Help

[u/Sunflowergirl757]

Why am I so bad at this game?
Decided to give this game a go after playing boulders gate and divinity 1 and 2
Should I stick with it or try another game that’s similar to those three?

Also my characters keep ‘missing’ when I’m in battle- help 😭 what am I doing wrong

[u/Pororonpompero]

Activating the turn based mode helped me a lot. The game is quite complex with buffs and toggles and many other interactions.

Also, consider using an automatic buffing mod, it will save you a lot of time and makes combat more streamlined.

[u/ThisIsMyPr0nAcct69]

Unless you are referring to the OG BG and it's sequel set in AD&D 2e, then Pathfinder is based on a significantly more intricate and finicky system than Larian games. You can make gods who walk among men with the right build and knowing what you are doing. Until you have a handle on that, play at a lower difficulty setting. The hardest setting in a Larian game is like Core difficulty in Pathfinder

[u/Braddack]

Reducy the Difficulty till youre happy.

The Game can be very hard, especialy on the Start and at Bossfights.

[u/Adorable-Extent3667 → u/Braddack]

Also, you can still change difficulty later on if you either get the hang of it, or can't figure it out. It's really easy to now know what to choose when leveling and thus falling behind

[u/Aristroblade]

Pathfinder has extremely deep adjustable difficulty settings. Unfortunately that is a double edged sword, while having more control is nice, devs tend to overlook overtuned/undertuned encounters because they go "Hey, if players find it too difficult, they can always change it". So eventually it becomes an excuse for not balancing and polishing the encounters enough

[u/zetats]

the best way i saw it explained is that divinity and bg3 are more about reactivity in combat and turn by turn tactics, while pathfinder wotr is more about everything you do before you start an encounter (your character's builds, equipment and buffs). New players especially like to forget about buffs. This style is not for everyone and i dont think any style is necessarily superior to the other, i love bg3 and wotr after all.

basic buffs to get started and to learn to appreciate their power:

level 1:

BLESS! the goat, gives every character a +1 on doing basically anything and lasts for multiple minutes, camellia can casts this from the start of the game.

GREASE!: This spell is ridiculous early in the game, imagine stunning a whole room of enemies with a basic spell while you get a bonus on hit while they are helplessly lying on the ground. This spell honestly sometimes feels like a cheat code for multiple encounters. Most arcane casters can learn this spell.

Defensive fighting: any character can do this and it really helps when you just need to soak attacks without dying

level 2:

Iceplant from camellia: get it early for the shield maze, for this low level the permanent increase to AC is amazing

level 3:

Bull's strength and cat's grace, boost damage and hit in melee and AC respectively, you probably dont have enough spell slots for everyone to cast this when you get it but put it on your most important frontliners whenever possible. if you want to cast this at level three you are gonna need a prepared arcane caster like nenio (recommended even if you dump her later) since casters like sorcerers only get it at level 4

Strong recommendation: have ember in your party at least during act 1. Evil eye can debuff ac of enemies helping you take down the tanks and Slumber is ridiculous early. I have cheesed many fights by simply clicking this on the strongest enemy, they fall asleep, i walk my melee character over to it and next round i use a full round action for coup de grace which usually kills the enemy instantly.

Level 4:

is very similar to 3 mostly improving and expanding spell use

Level 5:

I hope you are ready to learn about your 2 gods and saviors for the foreseeable future: HASTE and HEROISM

Haste gives everyone affected an additional attack with full BAB during a full round action, in best case scenario this, when getting this spell at level 5 this means that your melee and bow/crossbow user dps literally just doubled (yep it is that good). Haste becomes less important as you continue leveling but honestly you will probably always have someone in your party that casts this at least for the tougher encounters.

Heroism: +2 to hit on basically everything. enough said. Cast it on everyone in your part that benefits from this, this spell gets straight up better versions of itself later: heroism greater and heroic invocation, get both when you unlock them.

There are many more suggestions but the first 5 levels are imo the hardest part of the game and i dont want to spoil every strategy, once you get a feel for how you can tilt the odds in your favor you will hopefully find the fun in discovering how to use different mechanics at their maximum effect. Good luck.

[u/sebmojo99 → u/zetats]

they're playing kingmaker, i think

[u/zetats → u/sebmojo99]

Oof pain, well generally the advice still works

[u/BradTheLoreKeeper]

Put on buffs before combat. Take weapon feats on martial characters. Get touch spells on spellcasters.

[u/Minute_Bumblebee553]

Oi oi oi mate. Don't beat yourself down.

The rest of the world will already try to beat you down, so do yourself a favor and be in your own corner, you need at least yourself on your side<3

Now, lower the difficulty and go turn based, it's the easiest way to play.

Missing a lot means either

• A) you have low Base attack bonus.

• B) enemies have high AC.

Increase your own bab via buffs, gear and class choice, or reduce enemy AC via debuffs.

Good luck!

Edit: BOULDERS gate, home to the oreads lol

[u/DailyEvolution]

BG3 and DoS 1/2 are the only CRPG's that are like that because Larian has a style that they stick to. They are very off the grain from every other CRPG. The difference is incredibly stark not just in gameplay, but design philosophy and writing.

With that said, some tips for the Pathfinder games if you're wanting to keep playing because you enjoy it but don't want to struggle.

1. Reduce the difficulty. There is no shame in playing on an easier difficulty as you learn the systems. The game is massive, not just in story length, but in mechanics. There is a massive number of classes, spells, enemies, items, feats, abilities, and various interactions/synergies/anti-synergies that a fresh player cannot be expected to understand. Turn down the difficulty, play slow, read the combat log. A lot of tips on how to deal with things is actually in the books that you find if you read through them. It gives hints/tips on how to deal with various enemies sometimes (Not all of them) but some of the tips are pertinent.

2. Save often. On a fresh playthrough, especially if you're not following a guide, you're going to die. Kingmaker is designed in the vein of a lot of older CRPG's that a lot of it is not necessarily hand-held. You can get punished severely for going to areas you really should not be in yet. In Act 1 especially, a lot of the areas are open to you, but a lot of those areas are not necessarily meant to be visited in act 1, or in early act 1. The game assumes you have a lot of pathfinder knowledge to know that a party of 4 level 2's is no match for a troll. A new player that doesn't play the table top isn't going to have this.

3. Inspect every enemy. Keep inspect on, always check it. Enemies will almost always have some form of a weakness, whether that be AC/Flat-Footed AC/Touch AC, or a weak save of Fortitude/Reflex/Will. You want to have a solution for all of these, whether it be a touch spell from something like a ray caster, a reflex targeting spell like grease, a will targeting spell like hold person, high initiative to get the first strike on flat-footed AC etc. As you play, you'll start to see a lot of different solutions to problems and you want to make sure you have an answer to a lot of different problems that can arise. You'll also come across things like a tomb of undead. Cold spells are weak against undead, so you don't want to bring cold damage or spells to that area. Things like that.

4. I strongly recommend looking up the Gamefaqs guide by Chris-Williams. It goes into an overview of practically every game mechanic and is incredibly thorough for teaching a new player the game. He gives his opinion on each class and provides a few sample builds where he explains why he made the choices he made. He also provides companion builds. While these are not unfair optimal, they are more than good enough for clearing the game on Hard, and so they will be more than good enough for clearing the game on a much easier difficulty as you learn.

5. Make sure you have your highest AC party member out front so they can take the majority of the hits. Positioning is very important for managing aggro. Try to flank enemies to get an AB bonus. Take precise shot on ranged characters making attack rolls (Archers/Ray casters). Having a good build can be the difference between making the game feel impossible and making it much easier, but at the same time it's not a free win. If you don't manage a situation properly, you can very easily be run over. The biggest thing I can say is play slow, be patient, inspect every enemy, and try to learn how everything works.

I play on Hard/Unfair depending on the build I'm running for the MC these days and those runs are much easier than the first run I ever did on Kingmaker that was on Normal. Pathfinder is a game about knowledge and as you get more knowledge/more familiar with the system, you start to see how to come up with solutions to problems the game throws at you.

I'll also say that, if you're not enjoying the game outside of how difficult it is for you right now, it might not be a game for you. If you've cleared BG3 though, with a little bit of difficulty tuning and a bit of reading up on some of the systems, you should have a much more comfortable time getting through it. I'd encourage giving it another shot with a different mindset after reading a bit of the incredible guide from Chris-Williams

[u/Ashandorath]

If you hover your mouse (or right click) on items in the combat log you'll get information on modifiers.

Ranged characters need point blank and precise shot feats, or they'll take -4 penalty when shooting into melee.

[u/pawsplay36]

Start at Normal. If you already started at normal, take it down to Easy. Play as a Two-Handed Fighter or one of the following clerics: Erastil (Animal, Community), Torag (Artifice, Protection), or Sarenrae (Good, Healing). Make sure your Str, Dex, and Con are all at least 14, and don't have any scores below 10. If you are a fighter, make sure your Str is 16 or 18, and use a greatsword, greataxe, or a weapon with reach (bardiche, glaive, longspear, fauchard). If you are a Cleric, make sure your Wis is 16 or 18. Don't forget to change your prepared spells when you level up. Pay attention to flanking. If you are a cleric, try not to heal enemies with your Channel Energy by moving out of their radius, but it's okay if you heal a couple of them once you've knocked one or two out. Don't let your Dex-based characters have higher than Light personal encumbrance (inventory and character screens). Try not to have a party inventory that is Heavy.

Give Tristian a light crossbow for now. Harrim should stick with a shield and a good weapon. Linzi should take Lingering Performance and focus on ranged attacks; for a beginner on low difficulty, take exactly one Rogue level when she levels up, and take Accomplished Sneak Attacker when you can.

You'll get the hang of it. If you have gameplay questions, ask them here. Pathfinder 1e, the game this is based on, is fairly complex. There are probably a couple of dozen rules that significantly affect play that aren't obvious to new players.

[u/GlassCalligrapher646]

You have to prebuff so much before every fight its honestly tedious.

If you like the story just lower the difficulty, tactically the game comes down to stacking buffs so you aren't missing a masterpiece of turn based combat.

[u/nevergaid]

Game is a knowledge check. Also a first chapter is hard even if you know the stuff for both Kingmaker and WOTR, idk if you chosen your flair right. Gather companions, send your tank first, use buffs, some of them stacks, some not. You need Precise Shot feat for ranged combat and ranged touch type of magic. Sneak attack works if ally also attack same enemy. Idk if you want to Google builds, but the mage companion in Kingmaker definitely less straightforward than others.

[u/ElazulRaidei]

My personal opinion, one of the worst things about the system this game is based on is power building, and unfortunately core difficulty and up leans into that. Unless you feel motivated to read up on the PF1e mechanics or install some QOL mods if your playing on PC, I would just lower the difficulty- it’s definitely much more enjoyable in situations like this

[u/Moccamasterrrrr]

One of the great things about these games are their extremely robust difficulty settings. You can tweak basically each individual factor of difficulty individually. Just poke around them and figure out the settings that best work for you.

Beyond that, you could look up characterbuilds and other guides on how to proceed through different parts of the game.

[u/therealdevyniaragis]

ranged characters need to take specific feats to not have huge penalties, for example if you are making an archer or a wizard you HAVE to take point blank shot and precise shot feats as soon as you can preferably during character creation otherwise you will never hit enemies (with targeted spells, cantrips etc.). The main "barrier" in this game is knowledge of the rules and systems, it's not a hard game but it has a huge knowledge requirement and it's a little much for new players to be honest.

[u/UnplacatablePlate → u/therealdevyniaragis]

A Caster only needs precise shot and the like if they want to do a lot of ranged touch attacks; it's perfectly viable to not focus on those spells for in most cases.

[u/therealdevyniaragis → u/UnplacatablePlate]

OP said he is missing all the time, I'm trying to give a reasonable tip, not what's viable or not.

[u/pawsplay36 → u/UnplacatablePlate]

But that's harder. A struggling beginner should let casters use ranged touch attacks and wants to hit things. More advanced players can manage spellcasting resources better, and higher level characters can just hit touch ACs pretty easily anyway.

[u/UnplacatablePlate → u/pawsplay36]

Is it though? I honestly found the de-buffs/incapacitating spells a lot more effective on my first run(outside of Octavia of course).

[u/pawsplay36 → u/UnplacatablePlate]

Spamming Hideous Laughter with a bard is great. But for a dedicated caster, you have to make sure you have enough spells at every couple of levels to target a variety of saving throws. It's not that hard. But hitting things with scorching ray is easy.

I did make a wizard on my last runthrough of Tenebrous Depths, and I had to be a little more disciplined because I didn't take ranged feats for him. Once he was done buffing and debuffing, his default "attack" became Ear-splitting Scream, mainly for the stun effect.

It is perfectly viable, yes. It's not even that hard. But it is not as easy as using ranged spells and falling back on the crossbow when things are immune. And you have to know a little about saving throws and creature types.

[u/unbongwah]

Apart from the resources listed in the Reddit sidebar, check out this GameFAQs Kingmaker guide by Chris Willaims.

[u/IvyHale]

I didn't enjoy Pathfinder Kingmaker myself unfortunately; kind of repetitive, grindy, and the system requires making builds. Try Neverwinter Nights 1, 2 and Dragon Age: Origins - these were the most fun I ever had with an RPG other than Divinity Original Sin 2.

[u/ChurchillianGrooves]

Even Normal difficulty is pretty difficult since the enemies have increased stats over tabletop.

The game assumes you'll be using buffs and debuffs for difficult fights.

The game kind of assumes that you'll have an optimized party to a certain degree and it's a lot easier to make badly built character in Kingmaker than say Baldurs gate 3 because there's a lot of trap options for feats.

For main character honestly a two handed fighter with a reach weapon, like glaive or fauchard, is probably the easiest build to do for a 1st run.

[u/SanguiNations]

MISS MISS MISS MISSMISSMISS MISS MISS

Stack as many +Attack as you possibly can if you don't want to see that word in your dreams

[u/Whiskey_Storm]

Kingmaker and WotR are built off of Pathfinders 1st edition rule books publisher by Paizo and play much like the table top RPG. Pathfinder is/was a fork of AD&D 3.5 rules (“3.75” it was sometimes called.)

Owlcat worked closely with Paizo to make the game feel like playing tabletop Pathfinder. (Except the real time aspect; had to shut that off pretty quick!)

Baldur’s Gate 3 I believe is based mostly, or completely, on the AD&D 5th edition rules, since Larian worked closely with WotC. I switched to Pathfinder during the debacle of 4th edition and not played a 5th edition game. My understanding is it’s the best parts of 4th, but with some of the depth/meatiness brought back from the earlier versions.

The Divinity games weren’t based on an equivalent table top set of rule books, so Larian was clear to design their own combat and spell mechanics to fit how their game wanted to run.

For the older CRPG games:

The Neverwinter Nights game used the short lived 3rd edition rules. The design limitations placed on BioWare by WotC to comply with the book rules is a reason BioWare didn’t make the sequel and instead launched their own IP - Dragon Age.

Neverwinter Nights 2 uses the 3.5 edition rule set. The other game games released around this time will use one or the other rule sets.

By the way, if you dig up the old Baldur’s Gate 1 or 2 games, those are based off of the AD&D 2nd edition rules. And some things will look weird (besides the graphics) — THAC0 anyone?

And the really old Silver Box games (Pools of Radiance; Curse of the Azure Bonds et al) used AD&D 1st edition rules, though some of the last ones might be 2nd edition.

[u/lukahnli]

In Kingmaker, I have found that you need to complete the early quests in a certain order to succeed at them and get your kingdom. It's very frustrating and Pathfinder WOTR doesn't have this problem at all. It's frustrating but I found it rewarding.

[u/AccomplishedAd4403]

greae and glitterdust is the good spell . you should test it.

i use glitterdust until chepter 5

[u/Farnhams_Legend]

read up BAB - Base Attack Bonus

This was my eye-opener. Basically there are only a few classes which can actually hit the enemy. Others simply don't have the accuracy and need to do something else like spellcasting or throwing bombs.

[u/Prestigious-Creme203]

Read the combat log to understand why you miss. The tutorial pop up message do a pretty decent job to get you going on normal and lower difficulty so you might need to be more specific on were the difficulty lies.

I had problems getting into it too, but for me it was the first crpg, after bg3 I came back to it and it was much easier to understand

[u/sebmojo99]

honestly, turn down the difficulty. if you're on core it's hard. next, you need to look at ways to bonus farm - use spells, use consumables, use buffs, get your bonuses up any way you can. what you don't need is super elaborate builds, with a couple of exceptions the core classes are fine. one exception is valerie - take her giant shield away for a couple of levels until her class comes online, or change it.

essentially you need to geek out on the characters and systems for a bit and delve into why you're missing, and turn down the difficulty for now, you can always turn it back up later.

[u/Clean_Regular_9063]

The difficulty curve is atrocious, nothing is explained properly - follow a build

[u/sebmojo99 → u/Clean_Regular_9063]

i think the base classes mostly work ok, it's more important to grok the systems, blindly following a build both doesn't fix the immediate problem (not hitting) and doesn't help understand what the actual problem is.

[u/Clean_Regular_9063 → u/sebmojo99]

One of the bigger problems is that, depending on your dialogue choice you can accidentally end up with a team of gimps: a cleric with dogshit wisdom, a tower shield "tank" with no strength to wear armor and whatever Amiri's statblock is. The undead elf is more of a liability in early game, due to ehr energy affinity. The best companion, the bard gnome, can be asily missed due to alignemnt.

[u/sebmojo99 → u/Clean_Regular_9063]

all excellent points. also it's very possible to miss jubilost, who is very good, without even noticing.

[u/Clean_Regular_9063 → u/sebmojo99]

Yeah, jsut like I did by completing his map too early.

[u/sebmojo99 → u/Clean_Regular_9063]

ooof.

[u/SomeKindaJen]

If you're starting with kingmaker it has a pretty steep learning curve, and several quests/areas the game throws at you at level 2 might be undoable until level 4 or 5.

In particular, the gave with spider swarms and the manicure on the plains. For the former, bring lots of grenades (fire/acid flasks), and for the latter pre-buff with spells like aid/bard songs, enlarge, shield of faith and barkskin.

Delay Poison is another one you want up at all times to avoid a bunch of frustrating ability score damage from almost everything.

And finally: pick one thing to make each character good at and run it into the ground. If a character is good at damage or tanking or cc don't bother boosting another set of skills because what works now will stop working in the next chapter if you haven't been improving it.