New Player Help | Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Wiki

New Player Help for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous features an index of quick guides for new players to help them kicks start their unique journey in this hardcore RPG. Players can upload questions and update this page to lend each other a helping hand. There are many factors that players might need guidance in throughout the multifaceted universe of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, so feel free to find support here to complete your understanding of its innovative mechanics and rulesets.

 

New Player Help for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

This Beginner Guide for Pathfinder WoTR will take you through the basics to get ready for the game. Since this is a getting started guide, we focus on key concepts that players must understand in order to succeed. Please see Character Creation, Builds and Companions for in-depth tips. And for game progression, visit the Walkthrough and Combat pages.

Use of the search bar on the top right corner of the page is highly advisable to find the specific topic you are atfter.

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DIFFICULTY SELECTION

What difficulty is recomended for me?

Depending on your background when first playing Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous depends the difficulty recomended for you. 
Story, Casual or Normal are recomended for newcomers to the franchize, beginers on CRPG games or those preferring the Story over the game mechanics, since you will not be as punished for your decitions as in higher difficulties.
Daring and Core are recomended for experienced CRPG players or those familiar with the Pathfinder combat system who would like to experience the story but be challenged as well.
Hard and Unfair are not recomended; however, they are available for those who would like to learn and become masters of the pathfinder combat system and mechanics. These difficulties are not recommended due to the nature of the dice mechanics, meaning that even when using a min-maxed strategy there is still the chance to lose in any combat encounter.

Custom Difficulty

Besides the premade difficulties, there is the option to change any parameters when choosing your difficulty. Any changes will automatically set your difficulty to Custom.

 

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CHARACTER CREATION

What do I have to consider when creating my Character?

First and foremost, players must go through the process of Character Creation before they embark on their journey in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. The two primary aspects to consider during Character Creation are the character's Race, as well as the Class.
There are a total of 12 Races, 25 Classes, and 10 Prestige Classes in the game. The decision of which ones you want your character to be largely depends on your combat playstyle, and role play preferences. Races determine the basic unique attributes of your character, such as its size, which will dictate its Threatened Area, Combat Maneuver, rideable animal Companions, and so on. Classes largely determine the types of Skills and Abilities that the character possess in his/her arsenal, as well as the type of damage to specialize in. The available Prestige Classes, which are to be chosen when reaching higher character levels, will also be decided by this.
Players shall identify the classes they prefer before confirming their character's race, as certain race synergize better with various classes, resulting in a better foundation for efficient Builds.

How does the leveling system work?

While in most games the class you choose is mostly fixed for the entire game, in the Pathfinder series every time your character gains a new level you are given the choise to invest said level on any class available to your character (the first level being when you create your character). Witch classes are available depends on many aspects of your character, such as race, alignment, atributes, feats, etc.
This allows for a huge variety of builds and personalization, but also can be a trap for those unfamiliar with the game's mechanics, since you could easily invest points in aspects that hinder your previous choices (like increasing damage with a weapon that your character can't use yet). We recomend watching or reading guides, some provided on this wiki.
Keep in mind that, if chosen on the difficulty menu, respec will be available for your character trough most of the game.
Regardless, here are noted a few tips:

• Take your time to reed and comprehend the descriptions of each ability or feat before you make your decition. When in doubt, ask. While the game does give a few indications on good or bad choices this are not necesarily good or bad for your build, they are more recomendations than instructions.
• Not just your character can be specialized, both companions and mercenaries can be leveled up in the same fashion. Automatic levelup is also available for your companiuons if chosen in the dificulty menu.
• Some choices might affect dialogues, many of witch depend on your skills.

Much in this aspect of the game depends on the dice mechanics.

What's the difference between Classes and Prestige Classes?

Prestige Classes are expertise classes that players choose to specialize in after they have reached a certain threshold in character level and other requirements. When deciding which Prestige Class to specialize in, players shall also consider its synergy with their character's race and basic class. They each have their own unique playstyle and features.

What are Mythic Paths?

A Mythic Path is a character progression system separate from the ordinary leveling system. The character will reach milestones throughout the story to eventually ascend into a divine being. There are 10 types of divine beings in the game, ergo 10 different Mythic Paths. Mythic Path itself is a system to be unlocked some point early on in the narrative, and each milestone on these paths are unlocked by beating story beasts in various main quests. The player's choice of Mythic Path will affect the loyalty of certain armies in the Crusade Mode as well as Companions in the story, and will even influence the outcome in latter parts of the story.

 

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COMBAT

What format does the combat in  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous  follow? 

Like certain existing DND-based RPGs, combat in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous follows a turn-based format, where players and enemies take turns initiating actions against each other, such as moves, attacks, magic casts, and maneuvers. However, this turn based tactical system has a real-time (with pause) alternative that can be toggled on or off at any moment (even during combat). To implement this each "turn" is actually a "round", where all combat actions take place simultaneously in real-time in a span of 6 seconds. The outcome of each action largely depends on the result of each dice roll. The effectiveness of the outcome is affected by a combination of many other factors, such as Stats, Bonuses, Conditions, etc.

How does the general combat mechanic work?

Based on a Table Top game, the combat in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is largely dependant on dices to determine the outcome of  the actions taken (the most common being a dice with 20 sides or "d20") this are reffered as "checks" of a variety of natures be it a skill, an attribute, AC (armor class), DC (difficulty class),etc. Each action has an asociated dice with a specified number of sides witch determines the range of possible outcomes (in a 1d20, values go from 1 to 20), to this value is then added any bonus your character has from any source be it a buff, a feat, gear, etc. Note that some feats and abilities may change the type of dice used for a specific action directly instead of providing a bonus. Specific information about dice rolls can be found here.
Thus being turn-based or real-time the success or failure of each action depends on rolls, you may then build your character in a way that increases the chances of success of your actions or the chances of failure of your enemies.

For more explanation about dice rolls, saving trows, AC, DC, concealment, types of damage, etc. see here: Combat.

How do Checks/Skill Checks work? What are they for?

Any actions performed to achieve a result that is not guaranteed (i.e initiating attacks, climbing a ladder, protecting yourself from effects) are required to go through "checks". That means that the result, whether it be a success or failure, effective or ineffective, are decided by a d20 dice roll.
For your check to succeed the check result (sum of d20 roll and all the bonuses and penalties) must meet or exceed the Difficulty Class (DC) of this check.

What is an Attack of Opportunity?

Some actions performed close to an armed opponent can provoke an additional attack upon your character without waiting for the opponent's turn (and vise versa). Such actions include, among other things, casting spells, attempts to move away from an opponent, and shooting ranged weapons.

What are the different types of damage in this game?

The three types of damage in this game are:

• Physical damage: Typically dealt with weapon melee attacks, ranged attacks, unarmed attacks and natural attacks. It can be negated or minimized by Items, Abilities, or Spells that provide damage reduction.
• Energy Damage: Dealt by spells. A creature must have energy resistance to reduce the amount of damage it takes from one of those sources. 
• Ability Damage: Inflicted by diseases, poisons, or spells, it directly damages your ability scores. This damage temporarily reduces an ability and applies a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability. When any of a character's Ability Scores get reduced to 0, the character becomes unconscious. If the affected ability score is unfortunately Constitution, that character will die on the battlefield.

What does it mean to initiate a "Surprise Round"?

 If you initiate an attack on an enemy that didn't see you before the attack, for example in case of attack from invisibility or ranged attack, a surprise round happens before regular rounds begin. In initiative order (highest to lowest), combatants who started the battle aware of their opponents each take a standard or move action during the surprise round. You can also take free actions during the surprise round. This allows your party to bypass initiative checks with your enemies for that single round before combat properly begins.

What is the Concealment mechanism in Combat?

Concealment is a combat modifier that certain classes have and specific abilities provide. When a character is concealed, they are granted Concealment Miss Chance, where attacks launched at them have a 20% chance of missing. If a character is under Total Concealment, then there will be a 50% chance for an attack to miss them when fired. However, certain Spells such as Echolocation can deny concealment effects.

What happens with dead and unconcious characters?

If a character's HP drops to or bellow 0 said character is considered as "unconcious" for as long as his negative HP does not reach or exeed said character's constitution score, if and when this happens then this caracter is considered "dead". Unconcios characters can be healed at any point during combat to then continue fighting following the correspondant turn order. After a combat, unconscious characters heal some hit points, gain consciousness and stand up if not healed during combat.

When character dies for the first time, he revives after the battle, but gains the "At Death's Door" effect. Next time such character will die for real and will have to be revived. This happens only on Daring or lower difficulty or if special option is turned on. Dead characters can be revived with some Spells or Scrolls like Raise Read or Resurrection. If you don't have a character who can cast the required spell, you can find an NPC in a safe place, i.e camp or city, who will cast it for you.

How does healing work in the game?

Characters may heal after taking damage through two ways: Natural Healing or Magical Healing. Natural healing refers to the natural recovery of a character's hit points with the passage of in game time - specifically, at the rate of 1 hit point per character level with a full night's rest (8 hours of sleep or more). On the other hand, Magical Healing refers to the use of Spells or Abilities to restore hit points, such as cure light wounds, heal or lay on hands. Alternatively, outside of these two main methods, characters may also heal through the consumption of Items such as Potions.

At what rate does the in-game time pass during Combat?

Combat will take place in real-time, but players may pause the game, and hold down the respective buttons to play the actions in slow motion to allow for longer timeframe to to respond and strategize.

How do I find about about the enemy's current Stats, Skills and Abilities?

Every party member makes a check of an appropriate Knowledge or Lore skill. The greatest check result determines how much information the party learns. If the checks were unsuccessful, you get another chance to inspect a creature after you kill it, or after you increase the skill rank after levelling up.

How to remove sickness and afllictions? (in progress)

You can use Heal/mass heal spell or scrolls to remove it.

Basic Dice Related Terminology

How do Spells work?

 Spells in Pathfinder: Wrath of The Righteous have a rather complex yet well thought mechanic. Your character can't just cast an infinite amount of spells, but given the nature of the combat in this game you will almost never be lacking of this abilities.

Not all spells are available to all clases, thus there are clasifications to them as follows:

The two main distinctions to make depend on the class of the character casting them, specifically prepared or spontaneous casters:

• Prepared Casters have a limited pool of casting capacity that gets refilled once they rest. This pool can be incrased with levels, feats, etc. But also they must learn the spells they wish to cast before having them available to use frecuently.

• Spontaneous Casters automatically learn all spells available to their class when they gain a new level in said class and can cast any of these spells, however they have a limited amount of casts per day.

In spells themselves, we have a few categories and clases:

• Arcane Spells are casted typically by bards, sorcerers, witches, and wizards.
• Divine Spells are casted typically by clerics, druids, oracles, paladins and rangers.
• Schools: Despite their nature, all spells are divided in the schools of  abjuration, conjuration, illusion, divination, enchantment, evocation, transmutation and necromancy.

How do I get more spells?

Each spell is assinged by default to a specific level of difficulty to be casted, these go from "Cantrips" or "Orions" as 0-level spells (that can be casted an infinite amount of times)  to 10-level spells and Mythic Spells. Higher levels in any caster class allow your character to have access to higher level spells, altough this varies from class to class, some classes even having a straight difficulty limit regardless of they increase in level. Keep in mind that depending on class some spells might just not be abailable tou your character unless you choose to multiclass (spend levels on more than one class). Note that you can have acces to magical abilities with non casting classes.

Divine casters get all spells available for their class level as soon as they level up in the correspondant caster class. Arcane casters do get to choose a few spells every time they level up the correspondant class, but the remaning ones must be learned from scrolls (writen spells).

Mythics Spells and bonuses to spells are unlocked as you progress in your Mythic Path.

Does the Mythic Path give me more spells? (in progress)

Depending on the Mythic Path chosen, some aditional spells are provided, however the most significant change is the merging capacity, meaning that you can combine your mythic spell book with your caster class spell book.

For difficulty configuration see here: Difficulty.

 

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What are Companions? How do they differ from NPCs?

Companions are a specific set of NPCs who join the player's party at certain points of the story, and assist their character from that point onwards. They all have their own Races/Classes and equipment they begin with. While being in your party companions will react to words you say to them or other NPCs and decisions you make during the crusade.
If a player completes the respective Mythic Path to ascend the character into the Lich, he/she may choose to have special undead companions.

What are Animal Companions?

Animal Companions are creatures players can acquire throughout the story, but only when player certain Classes. When acquired, animal companions can act as the character's mount. However, characters may only mount animal companions of at least 1 size larger, resulting in a much higher variety of mountable animal companions for smaller Races. Thus, players shall take this unique mechanic into consideration early on when going through Character Creation.
When mounted, animal companions provide the rider with a far superior form of transportation compared to being on foot, as mounts transverse across all types of terrains much more efficiently. Mounts also have unique attacks during Combat, and certain classes, such as the Cavalier, possess Abilities that allow them to execute special attacks when on a mount, resulting in great synergy.

What is is the "Crusade Mode"?

The crusade mode is a new feature in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous where it switches the game to a battlefield POV Real Time Strategy game. Throughout the narrative, players shall continuously recruit forces such as Infantries, Archers, Paladins, and pay them for their allegiance - this is also known as Army Management. During specific points in the story, players will command troops with military leaders, utilizing their unique abilities to grant buffs over their forces. Unlike the usual combat system, combat in this mode will be fought over a grid-based battlefield.  

What are these "Illustrated Book Episodes"?

Illustrated book episodes refer to parts of the story that play out as cutscenes in elaborate illustrations. These usually occur in key points of the plot, where the player must make an important decision to determine the game progress route. Often times, the player must also pick an action for one of the Companions, or the companion of the highest rank will automatically perform an action.

How fast do characters travel in this game?

Speed is measured in the amount of feet that character can move in 3 seconds (or half its turn). When out of Combat, the party always moves with the speed of the slowest party member. The Speed of which the main character can travel alone can be drastically enhanced by the use of Animal Companions, aka Mounts.

How do parties travel across the map? 

To set out for a location, click on one of the arrows near your party token. You can learn the whereabouts of significant locations by talking to characters or happening upon them during your journey. After learning about a location, you must find the way there yourself. Along the way, random encounters await. You may be attacked by monsters, or you may meet new acquaintances. After exiting the location of a random encounter, you will not be able to return there. 

How do Ability Scores work?

Ability Scores are the basic numerical values used to measure your different Attributes. These are, respectively: Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma. Different Classes specialize in different Ability Scores as they are experts at different types of damage, and these scores cannot be improved after Character Creation, however certain wearable and consumable Items may provide bonuses.  

How do Bonuses work in this game?

Different Bonuses are granted via equipment such as Weapons and Armor, as well as consumable Items, and also via the Attack Roll mechanism. An attack roll is basically an attempt to attack another unit during Combat. When rolling the d20 dice, the outcome of the roll will determine how much damage that attack deals; based on the result, each Class will receive different attack bonus on that specific attack.

How does the Armor Class mechanic function in this game?

The Armor Class (AC) represents how hard it is for opponents to land a solid, damaging blow on you. It's the attack roll result that an opponent needs to achieve to hit you. Other bonuses, such as the Armor you are wearing, and your Dexterity score, will also affect your total AC.

What are Feats in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous?

Feats are special capabilities that characters can acquire through various methods. Feats represent Abilities outside of the normal scope of a character's Race and Class. Many of them alter or enhance class abilities or loosen class restrictions, while others may apply bonuses to statistics, or grant the ability to take actions otherwise prohibited by the rules.

What does it mean to be "Flat-Footed"?

Flat-footed is a pre-applied condition to all characters that have not yet performed actions in Combat. This causes them become vulnerable, unable to react to situations normally, temporarily losing bonuses such as their Dexterity bonus AC and Combat Maneuver Defense (CMD). They will be unable to perform attack of opportunity.  

Does the party ever set up camp to rest like in other DnD-based games?

The "fatigue" and "exhaustion" condition on characters will slowly build up over time, affecting their ability to cast spells, attack, and perform other tasks. Take note of the fatigue and exhaustion icons on their portraits to decide when to set up camp and replenish their powers.

During a rest, all characters restore a portion of their lost hit points. Spellcasters also replenish their spells.
The rest also helps you get rid of some of the negative conditions. Resting takes at least 8 hours. 

What is a Difficulty Class?

Any initiated actions apply effects that are not guaranteed to succeed are required to pass some form of skill check. To succeed the result of that check must meet or exceed the Difficulty Class (DC) - a specific number appointed to the action. Higher DC means a harder check.

How to remove the ability drain?

Some enemies can damage your Abilities (like Strength, Dexterity), ability drain has a permanent duration, you need lesser restoration to cure it. (either Spells, scrolls or potions)

How do army and battles work?

 In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, you need to fight the demonic forces with your crusader army. You can recruit units to strengthen your army, or earn army EXP by winning battles. Army can acquire different upgrades to further increase their Strength, for more information, please see our Army Management page.

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