Welcome to you all, i just want to get everyone to post in here before we start on the gameplay thread so i can confirm everyone made it in.
Congratulates on being accepted and a heartfelt apology to all those who didn't make it through.
Alagor (Hat) reporting. I hope kiddo is fine. Now, shall we chase Lucendar to move that bloody wagon? ;-)
Domitian here! Thanks for the pick. I hope your family fares well!
Taadaa! Egan jumps into the room. Pleasure for you to meet me. He says lightly with a dashing smile.
Just FYI, i picked you over him because he was in another kingmaker campaign when i looked over his profile. Otherwise his character was a really good write up and the choice would have been a lot tougher.
I had the same problem with Domitian as well because the two arcane applications i got were both extremely well writen and thought out, but i liked the witchy feel for kingmaker. Also he has quite a bit of healing spare so you compliment each other quite well.
Chosing the fighers/rogue was even harder tbh but i agonised over the caster choices for ages while reading all the martial applications. Phiona got lucky as well because when i saw her bard application at the end i thought, "hmm, never done kingmaker with a bard before, thats weird." so i upped it from 5 man to 6 man and i'll just tweek the challenges a bit more.
A few of my house rules, well not house rules but some that i like to throw out before we start.
1. The king (and only the king) can take leadership if they want but i would expect the cohort to be support based rather than a combat monster since a 6 person party is plenty big enough.
2. Everyone gets a hero point to start off with, you get an extra one each level and i'll give you another one when you finish a chapter, the rules for hero points are in the APG and are also on the srd.
3. The AP is a little easy as written for anything like optimised characters(and Alagor has 18 str) so i will be heavily tweeking it, i have a reputaion in my home town as a killer gm but thats why i give you hero points.
4. The AP is treasure light but i will be adding bits in here and there, once you get out of book 1 and into the actual kingdom building (might not be for a while) you can actually withdraw money from the kingdom to pay yourselves a salary and top up your adventuring loot. Feel free to do so but if you get too much stuff i will break/steal/vanish parts of it (normally we will have a chat about it first)
5. This is more of a style thing, i would love to set up an NPC alias for every person you will speak to but kingmaker is an old AP and i doubt i can get all the names now, so i will be posting all my responses on this alias with a quick italic name bar at the front of any speach or action.
Finally, i hope we can have a lot of fun. Since my daughter has been a little sickly and my partner under the weather i have been trying to keep up to date on everything but i do have a little work to catch up on after my 4 days off so my post count may be a little low this week. I am confident that together we can keep up a post count of 10 each per week though and keep the action rolling from there, Kingmaker is a complex AP and you can spend absolutely ages planning your cities/kingdom, talking to people and in depth roleplaying so we should have plenty to post about even out of combat. I think i have my map skills ready to roll but bear with me as its my first time using these mapping tools online.
Just FYI, i picked you over him because he was in another kingmaker campaign when i looked over his profile. Otherwise his character was a really good write up and the choice would have been a lot tougher.
I had the same problem with Domitian as well because the two arcane applications i got were both extremely well writen and thought out, but i liked the witchy feel for kingmaker. Also he has quite a bit of healing spare so you compliment each other quite well.
I understand. Glad to have help with healing from the witch as Egan does not channel. After I read the other divine caster's write up I was a little worried as it was great, and almost posted you to suggest you also consider me for a support role as I make a good face and can do DPS eventually. But I figured you would know that.
One thing I want to correct if you don't mind - I believe I have shortchanged myself on gold, taking average gold instead of max gold. The difference is 75 gold. And with that I can choose to not buy alchemist fires and start with a riding dog, or at least the gold to buy one shortly. Buying tack and a saddle might break me. Let me know.
If anyone wants to make any last minute minor changes to their characters they can do before the gameplay thread comes up, now you know your party members if you want to shuffle skills to cover more knowledges or alter a spell choice it makes sense.
If you have an error feel free to correct it, i know the writing up section is a bit of a rush and mistakes do happen.
I will purchase gear shortly. Are the items in the Adventurers Armory available? I have a few items I am partial too. Cooking kit etc.
Thanks for the kind words, your write up, Egan, was excellent as well as very unusual. I suspected my other Kingmaker game (Ryuko's Kingforge) was a factor. As for my write-up I used my backup character for Kingforge as base with a chunk of Stellan Volkov added in. So I had more time than it seemed. (This week RL has really slammed me but getting over it now). Domitian is a very strong witch design as well, I'm sorta envious, but Stellan will be the main healer it appears for Dunebugg's Kingmaker, so I'm in two anyway. (Not sure what I would have done with three!). So good luck all.
Items from the armoury are fine, as are any items from the campaign setting books or apg/uc.
Your write up is really good Maksim but yeah your other games were the major factor. Would have been a much closer call otherwise, Egan kind solidified the choice between the wizard and witch as well since i think they will need the healing backup.
The martials were by far the hardest to pick out but i had to go for a couple of bruisers over the archery options since the party had no real melee presence and i really wanted to get the elf warrior in but i was worried that his gear would set him aside from the other characters. Cavalier was a bit unlucky but i just had to select the swordlord and weaponmaster on their backgrounds.
Good luck in the other games though!
OK. With his campaign trait netting him 100 extra gold Egan can start with a riding dog mount, saddle, and tack (but just barely). Cost was 162 gold. So please do not cleave into the dog immediately and kill it. :)
As far as other tweaks go, Egan currently has Knowledge Religion (+6), but could move that to Knowledge History or Planes if need be. Anyone else have Knowledge Religion covered and/or think History or Planes is more important?
OK. With his campaign trait netting him 100 extra gold Egan can start with a riding dog mount, saddle, and tack (but just barely). Cost was 162 gold. So please do not cleave into the dog immediately and kill it. :)
As far as other tweaks go, Egan currently has Knowledge Religion (+6), but could move that to Knowledge History or Planes if need be. Anyone else have Knowledge Religion covered and/or think History or Planes is more important?
Erm, well....I can intimidate things good, real good...and I can swing this big sword....and that's about it, more or less (*blush)
I have Arcana history and nature covered.
Reporting in... I've Stealth and Survival covered for the moment but my survival skills are probably better as Aid Another level of proficiency.
Curious - and happy - as to why Andrej was chosen. Lots of strong offerings in that area.
I was a bit torn with all the martial offerings, but i liked the swordlord concept and the built in npc hook you had. There were some other good applicants. Both the elf fighter and the cavalier looked great but i thought with a 6 person party an animal companion mount it would be another semi pc and i thought that alagor was a better two handed build.
The martial choices were hard as well though. We're just waiting on two more then we can make a start.
Phiona got lucky as well because when i saw her bard application at the end i thought, "hmm, never done kingmaker with a bard before, thats weird." so i upped it from 5 man to 6 man and i'll just tweek the challenges a bit more.
Oh my, indeed I am lucky =p.
I would though a bard would be great with the amount of skills they could use, and Charisma should do well in kingmaker too, no?
Anyway nice to meet y'all and hope to play soon.
As for skills, you could see from my character, I didn't put any skill into Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff and Intimidate. As I'm hoping to pick up Versatile Performance: Singing at level two, and Versatile Performance: Keyboard Instrument at level six, or vice versa.
Versatile Singing would get me covered with bluff and sense motive using perform singing, Versatile Keyboard Instrument would get me covered with diplomacy and intimidate using perform keyboard.
Also being a bard I had Bardic Knowledge, so I can kinda have +1 on all of the knowledge check so far, until when I level up to get more skill point to put some in the one we're missing.
Yeah, i imagined a bard would be ideal for kingmaker. Thats why i was surprised when i thought i hadn't run for one. Just waiting for Sergei to pop in and we're ready to start, i've put some maps up and i'll make a gameplay thread once everyone has posted.
Egan can serve as the face for now, if that works for everyone. He is +8 in Diplomacy before his "Enhanced Diplomacy" spell.
Not one to tell one how to build a character but we will be needing a Diplomancer when we get things building and always having to sing/play your engagements can be strange... that said? Play as you will :) Its always fun to watch how characters develop.
I got a couple of PM's about maptools usage, you don't need map tools yourself i'm just using it to produce the maps and the uploading them to photo bucket. If you check out the campaign front page there are maps of the whole of the stolen land, the hex map you will be exploring with Olegs trading post (your starting point) on and a map of the trading post itself. I'll be posting link to round by round maps while your in combat but i'm still working on maptools so my maps might be a little poor to start off with.
Also could you all set up your profile similar to Egan's so your perception skill, ac, hp, etc are all on your front page and i don't need to click into you to see if an attack hits or not.
It is extremely strange how that works, Versatile Comedy, could intimidate people...
So you'll practically be,
"Ahahaha, oh nothing I'll just castrate your genital, with a hammer. Just kidding, or am I?"
Or something stupid like that, but hey that's just something bard does, another one is inspire competence: stealth (which requires audible components). But I'm guessing Ego won't allow this. The only way I think this would work, is only if you are distracting the target from looking at the person you inspire competence on, hence increasing his/her stealth.
All in all, it's gonna be fun to see how thing turns out, dunno if it's just me, but I have a feeling Ego put me in so he'll get first blood. =p
Yes. I'm in.
I'd got distracted from the recruitment thread and hadn't realized you'd made your picks. I want to go through his gear again maybe tweak a couple of skills, but I'm basically ready to go.
It is extremely strange how that works, Versatile Comedy, could intimidate people...
So you'll practically be,
"Ahahaha, oh nothing I'll just castrate your genital, with a hammer. Just kidding, or am I?"
Or something stupid like that, but hey that's just something bard does, another one is inspire competence: stealth (which requires audible components). But I'm guessing Ego won't allow this. The only way I think this would work, is only if you are distracting the target from looking at the person you inspire competence on, hence increasing his/her stealth.
All in all, it's gonna be fun to see how thing turns out, dunno if it's just me, but I have a feeling Ego put me in so he'll get first blood. =p
Wouldn't work in all circumstances, but I can see biting satire making any kind of public figure back down, lest it be spread across the kingdom. Treat the bards well or find yourself the butt of the popular songs in every tavern in the land.
I'm gonna post the intro for the gameplay thread when i get in tonight, probably 4 hours or so. You can make gear and skill tweeks up to then, we can start posting tonight.
I just need to find a few pictures for maptools so i can pop on some npc's.
First rule we will need to post is any Embassage within the 'kingdom' will need to be conducted in performance.
First rule we will need to post is any Embassage within the 'kingdom' will need to be conducted in performance.
I've already updated my profile, I'd actually took what you said into consideration, and put skill rank in diplomacy and intimidate, but still none on bluff and sense motive, I'll be using my versatile performance on those =p.
To DM: I'm edited my skills and changed my equipment, which made my character naked(in terms of gears). Only manage to buy a horse(light) with saddle (pack), and the only thing I have on my is chain shirt, whip and my entertainer's outfit (free). Not even a single copper is left on me.
To clear something up for you Phiona, when you use versatile performance you don't have to keyboard solo your diplomacy check, you conduct your diplomacy normally with words but use your perform skill check in place of diplomacy. I find it silly otherwise.
With horses i would reccommend not buying them straight away unless you have loads of cash spare since there is an opportunity to get some horses quite early on, it is however worth noting that i often kill horses and hirelings if they get in the line of fire. There is no opportunity to easily get a riding dog Egan so you may want to keep yours.
I got a horse mostly because I had nothing else that I wanted lol. Domitian travels light and often. No armor and 41 gp for weapons and ammo. Most everything else was less than 15gp. I would share but I don't know you and as my charisma is horrendous I would probably say something unpleasant at the thought!
For yourself domitian you could spend the money that you saved on the horse on buying a few more spells for your familiar. It's 10gp to scribe the spell into your book and 5gp to buy the privilage from a higher level wizard, i have no issue with you getting a few extra utility spells with spare cash. I've always thought that the number of starting spells is a little low.
Also you will not have the opportunity to scribe spells from another wizards spell book for quite some time, you will find a few spells as you level but purchasing them will require buying the scroll and getting it delivered to you from restov, so i'd stock up at the low price while you can.
Hey Domitian. I'm Egan! Nice to meetcha. The dashing little gnome sits atop a small saddle on a riding dog. This is Sparky. Egan indicates the mount. He can track, and guard, and can even fight if I tell him to. He is great to have around. But I am running low on coin. Maybe you could help me feed him?
Diplomacy (Enhanced) :
Sparky likes your little fox and wants to help protect him. But Sparky is soooo hungry...
To clear something up for you Phiona, when you use versatile performance you don't have to keyboard solo your diplomacy check, you conduct your diplomacy normally with words but use your perform skill check in place of diplomacy. I find it silly otherwise.
With horses i would reccommend not buying them straight away unless you have loads of cash spare since there is an opportunity to get some horses quite early on, it is however worth noting that i often kill horses and hirelings if they get in the line of fire. There is no opportunity to easily get a riding dog Egan so you may want to keep yours.
Oh right, that's nice to know, but I'll still put points into diplomacy and some in intimidate, as it'll take a long time to get to level 6 I presume?
I'm gonna rework my equipment again then.
Also how much would a hireling cost? Sorry for being lazy to check this out.
Well level 6 will be near the end of book 2, so your kingdom will be classified as medium sized by then at a guess. Perhaps 3 years from the start of your adventure.
A hireling depends on what they will be doing for you, just for example part of your charter is to explore and map the stolen lands, to draw a map you need craft cartography, to explore and plot the area you need survival. My first kingmaker party hired an expert to guide them around and draw the map while they did the killing/talking, they also hired a porter to drive their wagon and carry their stuff, a butler to organise their camp and cook for them, and they had a long discussion about "camp followers" which would be women of negotiable affections. They were a 3 person party though so they didn't have the skill points to spread around like you guys do.
The guide would charge 2/sp a day
The porter would charge 1/cp a day
The steward would charge 2/sp day
The camp follower has variable rates
Each of them would require double pay for any day in which they were threatened with violence as danger money and might quit if you lead them into danger and don't protect them.
I will def. do that. I just don't have to opportunity to do it now as I am in the office working. Thanks!
I'm too poor for a damn hireling.
**Just upgraded to MW Backpack AND Map Making Kit
*** Added a scroll case and 5 sheets of parchment
I will def. do that. I just don't have to opportunity to do it now as I am in the office working. Thanks!
No problem.
Sorry guys, just to update you all, I'm away on business currently and will not have net access for the next 12-16 hours. Will post afterwards
Thats no problem, I'll post the charter and introduction in the Gameplay thread and everyone will have the opportunity to RP a bit while you travel from Restov to Olegs trading post, we can start the game for real when you get back.
Another little heads up, in the stolen lands they play in "hardcore" mode, with full terrain, travelling and weather effects. You will have even heard silly (some would say, others maybe not) rumours of supernatural storms infrequently in the area.
If you don't have winter survival gear you can get caught out even in spring and its possible to get extremely high winds even into summer. Being prepared to ford rivers and travel through rocky hills and mountains is a good idea, the area your tasked with exploring is vast and is still small compared with the stolen lands as a whole, your actually responsible for about an eighth of the stolen lands in all at the moment.
You may need to carry two or more weeks rations, depending on speed, mounts and encumberance (which i'll check now and again) it will take between 3 and 16 hours to cross a single hex or between 1 and 5 days to fully explore a hex.
You'll need knowledge geography to get any more than a basic outline but you can still make dc10 untrained knowledge checks for information, local and history are also ones worth rolling early on for rumours and info.
Edit: in the second book we relax up a little since magic becomes more readily available, your building roads and while we still watch travel and weather its more of a backdrop than a hazard unless a hurricane blows up or a snowstorm hits the area.
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What time of year are we starting? Spring, I take it?
How will we be traveling to the trading post? I know you said we might not want to buy horses yet, but I don't want to have encumbrance issues before then. Or can we assume our initial gear represents stocking up at the post after we reach it?
Andrej are you still in Japan?! I just realized who you are!
Weather you have a horse or not the trip to the trading post is a terrible one, consider your gear hand waved for this portion as its jst a bit of an intro so your characters can get to know each other and bond on the way.
Once you begin exploring in earnest you will need to worry about encumberance and loads, tonight getting thtough the snow yo the inn for stew is challenging enough!
Andrej are you still in Japan?! I just realized who you are!
Yep - we share a common goal :) again and yes, still Japan.
I added another 6 wander meals so I have 5 days real food and 10 of 'cram' but we'll probably supplement our diets with hunting and foraging etc
Equipping I did not understand the winter conditions and do not even have cold weather gear. Am I the only one?
Doesnt seem that way...I think a lot of us forgot. I added it in to my equipment just now, as well as food. My pack is pretty heavy now.
Its perfectly normal for newly minted adventurers to forget to pack things, do not worry about it you will have a chance to restock at Oleg's.
I always make it snow on the way down so people remember all the things they really will need while exploring in early spring.
And I am sure Oleg has excellent prices and never gouges new adventures that forget their furs. :)
I had no idea what time of year it was. Winter blankets may be of use as well. And why would and honest merchant gouge us! lol
I gave you max gold! He's allowed to gouge, but he won't.
:)