Pathfinder: Kingmaker update

I spent a little of yesterday and all of my gaming-directed free time today on Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

I'm still playing my Lawful Evil Monk. I use retraining to respec, though. I found a nice build that uses Rogue and Scaled Fist Monk to make a good bare-handed fighter. This one is doing much better than the fragile and low-damage previous character. At least now with Sneak Attack and Disorienting Attack I often put the enemy in a bad way. I still need more AC.

My playthrough approach on LE is this:

- choose the Lawful Evil option unless choosing something else is far better.
- otherwise go lawful before chaotic and neutral before good.
- choose the Evil option unless the Neutral option seems closer LE (it happens.)
- avoid the usual "Just attack!" Chaotic Evil action.
- pick fun stuff my good or neutral guys wouldn't.

So I've done stuff like double-tax a petitioner and piss off my neighbors, butcher a diplomat who insulted me when I caught him out in the field fighting a random encounter, and destroy both sides in a conflict. Fun stuff. I expect there to be hell to pay for a lot of this, but the advantage of being LE is that hell is kind of your thing.

I still do "good" things that clearly come with XP, though. And I've sided with good people over evil people who annoy me because annoying me is dangerous and should be.

I'm trying to avoid short-circuiting adventurers like I did last time by being too direct. Thanks to a prior playthrough and better understanding of my options, I'm finding monsters that stomped me hard the first time - wisps, wolves, and alchemists - are not so hard now. I know better how to prioritize wiping them out.

Fun stuff. I can't wait to take more of the evil options I turned down last year.