What I learnt from Four-man party on Hard Difficulty

[joy.kafka]

My team just finished the Palace of Pitax at the end of Chapter 5. They are now level 18 and half. It appears that this team is quite viable on high difficulty and able to overcome all kinds of challenges, so that I feel an urge to share. At any rate, this is not a guide about the best builds but simply a summary of what I’ve learnt from trial and error, and hopefully some new pathfinders might find it helpful.


(1) Team Size:

A team of four is quite sufficient to solve all kinds of puzzles, since the plots in this game doesn’t seem to split the team into more than 4 parts. A team of four is also sufficient to cover all the skills. Another benefit is the number of buffs required for only four won't take up too many slots in the spell books. Beside all that, camping with four is pretty safe.

(2) Team formation:

For your reference, my team consists of two melee (physical) classes and two ranged (magical) classes. They specialise in two-weapon fighting, two-handed weapon, bombs and spells respectively. This is to cover all kinds of damage and debuff types.

(3) Mutli-class vs Single class

My team is quite simple, all single classes. A single class alone may not seem to be as powerful as a multi class on a one-on-one basis. Each companion may have his or her own drawbacks with regard to their default attributes. Yet as a team of four, their synergy performs extremely well to my liking. My companions are Amiri, Octavia and Jubilost, while my main character is a Thundercaller, Koraki.

For many common encounters, they could wipe most of the enemies out on auto mode. On Challenging Difficulty, Octavia doesn’t even need to cast a spell nor does Jubilost throw a bomb.

(4) Min-max vs Balacing

It seems balanced builds are quite viable on Hard Difficulty. Min-max may outperform balanced builds but there might be some risks and annoyances to be expected. Basically it’s rather safe and less annoying to keep most attributes at least 10. I’ll use Jubilost as an example below to explain my standpoints.

(5) Basic concept of my team

The fundamental concept of my team is simply empower Amiri to continually and consistently perform a chain of cleaving kills. It works pretty well. Either a kill allows her to finish another enemy in one shot, either Koraki’s crits enable her to finish yet another in one shot, and so on and so forth. With a reach weapon enlarged, she can cover a cleaving radius of about 25 ft. Any enemies that try to attack her companions within this radius would provoke attacks of opportunities and also susceptible to her cleaving finish.

(6) Builds

I played multi classes in my first time. This time my companions turned into single class one after another. Octavia couldn’t be happier being a dedicated wizard and I like how graceful she is now more than ever. Amiri also doesn’t regret letting go of her past.

My life is simpler, less worrisome. I hope you can enjoy the game as much as I do.

Amiri 2H Fighter Reach weapon & Crit build
Koraki Thundercaller Dual-wield & Crit build
Jubilost Grenadier
Octavia Wizard

Let me write down the details in separate posts below and hopefully you may find some inspiration.

[joy.kafka]

Amiri, the two handed fighter

Her major role in my team is damage, damage and damage.


(1) Weapon Choice

This is one of the few things I reckon not bad to decide as early as possible for Amiri.

Many may think it’s better to delay the choice of weapon, but imho the more the decision is delayed, the less we enjoy the benefits of this weapon to the extent that it doesn’t really matter anymore. It is the beginning stages where these feats provide a substantial improvement since all the values are still low.

My choice is a fauchard. Not until after level 10 did I found what I used wasn’t even a Master Fauchard. The vanilla fauchard is simply that good with the right feats. The only difference the upgraded fauchard (+3) offered to me at level 14 is simply that it is a « magical » weapon. I have been enjoying the benefits of a fauchard for 14 levels already.

Even till now when I’ve found so many better +5 weapons, I still wouldn’t hesitate using a master fauchard over any other weapons because my Amiri is built for that (unless some immunity issue). That said, it won’t hurt to let Amiri learn another weapon feat at all. She simply has too many feats.

There are other nice weapon choices (other than fauchards) but there is no need to worry about making the decision earlier.

(2) Vital Strike: 3 Levels

Instead of multiple strikes, Amiri can choose to swing a single vital strike per round, which provides a substantial increase in damage. Take the axe for example, it would be 3d6, 6d6 or 9d6 additional damage rolls respectively depending how many levels put into Vital Strike. In the early stages, both the basic attack bonus (hit rate) and damage bonus rolls are so low that Vital Strike could easily and significantly raise Amiri’s damage. It would also be the major damage source if Amiri is not (yet) going to specialise in Critical Hit or where Power Attack is turned off due to the concern of the attack bonus penalty. Vital Strike with Cleaving Finish is how my team finishes an encounter in one, two or at most 3 rounds most of the time.

At around level 10+, my Amiri starts to hit for 100 dmg more and more often with vital strike (add 4d8 or 6d8 for a fauchard). Later on I increased her crit chance to 30%, and started to realise the fact that the damage bonus of vital strike is not multiplied by crit nor is it triggered by a crit. Eventually the 3 levels of vital strike were replaced with 2 critical conditions and Critical Mastery.

However, for a weapon that couldn’t really crit (5%), the additional 9d6 (per round) is solid and sweet. For those who go for combat manoeuvres, vital strike as a guaranteed destructive hit might also have its use.


(3) Greater Power Attack & Two-handed Weapon Training

At level 15, a 2H fighter gains greater power attack, that’s to say -5 attack roll penalty for +20 damage bonus in return. For a 30% crit chance X3 multiplier, the estimated value would be above +30 dmg. While my Amiri also has 2-handed weapon training which gives her +5 bonus to both attack roll and damage. This negates the penalty and my Amiri almost always hit with Greater Power Attack on. If she misses, it’s her teammates’ responsibilities, and she’s never alone.


(4) Greater Cleaving Finish

To turn cleave on or off, it might be situational. There are also rare cases where Power Attack might be better off. But I still wouldn’t blink my eyes to take all these feats, since the greater cleaving finish is how Amiri could perform her one-shot tricks without stop.

(5) Critical Feats

Now that Amiri has 20 dmg bonus from Greater Power Attack, 20 or more dmg bonus from STR modifiers enhanced by Overchop & Backswing, 5+ dmg from 2H Weapon Training, and a few more from other enhancements and buffs. It’s over 50 dmg bonus or 150 dmg with a crit, before even rolling the damage dice.

The beauty is such an attack could be made into an 25-ft AOE dmg with a reach weapon and an enlarged person spell.


(6) Example of my build

* Weapon Proficiency (Fauchard), Improved Critical, Critical Focus

* Combat Reflexes, Outflank, Seize the moment,

* Power Attack, Cleave, Cleaving Finish, Great Cleave, Improved Cleaving Finish

* Improved Initiative, Greater Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Specialisation

* Staggering Critical, Blinding Critical, Critical Mastery (Since Amiri's a full BAB class, it makes sense to make use of her higher DC.)

[joy.kafka]

Koraki, the Thundercaller

Her main role is to fascinate, crit, make AoO and apply conditions.

(1) Weapon Choice

The chance to crit is a crucial factor for my plan. The highest crit chance would be kukris (30%). The culprit is that they come pretty late and pretty few. They probably would be best for damage dealing, but damage doesn't matter. Daggers (20%) is acceptable, considering there are more better daggers that could be acquired earlier. Particularly many of them are also enchanted with a proc’ing condition. Since thundercaller has only ¾ BAB and fewer feats, going with daggers provides higher enchantment bonus and it also saves a feat from martial proficiency.

Before taking the Improved Critical feat, she can use any keen weapons available on the main hand. Just give her any light weapon off handed.

(2) Critical Feats: Synergy with a fighter

* Combat Reflexes, Seize the Moment, Outflank (Team feats that allow Amiri to gain additional hits every time Koraki crits.)

* Weapon Finesse, Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved TWF (More attacks and more effects, Greater TWF is fine, but I'd rather save it for Great Fortitude for example.)

* Improved Critical (daggers), Critical Focus (An item with +4 bonus for critical confirmation check will give you a total of +8, if you have a spare one. When you throw a 15-20 or 17-20, you actually turn a supposed-to-be miss into a crit. It's not bad for a ¾ BAB class.)

* Improved Initiative (As long as you Fascinate first, it makes a great difference. Her feats are mainly complete up here.)

* As an MC: Skill Focus - Perception & Persuasion, Alertness

* Sickening Critical (Her BAB is too low to use DC dependent conditions. Let Amiri get Staggering and Blinding Criticals. The two keep trying to apply the 3 conditions as free actions.)

(3) Bardic songs & bardic spells / Synergy with a wizard

DC of bardic songs: 10 + bard level + charm, say about 30
DC of bard's spells: 10 + spell level + charm, say about 25

The song's DC cannot be increased by spell focus, and the spell's DC are basically 3-4 levels lower than a pure caster. It's necessary to have a helping spell, such as Mind Fog, or a few cursed bombs, to make her spells viable.

* Fascinate:
This is the main reason for which a thundercaller performs in the front line, Many a time many enemies just stay there motionless while Koraki and Amiri chop them off one after another or all at once. They won’t feel the pain. Nor will my team. Surprisingly, it still works till late in the game.

Just be careful, not to disturb those fascinated enemies.

* Thunder call & Grease
This is what I use in the early chapters to keep the crowd under control when fascinate fades away. Then the job gradually goes to Octavia.

* Inspire Greatness & Heroics
After the first few rounds, I will switch to chant Inspire Greatness, stacking competence bonus on top of morale enhancement from the spell, to overcome the AC or saving throws. Or, at a later stage, use Inspire Heroics, whose +4 morale bonus to all saving throws (will, fortitude and reflex) I found very valuable in the later chapters.


* Cure wounds and remove conditions
As the thundercaller is not offensive enough either in terms of melee or in terms of spell, she learns all the wound curing and condition removing spells and focus on her supporting role.

[joy.kafka]

Jubilost - Pure Grenadier

My first MC was a vivisectionist so this time I’d like to see how a grenadier performs. So here we go:

(1) Feats
* Throw Anything, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, (Discovery: Fast Bombs)
* Improved Initiative, Ability Focus - Bombs
* Extra Bombs

(2) Discoveries:
* Choking, Dispelling, Force, Cursed, Holy Bombs
* Infusion


Jubilost’s role is to buff the whole team through infusion, deal out magical damage, and debuff the enemies with the right bombs in a casual fashion as in the way Koraki and Amiri apply some minor conditions with critical hits - that's to say, at least one among so many hits would crit or overcome the saving throws.

The major decision to make for him seems to be Mutagen vs Contagion.

DEX increases the hit rate while INT applies the conditions more easily. My experience seems to tell me it’s not hard for the bombs to hit against touch AC (low), while it’s not always easy to win the DC race. That said, taking the rapid shots and fast bombs into consideration, the last bombs (-10 -2 penalties) may miss a lot and Jubilost would simply lose most of the last bombs each round.

Grand Mutagen (+8 DEX) might have a chance to turn the last (two) bombs from misses to hits. Above all, it increases the initiative by 4, which is significant to Jubilost, whom happens to have the lowest initiative in my team. Initiative is significant to an offensive oriented team and even more so to a team wearing no armours nor shields (flat footed penalty).

On the other hand, Grand Contagion (+8 INT) might only be useful for rather difficult fights at higher levels. Contagion increases DC by 4, which is a huge boost. While there would be 3-5 bombs thrown in a round, I personally prefer to make sure more bombs hit, which triggers more DC checks. More hits vs higher DC, it might be a complicate question and quite situational.

Even though both are great, it turned out that I seldom used either of them. It’s still not bad having either of them as an insurance. Otherwise you may as well get preserve organs 3 times instead. 3 times out of 4, it could negate damage from critical and sneak attack. It's not going to happen to a back line grenadier often though, but when things happen, they do come quick and "Preserve Organs" does save Jubilost's life.

I am personally inclined toward Grand Mutagen slightly but this decision doesn’t seem to matter too much to my team anyway.

Grenadier's build is quite simple. What I feel is it's safer and more economic (cost effective) not to go too extreme on min-maxing. There would be very good items and methods to increase the attributes as one advances towards the end game.

[joy.kafka]

Octavia - Wizard

An arcane trickster doesn’t seem to be effective in a small team. Koraki and Amiri kill very fast and they move from target to target really fast too. When Octavia’s ranged attacks land, it happens often that they move on to different targets already (or on their way).

My Octavia uses the following spells the most:


(1) Conjuration:

Grease, Stinking Cloud, Acid Fog, Cloudkill, Chains of Light, Tsunami

These are the spells used a lot in the early to mid game. In the late game, even though I avoid using summons, they appear useful as a strategical deployment or elemental damage. For example, summon them to the front of each door around where the ambush awaits behind.



(2) Enchantment:

Mind Fog (Heightened), Feeblemind, Insanity

In the early game, Octavia could use Hideous Laughter or Confusion, only when things go out of Koraki’s control, or to double the insurance.

In the later stages, mainly Heightened Mind Fog followed by Feeblemind/Insanity, offensive Illusion spells, the Bard’s Song of Discord / Overwhelming Presence, or Cursed bombs.



(3) Transmutation:

Haste, Slow (Heightened), Disintegrate, Tar Pool

Slow is used very often earlier but later on replaced by Tar Pool or Phantasm web. Slow seems to become too slow for the fights in late game.

I avoid using Disintegrate or any ranged touch spells that require attack rolls due to the penalty and lack of feats, unless I won't shoot into the combat.

(4) Illusion:

All the defensive illusions, Phantasmal Web, Shadow Evocation. Weird

Phantasmal Web: Used quite often in mid-late game (heightened).

Greater Shadow Evocation: Mainly for the sake of flexibility and the shortage of spell slots.

Offensive spells in illusion school would benefit from Mind Fog in Enchantment school, which I like to make use of. It doesn't matter which school we focus, there is always the immunity issue, and therefore I'd also prepare a few other spells attacking via Fortitude or Reflex.


(5) Abjuration

Banishment: There are super difficult situations where this is the hidden key to the answer!


(6) Evocation:

Icy Prison (Mass), Caustic Eruption, Chain Lighting, Cold Ice Strike (Swift)

To be honest, rarely used, only when a specific elemental damage is a must, or when immune to Greater Shadow Evocation. In case of immunity to Mind Affecting spells, I would try Chains of Light or Icy Prison.


(7) Specialist School

* Divination:
Increased initiative is the best. It may also save a feat or a familiar.

* Conjuration:
Longer duration for the summons could allow them to stay for one more fight but that’s not really necessary. Summons and pets might go out of control and I don’t like that.

* Enchantment:
Octavia is not within touch of anything so the bonus spells of this school are not useful.

* Illusion:
Blinding ray is much more useful than acid splash or darts. Instant Invisible is also a good life saver.

I picked Illusionist as my Specialist school. Since Divination has got the fewest spells and you could have some of them from Alchemist, it became my opposition school. Otherwise I’d pick Divination as my Specialist school. Necromancer goes to my opposition schools too.

≫ Specialist School: Illusion
≫ Opposition School: Necromancer, Divination
≫ Hare Familiar: Initiative +4

(8) Greater Spell Focus Choice:

In terms of higher DC, I’d consider taking them in the following order.
(1) Conjuration - DC very useful early to mid game.
(2) Enchantment - Good Synergy with bards and bombs throughout the game.
(3) Transmutation - Slow and Tar Pool only.
(4) Illusion - DC useful from mid to late game.

I’ll skip transmutation, and take only 3 schools up to GSF. The reason is there are not enough feats for all the 3 schools in early game, and transmutation could become less used in late game. Otherwise you may also skip Conjuration and use mainly summons in this school.

(9) Other feats

* Greater Spell Focus * 3 Schools
* Improved Initiative
* Greater Spell Penetration
* Metamagic: Heighten - Increase the DC.

* Combat Casting (usually not important)
* Augment (& Superior) Summoning (late game, if no other priority. Otherwise I'd take Skill Focus feats if wizard is also my Skill Monkey.)

I also realised something that have been overlooked by me while writing them down.

My thought is simply that without multi classing, I enjoy the team work, role play and story plot a lot. Even only 4 men and hard difficulty mode don’t really bother me. No healer or no tank is not an issue either. That said, the fights are quite challenging, so much as that they are like puzzles to be analysed and to be solved, in a smart fashion, not in a brutal fashion.

Hope you enjoy your game as well.

[Gildongs]

enjoying your build!

[haplok]

Originally posted by joy.kafka:

Amiri, the two handed fighter

(2) Vital Strike: 3 Levels

Instead of multiple strikes, Amiri can choose to swing a single vital strike per round, which provides a substantial increase in damage. Take the axe for example, it would be 3d6, 6d6 or 9d6 additional damage rolls respectively depending how many levels put into Vital Strike.
(...)
At around level 10+, my Amiri starts to hit for 100 dmg more and more often with vital strike (add 4d8 or 6d8 for a fauchard). Later on I increased her crit chance to 30%, and started to realise the fact that the damage bonus of vital strike is not multiplied by crit nor is it triggered by a crit. Eventually the 3 levels of vital strike were replaced with 2 critical conditions and Critical Mastery.

So you realised yourself that's it's pretty useless on her... yet you're still recommending it.
I don't know how to comment on that...

Plus you didn't mention how important size increasing buffs are for the Vital Strike line.

That 3d6 base damage axe (with Enlarge?) could become 4d6 with Legendary Proportions. Or 6d6 with Legendary Proportions and Lead Blades. X4 => 24d6 with Greater Vital Strike.

[joy.kafka]

Originally posted by haplok:

So you realised yourself that's it's pretty useless on her... yet you're still recommending it.
I don't know how to comment on that...

Plus you didn't mention how important size increasing buffs are for the Vital Strike line.

That 3d6 base damage axe (with Enlarge?) could become 4d6 with Legendary Proportions. Or 6d6 with Legendary Proportions and Lead Blades. X4 => 24d6 with Greater Vital Strike.

Thank you for explaining in more details how to make the best use of Vital Strike. It is actually quite useful for my team even in the earlier stages, before my crit build could start to work. It would still be useful and flexible to coexist with the critical teamwork and cleaving finish feats. But at some stage, I was thinking to give critical conditions a try, and anyway my team couldn't cast lead blades, what a pity.

[joy.kafka]

I was focusing mainly on the synergy of my team formation. Perhaps let me add some more thoughts about trip etc here:

* Trip vs Piledriver-trip

When you perform a basic trip action, you cannot attack, and even if you succeed in tripping, no attack of opportunities is provoked.

Greater trip allows you to gain the attack of opportunities for free once you successfully trip the enemies. How many attacks may depend on your DEX and how much damage you gain may depend on how many melee companions are around. However, prone provides protection against ranged attacks. (1 trip per round + many AoOs)

Piledriver ability allows you to make one single attack first. If you win the attack roll, you may continue to throw the CMB roll for tripping (or bull rush). However, after a successful trip, you don't get attack of opportunities for free. (1 single attacks per round + basic trip)

Trip with reach. There is (at least) one end-game reach weapon that allows you to trip with weapon, at a distance. It also gives you a guaranteed hit after a successful trip. It works for both trip and piledriver, however the free hit won't crit, since no dice is rolled.

In early game, our companions couldn't attack several times per round and couldn't hit often, tripping has a low cost and better benefits in return. The more melee companions around, the more additional attacks you can make.

In late game, a full BAB melee companion can hit 5 times with haste, with each hit having a chance to provoke a crit and apply conditions. My team will kill faster and more reliably with normal attacks. My observation is (1) You won't get 5 misses in a row often. Even if you do, it doesn't hurt. But if you fail the tripping attempts 5 times in a row, well... (2) My team has basically only one melee damage and one ranged damage sources. As a result, prone and AoOs from tripping don't earn me advantages.

Again, all the feats have their progression. They might be more useful in certain situations, but not all. Some may give more advantages in early game but the advantage may diminish in later stages. I won't say it's a bad build or a waste. For me, it's mostly about the whole team and the synergy, rather than an individual.

For your reference, my CMB @ lv19 is about 45+ in actual combat, with my attack bonus also about 45. I would try to use trip when the other 3 couldn't manage to lower the defence of the enemy via Will, Reflex, Fortitude or critical conditions. Let's just say in end game, all the skills are very situational, and it's not bad to have another trick up the sleeve.

* Devastating Strike and Weapon Mastery

Devastating Strike at level 19 allows you to attack only once per round but turns a successful hit into a crit. It looks like an upgrade version of Vital Strike and particularly valuable for high damage weapons (1d12) with high critical multiplier (X3) but only a 5% crit chance. The good thing about Devastating Strike and Vital Strike is they are not weapon dependent, compared to Critical tricks that require improved critical.

Weapon Mastery turns all successful hits (5 attacks) into crit for a selected weapon type.

I won't build a companion for the above two special abilities at all. They don't help to get me through the 18 levels. Besides, how do I know what weapons are awaiting. My team's skill training seems to be quite complete around level 17 / 18. There are also some spells I don't use at all, like stone skin, legendary proportion... That's to say your team could easily out perform mine. But to overcome the hard difficulty, it doesn't require any extremity.

Have a good time role playing.

[InEffect]

trip is more useful in synergy than in vacuum. one option is bite stacking and a cloak of winter wolf. Another is monk. bonus trips for pommeling style if you want. Kineticist with bowling is another obvious one. Ranger or druid with aspect of the wolf too. Think that's all important ones.

[joy.kafka]

Originally posted by InEffect:

trip is more useful in synergy than in vacuum. one option is bite stacking and a cloak of winter wolf. Another is monk. bonus trips for pommeling style if you want. Kineticist with bowling is another obvious one. Ranger or druid with aspect of the wolf too. Think that's all important ones.

Wow, the scale of this game is really immense, not in terms of the size of the map, but in all the possible combinations we can create ourselves. I wouldn't have thought of all these things if you didn't tell me. I've never given animal forms or pets a try. Interesting.

[InEffect]

aspect of the wolf works in whatever form. human or not. it just gives you a free trip skill in your abilities that you can right-click and auto-use every turn.

[joy.kafka]

So excited to learn there are many ways Making use of tripping. To me it means the viability of all kinds of role playing, not limited to class or attributes.

[haplok]

Theoretically you can stack about 5 bite attacks per round. Practical builds will be usually be limited to 3 sustainable bite attacks per round (plus 3-8 regular weapon attacks). Now each landed Bite attempts to Greater Trip enemies - causing main hand full Attack Bonus Attacks of Opportunity from all near allies on falling down AND another barrage of AoOs on getting up (if still alive, that is). You can't re-trip someone already prone - but you can switch targets mid-fight.
Now with Sahiya's masterpiece Fauchard, called Mastery, you not only have massively boosted CMB, but also each landed Combat Maneuver also delivers attack damage, without attack roll, in addition to the regular Attacks of Opportunity.

My build has about 60 CMB end game. Also each sneak attack debuffs enemies (and their CMD) with Crippling Strike. Therefore landing trips is not a concern.

TL DR
Trips being limited to a single attempt / attack per round is patently false - if you use the available tools.

[InEffect]

Yeah that build is solid. I would change a few bits about it, but there is nothing wrong as is. Would be pita to bring from level 1 solo unfair, but then all melees are.

[joy.kafka]

Originally posted by haplok:

Now with Sahiya's masterpiece Fauchard, called Mastery, you not only have massively boosted CMB, but also each landed Combat Maneuver also delivers attack damage, without attack roll, in addition to the regular Attacks of Opportunity.

My build has about 60 CMB end game. Also each sneak attack debuffs enemies (and their CMD) with Crippling Strike. Therefore landing trips is not a concern.

TL DR
Trips being limited to a single attempt / attack per round is patently false - if you use the available tools.

There's synergy in that at least two in your team are working on combat manoeuvres. They must perform very well. I'd like a team like that too, perhaps if I had rolled for a scaled fist in place of a thundercaller.

By the way, there's also a heavy flail that can trip once per round for free before making normal attacks, but it gives no CMB boost. In case CMB is high enough, it looks like a very good tool.

As for how to make these feats work well, my impression is it doesn't really depend on the end game gears. By the time we have access to these high end weapons, our builds are all complete and competent enough, and it's not too late to spend the last few feats to optimise the performance with the endgame gears.

Like myself, I used fauchards satisfactorily throughout the game until level 18 when I found an earth breaker that does -2 AC per hit. I switched to it. Then I was sure I would be able to reach levell 20 soon and get Weapon Mastery that turns every hit into a crit with +1 crit multiplier. I prepared to switch to a great axe with x4 crit multipler and started to add weapon focus to it. It wouldn't make use of the feats previous learnt such as improved critical but it's not conflicting at all.

In short, all I wanted to say was it should be always viable no matter we build for Vital Strike, Critical Hit, or Tripping, as long as we can create the synergy for our teams.

Thank you for your inputs. I found them quite useful!