical vestment basically useless now? I rmemeber them being pretty good). Some suggestions are just weird (Blink is among Woljif's useful spells list, for instance, then I read it, turns out it gives him 20% chance to miss, wut? No thanks!). Some suggested spells just aren't there anymore, or had their levels moved.

I hadn't noticed just how much was out of place until recently (level 7), I thought it was just my memory playing tricks on me.

Anyways, I'm still following these guides because I'm unfamiliar with the rulebook and I don't like the complexity and lore unfriendliness of multiclassing, which means my builds are probably getting a bit wonky. Are there similar guides anywhere updated for the latest patches?

[leyasu888]

Publicado originalmente por CaimDark:

Question: I typically have 3 frontliners. My paladin Anduin Lothar has the Leading Strike mythical ability. It says other allies with Leading strike do not deal additional damage to the marked target. Which I take to mean if everybody hitting the same target has this feat, it's basically wasted, right? So I only took it with my main character. But I'm wondering if it's right. Maybe 2 frontliners with it would be better, give me more procs possibly. Or the benefits might not be worth the feat? I don't know.

One person with leading strike is more than enough. I personally find it is not that good a mythic feat and you should only take it if that character has no other decent feat to take.

[pete3great]

Oh, I forgot to warn you about something else:

There are A LOT of builds out there that were theory crafted from end game backwards. Yeah, you'll be powerful in Act V, but you're going to struggle for the majority of game until you get to that point.

[CaimDark]

Publicado originalmente por pete3great:

Oh, I forgot to warn you about something else:

There are A LOT of builds out there that were theory crafted from end game backwards. Yeah, you'll be powerful in Act V, but you're going to struggle for the majority of game until you get to that point.

That is true from my experience in other games as well, something I've always avoided if I can help it. Having a harder time for most of the game only to have an easier final boss battle makes very little sense to me.

[CaimDark]

Publicado originalmente por leyasu888:

Publicado originalmente por CaimDark:

Question: I typically have 3 frontliners. My paladin Anduin Lothar has the Leading Strike mythical ability. It says other allies with Leading strike do not deal additional damage to the marked target. Which I take to mean if everybody hitting the same target has this feat, it's basically wasted, right? So I only took it with my main character. But I'm wondering if it's right. Maybe 2 frontliners with it would be better, give me more procs possibly. Or the benefits might not be worth the feat? I don't know.

One person with leading strike is more than enough. I personally find it is not that good a mythic feat and you should only take it if that character has no other decent feat to take.

Which feats would you say are better?

[Draken]

Ever Ready -> If you have a setup that regularly uses attacks of opportunity. More AoO and they get more AB and damage.
Unrelenting Assault -> + 10 to melee damage rolls after 10 rounds.
Thundering Blows -> If you have lower AB attacks that tend to miss. It's sonic damage and AoE. So it will usually do something.

At least those are the ones I usually take on a melee character if they make sense. Then maybe something defensive, depending on the characters role in battle.

[leyasu888]

Publicado originalmente por CaimDark:

Publicado originalmente por leyasu888:

One person with leading strike is more than enough. I personally find it is not that good a mythic feat and you should only take it if that character has no other decent feat to take.

Which feats would you say are better?

Ever ready is a must have for any melee character.
The feat that turns rolls of 1 into 20. (if you are not playing trickster)
I like to take last stand as i tend to play on core to unfair difficulty Definitely a must for unfair, but if you are newish to the game it helps alot from core onwards

Abundant casting 1-3 are a must for any caster.
Personally i like to take enduring spells 1-2 for casters too.
Archmage armor for casters
Ascendant element if you are a blaster caster.
Best Jokes if you are a DC caster

Mythic beast if you have a pet.

You are a paladin? then take abundant smite

Raging classes will want the feat that lets you rage indefinitely

Is there one NPC that you will always bring along on every adventure? Then that character will need to take inspirational leader for the party-wide buff. If not, you will probably have to find space on your MC to take it.

Shifters/druids/kitsune characters will want the master shapeshifter feat.

If you have domains, take impossible domains for community/madness/nobility. animal domain is a must if you don't already have it for whatever reason.

Second bloodline, second mystery etc are all really good for classes that have bloodlines or mysteries. Second spirit nature also gives shamans a pet at level 17 so it is a must have for any shaman without it.

Ranged classes will want cleaving shot, distracting shot, exposed vulnerability, bigger they are

Mythic feats are scarce enough that i find i almost never have space on my builds to squeeze in leading strike. If you think about it an extra 1d6 damage for one attack each round is rather meh imo. After level 7, where most of my party get outflank, i find most of my fights end in one round anyway even on unfair. Only really tough opponents last 2 rounds unless i am trying to collect nahyndrian crystals from the demonlords. Because i find my fights end so quickly i also generally avoid any feat that requires you to build up over multiple turns or bleed effect feats, since bleeding a dead opponent is pointless.

[Chronocide]

Publicado originalmente por leyasu888:

Second bloodline, second mystery etc are all really good for classes that have bloodlines or mysteries. Second spirit nature also gives shamans a pet at level 17 so it is a must have for any shaman without it.

Unless they fixed it, second mystery is terrible. It doesn't give you anything except "access" to the mystery. So you get the class skills and that's it.

It doesn't give you any revelations, just access to them if you select them when you level normally (so you get the same 6 revelations your oracle would normally have). I suppose it might give you both "final revelations" so might have merit at level 20, but very disappointing before 20.

The Second bloodline, on the other hand, gives you all the powers for both bloodlines, which is great.

I haven't experimented with the shaman yet.

For the oracle (and stigmatized witch), the beneficial curse is pretty cool. It's just one more curse that ignores the negatives. Can be useful, depending on your build.

[leyasu888]

Publicado originalmente por Chronocide:

Publicado originalmente por leyasu888:

Second bloodline, second mystery etc are all really good for classes that have bloodlines or mysteries. Second spirit nature also gives shamans a pet at level 17 so it is a must have for any shaman without it.

Unless they fixed it, second mystery is terrible. It doesn't give you anything except "access" to the mystery. So you get the class skills and that's it.

It doesn't give you any revelations, just access to them if you select them when you level normally (so you get the same 6 revelations your oracle would normally have). I suppose it might give you both "final revelations" so might have merit at level 20, but very disappointing before 20.

The Second bloodline, on the other hand, gives you all the powers for both bloodlines, which is great.

I haven't experimented with the shaman yet.

For the oracle (and stigmatized witch), the beneficial curse is pretty cool. It's just one more curse that ignores the negatives. Can be useful, depending on your build.

You should get the final revelation at capstone, at least that was the case when my daeran hit level 20 in the past. Should not have changed since a few years ago tbh.

Second mystery nature if you do not have it, which is the case on Daeran gives you a Wolf pet at level 7. That makes it a mandatory pick for Daeran imo,

Pets are so powerful in this game, especially Dogs and Wolves that any feat that can give you a pet for your class are all S+ tier and mandatory in my opinion.

But yeah, for custom characters If you already have Nature mystery when you made the character then you can skip the second mystery. I am only taking the second mystery for the pet from nature.

Same case with Shaman but you only get the pet at level 17 so that can be delayed until one of the late mythic levels

[leyasu888]

Publicado originalmente por talemore:

It makes much more sense for Camelia to have a spirit animal.

Besides I already have animal companions known as summons. I don't need another animal in the party to plug the hole in the wall when Seelah's horse is Lydia from skyrim.

Get out of my way Lydia I'm casting lightning bolt.

You can't do that with animal companions the way you can have multiple witches casting lightning bolt into your summons.

Fireball is limited in range and damage. When you dealing 25 the lightning bolt deals 50 since demons don't have resistances to lightning and only immunities.

Not using selective metamagic?

[leyasu888]

Very different style of play than what i am used to, I prefer a melee focused party built around outflank and AoO. How does it fare on unfair? I have never had much luck using woljif as a tank on unfair even with full buffs. He already dies way too often for my liking as a dps even with last stand,

[CaimDark]

Is the spell resistance spell not good? Seems like it would be good to have a spell resistance buff, but the guides I'm following don't list it among the good spells. What am I missing?

[leyasu888]

Publicado originalmente por CaimDark:

Is the spell resistance spell not good? Seems like it would be good to have a spell resistance buff, but the guides I'm following don't list it among the good spells. What am I missing?

It is a mediocre buff, it's effectiveness is heavily reliant on the CL of the person casting the buff. On a merged Lich/Angel it can be quite impactful but in most cases it ends up mediocre.

If i have spare spell slots for buffs i will buff it on front line characters with weaker saves.

Another problem is on the higher difficulties unless you have other sources of spell resistance tougher enemies will be able to bypass your spell resistance relatively easily. I find you need like 60+ spell resistance to actually see any effect in alot of cases. and against easy opponents you don't need it lol.

[Chronocide]

Publicado originalmente por CaimDark:

Is the spell resistance spell not good? Seems like it would be good to have a spell resistance buff, but the guides I'm following don't list it among the good spells. What am I missing?

A good chunk of things ignore SR, including spells.

The things that don't ignore SR, will effectively ignore your SR if your SR is low or if the caster is high caster level.

But when it works, yeah, SR is great.

And then, in the pen & paper, SR is friend or foe, so it blocks friendly healing magic...so people coming from the pen & paper pathfinder tend to avoid SR.

[Chronocide]

But, anyway, SR is like concealment miss chances. SR isn't supposed to be the final solution in defense, SR is just another layer. If it blocks a few spells, great. It doesn't need to block all of them.

A good defense, in pathfinder, is many, many types of defense layered together.

[MacabreLion]

Publicado originalmente por talemore:

Theory crafters adds things like blink and never field test it since everything sound great on paper.

It's the same kind of people who skip 20 levels and go straight to level 20

There are spells who are only useful at their level and at certain enemies.

There are many issues with making D&D into a videogame by turning off your spells with spell resistance.

And some other BS by letting the player have access to poison myth path. Which means stinking cloud the broken spell who turns anything into a mindless zombie as the enemies have no spells against it.

As example the cure for poison is at higher level than the (immune) delay poison spell. One wonder why anyone would want to pick the cure poison when delay posion remove the need of it.

The broken witch class who has access to free invisible spell.

Pick any of the witch classes and they're all broken. They make clerics and arcanists obsolete as a witch can use channel energy, resurrect, use offensive spells and heal wounds and cure diseases and sickness.

In most times if almost always nobody want to have 3+ multiclass on a character.

You can add spell penetration twice which is two spell caster levels.

Wenduag work to me better as barbarian since it gains the same thing as a fighter but at level 16

The main thing is that spells never seem to work since you are always 2 levels underneath the actual level you should be and players are cheesing the game to obtain those levels and that was the same thing with kingmaker where the game was made for 4 characters but added 6 characters which meant there wasn't enough experience.

What is to do about it that the game is meant for 4 characters is adding animals to work as members. Death door is not a thing, that's D&D added to the game to make it easier. Once your animal companion dies it died. And why deaths door is not part of core.

But core is not really how the game is meant to be played. It's not meant to be like reloading the game at every surprise attack to see if you will be allowed to use your spell.

There's an issue with surprise attacks that they don't add to the saving throws but they do to ac saving throws.

Since if your target doesn’t know you are there how can they have advantage to dodge a fireball.

Sure it maybe their version to make everything based on grease until you increase the difficulty and they resisting grease.

Who makes the rules like this that you not allowed to use color spray because I want everything to be grease and only grease, nothing else. Color spray is a nerfed version of the one in D&D since this one can't even be used for anything than being a weaker command spell.

The main differences they made was to remove all trip from enemies, now the warriors in the maze are defenseless. You can just keep hammer at them with not much brain activity.

If you start to think that you want to use unique spells, they're only working for 1 round each level.

You know. One working spell is confusion since you can make your own characters super weak and cast confusion at them when the enemy mind control. Since they're now on enemy team they going to kill the enemy and the enemy won't attack them.

But I have lots of these level one ray of sickening who never going to be used since everything at level one is resisting it.

This post is wrong right off the bat by saying clerics are useless compared to witches. Domains are infinitely better than anything a witch can produce imo, lol.

what kind of arcanist? Brown fur makes every single green buff stronger (from level 3) and can give insanely strong personal buffs to allies (level 8,9?). This is exclusive as far as I'm aware.