Pathfinder & Me
I had only played a couple of games of Pathfinder in real life - one a failed campaign that died after two sessions run by my brother which I had been looking forward to playing as a rogue for the first time. The other was a one-off convention game in Cork sometime around 2016-2017, a Pathfinder Society game to boot. I enjoyed myself both times despite the brevity. Why? It’s just D&D 3.5 baby! Only a little more refined. No wonder they called it D&D 3.75. I kind of missed the whole ‘4th edition sucks’ period - I missed all of 4th edition I’ve never played it - but played loads of 3.5 and of course now 5th edition. So I enjoy Pathfinder/3.75 to an extent but it is not without its problems. Enemies having (potentially) insanely high ACs turning combat into miss-fests is one.
Starting out
Pathfinder:Kingmaker is a CRPG. Computer RPG. I had dabbled in this genre before, my brief experience of Fallout 1 apparently is one time. I had played Neverwinter Nights before but couldn’t get into it. It’s a genre I could not get into. I’m not a huge fan of isometric views unless it’s some good old-fashioned Age of Empires of Civilization. Or the Sims. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy playing it but I booted it up anyway mid-September and launched into the first chapter.
I made a human paladin, mainly because apparently there is no paladin companion unlocked later, and being Lawful Good and charismatic would be an alleged benefit to the ‘kingdom management’ which was a core part of the game later on. The first chapter was OK. It sort of pulled me in when I was lied about and placed under suspicion by my host for the attack on the mansion I just survived and helped repel. I would have to set out into the wilderness to clear my good name and in a race against the guy who lied about me being responsible for the attack. I had amassed a party of seven but lost three of them as the liar and two others went with him to the wilderness. I kept the friendly (if annoying) halfling bard Linzi, the savage barbarian lady Amiri and the valiant fighter shieldmaiden named Valerie. Our task? Go to the wilderness and defeat the Stag Lord and establish a kingdom in the Stolen Lands. No big.
I quite enjoyed this first chapter overall, I wasn’t sure how long I could keep going at that pace but I had cleared it in a couple of hours and had largely swept through the encounters. My party had even levelled up by the time I was through it and yes, it’s very pure 3.75 Pathfinder rules in managing that. You can assign feats, increase the six D&D attributes and various skills tied to them and select abilities and spells. You can also multiclass to your hearts’ content. I set out for the wilderness, confident that with myself, Amiri the barbarian and Valerie the shieldmaiden in front and Linzi buffing us with spells from behind we would have a glorious adventure.
Difficulty
Oh no. The difficulty in this game is insane. I had set it to ‘Normal’ at the start, which is the 4th of 7 possible options. 3 harder, insane difficulties which I ignored plus Easy, Story and Custom. It was like… I would have a couple of smooth encounters wherein my melee trio would slaughter foes and all would be well then every third encounter would just be a party wipe. This was not even a case of D&D using up your resources and just having gone a bridge too far - I wasn’t using any abilities outside of Bless, Channel Life, bard songs from Linzi, rage for Amiri and shield mode for Valerie. There were a number of times I would enter a location and it was just party wipe after party wipe and I would have to reload and go somewhere else. Fair, this happens in Final Fantasy and any RPG - you enter an area before you are supposed to, you generally die. But yeah I just found that I was whiffing all my hits, even with shield mode turned off, and combat was swingy. Either I would clear the enemy without a sweat or be wiped rapidly. Once one melee fighter went down it was usually the end for the other two. This kept up for a while, I managed to clear up as far as the Stag Lord and defeat him but afterwards when trolls swept my lands I opened up the customisable difficulty.
I switched enemies from ‘Slightly Easier enemies’ to ‘Moderately Easier enemies’ (from 3rd lowest to 2nd lowest difficulty setting in that dropdown menu) and reduced damage from enemies from 0.8 to 0.4, but I slightly regret that. I think the first thing fixed it for sure, difficulty became ‘Custom’ but that’s all I changed and suddenly the game became playable again. The debate over the difficulty of this game had already raged back in 2018 when it came out and the two camps seemed to be ‘git gud’ and ‘just lower it for your sanity’. I don’t want to switch to turn-based combat (the endless misses would kill me) and I’m fairly happy with the largely passive abilities and feats/teamwork feats I’ve chosen, allowing me to just supervise with the bard and the cleric in the back row while the various melee attackers just whale on the enemy. I can still be wiped if I’m not careful and big fights still need lots of potions, scrolls and abilities to buff me but that feels more balanced, not like an endless series of brick walls for me to bang my head off and walk away bloodied until I find the smoothest path to travel. What really set me over the edge was I was ambushed by like 10 Manticores at one stage and just sat back and laughed as my party was completely outflanked and slowly ripped to pieces. I approached that ambush thinking I’ll buff my way out of this and we’ll persevere, maybe with a few lasting injuries and lessons learned but nope. If this were 5e, I could rely on the ‘bounded accuracy’ to reliably hit the enemies balanced for my level a majority of the time. This is Pathfinder/3rd edition where ACs and stats go way beyond 30 all the time.
Mid-way through the second chapter I could see myself playing through this allegedly really long game and finishing it. I was tempted to give up on it out of lack of fun prior to this but with the difficulty where I wanted it I could see myself forging on. This was almost a ‘hate’ review.
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By the end of the game difficulty crept up again, I went to absolute lowest difficulty for the House at the Edge of Time because good lord. Perhaps I should have turned off experience sharing, wherein I got less experience as it was split 12 ways between all my party members whether they were in the current party or not. I never used 5-6 people so could have afforded to do so. I was level 17 entering the House (the final chapters) so maybe could have done with being closer to 20. Also I did use some guides to select my character advancements but got lazy in some cases. Also I did not manage my spellbooks well.
Kingdom management
The party
My party was almost always Myself, Valerie, Amiri, her Smilodon, Nok Nok, then Tristian and Linzi bringing up the rear. My guy would occasionally throw down a couple of Peridot Wyverns to add to our numbers.
Future playthroughs: I like the idea of an evil party, headed by my guy as maybe an absolutely cheesed build alongside all the best characters like Nok Nok (starts with over 20 Dexterity and 10 levels in Rogue). Also the idea of having several party members with animal companions to create a small army.
Stuff I like: Pathfinder class rules, less spells, addictive loot and clear; sense of progress with kingmaking and quests
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Stuff I dislike: some of the dialogue, alignment; difficulty; music earworms; Kingmaking tasks missable etc; BPs; reliance on guides
Dialogue is cheesy af at times; I was partially invested in it but when the party got bigger and the stakes higher somehow I felt less like I was piloting my paladin and he was just this bland nameless guy who everyone turned to do the baronial stuff
Alignment - I read somewhere that being Lawful Good is the best for kingdom management reasons and general sanity. That made sense, I assumed a Chaotic Evil land would just be endless civil strife and backstabbing. Turns out it just gives a slight buff to your initial stats for your land and is just a good incentive to stay on a straight and narrow path. I was often turned to as the baron to make decisions which were more often that not Chaotic Good (CG), which I recall as the pure, nice good alignment if that makes sense as opposed to righteous and just and noble or whatever like Lawful Good (LG). These often meant sparing peoples’ lives but interestingly some LG decisions were of the biological determinist ilk. Goblins and Orcs and such that transgressed could be safely put to death as an LG solution or otherwise attacked with impunity. Chaotic Evil (CE) choices would appear here and there and were usually of the ‘kill them all’ flavour. Neutral Evil (NE) choices would appear as ‘rob them first then maybe kill them’ and so on. I thought these might be locked out completely but they would often appear near the bottom of my screen as an option. Very, Fallout 3 kind of vibes here. Anyway, some of the LG decisions I was offered bordered on the infamous ‘Lawful Stupid’ type of paladin you encounter here and there wherein you must adhere to the law even to detrimental effect. I managed to weasel my way away from some of these but there wasn’t always a CG, neutral or unflavoured answer to pick from instead.
Two of my companions crossed me early on and completely got away with it. One of them robbed from the barony’s funds, while the other concealed that they were connected to a group of cultists actively destroying my land from the inside out and was assisting them indirectly. Both got off scot free, as there was no option to punish them in any way. It was weirdly out of character for the former one, protected as she is by a literal plot armour ring, as up to that point she is super open and honest about everything. Valerie would never betray me and thus I crowned her early on as best, if you’ll forgive me, waifu (possibly my first use of that term in this blog) while Amiri is just happy I let her kill stuff. I’m personally not too miffed about being deceived by a clump of pixels and code but I can see how others might be and it just reeks of poor writing or something. Had she asked and I had refused and later on she stole the funds, sure, that might have won me over. The other traitor went through hell and back so I forgave him multiple times.
Re-speccing
I initially planned to power through the whole game as everyone being a pure class, whatever they started in all the way, yay! That might have worked but then I got Octavia with her levels in rogue and wizard, boo. I powered on until around level 8 or 9 I realised I was hurting my chances and needed to re-spec.
I kept my main guy Zachariah as a Paladin, which suits everybody and everything. Valerie gets to stay as a Fighter with levels in Stalwart Defender. I will give her some levels in Rogue apparently to make her more powerful. I was using Harrim as my cleric but he kind of sucks overall so switched to Tristian after a long time as my pure cleric/healer. Linzi I also kept as a Bard but am giving her levels in Rogue so she can be a better shot in the background when not buffing everybody. Amiri was the main re-spec; she was a pure barbarian initially but something about her felt fragile. I had briefly used the ranger Ekun during the trolls quests and his animal companion was a fantastic ‘7th’ character slot in my melee frontline and action economy so I found a build for Amiri which makes her some sort of DPS barbarian turned ranger turned Inquisitor. She got a big animal companion as my 7th slot and suddenly became more valuable as a DPS next to the Valerie-Zachariah shield wall. Finally there is Nok-Nok; the last party member I got and with his insane 24 Dexterity to start with he became the other DPS with his two swords. A few pieces of magical equipment and his Armour Class was not quite as high as Valerie or my guy but nicely in the mid-20’s. With this renewed party build replete with teamwork feats like Outflank we are slaughtering our way through the First World.
If I do a second run at some stage in the future (quite likely, but maybe after a significant cooldown period) I would probably run an ‘evil’ group headed by my MC who would probably be second row mage/rogue/bard of some description and use the characters I am not using now to an extent, all heavily re-specced of course. This game has some weird things in it like the uber tanky Valerie having a high Charisma score and a lower than average (for a fighter) Strength. I adore Valerie though she’s the least annoying character after 20+ hours. I really liked Octavia initially but the horniness of herself and Regongar is bordering on cringe now. I am envisioning myself, Amiri, Jaethal, Regongar, Nok Nok and Kalikke (DLC) slaughtering all the enemies. Maybe a third, neutral run with anyone I didn’t use a lot the previous two runs. It's a good thing if I’m thinking of future runs but gods this game is long.
Music
I like the music but my gods is it endless and repetitive at times. I literally have it playing in my ears right now as I type this, and I have no actual music playing. I was able to reliably mute it completely a few times and listen to podcasts instead so it gets a thumbs up.
The companions and quests
I was annoyed that I missed out on resolving Jaethal’s companion quest early on. She (and the game) warned me I was not following up on her quest arc but I must have missed my timing, preoccupied with keeping a whole barony afloat that I missed it and it failed. I don’t really like her undead character (for this good run anyway) and don’t plan on using her this time so it’s no big loss but that’s an achievement locked out for now.
Harrim is kind of a bad cleric and a general misery-guts. I still dragged him out for his various companion quests.
Linzi has plot armour but is a good bard and I pretty much always had her in my party.
Nok Nok is absolutely fabulous. I had him mostly as a rogue and prtety much always in the party as DPS. Endless sneak attacks for high damage, he would often be the only one doing any damage. Some levels in Alchemist and Slayer too for dropping bombs and damage.
Amiri is kind of a meh barbarian but after seeing how good animal companions are I got her a couple of levels in Ranger and she got a Smilodon and just more useful. They were pretty much always in the party but I messed up her last companion quest, oops.
Valerie was always in the party too at the front of the line. I got her AC to 40+ but apparently it an get as high as 60+ somehow. Must note that for future playthroughs. I gave her levels in Rogue for some reason and Stalwart Defender prestige. Her quests earned her a rad scar which I set about fixing. My character would ultimately romance and marry Valerie.
Tristian was a much better cleric and replaced Harrim. Just kept him as a pure cleric healbot. His quests were harrowing, poor bastard. I kept him on side all the way through.
Jubilost I never used but maybe in a future playthrough. I had Nok Nok throwing bombs instead. His wacky gnome-related quests I completed but barely kept an eye on them.
Ekun was a pretty good ranger and I got him some levels in Rogue but I didn't really use him much. Sorted his quests and used him at the House at the Edge of Time.
Octavia I used a bit early on and she was good at flinging Acid Splash at the trolls, finishing them off. She could potentially be very good but I opted for a Tristian-Linzi backline instead.
Regongar I did not see the appeal in, he seemed very flimsy to me but he could probably be re-specced.
Advisors
Regent - Octavia, then Valerie - not really sure how exactly to define this but Octavia had the best stats for this at the time so I plugged her in there. Valerie subbed in later when Octavia went Arcane.
Councilor - Tristian - again, he had the best stats for this (Loyalty?) so he went. I’m taking ‘best’ as 5+ in the initial stat.
General - Kassil Aldori, then Reg - I acquired this guy at the very start of my barony and he represents some faraway land. He’s been an OK general so far. He left abruptly so Regongar took over and his Strength value was much more suited to generalship.
Treasurer - Jubilost - I had no candidates for this position initially and it seems to come up all the time. It's unreal, 1 in 3 jobs seem to be for the Treasurer. Considering the length of time these tasks take it doesn’t seem right to have him tied up most of the time with other stuff. Anyway I googled it and he was in a wrecked caravan very close to my capital. Go figure.
High Priest - initially Jhod, now Harrim. Jhod was there from the start and seemed OK but he regularly failed at his tasks. I fired him as High Priest and put the slightly better at Wisdom stuff Harrim in there. As I had ditched him as a not quite as good cleric it was fitting to put him to work here.
Warden - Ekundayo - this is the first of the ‘secondary’ roles that opened up and Ekun had the best stats it seemed for the job so I threw him in there. I think I just like having him and his beastie in the hall with me.
Culture - The Storyteller - some sort of ancient blind elf who resides in my court for free so I figured better put him to work. As an aside, he did give me gold on a number of occasions in return for ancient, useless trinkets I found on my adventures but he keeps only taking like two at a time. I need that gold, old elf.
Arcane - Octavia - best stat for the job, Intelligence.
Espionage - Jaethal - she had decent stats for the job and like all of them you can pump up the relevant stat - in this case Dexterity - by equipping magic items and levelling up.
Tasks, BPS, regions, events, opportunities, building
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On feats, skills, upgrading
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Camping and travelling
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