Pathfinder: WotR - Combat Basics

what's going on everybody mortem here this time bringing you a video about the basics of combat in pathfinder wrath of the righteous now most of this should apply to king maker as well but i am making this specifically for wrath of the righteous so take that for what you will moreover if you're a veteran i don't know what you're expecting to get out of this video thank you for watching but also again this is about the super basics of combat just like how attack rules work that kind of stuff with that out of the way let's dive into this so first things first i want to start with ability scores ability scores are from 0 to 20 at a base and then there are modifiers that can affect that now typically speaking you're never going to see an ability score all the way down to zero outside of like being undead or something which for instance you just wouldn't have a constitution modifier at all and even then it's not even technically zero you just don't have one but for every two points an ability score is over 10 with 10 being like average of an ability score every 2 something is over that so say 12 you'll start getting plus 1 for each 2 that it's over 10 to modifiers so 12 would be plus 1 14 would be plus 2 16 is plus 3 etc now we'll get into what those modifiers are for here in just a minute but we're going to start with talking about strength points in strength and the modifier from it affects melee attack rolls damage rolls on melee and thrown weapons and while it doesn't affect the attack roll for ranged it will incur a penalty if you don't have enough strength so just to give a quick example if i'm firing a bow with 12 strength i won't get the plus one damage to that from my strength however i will get a penalty if i said had eight and therefore had a negative one modifier i would actually take that penalty to my range damage roll but i don't get the bonus for the roles on ranged weapons outside of throne weapons in addition strength also affects things like athletics checks as well as just base strength checks then we have dexterity dexterity affects our ranged attack roles including for some spells it can give a bonus to our armor class when we're not flat footed again i'll get into what flat footed here is in a bit it also affects our reflex defense i'll cover that in a bit our mobility trickery and stealth checks as well which are all skills now constitution is basically where we get our health die from so this modifier affects how much health we get it also affects our fortitude defense and then we have intelligence intelligence affects how many skill points we get each level for you know putting into actual skills it also affects our knowledge checks which are part of the skills essentially there's a couple different types of knowledge and your character will roll an intelligence modifier for those checks as well as granting certain class spells such as for a wizard then we have wisdom wisdom will affect our will checks which is a defense type our perception as well as lore skill checks as well as again some class spells now charisma affects our ability to use magic devices channeling energy for certain classes some class spells such as a paladin or a bard as well as being able to persuade people as charisma is actually for now so that is a breakdown of what each ability score will actually do but what i'm talking about specifically with those is that's what the modifier affects so again for each two points we have above 10 we're going to get plus to something or for every two levels below 10 we have we're gonna get minus something that modifier is going to affect those skill rolls i just mentioned for each stat so for instance if i have h strength and i'm trying to say move a boulder or something else that would encourage strength check i'm going to take a minus one to rolling on that check now you also heard me reference skill checks as well as certain types of defensive checks there the defensive checks i will get into a bit later in a separate portion of the video however the skill checks are pretty easy to explain there's a variety of skills you get to put points in such as persuasion athletics trickery stealth trickery is like picking locks by the way and all sorts of things like that and when you make a character you'll get to put points dependent on your class and intelligence into those skills the initial point put into a skill gives you a plus four to it and then every subsequent point increases that by plus one that modifier from your skills gets applied in addition to your ability scores to your skill checks so for instance my mobility is a combination of my dexterity modifier as well as my mobility skills as well as any other modifiers that might affect my mobility such as wearing armor now let's move on to attacking an enemy so when it comes to attacking an enemy first things first we need to start with initiative now in the games here initiative isn't a huge deal but it is still a thing now for real time with pause initiative is quite simply how fast you get to act at the start of combat in turn based initiative is more like you know who's going win kind of thing basically whose turn it is whereas in real time with paws it's just how quickly you get to fight at the start of combat but outside of that let's start talking about our attack bonuses so attack bonuses basically come in two types melee and spell casting for melee we're talking about our base attack bonus this is going to increase basically as you level up and once this bonus reaches 6 11 and 16 for each of those respectively we get an extra attack per round so how attack rolls wind up being rolled and specifically what an attack roll is by the way is rolling to see if you hit something it is separate from a damage roll so first you gotta roll to see if you hit which is your attack roll which is what your base attack bonus is going to be applied to so for a melee attack rolling to hit something is your base attack bonus plus your strength plus any other modifiers versus the difficulty check in the case of trying to hit something the difficulty check is just your enemy's armor class for a regular melee attack and we'll get into armor class in the defensive portion of this video suffice to say that is how attack rolls for the most part are calculated now for a ranged attack instead of using your strength modifier you would use of course your dex modifier and then we have criticals so criticals in this game are rolled for into a threat range and then confirmed by a separate role so basically if you roll to hit something and you roll within your threat range which is usually just 20 but some weapons will have a threat range of like 19 to 20. so if you roll in that threat range on an attack roll you will potentially be able to critically hit however you have to roll a second attack roll that then just has to clear the enemies ac to become a critical hit now it's worth mentioning if you roll a natural 20 it is always a hit it might not necessarily be a critical if you miss your confirmation roll but it will still hit and you'll roll regular damage now the opposite is true of a natural one so if you roll a natural one you'll just miss guaranteed whereas a natural 20 will always hit now critical damage is typically speaking just a multiplied version of your weapon damage typically speaking damage from other sources such as precision damage is not calculated into this now there's a lot of variance on that but just know in general criticals are multiplied by your weapon damage so that's a real bare bones of how melee attacking works so let's talk spell casting now spell casting attack rolls work off of your caster level now this is essentially just the level of the class that is giving you the ability to cast now there are effects that will change this outside of just what it is so there are modifiers from like spells and things which will affect your caster level and then we have this thing called spell resistance this is basically like the spell version of armor class not all spells will actually be affected by spell resistance and the tool tip for the spell will usually tell you whether or not it is so in order to hit something with a spell you essentially have to roll a d20 add your caster level to it and then compare that to the target's spell resistance and that basically decides whether or not you hit the target with the spell and then we have concentration concentration is essentially you know the concentration it takes to cast a spell so if you're hit or something while casting a spell you have to roll a concentration check to not fail the spell so essentially a concentration check is your d20 plus caster level plus class spell modifiers if you fail a concentration check your spell just fails it doesn't happen and then there's spell failure what happens then so spell failure is just pretty straightforward your spell just doesn't work however in addition to failing a concentration check this can also be caused by armor or other equipment so the biggest thing is like heavy armor is going to have a arcane spell failure chance this is what is going to cause your spells to fail so if you're ever using a spell and it seems like it didn't do anything if you look up your combat log it more than likely just failed now when it comes to spell casting i'm not going to get super into it but suffice to say that some classes will be preparing spells every level so when they get their new spells they have to go to their spell book in the menu and prepare them which essentially means assigning the spells you know to your spell's slots spell slots are just the amount of spells the appropriate spell level that you are able to cast so again some classes have to prepare them so you have to go to your spell book and manually drag them to the spell slots others have spell uses per day where essentially they can cast any spell they know at that level but they can only do so so many times per day that is to say per rest really so that's the basics of attacking with melee and spells and now we're going to move on to defense so it's important to note in pathfinder especially when you're talking about defense because that bonuses do not stack of the same type typically so for instance if i'm wearing armor and i also have bracers of armor on the bonuses from both of those things won't stack i just get the bigger of the two so before we even talk about defense it's important to understand that you need to diversify your bonuses however luckily wrath of the righteous will actually tell you if you are stacking bonuses that don't stack so if you make the mistake of doing something like that it will actually tell you that you're only getting the bigger bonus and you can see that in the ui as well as probably notice it in the armor class calculation if you mouse over it now let's talk about what armor class actually is armor class is essentially the difficulty check to hit you or an enemy with a spell or armor we'll get into the various types of armor classes right now so there's regular armor class which is just standard rolls really then there's your flat footed armor class flat-footed basically just means that you are in a situation where you cannot get your dexterity bonus to your armor class and then finally we have our touch ac some spells and things like that don't require more than just touching someone so touch attacks will just bypass your armor so instead of including the armor in the difficulty role of your touch ac you just removed so you don't get your armor bonus to the ac for attacks made against a touch attack so to recap real quick if you're being attacked by a touch attack you don't get your armor bonus if you are flat footed you don't get your dexterity bonus that's the different types of ac essentially now touch attacks are pretty straightforward something's just physically touching you and it doesn't require to bypass your armor in any way such as certain spells then flat footed has a few more caveats so you can be caught flat-footed when your enemy is invisible potentially you know provided you don't have a perks or abilities that mitigate that you can also be caught flat-footed when you are flanked by enemies and a few other instances now that's important to know because if you are caught flat-footed that typically opens you up to sneak attack damage if the enemy is capable of dealing it to you now that we have some of that out of the way let's talk about how this is calculated your armor class is typically just a base of 10 plus your dexterity bonus plus your armor bonus plus any other modifiers modifiers are typically the stuff you're going to get from like accessories and stuff so there's the armor you're wearing of course and then there's modifiers from like bracers and stuff that might give you a luck bonus to ac or a dodge bonus to ac instead of a regular bonus to ac there are necklaces that will give you a natural armor bonus which essentially just raises your base armor so there is actually a lot going on with the armor portion of that calculation because armor comes with a max dexterity bonus as well as an armor check penalty armor will cap your dexterity bonus to ac so for instance if i am wearing an armor that has a three max dexterity bonus but i have a plus five modifier for my dexterity what that plus three max dex means is that i can only get plus three to my ac from my dexterity while wearing this armor now that may or may not matter in terms of giving me more ac so in some cases the actual armor from the armor is going to be so high that losing a couple points from my dex modifier to my ac is okay and then armor also has what's called an armor check penalty now this doesn't directly relate to your ac but it's worth talking about right here armor check penalty is basically the minus to a skill check you get because you're wearing armor so for instance if you're trying to you know be stealthy but you're wearing heavy armor that's going to come with a heavy armor check penalty which is basically just a negative modifier to the skill check so moving on to various other types of defense now i'm going to talk about saving roles these are the fortitude reflex and will defense that i spoke about earlier so the total for these defenses is a combination of your class bonus plus your stat modifiers as well as other modifiers such as like a cloak of resistance or something what each of these individual defenses do is potentially reduce or avoid the effects of magic or unusual attacks so most magical attacks or something like that will have a saving throw attached to them and essentially fortitude for instance is like your internal fortitude so you know if something tries to make you sick you will probably have a fortitude check against that to reduce or completely mitigate the effects of that spell and then we have reflex defense which is basically the defense where like getting out of the way quickly enough would mitigate the damage and then there's will which is typically like mind altering stuff these are your savings throws against again magic so if somebody throws a fireball at you you're probably gonna get a reflex safe to potentially take like half damage from it so guys that is the basics of how to attack how to defend yourself how ability scores work how skill checks work now at the end of this video here which is right now i'm going to wrap up some other things that i think are important but don't really fit into any of the categories i mentioned above so just kind of stuff that's useful to know so we have speed this is basically how far you can move in three seconds so for most people that's gonna be like 20-ish feet then we have attacks of opportunity attacks of opportunity is basically where you use an opening in defenses to make an extra attack so for instance if you are moving past an enemy if you're trying to grapple someone if you're making a ranged attack right next to an enemy all of that's going to provoke an attack of opportunity because you're lapsing your defenses to an enemy next to you the same is also true of your characters you will also get to make attacks of opportunity now typically you only get so many per round depending on a few various modifiers i just mentioned per round so what does that mean when it comes to rounds and pathfinder a round is six seconds and you get so many actions per round now in real time with pause that's happening all at once but turn based it's it's literally just your turn there are a variety of action types typically speaking a standard action and a move is pretty much your full round however you can potentially also use swift and free actions once per round as well now those action types to sum them up a standard action is basically like attacking or using an ability typically then you have your move action this is obviously like various movements so if you're drawing your weapon or drawing your bow that kind of thing and then we have full round abilities full round abilities do exactly that they take the entire round you can't do anything else and then we have free and swift actions free actions there is no cost so think of a free action like knocking an arrow while you fired your bow that would technically be a free action because it's so small for instance it's not even calculated however there are a variety of free actions essentially that you can use in combat and then there are swift actions these are where you're doing something but it's essentially an instantaneous thing so there are a lot of buffs in combat that are swift actions that you can use each round for instance at level 10 an assassin gets to use their poisons as a swift action which basically means they can apply poison instantly and then use it in the same round and then lastly how does dying and death work so dying is essentially when you hit zero health points this will put you down on the ground you'll be unconscious however you won't die until your negative health is more than your constitution so for instance if i have like 14 constitution and i reach negative 14 health that character is dead actually one last thing before i forget about it then there is the concept of concealment so concealment is basically a 20 or 50 depending on if it's partial or full concealment to just straight up miss a successful attack roll so if i'm attacking something that is in concealment and i successfully hit it with my attack roll there is a 20 to 50 percent chance i will then just miss it because of concealment now in the damage this is like literally marked as concealment so you'll know that you hit the target but because of the concealment chance you missed this applies to things like stealth and invisibility there you go guys there is a roundup of a lot of the basic mechanics of how to attack and defend yourself in pathfinder so late game and more in-depth play of this game is essentially just extrapolating on these basic effects and understanding how they work so personally i find just a base understanding of the very low systems like this where like just you know how is it calculated whether or not i'm missing something to be incredibly helpful so to that end i hope that it was helpful to you as you probably saw throughout this video the ui is pretty good about actually showing you these calculations in most cases so hopefully if nothing else you learned where you can see to go look up your modifiers and why something is the way that it is but with all that out of the way i truly do hope you found this video useful and moreover i truly appreciate you watching this video i hope you like comment subscribe stick around i hopefully will have more stuff up soon but honestly just thank you so much for watching may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music] you

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 50,641

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, Combat, Rtwp, Turn based, Pathfinder, Attack, Damage, rolls, saves, Ability scores, skills, checks, d20, basics, tips, help

Id: l6dqcCgn2Dg

Length: 19min 28sec (1168 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021