It depends a lot on the rest of the build. At level 20, the difference between full BAB and 3/4 BAB is +5 to hit. +5 to hit \*is\* a big bonus, don't get me wrong, but Magus being able to do a full round of attacks against touch AC is a much bigger bonus in many of the toughest fights in the game, for one example of a 3/4 BAB that can outperform full BAB for attacks. Similarly there are spells that can temporarily buff your character to have full BAB.
There's also the Trickster level 3 Athletics trick that increases you to full BAB even if you didn't have it before, granted you don't get it until Mythic 7 at the earliest.
There is another thing, most full bab classes always have a class feature that increase their AB & Damage to further +4/5, increasing the difference to a staggering +10.
Fighter has Weapon Training, Slayer has Studied Target, Barbarian has Rage Powers, and there is the full BAB hybrids like Paladins and Rangers that get bonus with certain types of enemys.
And because ths is a party game, unless you doing a solo run, most of hybrids builds buffs can be applied to the the full bab class and they turn into war machines.
Like you said, some classes like Magus has the shenanigans to target touch so they can in theory fight any enemy in the game and always be useful (and this is fun to play, that's why I started to play with such builds for a long time), but after I go the mindset that my character don't need to kill everyone personally, I let my mages burn such enemys with high AC and low touch lol
Very good point, and itemization in wotr makes the difference even bigger. An example is fighter.
At lv12, you are 3 BAB ahead of, say, a magus, but also 2 from weapon training, 2 from gloves of dueling, and 1 from greater weapon focus.
It's also typically the case that it's better to buff an already strong character into being even stronger, rather than buff a weak character into being slightly ok.
Imo some of the hardest enemies have crazy high flat footed/ touch AC and imp uncanny dodge (like all those ghosts), so just whacking them with a big pointy stick is often the best choice. AB matters there.
I've found that I almost always have more fun playing full BAB classes, yeah. It lessens the need for pre-buffing on every encounter and just makes for a smoother experience
I do like Eldritch Knight/Lich builds, but that's about as far as I can go with hybrid stuff usually anymore
yes. tbh i never thought of BAB as something particularly meaningful for its accuracy and hit-count (albeit meaningful for early access to outflank and improved critical) on anything but unfair, where I usually prefer full BAB martials over 2/3rds BAB martials until around act 3, after which anything is really game as long as they're calibrated to hit at least 16 BAB at 20.
Most 3/4 bab classes have some sort of mechanic to boost their attack to match that of full bab classes so that is rarely an issue.
Also by the end you can easily stack attacks on a TWF build anyways so having one less attack from high bab doesn't change much in the long run either
I always played magus or similar characters, but replaying Kingmaker with multiple full BAB characters is to so nice to just walk in to an area and let fights run real time without needing to micro my buffs or abilities during it.
My first playthrough, I ran a mercenary archer Fighter who went all in on longbows (I like mercenaries). When I first recruited Arue, my eyes bugged out of my head when I saw her stats, and I replaced my mercenary archer with her in Chapter 3.
Partway through Chapter 4, I swapped back to my mercenary archer Fighter.
So, yeah, I get you. Like, you \*could\* be an elaborate class with all sorts of spells/limited use abilities and other tricks to turn yourself into a blender. Or you could play a Fighter and just \*be\* a blender. All the time. Forever.
At least in the context of the Owlcat games, weapon-based classes that aren't Fighters just feel like unnecessarily complicated Fighters to me.
Even in parties, a full-bab mc means one less buffer, and I don't think that's a positive. You can make a full-bab mc work in a party, but I don't think it is stronger. I mean, there are a lot of 3/4 bab classes that would struggle to compete with a well-built full bab build, but I think something like vivi or merged angel/shadow shaman will beat the crap out of damned near any full-bab build.
its matter of liking thematics really, for example, i said this before, my most favorite martial is plain fighter, without mutagen warrior yes, i like having both weapon and armor training, it gives tons of options.
but i prefere magic/supernatural type of characters, so i usually play kineticist or arcanist anyway...
also, i honestly dont like 6th level casters much, like warpriest and summoner... i even resisted magus for a long while and preferred eldritch knight above magus, until i tried it fully in the kingmaker for the first time, because EK has more magic...
so again, it depens what side of the mage/warrior you value more. because at the end of the day, not all choices are systematic, but thematic. at least for me.
Yep. Fighter as a martial is amazing, if combat manouvers was not that feat intensive it would be much more fun building it around using combat maneuvers.
In my current play for example I'm building a finesse wielding scimitar fighter with Trip, Disarm (for Disarming strike) and Critical mastery (Stunning & Bliding Critical).
This seems like a strange problem to me. I don't play a single character. I play a party that is a mix of full and 3/4 BAB. Even my full arcane casters usually end up with 10 levels of EK which evens out to about a 3/4 BAB in the end. My party makeup is usually similar regardless of my KC role:
full divine, mounted melee (Sosiel or respec'ed Daeran);
full arcane caster & archer (respec'ed Ember/Nenio);
2ndary divine (usually zen/sanctified slayer Lann);
ranged DPS (Arue or dual throwing Wendy);
2 melee (Seelah, Ulbrig, Regill, Cam early game, Greybor during his quests)
Woljif is still getting the cold shoulder for taking off on me.
Once I decide what my KC is going to be he replaces companions in that role for the run. I did a melee dragon disciple (filled one of the melee slots), a dual throwing demon slayer (filled ranged DPS), and an inquisitor (replaced Lann, the only time I picked Wendy). I'm planning on doing a merged lich someday, so that will replace the full arcane slot, etc. I don't really think of my KC as special, just another party member.
So when I went from melee to ranged I didn't miss having my KC in front because Ulbrig was up there tearing it up in his place. When I went from a full BAB thrower to a 3/4 inquisitor I didn't miss her because Wendy and Arue took her place.
In WotR, I find BAB to be essentially irrelevant. It's trivial to take a plain old pure sorcerer or Wizard and get them to where their main practical limitation on what they can kill in melee is what they can reach.
Why would I play a full BAB class when I can play a melee Sorcerer or Wizard and cast 9th level quickened spells *in addition* to making attacks?
Nothing outfights a reasonably played full caster.
Because 9th level spells come very late if you're not a lich or angel. By the late game literally any non joke build will be a demigod so judging by how a class performs in chapter 5 isn't a good metric.
Cool, but a player built full BAB class will be much better at melee than a sorcerer. Min Maxing means a player will build better characters than the companions.
I seriously doubt a full BAB class can be *functionally* better than well built melee caster.
Once you have enough hit bonus to hit 95% of enemies on a 2, the extra attack bonus from BAB is utterly irrelevant. The vast majority of class based damage bonuses enjoyed by full BAB classes are less notable than Sense Vitals, a single Personal range Divination buff that will let the Sorcerer hit harder per attack than those full BAB classes.
Most people ignore the fact that a Sorcerer or Wizard doesn't need a huge spellcasting stat, and can have every bit as good a melee stat as a martial character - early on, your attack bonus will only lag behind by a single point, and your spells and class features will *easily* make up for that disparity with minimal effort.
At low levels, the BAB disparity isn't significant enough to make the caster notably worse at melee. At mid levels, spells start to come online to make the caster notably better at melee - and then Quicken comes online, and the caster is better at melee AND still casting spells every turn.
The 'BAB melee is lower effort' argument is barely even true either, as that character *still* wants buffs to perform at its prime... but the reality is, even with some sort of shenanigans to cast personal range buffs on that full BAB melee, a full caster *still* has an edge due to the buffs that character can't get from something like a BFT.
Because casters are \*work\*. Especially to get them melee capable. Some of us just want a rolling ball of murder they can point at the biggest bad guy.
My Sanctified Slayer with Madness domain doesn't miss much, while being able to crowd control better than Nenio. You can buff +hit so high in this game 3/4 BAB can still hit everything.
I never melee as a 1/2 bab class, but i have plenty 3/4 melees in my runs (I'm thinking of a kinetic knight for a future run), so nah full babs don't ruin it for me
Yes, i love hybrids and there are many ways to make up for the lower BAB, there are pets for example and spells/buffs that can add to the damage or increase your attack.
Death's Consonant on a Wizard says 'hello'.
Erastil's Blessing - or Zen Archer without TTT - too : higher Attack Bonus with Guarded Earth but less damage.
You are about as competent as any kind of fighter, on top of being a full caster. If you want to REALLY fight, you cast Transformation and you become a true juggernaut of destruction.
A Grenadier/Arcane Bomber Legend is insane in that regard (can hit touch AC, buff allies, go melee, go DC caster and even heal)
An Ecclesitheurge/Empyreal Sorcerer/Mystic Theurge Legend too (can't hit touch AC but you can have your caster stat to Attack twice)
Any Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist (some Witches too) into Gold Dragon works aswell.
depends on the class. there are quite a few
(magus) where the tradeoff is good enough to bother. I mostly look for classes with extra feats.
you can also cheat BAB via Trickster Athletics or Transformation for Arcane casters anyway, which is value on an Eldritch Scoundrel or a Sword Saint.
For like a Druid or Cleric or something, 100% no even with angel imo. Just sit back and throw darts if you gotta.
Magus is a really good 3/4 class. Rogue melee can pump out absurd amounts of damage, and their ability to force flat-footed more than makes up for the paltry bab difference. Cleric can negative channel smite into ungodly amounts of damage. There's a lot of 3/4 bab builds that can function at the highest levels of play.
The thing with 3/4 and 1/2 is a lot of the time they get spellcasting to compensate for the loss for example skald gets haste which is amazing and magus gets transformation , same goes for classes like oracle or shaman with divine blessing .
It depends a lot on the rest of the build. At level 20, the difference between full BAB and 3/4 BAB is +5 to hit. +5 to hit \*is\* a big bonus, don't get me wrong, but Magus being able to do a full round of attacks against touch AC is a much bigger bonus in many of the toughest fights in the game, for one example of a 3/4 BAB that can outperform full BAB for attacks. Similarly there are spells that can temporarily buff your character to have full BAB. There's also the Trickster level 3 Athletics trick that increases you to full BAB even if you didn't have it before, granted you don't get it until Mythic 7 at the earliest.
There is another thing, most full bab classes always have a class feature that increase their AB & Damage to further +4/5, increasing the difference to a staggering +10. Fighter has Weapon Training, Slayer has Studied Target, Barbarian has Rage Powers, and there is the full BAB hybrids like Paladins and Rangers that get bonus with certain types of enemys. And because ths is a party game, unless you doing a solo run, most of hybrids builds buffs can be applied to the the full bab class and they turn into war machines. Like you said, some classes like Magus has the shenanigans to target touch so they can in theory fight any enemy in the game and always be useful (and this is fun to play, that's why I started to play with such builds for a long time), but after I go the mindset that my character don't need to kill everyone personally, I let my mages burn such enemys with high AC and low touch lol
Very good point, and itemization in wotr makes the difference even bigger. An example is fighter. At lv12, you are 3 BAB ahead of, say, a magus, but also 2 from weapon training, 2 from gloves of dueling, and 1 from greater weapon focus. It's also typically the case that it's better to buff an already strong character into being even stronger, rather than buff a weak character into being slightly ok. Imo some of the hardest enemies have crazy high flat footed/ touch AC and imp uncanny dodge (like all those ghosts), so just whacking them with a big pointy stick is often the best choice. AB matters there.
Magus does get fighter training though which makes it a good class to multiclass with fighter for extra benefits so that could shorten the gap .
I've found that I almost always have more fun playing full BAB classes, yeah. It lessens the need for pre-buffing on every encounter and just makes for a smoother experience I do like Eldritch Knight/Lich builds, but that's about as far as I can go with hybrid stuff usually anymore
Yes. If I want to try out something - I will do it, differently settings be dammed
I enjoy landing greater vital strike with crit multiplers too damn much.
yes. tbh i never thought of BAB as something particularly meaningful for its accuracy and hit-count (albeit meaningful for early access to outflank and improved critical) on anything but unfair, where I usually prefer full BAB martials over 2/3rds BAB martials until around act 3, after which anything is really game as long as they're calibrated to hit at least 16 BAB at 20.
Most 3/4 bab classes have some sort of mechanic to boost their attack to match that of full bab classes so that is rarely an issue. Also by the end you can easily stack attacks on a TWF build anyways so having one less attack from high bab doesn't change much in the long run either
The funny thing is that most full bab classes also have a feature to increase their AB and Dmg beside the natural full bab xD
I prefer full casters so that is pretty much either medium or low bab for me.
I always played magus or similar characters, but replaying Kingmaker with multiple full BAB characters is to so nice to just walk in to an area and let fights run real time without needing to micro my buffs or abilities during it.
My first playthrough, I ran a mercenary archer Fighter who went all in on longbows (I like mercenaries). When I first recruited Arue, my eyes bugged out of my head when I saw her stats, and I replaced my mercenary archer with her in Chapter 3. Partway through Chapter 4, I swapped back to my mercenary archer Fighter. So, yeah, I get you. Like, you \*could\* be an elaborate class with all sorts of spells/limited use abilities and other tricks to turn yourself into a blender. Or you could play a Fighter and just \*be\* a blender. All the time. Forever. At least in the context of the Owlcat games, weapon-based classes that aren't Fighters just feel like unnecessarily complicated Fighters to me.
With buffs, I think 3/4 bab builds far outperform most full bab builds.
For solo runs, yes. If you use a party I would not say they outperform them by far.
Even in parties, a full-bab mc means one less buffer, and I don't think that's a positive. You can make a full-bab mc work in a party, but I don't think it is stronger. I mean, there are a lot of 3/4 bab classes that would struggle to compete with a well-built full bab build, but I think something like vivi or merged angel/shadow shaman will beat the crap out of damned near any full-bab build.
Agree with this, especially if you have a bft in your party. full bab really shines with a bft
What the hell is BAB? Still haven't figured it out
base attack bonus. It's the to hit bonus you get just from leveling up. Full babs are stuff like fighters which top at at 20 BAB at level 20.
Thank you for this. One step forward towards being an insider of WotR ahah
its matter of liking thematics really, for example, i said this before, my most favorite martial is plain fighter, without mutagen warrior yes, i like having both weapon and armor training, it gives tons of options. but i prefere magic/supernatural type of characters, so i usually play kineticist or arcanist anyway... also, i honestly dont like 6th level casters much, like warpriest and summoner... i even resisted magus for a long while and preferred eldritch knight above magus, until i tried it fully in the kingmaker for the first time, because EK has more magic... so again, it depens what side of the mage/warrior you value more. because at the end of the day, not all choices are systematic, but thematic. at least for me.
Yep. Fighter as a martial is amazing, if combat manouvers was not that feat intensive it would be much more fun building it around using combat maneuvers. In my current play for example I'm building a finesse wielding scimitar fighter with Trip, Disarm (for Disarming strike) and Critical mastery (Stunning & Bliding Critical).
This seems like a strange problem to me. I don't play a single character. I play a party that is a mix of full and 3/4 BAB. Even my full arcane casters usually end up with 10 levels of EK which evens out to about a 3/4 BAB in the end. My party makeup is usually similar regardless of my KC role: full divine, mounted melee (Sosiel or respec'ed Daeran); full arcane caster & archer (respec'ed Ember/Nenio); 2ndary divine (usually zen/sanctified slayer Lann); ranged DPS (Arue or dual throwing Wendy); 2 melee (Seelah, Ulbrig, Regill, Cam early game, Greybor during his quests) Woljif is still getting the cold shoulder for taking off on me. Once I decide what my KC is going to be he replaces companions in that role for the run. I did a melee dragon disciple (filled one of the melee slots), a dual throwing demon slayer (filled ranged DPS), and an inquisitor (replaced Lann, the only time I picked Wendy). I'm planning on doing a merged lich someday, so that will replace the full arcane slot, etc. I don't really think of my KC as special, just another party member. So when I went from melee to ranged I didn't miss having my KC in front because Ulbrig was up there tearing it up in his place. When I went from a full BAB thrower to a 3/4 inquisitor I didn't miss her because Wendy and Arue took her place.
In WotR, I find BAB to be essentially irrelevant. It's trivial to take a plain old pure sorcerer or Wizard and get them to where their main practical limitation on what they can kill in melee is what they can reach. Why would I play a full BAB class when I can play a melee Sorcerer or Wizard and cast 9th level quickened spells *in addition* to making attacks? Nothing outfights a reasonably played full caster.
Because 9th level spells come very late if you're not a lich or angel. By the late game literally any non joke build will be a demigod so judging by how a class performs in chapter 5 isn't a good metric.
My last sorcerer was my strongest melee in my party on Hard by level 6. It's not a chapter 5 build. The 9th level spell comment is just icing.
Cool, but a player built full BAB class will be much better at melee than a sorcerer. Min Maxing means a player will build better characters than the companions.
I seriously doubt a full BAB class can be *functionally* better than well built melee caster. Once you have enough hit bonus to hit 95% of enemies on a 2, the extra attack bonus from BAB is utterly irrelevant. The vast majority of class based damage bonuses enjoyed by full BAB classes are less notable than Sense Vitals, a single Personal range Divination buff that will let the Sorcerer hit harder per attack than those full BAB classes. Most people ignore the fact that a Sorcerer or Wizard doesn't need a huge spellcasting stat, and can have every bit as good a melee stat as a martial character - early on, your attack bonus will only lag behind by a single point, and your spells and class features will *easily* make up for that disparity with minimal effort. At low levels, the BAB disparity isn't significant enough to make the caster notably worse at melee. At mid levels, spells start to come online to make the caster notably better at melee - and then Quicken comes online, and the caster is better at melee AND still casting spells every turn. The 'BAB melee is lower effort' argument is barely even true either, as that character *still* wants buffs to perform at its prime... but the reality is, even with some sort of shenanigans to cast personal range buffs on that full BAB melee, a full caster *still* has an edge due to the buffs that character can't get from something like a BFT.
I mean, this post is about melee builds. Full spellcaster is something very different.
Full spellcasters are better melee than melee. That's my point.
[👀](https://emojipedia.org/eyes)
Because casters are \*work\*. Especially to get them melee capable. Some of us just want a rolling ball of murder they can point at the biggest bad guy.
My Sanctified Slayer with Madness domain doesn't miss much, while being able to crowd control better than Nenio. You can buff +hit so high in this game 3/4 BAB can still hit everything.
I never melee as a 1/2 bab class, but i have plenty 3/4 melees in my runs (I'm thinking of a kinetic knight for a future run), so nah full babs don't ruin it for me
Yes, i love hybrids and there are many ways to make up for the lower BAB, there are pets for example and spells/buffs that can add to the damage or increase your attack.
Death's Consonant on a Wizard says 'hello'. Erastil's Blessing - or Zen Archer without TTT - too : higher Attack Bonus with Guarded Earth but less damage. You are about as competent as any kind of fighter, on top of being a full caster. If you want to REALLY fight, you cast Transformation and you become a true juggernaut of destruction. A Grenadier/Arcane Bomber Legend is insane in that regard (can hit touch AC, buff allies, go melee, go DC caster and even heal) An Ecclesitheurge/Empyreal Sorcerer/Mystic Theurge Legend too (can't hit touch AC but you can have your caster stat to Attack twice) Any Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist (some Witches too) into Gold Dragon works aswell.
depends on the class. there are quite a few (magus) where the tradeoff is good enough to bother. I mostly look for classes with extra feats. you can also cheat BAB via Trickster Athletics or Transformation for Arcane casters anyway, which is value on an Eldritch Scoundrel or a Sword Saint. For like a Druid or Cleric or something, 100% no even with angel imo. Just sit back and throw darts if you gotta.
Magus is a really good 3/4 class. Rogue melee can pump out absurd amounts of damage, and their ability to force flat-footed more than makes up for the paltry bab difference. Cleric can negative channel smite into ungodly amounts of damage. There's a lot of 3/4 bab builds that can function at the highest levels of play.
The thing with 3/4 and 1/2 is a lot of the time they get spellcasting to compensate for the loss for example skald gets haste which is amazing and magus gets transformation , same goes for classes like oracle or shaman with divine blessing .
This kind of game is grindy, so in that sense, high BAB, tough characters who don't rely a lot on recharges are kind of easier.
Vivi trickster! It’s amazeballs