This game combat is just REALLY bad

[Obi Hung Kenobi]

TLDR it doesnt matter how much stats you have, what traits or feats you get how many +1 weapons you have, you will miss, miss and miss n be penalized for running a party that doesnt meat a specific very strict meta, freedom indeed.

They should of just copied Pillars of Eternity combat system, at least there armor and skills WORK.

Seriously the difficulty is all over the place, i'm playing Miss simulator.

I have an archer with dex 20 with a +1 longbow and the feat to reduce penalty for mobs who are engaged in melee and STILL he misses 80% of shots.

Like WHAT? For some reason his damage is beyond pathetic, I rerolled archer after reaching kindgom with a rogue whom btw defense was pitiful even with light/medium armor, 2 daggers and all the proper traits. Just missed, missed, missed or will never evade enemy attacks.

This is not counting the cluster F that happens once in combat with spell casters running into melee range or for somehow giving your first cleric the inability to use ranged weapons or equip any sort of armor.

It gets beyond frustrating rolling through mobs with a single hit then arbitraly encountering bandits that will just whip your party back to the stoneage.

Also with the numeroues amount of enemies in this game, forcing just 1 specialization for rangers being affective against X enemies makes the feat entirely useless as well as the ground specialization.

Like cool let me get a feat that will only work 10% of the time, most of the fighting isnt done in cities to uban trait is a waste and humanoids are not the majority of people you fight nor giants.

[Purdurabu]

What difficulty are you playing on? just at normal and below you don't miss all that much unless you are trying to take on something way out of your level.

[Gin-chan]

It gets better at later levels ( Well probably except for certain bosses) especially if you make use of all the buffs you're given(All hail Linzi/Tristain/Octavia).

Anyways since literally everything is based on RNG anyways. Its very much a possibility to miss everything in a fight. Play an action game if you dont want constant misses. Or better yet just reduce every difficulty till you stop missing, Thats what the custom difficulty sliders are for.

I didn't even try for a specific meta and just build my ranger/druid with wahtever skills i wnted and he's been doing decently up to act 3 now on normal. Also what do you mean ranger only get 1 specific enemy specialization. My ranger is at lvl 8 and already has 2 favored enemy types. and seems like he can get more if i put more levels into the ranger class too from reading his class chart.

[Obi Hung Kenobi]

I am playing on medium but like Gin-Chan said the RNG is just wayyy too much.

I'm not a fan of it all. There is a huge probability of you missing everything in one fight and the enemy not. So you can have the same fight 4 times with different outcomes each time and no please dont be condessensing and tell me to play action games, I love rpg's played them all since baldurs gate but this is just frustrating and annoying.

It definetely isn't everyones cup of tea and like i said POE does the combat a whole lot better.
I don't miss 80% of the time or have my dmg severely reduced for not carrying and specializing in different weapons.

Like for example you encouner skeletons, well besides the cheap AOE of harm undead which makes it stupid ez to kill you are forced to have people specialize in blunt weapons, if not is miss gallore.

[Gin-chan]

Yeah well i'm pretty much already immune to being annoyed by RNG so thats an advantage i have ove rmost people on enjoying this anyways. Thats what playing 2 years of XCOM-EW and binging XCOM2 for a month does to ya. Or maybe its the constant reloading for best choices and companion dialogue in Baldurs gate and Neverwinter knights XD.

(1st tried the red dragon in BG 2 with the power of reloads and RNG too lol)

[Scottx125]

NOTE THIS IS FROM THE DnD GAME! IT MIGHT BE DIFFERENT IN GAME!

Evidently you don't understand the combat system. Truth be told I agree it's not well laid out for those who know absolutely nothing about DnD or pathfinder. For ranged attack chance it's:

Base attack bonus + Dex modifier + range penalty (if you are far away it's harder to hit).

The above makes up your attack roll total, however with ANY attack you roll a 1d20. A 1 is ALWAYS a miss, and a 20 is a crit (with certain weapons this can be lowered to 19-20 or lower).

The range modifier for your weapon in this case a bow, is determined by the max range with 10 increments. Projectiles have 10 increments, throw has 5. Anything below the normal range of your bow should be +0. Anything further away will decrease at certain increments by -2 per time.

However this is only 1 side of the equation. As the target will have an AC. Armour class, which determines how hard it is for that target to be hit with an attack. This is calculated by:

10 + armour bonus + shield bonus + dex modifier + other modifiers.

It should be noted some armours, especially heavy armour limits the dex bonus you can get.

So let's take your situation and put it to the test!

If you are going up against a mob that has a total AC of 30. And your total attack bonus is 23 for arguments sake. That means you need a roll of 8 or more to hit. I'm not sure if it works if you match the AC, I'd imagine it wouldn't. But already that means your only going to hit 40% of the time in ideal conditions. That's not to mention any debuffs or buffs you might be suffering from, low morale, insight, luck, outflanking etc etc.. So to be honest hitting 10-30% of the time is about right.

Though I will say, difficulty will change these stats wildly. So if you're finding it too hard, try lowering the difficulty or go to a different area as mobs in this game don't dynamically change based on your level, they are fixed. I will also say building your character CORRECTLY is very important, so if you've screwed up check some guides online and on youtube, there's a character respec tool here if you need to change anything: https://pathfinder.deev.io/

[RubADuck]

Medium so normal isn't that bad. Maybe your build is just plain awful.
It gets better at higher level

[Kishorn Commando]

if you mouse over the attack data in the log it will tell you what your numbers were

bear in mind if youre using Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, and some other feats, you get -2, or worse on your THACO

[Gin-chan]

Originally posted by Hannibal Angus:

Medium so normal isn't that bad. Maybe your build is just plain awful.
It gets better at higher level

This game is up there with XCOM and XCOM 2 in terms of early game hell so yeah imo. You get so much more powerful with each level up that the levels are really no joke.

[Obi Hung Kenobi]

Originally posted by Gin-chan:

Yeah well i'm pretty much already immune to being annoyed by RNG so thats an advantage i have ove rmost people on enjoying this anyways. Thats what playing 2 years of XCOM-EW and binging XCOM2 for a month does to ya. Or maybe its the constant reloading for best choices and companion dialogue in Baldurs gate and Neverwinter knights XD.

Okay but Xcom 2 is a tactical game not a real time RPG game and at least there the hit% is clearly shown. Sure the frustration its real when you miss a 80% shot and the reloading is real too but here it just seriously hinders the experience and sets further drawback in moving forward in the world.

It really makes a chore for a lot of people and a nuissance to have to deal with terribly RNG for a game of this magnitude. I can see why the reviews are what they are.
I'm glad your immune to RNG but it really does kill the experience for many in this setting/genre.

I just drop the game more often then not instead of reloading after for example when fighting the staglord I am pinned against an army of bandits while my guys drop like flies.

The victories always feel super cheap and my armor/skills seem to not matter not mater how "l33t" they are.

The game makes it very clear that you wont EVER feel OP or not does it reward you for having "better loot", not matter how are or good the loot is, you remain stuck behind an RNG wall.

that really sucks for many, some like it some don't.

just warning people about it.

[Hazmy]

Probably your builds are just bad, and I mean this is a constructive way.

If you could post a quick summary of your stats, and what feats you took, I am sure we can help you with all that.

Originally posted by Drones200:

The game makes it very clear that you wont EVER feel OP or not does it reward you for having "better loot", not matter how are or good the loot is, you remain stuck behind an RNG wall.

I am playing on Hard difficulty, level 10 and i feel pretty OP. So let us help you instead of saying some non-sense :)

[Scottx125]

Originally posted by Hazmy:

I am playing on Hard difficulty, level 10 and i feel pretty OP. So let us help you instead of saying some non-sense :)

Level 10 is the EZ part when you should be strong. This doesn't really start happening till level 6.

[Young Clancey]

you are forced to have people specialize in blunt weapons, if not is miss gallore.

This is the wrong attitude to have towards a game like this... you are supposed to have fun understanding and resolving the different challenges like damage resistances, which give encounters flavor, not resent being "forced" to do it. Maybe like you said this whole thing is not your cup of tea

Also, I have not been having trouble hitting things, other than the damn wererats

[Gin-chan]

Originally posted by Drones200:

Originally posted by Gin-chan:

Yeah well i'm pretty much already immune to being annoyed by RNG so thats an advantage i have ove rmost people on enjoying this anyways. Thats what playing 2 years of XCOM-EW and binging XCOM2 for a month does to ya. Or maybe its the constant reloading for best choices and companion dialogue in Baldurs gate and Neverwinter knights XD.

Okay but Xcom 2 is a tactical game not a real time RPG game and at least there the hit% is clearly shown. Sure the frustration its real when you miss a 80% shot and the reloading is real too but here it just seriously hinders the experience and sets further drawback in moving forward in the world.

It really makes a chore for a lot of people and a nuissance to have to deal with terribly RNG for a game of this magnitude. I can see why the reviews are what they are.
I'm glad your immune to RNG but it really does kill the experience for many in this setting/genre.

I just drop the game more often then not instead of reloading after for example when fighting the staglord I am pinned against an army of bandits while my guys drop like flies.

The victories always feel super cheap and my armor/skills seem to not matter not mater how "l33t" they are.

The game makes it very clear that you wont EVER feel OP or not does it reward you for having "better loot", not matter how are or good the loot is, you remain stuck behind an RNG wall.

that really sucks for many, some like it some don't.

just warning people about it.

No you're complaints really only applies to the early levels. As i said levels really do matter in this game. I'm just at level 9(8 ranger/1 druid) and everything already feels a lot easier. I've had not have to reload a fight unless its a boss and even then i usually only need to apply the proper buffs to get past the fight rather than rely on RNG.

The skills and equipments DO matter. You just might be picking the wrong ones early on and better equipments comes just as you start act 2 and explore the area more. As picking the wrong skills WILL gimp your character ( thats how much thought you should be giving when picking skills upon leveling and character creation).

Its also true that certain builds are more powerful than others especially early on and there are also builds thats weak early but can be OP later when properly built. Best way to know and to get what you want is to do the research and ask really. What i did was just restart the game with a fresh mind once i realised how important the early feats and levels are and put much more thought into picking them while also still going with my own vision of what i want my charcter to be ( A lightning wielding magic ranger with a bear for a companion :D).

[Gin-chan]

As for the stag lord fight you actually have no way on losing it on normal since you can basically get a boss to finish the fight for you while your party just stand back and watch. (thank god for ranger nature skills)

[climbingeastofwinter]

There are counters to most creatures you have to fight in this game, part of the fun is learning their capabilities and designing a party that can adapt and handle a variety of threats. If you're having difficulty landing physical attacks, try to do something different with the way you're using magic to make it easier to hit them.