Rules and Difficulty Settings

# Rules and Difficulty

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has a lot of rules which can be tweaked, giving a very customisable difficulty experience. There are also seven preset difficulty levels for those who would prefer not to fiddle with each individual option, or who want to go for achievements tied to that difficulty. A summary of what each of the rules options means and the settings for the presets will be outlined below.

## Rules

The following are the adjustable rules available when starting a new game. These rules can be tweaked at any time during play as well. Changing a rule will set your difficulty to "Custom", which means you cannot get any difficulty-based achievements (e.g. kill x monster on Core Difficulty). This persists even if you later change the difficulty back to a preset value.

**Critical Hits** - Determines how much damage your party will take from critical hits. The options are:

* **Off** (party will not suffer crits)
* **Weak** (only dice will be multiplied, not bonuses)
* **Normal** (full damage)

**Death's Door** - Created for the CRPG, this option means that your party will not permanently die the first time they are killed. Instead, they will receive the Death's Door condition, depicted with a bloody filter over their portrait. If they are killed again with this condition, they will be properly dead and can only be brought back with resurrection magic.

**Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - With this enabled, your party will never permanently die. They will only fall unconscious and rise once combat is finished.

**Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - When this option is enabled, normally "permanent" conditions, such as blindness and ability damage, will be completely healed after resting, instead of only being partially healed or requiring magic to cure.

**Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - This option causes effects that control or disable your characters to expire soon after combat finishes, instead of lasting for their full duration/until cured.

**Auto Level-Up** - Automatically selects new abilities for characters when they level up, instead of having them be selected by the player. The options are:

* **Off** - all characters will be leveled manually by the player
* **Companions** - companions will be auto-leveled. The player will only level up their character manually
* **All Possible** - all characters will be leveled up automatically

It's possible to make manual adjustments to an auto-leveling character, but once you do, you will have to manually level them for the rest of the game. Auto-leveling cannot be re-enabled once it has been disabled for a character.

**Enemy Stat Adjustments** - This adjusts how much stronger or weaker enemies will be compared to Owlcat's base. Note that Owlcat's baseline for stats is significantly higher than in the tabletop game, with tabletop stats generally falling more in line with the Much Weaker/Moderately Weaker enemies. The options are:

* Extremely Weaker
* Much Weaker
* Moderately Weaker
* Slightly Weaker
* No Adjustment
* Slightly Stronger
* Moderately Stronger

**Damage to Party** - Applies the multiplier selected on the slider to the incoming damage your party will be receiving.

**Number of Enemies** - Increases the number and power of enemies the party will be encountering. Options are Standard or Increased.

**Additional Behaviours** - Enabling this option allows enemies to use a wider range of options in combat, such as items or additional spells.

**The Party's Speed Depends on the Weight You're Carrying** - Enabling this will cause your characters to slow down if they are carrying too much, including on the world map.

**Weather Effects** - Determines how much the weather will affect your characters, such as through penalties or damage. Options are Light or Heavy.

**Enable Character Retrain** - Determines whether you can respec your characters in-game or not.

**Crusade Management Difficulty** - Sets a separate difficulty for the Crusade Mode of the game. The options are:

* Story
* Casual
* Standard

**Crusade Automode** - Enabling this will set Crusade management to be automatic. Note that this option cannot be disabled once selected. The main story will be unaffected, with the different areas being liberated in stages, but some side quests will not be available if the Crusade is set to automatic.

**Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - If this is enabled, only the companions who are currently in your party will receive experience. Companions who are at your base of operations will receive no experience. If you have fewer than six companions in your party, each member will receive increased experience.

**Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Enabling this means that only the party member who made the successful skill check will receive experience for it. Your other party members will receive no experience.

**Last Azlanti Mode** - Manual saving is disabled, and you will only have one save file. The game saves automatically after key points and when exiting the game. This option makes the game very challenging and is recommended for those who are experienced with the game.

**Immersive Mode** - Disables a lot of the interface hints.

**Show Tutorial** - Enable or disable tutorial hints throughout the game.

## Preset Difficulties

Below are the descriptions and settings for the preset difficulties available in the game. Note that if you make any changes to the presets, your difficulty will change to Custom and you will be unable to get difficulty-related achievements.

### Story

This mode is intended for players who simply want to enjoy the story and don't want to deal with the mechanics of everything. Incoming damage and enemy strength is significantly reduced and characters will only fall unconscious, not die. You can still get a game over if all of your characters fall unconscious.

* **Crits** - Off
* **Death's Door** - Off
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - On
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - On
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - All
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Extremely weak
* **Damage to Party** - 0.2
* **Number of Enemies** - Standard
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - Off
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - Off
* **Weather Effects** - Light
* **Enable Character Retrain** - On
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Casual

This mode is slightly more challenging than Story, but is largely intended for those who do not want to worry about the mechanics in too much detail. Damage and enemy power is slightly increased compared to Story, and characters will receive the Death's Door condition when they first fall in combat.

* **Crits** - Off
* **Death's Door** - On
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - On
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - All
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Much weaker
* **Damage to Party** - 0.4
* **Number of Enemies** - Standard
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - Off
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - Off
* **Weather Effects** - Light
* **Enable Character Retrain** - On
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Normal

This mode is most suited for the average gamer, particularly if they are not very familiar with either CRPGs or with the Pathfinder tabletop system. If you are unsure of difficulty, this is probably a good place to start. You can always bump it up later if it's too easy.

* **Crits** - Weak
* **Death's Door** - On
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - Off
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - Companions
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Moderately weaker
* **Damage to Party** - 0.8
* **Number of Enemies** - Standard
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - Off
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - Off
* **Weather Effects** - Light
* **Enable Character Retrain** - On
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Daring

This mode is a step up from Normal. Enemies are stronger and your characters will take more damage. Death's Door is still enabled and crits are still weaker. This mode would be a good fit for those familiar with both the Pathfinder TTRPG system and CRPGs in general.

* **Crits** - Weak
* **Death's Door** - On
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - Off
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - Companions
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Slightly Weaker
* **Damage to Party** - 1.0
* **Number of Enemies** - Standard
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - Off
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - Off
* **Weather Effects** - Light
* **Enable Character Retrain** - On
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Core

This mode is intended for players who are familiar with not just CRPGs and the Pathfinder TTRPG, but with Owlcat's specific implementation of the Pathfinder system. It can be brutal if you go in blind, particularly since character retraining is disabled in Core - you cannot respec characters if you make a mistake. Experience is advised before attempting this mode.

* **Crits** - Normal
* **Death's Door** - Off
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - Off
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - Off
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - None
* **Damage to Party** - 1.0
* **Number of Enemies** - Increased
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - Off
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - On
* **Weather Effects** - Heavy
* **Enable Character Retrain** - Off
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Hard

This mode is similar to Core, but with stronger enemies. It is much less forgiving of non-optimal builds, and like Core, you cannot retrain. This mode is not recommended unless you are experienced with the system.

* **Crits** - Normal
* **Death's Door** - Off
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - Off
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - Off
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Slightly Stronger
* **Damage to Party** - 1.0
* **Number of Enemies** - Increased
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - On
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - On
* **Weather Effects** - Heavy
* **Enable Character Retrain** - Off
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On

### Unfair

As the name suggests, this mode is intended to be brutal and punishing. There is little room for mistakes in either builds or tactics. It is not recommended for inexperienced players, or for experienced players who are not willing to suffer.

* **Crits** - Normal
* **Death's Door** - Off
* **Dead Companions Rise After Combat** - Off
* **Remove Negative Effects on Rest** - Off
* **Remove Controlling Effects After Combat** - On
* **Auto Level-Up** - Off
* **Enemy Stat Adjustments** - Moderately Stronger
* **Damage to Party** - 2.0
* **Number of Enemies** - Increased
* **Additional Enemy Behaviours** - On
* **Party Speed Depends on Weight** - On
* **Weather Effects** - Heavy
* **Enable Character Retrain** - Off
* **Crusade Management Difficulty** - Casual
* **Crusade Automode** - Off
* **Only Active Companions Receive Experience** - Off
* **Only Skill User Receives Experience** - Off
* **Last Azlanti Mode** - Off
* **Immersive Mode** - Off
* **Show Tutorial** - On