Difficulty Settings that aren't actually ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Wyzilla]

I bought the game assuming this was actually similar to the PNP, only woe is me to find out that apparently the stats for all enemies are basically complete bollocks and just artificially pumps up the difficulty for no other reason to be a time waste. What are the difficulty settings that actually gets things to their proper beastiary/pnp status, because I'm sick and tired of Wolves wearing a Panzer IV's glacis armor.

[xunlaiAgent]

Normal or easy I guess is more similar to standard enemy rules.

Remember that you have a party of 6 characters and your main character has generous point-buy at character creation. Later you will also find some super OP loot. So you might want to tune down the difficulty first, and then up it again to keep things challenging towards the end.

[Finrod]

Tabletop adventure path is made for a party of 4.
Enemies closer to table top, would be normal setting, with damage from ennemies 0.8 and slider in slightly weaker ennemies

[gunman]

The difficulty progression in this game is the same as in most CRPGs: hard at early levels, super easy later on. If you learn the mechanics, playing on Easy/Normal would be extremely boring later on. I'm currently playing on Challenging and after a brutal Chapter 1, by Chapter 3-4 it is already easy peasy.

[InEffect]

Originally posted by Finrod:

Tabletop adventure path is made for a party of 4.
Enemies closer to table top, would be normal setting, with damage from ennemies 0.8 and slider in slightly weaker ennemies

Not only the party of 4, but unoptimized party of 4 with 15PB, no prebuffing, and no insane items.

[JonWoo]

There really isn't a setting to make it exactly like PnP. The closest would probably be setting the game to challenging and then putting the stat adjustment for enemies to moderately easier.

That said the reason they're so buffed is because of how the party side of the game was designed. Higher point buy for the player and companions, 2 extra party members, and an abundance of magical items, some of which are really powerful. This just doesn't show as well in the first few levels of the game so things are a bit harder.

You're not going to find an exact copy of the PnP rules with this if that's what you're looking for.

[Raigavin]

Originally posted by Jonwoo89:

There really isn't a setting to make it exactly like PnP. The closest would probably be setting the game to challenging and then putting the stat adjustment for enemies to moderately easier.

I'd suggest NORMAL and not CHALLENGING, because in PnP you have DM who buffers the game from going anti-players and in the game the DM is a lawful robot.

[Zzyl_tsw]

lets be honest.
Start at "easy" and see how it goes. because in normal (with very little knowledge of PF), I died a LOT.

[JonWoo]

Originally posted by Raigavin:

Originally posted by Jonwoo89:

There really isn't a setting to make it exactly like PnP. The closest would probably be setting the game to challenging and then putting the stat adjustment for enemies to moderately easier.

I'd suggest NORMAL and not CHALLENGING, because in PnP you have DM who buffers the game from going anti-players and in the game the DM is a lawful robot.

So would I but that's not what he was asking about.

[InEffect]

To be fair, the guy doesn't know the first thing about the pnp and was asking nothing.Otherwise, he would know that pathfinder has a thing called progression tables and mobs statline in the books are just guidelines. Also, there isn't a single questionmark in the OP. He just wants validation and uses claimed tabletop knowledge he doesn't have to make his struggles seem more of a legit issue and not a result of a chair-keyboard connection issue.

[puschit]

I got this game and haven't played yet (still customizing my first character but sometimes the screen freezes/crashes) but when I started a new game there was also the option for a CUSTOM difficulty level - THIS is where you can set every detail how you want it to be including opponent's stats. Hint: Neither of the preset difficulty levels has the regular stats for enemies, but in custom you can choose that.
That and about a dozen other things.

[jsaving]

The thing is, core monster stats in Pathfinder were balanced for 4-man parties created using 15-point point-buy and equipped with tabletop-legal items. Whereas Kingmaker gives you 50% more people (6), 60% more character generation points (25) and a large number of tabletop-illegal items designed to make your party stronger.

It would be very strange to keep all of those player buffs while scaling monsters back to their listed values in Pathfinder's bestiary, especially since tabletop DMs are supposed to upwardly adjust[www.d20pfsrd.com] monster stats when the party is stronger than intended. But considering the game already lets you pretty much make foes as easy as you want, there probably wouldn't be much harm in a low-difficulty setting that would have monster stats match the Pathfinder bestiary.

[Averagedog]

In my first run of the game, I played without using any of the mist spells or stinking cloud or pits or anything of that nature that is until I used sirocco during a late game fight... N ow during this second run, I laughed maniacally as I used stinking cloud on the Stag Lord fight.

[Wyzilla]

Originally posted by InEffect:

To be fair, the guy doesn't know the first thing about the pnp and was asking nothing.Otherwise, he would know that pathfinder has a thing called progression tables and mobs statline in the books are just guidelines. Also, there isn't a single questionmark in the OP. He just wants validation and uses claimed tabletop knowledge he doesn't have to make his struggles seem more of a legit issue and not a result of a chair-keyboard connection issue.

Dude no wolf or worg on the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ planet is supposed to have AC high enough to the point that they're actually dangerous to level 4's or 5's. Creeping the stats up that much is ridiculous and I nearly did a spit take looking at the stats of some of the enemies. The whole point of incremental difficulty adjustments is that they are slight, and some foes become total fodder. A wolf should never, ever, have more than 20 AC besides Worgs, and more importantly by level 5 PC's are already supposed to be above and beyond the typical soldier. By level 10 you're at the upper crust of the population on a whole and by level 16 you're entering the territory of Herakles. It feels like the devs cranked up the difficulty beyond the PNP for no other reason that to simply bloat their game's playtime, and makes it a pain in the ass trying to tool things so they aren't too high or low. I've tried setting enemy enhancements to very low, but that seems to nerf them too much depending on power scaling such as with Trolls and the like, but if cranked up then the wolves and worgs start bloating up in stats again. Which makes it seemingly impossible to actually strike a balance between fights that actually should be hard (the Troll quest) and the fights that should be an absolute walk in the park for anyone over level 3 (dire/wolves, worgs, leopards, etc).

[Shakajolt]

Customize in difficulty options, you can tone down the absurdity of enemy attributes.

Game has a lot of brain-addled fanboys who think the balance is 100% perfect, when in reality it's a slapshod mess all over the place. Especially when you consider the majority of this game is combat.

[InEffect]

Originally posted by Wyzilla:

Dude no wolf or worg on the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ planet is supposed to have AC high enough to the point that they're actually dangerous to level 4's or 5's. Creeping the stats up that much is ridiculous and I nearly did a spit take looking at the stats of some of the enemies. The whole point of incremental difficulty adjustments is that they are slight, and some foes become total fodder. A wolf should never, ever, have more than 20 AC besides Worgs, and more importantly by level 5 PC's are already supposed to be above and beyond the typical soldier. By level 10 you're at the upper crust of the population on a whole and by level 16 you're entering the territory of Herakles. It feels like the devs cranked up the difficulty beyond the PNP for no other reason that to simply bloat their game's playtime, and makes it a pain in the ass trying to tool things so they aren't too high or low. I've tried setting enemy enhancements to very low, but that seems to nerf them too much depending on power scaling such as with Trolls and the like, but if cranked up then the wolves and worgs start bloating up in stats again. Which makes it seemingly impossible to actually strike a balance between fights that actually should be hard (the Troll quest) and the fights that should be an absolute walk in the park for anyone over level 3 (dire/wolves, worgs, leopards, etc).

We can hit wolves on about 2 by level 5 on challenging and below. Level 5 is like +15AB and 35-ish AC for melees buffed. We don't need to press many buttons in combat at all with half-decently done party. By early teens we can just buff and autoattack with everything. Point is, if unfair is doable, anything below is easy. And unfair is doable. I have like 10 unfair runs under my belt, so I know what I'm talking about.

Now if you have questions, I'm happy to help, but the core premise of the OP is bogus. Also, the wildlife has a story reason to be above average. And humanoids that can survive in the proximity of said wildlife will obviously be too.