Tag: CRPG

Pathfinder Kingmaker – A Classic Modern Roleplaying Game Coming From The Golden Age Of Dungeons And Dragons

Pathfinder Kingmaker – A Dream Come True For Every RPG Player, New And Seasoned?
(ongoing Development / Discovery Blog, post will be updated, so bookmark 🙂 )

December 30th 2017 – A First Look At The Alpha, Impressions

Pathfinder Kingmaker Roleplaying Game Sensation Dungeons And Dragons
Pathfinder Kingmaker – A New Roleplaying Game Sensation From The Golden Age Of Dungeons And Dragons

By some stroke of luck, this game found me as I found the game – weirdly missing its Kickstarter Campaign, I got contacted by the Owlcat Games Team. One of its prominent members: Chris Avellone, a name a few of you might know, a very important former Black Isle  Studios member (Baldur’s Gate…) and recently, Co-Designer of the massively successful Divinity: Original Sin 2. Having only recently discovered Pathfinder: Kingmaker’s existance, I cheered fate and went to communication happily, welcome to the Alpha 🙂 The ALPHA – this looks already REALLY great! Too good for an Alpha!

Pathfinder Kingmaker Character Creation Start Screen
Pathfinder Kingmaker Character Creation Start Screen, only the limited selection speaks Alpha

And now the legendary Chris Avellone and his team are taking on the Pathfinder system, based on the old Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 / 3.5 system, often thought as the most accomplished and fun system there is and still played on many gaming tables. It’s a crazy feeling for someone playing Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder for so long to see that system too come to fruitition in a computer roleplaying game. What a great opportunity to have new players enjoy the infinite possibilities of such a ruleset and game!

Pathfinder Kingmaker Ruleset Choice
Pathfinder Kingmaker Ruleset Choice, Advanced Rules are great, implementing the whole Pathfinder ruleset, but will regularily kill even the veterans, so you should start with simplified or adapted rules.

In its fullness of detail and immersion it seems made for the computer, and not only often hardcore Pen & Paper players. Saving you a lot of hassle to learn this system by heart in Pen & Paper you can now – SOON! (2018!?) – enjoy its full power and enchantment and immersion in the coming Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Pathfinder Kingmaker Character Classes
Pathfinder Kingmaker Character Classes – 16 classes for a start, combine freely. Due to alpha status, (some) feats have placeholder letters still, but this is already changing!

I am enchanted, thrilled, thunderstruck by this opportunity. A feeling of unreality is there, and a want to bring this game to as many players as possible. Give it a try, or already a buy (you can pre-order) if you like deep immersion into story, also if you love to tinker and to optimize. If you’re new to “old hardcore” DnD, this IS your golden opportunity to have great fun without having to know it all by heart.

Now you say: Give me some ingame screenshots after all that hype and.. here they are 🙂

As you can see, I tried the Advanced Rules.. and died in the tutorial mission 😀
As it should be!

Happy Gaming to you – see you in another update soon, your
Immanuel Can 🙂

 

Pillars of Eternity Character Creation: Adonan, Aumaua Fighter and Quoril Yogsword, Pale Elf Priest

Hi guys and gals!

So, as we wrote earlier, Kevaver will be joined by his friends, a concept custom party designed for Path of the Damned (which will hopefully fare well, as this is a mostly blind Playthrough).

And to create the “basic” group, we chose two of his friends to join him early. Adonan, a tough Aumaua Fighter and Quoril Yogsword, a Pale Elf Priest of Magran.

So first, Adonan:

Race: Aumaua – Many enemies in the frontline have stun or knockdown abilities. The Coastal Aumaua ability (resistant to these abilities) is excellent against that! This enables him to better control the combat himself (and to take fewer hits of course).

Might 13
We want some Might, but he’s not a damage dealer, so we won’t spend too much on it. 13 is a pretty OK value getting a nice Fort save as well.

Constitution 18 (+1 = 19, from Rauatai)
He’s a tank. He has to have many hitpoints. And Fortitude save is the most important save for tanks too, they can take the Reflex save based Area Damage no Problem. But failing your Fortitude save will bring you in trouble as many melee opponents have abilities just against that save.

Dexterity 12
Dexterity isn’t crucial for a good tank, but it’s just so good generally. We just have to take it to bring down cooldowns and recovery times a bit.

Perception 13
On Hard we would dump this stat, as we wouldn’t have a problem hitting enemies anyways. On Path of the Damned, if your Perception is too low, you will have problems with anything combat related (if you’re not only buffing / healing). So, a compromise.

Intellect 3
The only ability we can afford to dump. It’s not crucial for a tank even though it wouldn’t hurt either. But many effects and abilities of the tank are instant and have to do with doing engage / disengages. Intellect won’t help there much. We are bleeding on the defensive Auras though, but sometimes, we have to make sacrifices for a gain elsewhere.

Resolve 18
We are playing a tank. He should have good deflection. This helps. It’s rather useless for a non-tank though.

 

Second, Quoril Yogsword

Race: Pale Elf. He is more resistant to elemental damage now which can be a problem even in the back row (think Fireballs or spells in general). This will help him, as he has that super low Constitution…

Might 18
We want our spells and abilites to be as strong as possible. We want to do damage too, if using weapons. This is giving us the power. What we sacrifice is..

Constitution 3
Our priest is mainly a buff / debuff character with ranged attacks. So we don’t ever want him to be under attack. He’d be dead then with Con 10 as well, so no point in going for more than the minimum. We’ll have to be careful with him though, as there are many archers and other ranged opponents in Pillars of Eternity.

Dexterity 19
Now how great is quick spellcasting, quick attacks and quick recovery time? Speed has, in most RPGs, been a crucial ability for spellcasters and, of course, healers. Pillars is no exception.

Perception 9  (10 with The White that Wends)
Not that good but not too bad either. We want to be able to hit things when debuffed. Or we want to debuff them. Buffs are more important still, but we won’t cripple our Perception totally. That would be neither helpful nor needed.

Intelligence 18
Just nice to have. A good area for the area spells and longer lasting buffs. Maxing that is mandatory.

Resolve 10
We won’t dump that as for a healer, some help with concentration can be crucial. But we won’t boost it too. As it’s really a tank stat.

 

Alright, I’m out – see you on YouTube in the Playthrough!

Have fun gaming,

Immanuel-Can

 

 

 

 

#Wizardry8 #Shredder #Speedrun 14 : Oh-oh – it’s magic :D

Deal with it: Two out-of-reach sorceresses paralyzing your party while a bunch of mindless morons and troublesome thugs supplies you with a thorough beating!

Also: Locations of the starting items in Trynton (as we’re reaching it).

Playing that part was a bit of a nailbiter 😀

So have fun watching & happy gaming!

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 #Playthrough #Video 2: The #Monastery

…where the party experiences a massive slaughtering of lots of rats, bats and slimes in the lower parts of the Monastery (and avoids getting slaughtered – yet) and all of the girls (and the guy) gain massive experience (and thus level up).

Also: A live introduction to basic Wizardry 8 tactics.

It might need some time still as YouTube Servers seem to not react quickly atm. Some re-production will also be done later because of that delay.

Have fun and hopefully see you around!
If you have any suggestions for me to try or to explain – write a comment anywhere on the Thoughtful Gaming pages.

Immanuel-Can

 

 

Starting the #Wizardry8 #speedrun !

Party building live with explanations for an extremely offensive hardcore late game party. Have fun playing along, lurking, watching, commenting – I’m looking forward to You 🙂 – Immanuel-Can

Skyrocketing #Wizardry8 #DPS with a #Dwarven #Valkyrie !

You could guess I only want a divine character as a healer. Or for the precious buffs. Resurrections. No – DPS is also great for the Valkyrie, especially to bridge the midgame. But also because she is specialized in Polearms. And there are some pretty good polearm weapons late in the game.

As with the previous melee characters (Monk and Samurai) our ability priority will be Strength (melee damage and armor penetration final skill) > Speed (number of attacks and initiative) > Dexterity (to hit and AC) > Vitality (hit points in melee are never bad).

You can always argue that Senses or Intelligence are listed under combat skills but they only make you learn the skills a little faster – their endgame final skills (unlocked after you reach 100 Senses or Intelligence) are pretty much useless for a melee character, so we are ignoring these on purpose.

So let’s make our girl strong, quick and dextrous – who wouldn’t want such a bodyguard girlfriend? (especially as a stereotypical nerd 😀 )

valkyrie-dwarf

And she’s a dwarf, too. The damage resistance is always cool for a melee character and the piety won’t hurt for some nice extra heals (piety raises spellpoints and stamina).

Combat skills are pretty straightforward, too: Polearm and Close Combat. We won’t need more. For some ranged damage, if we really happen to get two Tripleshot Crossbows, we’ll put the rest of the points into them (Level 5 upwards these points will go into spellcasting).

valkyrie-combatskills

Her name is gonna be Brunhilda after her famous namesake from the Nibelungenlied whose combat skills were so legendary that she could even wrestle with the uber-strong Dragon Slayer Siegfried.

Yes, another aggressive character. But what are you going to do in combat? Bake bread and pick flowers?

valkyrie-character

Better pick up some kills. Yes Madam. She won’t have a problem with that.

See you soon for party member 5! Happy gaming,

Immanuel-Can

#Wizardry8 : Building an effective #DPS #Ranger

After having built the core style components of our team (SHREDDER THEM!), let’s go to a class you definitely do want in your party. The ranger. He can scout automatically which is a big bonus and has high quality of life. I’d recommend the ranger to every new player’s party of Wizardry 8 just because you will not have to turn “Scouting” on and off. And even if you know the location of every hidden item it’s still really tedious if you don’t have a ranger.

So, take one. There’s no doubt: He’s useful. He can heal a bit, and teleport too in high levels. Can mix potions with his alchemy skill.

And he does tons of damage in the late game, and is still pretty OK early. If you build him right.

In order to achieve a non-balanced offensive ranger with high ranged damage, we are going to buy points in the following priority: Senses (for the final skill Eagle Eye, recommended for late game ranged damage) > Strength (for additional ranged damage and the eventual melee encounter) > Speed (for additional attacks) > Dexterity (for better to-hit and a quality of life Armor Class final skill later).

One of the best, if not the best ranger is a Mook: He has most bonus points, and is even one size category larger than the other choices, so he will have access to a nice late game sword: The Giant’s Sword, with extended range – furthering his DPS role even if the enemies come close.

ranger-mook

The skill category is pretty straightforward: We want him to kill with ranged weapons – bows. A crossbow, and hopefully a tripleshot crossbow later will be our favored weapon. Additional points are spent for scouting, so we won’t miss items.

ranger-combatskills

For his Gorillalike looks, I have baptised our furry ranger Silverback, in short: Silver. Whatever comes his way, he will drop them like flies.

ranger-character

Bonus points for recognizing the Statue up above I used as a featured image 🙂

Happy gaming! See you,

Immanuel-Can

Welcome to the #Wizardry Party, #Samurai #Musashi !

The first member of our party is going live, the most aggressive too, the Samurai!

To the honor of Miyamoto Musashi, we will call her Musashi, after one of the most famous Samurai – a double blade swordsman from the 17th century: Now going to the stars!

How are we going to build Musashi in Wizardry 8? As I already wrote earlier, there are so many possibilities to create viable characters in the game.

For the Samurai class, these choices would be:

  • Melee oriented with minimal Magic for quality of life buffs
  • Magic oriented with combat stats for better defense
  • A hybrid of the two, going offensive
  • A hybrid of the two, going defensive
  • …and possibly many more

For a high DPS endgame party, we will go for a melee Samurai and use magic to provide utility and buffs. For fun we will make her as offensive as possible. She is fearless (immune to fear effects) after all and won’t complain!

We will need:

  • High Strength
    Strength guarantees melee damage, and this is what we are going to need. Also, it provides stamina which is fueling melee attacks. Finally, when we reach 100 Strength we will have access to Power Strike, a special skill to penetrate the enemies’ armor even more. The increased carrying capacity is a nice bonus.
  • High Speed
    Speed guarantees more attacks and a higher initiative. Additionally, it helps to trigger “Lightning Strike”, a special attack of the Samurai where he attacks 4 times instead of only one time. Also, high speed grants some armor. Finally, when we reach 100 Speed we will get a special ability granting Avoidance which is really helpful to avoid malicious effects in melee combat.
  • High Dexterity
    Dexterity provides a bonus to “to hit” as well as armor class. Its final ability grants even more armor.
  • (late game) Vitality
    As we go for a victory as quickly as possible, we will postpone this ability until very late in the game. Vitality is pretty straightforward an ability granting HP and Stamina, as well as carrying capacity. It helps much with survival.

As a race we will go for the most (melee) combat oriented race in Wizardry: Its weak magical abilities give it more points for melee. The Hobbit! A female hobbit for.. well, powergaming! We will need much stamina, and stamina regenerating items are easier to access for female characters at the start of the game.
samurai-hobbit

For the start, we want her to have great Sword skills as well as Dual Weapons and Close Combat. At the beginning of the game it is more important to hit the opponents opposed to critting them – they will have so few hitpoints that they will quickly die through a much easier hit. A crit isn’t of that much benefit, so we will raise that skill later. The blue color of the Sword skill marks the class skill of the samurai: We will get a 25% bonus on the skill in game, it will apply 125% of its skill number – which is really helpful as fighting with dual weaponry gives a malus.

samurai-combatskills

As for the Magic: The Samurai cannot do magic off the bat. It will have to wait until the 5th level where we are going to talk about magic and its specialization for the Samurai in Wizardry 8.

Now imagine a female version of Musashi – you have quite a few portraits, but I like a more calm one, staying concentrated in the heat of the battle. Her intentions are to go for the great enlightenment – to beat any opponent even before the battle!

samurai-character

When the party is starting (on YouTube), you’ll be able to hear the voices of the characters in game, commenting on the events happening in game. It is always fitting, funny, and actually making you like your characters much more.

Such a masterwork!

Let’s get it on – happy to see you at Party Member 2

Immanuel-Can

A #Wizardry 8 “shredder” group for a #fast #playthrough

All the “games done quick” have also influenced me. So I want to try that with Wizardry 8 too. And as content rich as that game is, it should be possible!

One great thing about Wiz8 is all the freedom you have to build characters: You have 6 slots and you can build anything you want in any combination. It basically screams replayability! (As a result, there are random party generators for Wizardry 8 online, to give you even more of a challenge.)

wiz-partyscreen

There are many classes to choose from, with or without magic, with special abilities or just plain fighters / mages. For a quick playthrough you have to know that the endgame in Wizardry can be very hard. So we will focus on a good endgame – with the result that the early game will be somewhat hard.

The best scaling classes in Wizardry are Hybrid classes. They can do magic and they can fight too. Most of them can crit which results in an instant kill and can be very helpful late game when you have to kill opponents with many hitpoints as quickly as possible – in the first combat rounds. We will go for maximum slaughter!

So our party will be composed mainly of hybrids, focusing on melee combat (as it will deal the highest single target damage). Magic will be used to support the characters, for buffs and teleports and the like. Just to make life easy for us – #FeelsGoodMan 😉

Additionally, to feature most of the game, I will integrate two “sort of” magic classes, the Bard and the Engineer: Both can fight and can use unique items in the game. The Bard uses Instruments to play Songs on to help the party (and destroy enemies, too). The Engineer can even create special items – like combining three crossbows into a tripleshot crossbow – very helpful!

We will need a Ranger to find items quickly and to have those precious ranged combat crits (with the tripleshot crossbow!) and we will use a Valkyrie for tanking and access to the divine realm of magic and its range of buffs.

To round the party up we will use two extremely high dps characters: The Monk and the Samurai. Those valiant fighters can crit extremely often and are, of course, quite cool too if you’re into that Asian Martial Arts and Samurai aesthetics thing – who isn’t? They will rampage through the opponents like there is no tomorrow.

See you next time for some meaty character building. Fun names. Fun characters. And the unique audios for each character which you get to choose too! 🙂

 

#Wizardry8 : Enchanting steps back to the Past!

This is the start to a series around the CRPG classic Wizardry 8. One of the greatest RPGs of its time – and still tons of fun.

Thanks to Steam revamps, Wizardry 8 is back to playable and available here in a version supporting Windows: http://store.steampowered.com/app/245450

Step by step, we will go on a journey through the rough & tough world of Wizardry 8, featuring

  • A YouTube Playthrough
  • A character building / attribute guide for the newbies
  • Various helpful links about the game
  • A unique try for a DPS oriented late game party – as the late game is even harder than the respectable early game in Wizardry 8, this will be a good starter if you want to play through the full game which isn’t easy at all
  • Good Dungeon Crawling Fun on the highest difficulty setting interesting for veterans and newbies alike 🙂
  • maybe even streaming if I get my provider to give me better bandwith 🙂

See you in game!

Immanuel-Can

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