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DitheringFool
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules, GameMastery Cards Subscriber)
Dark_Mistress
(Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Adventure Path, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
I believe the standard issue with traits is to pick two traits no two from the same type of traits.
Traits
Many traits from previous APs won't really fit here. Campaign traits are designed to tie PCs to this campaign and plant background seeds that will come into play during the course of the adventures. Tying them to another part of the world and different plot hooks doesn't help the PCs get into this particular story.
Quick question: Is it intended that PCs each take one campaign trait, or two? Also, should traits from previous adventure paths be available, or just these?
It looks like your question already got answered, but yeah, you get two traits, but only one trait per type of trait (Basic, Campaign, Racial, yada yada). The link above does a good job of covering the basics.
As for balance between the traits, these rules elements are pretty subjective and skewed to apply to elements characters will find useful within the upcoming campaign and related to their backgrounds. There's been no decision to change the power levels of traits, and as a wholly optional system if you can feel free to change any element you want to tinker with.
As for Sword Scion, the major difference between this trait and Weapon Focus is that with the Weapon Focus feat, you choose the weapon you want to use, while with Sword Scion, you have longsword pre-selected for you. If you plan on building a character who uses a longsword, then this is great for you and ties you to Restov. If you were just going to build a weapon master, now you've got a real good reason to make a sword user and, again, it slips a connection to Restov and the plot of the AP in there.
Wheels within wheels man.
Hmm, the Hex Map thing is pretty nice. I built a page that has generic land masses (Mountain, Forest, Plain, Swamp, Desert, Ocean/Water) and the option to add rivers. I might have to dig it up again.
EDIT: Link to "Map Creator" if you're interested.
Originally set up for a PHP page, so you may get errors on the exporting piece. I haven't checked it in a while, but I know that it doesn't work right when the rivers are "overflowing" to another map (around the sides of the map).
[Edit - remainder of post is premissed on a misunderstanding of mine which the two posters below me rectified. Feel free to to ignore it.]
It's beautiful, looks well produced, and please don't jump on me for saying this but...
WTF INCLUDING A FULLY DETAILED MAP ON THE REGION ON PAGE 11 OF THE PLAYERS GUIDE??!?!?!?!?!?!
Is this a joke or what? The whole POINT of a hex-crawling campaign is that the players start out with a white sheet. Check out the player maps for Necromancer Games' Wilderlands box to see what I mean. Read Monte Cook's article in Dragon #319. Did anyone on the design team EVER play a hex-crawling game? Peeped into the Mentzer Expert set and its instructions?
AAAARGH. Well, good to know that I'll have to disallow my players from using the PG to not ruin their experience. It's not ruining the campaign, not by a wide stretch, especially if you run it as 'yet another non-hex crawling campaign EXCEPT with a cute hex page art'. Oh, perhaps that's because what it is.
Sorry to be negative and upset, but seeing the map in the PG really ruined the whole underlying idea for me as per the Monte Cook article referenced above - taken from the former glorious days of Paizo publishing, no less.
Designing Wilderness Adventures: Adventuring off the map
The PCs head into dangerous territory, occupied not by commoners and gentlefolk, but by monsters and creatures the like of which no one has ever seen. They don't know the way, and their main goals are simply discovery and survival.
(...)
Before you can send your PCS off into the true wilderness, you've got to figure out what 'wilderness' is. What's meant here isn't just a lot of trees between towns, or a dangerous mountain pass. 'Wilderness' is a forest where no one knows what's on the other side. Mountains where - if there is indeed a navigable pass - no one knows where it is. The PCs don't have maps; they don't have any knowledge at all of what lies even one step ahead.
WTF INCLUDING A FULLY DETAILED MAP ON THE REGION ON PAGE 11 OF THE PLAYERS GUIDE??!?!?!?!?!?!
Whoa, deep breath. That's a map of Brevoy, the nation which sends PCs to explore the Stolen Lands. It appears on page 11 above a description of the noble houses (from which PCs may choose to descend) to provide context when those descriptions reference locations within Brevoy.
WTF INCLUDING A FULLY DETAILED MAP ON THE REGION ON PAGE 11 OF THE PLAYERS GUIDE??!?!?!?!?!?!Whoa, deep breath. That's a map of Brevoy, the nation which sends PCs to explore the Stolen Lands. It appears on page 11 above a description of the noble houses (from which PCs may choose to descend) to provide context when those descriptions reference locations within Brevoy.
Thanks for clarifying this. I had trouble believing it myself. So we only see a fraction of the region fully mapped to begin with - sc. the northern parts of the River Kingdoms which of course DO appear on the map. Not the same thing as showing the entire region...
Thank you (both of you).
Yeah; we included the map of Brevoy in the Player's Guide so that players can have some context of where their characters are coming from when they pick their traits, otherwise a lot of the proper nouns in the back part of the guide wouldn't make sense. The map itself is from a gazetteer of Brevoy that appears in the first Kingmaker adventure path that details Brevoy for the GM, should the PCs ever wish to go back up into this region. During the adventures themselves, the PCs don't go into this area really at all.
The map of the region the PCs will be exploring basically consists of a swath of land between Brevoy and the River Kingdoms; this area's long and rectangular but covers the same square mileage as the state of Maine, pretty much. Furthermore, while you can certainly see the area on the overland map, we've put a LOT more detail in there for Kingmaker; there's mountain ranges, swamps and all sorts of stuff for the players to explore.
The kingdom sheet looks cool and has me jazzed for this AP. This is going to cover something I have wanted for years. How to let the PC's get, control and build a kingdom of their own.
Looks like the kind of thing that the old-school AD&D Birthright campaign setting offered, only with a decent ruleset behind it this time. Looking forward to learning more about it.
After reading through the player's guide, I simply cannot wait to run my PCs through kingmaker. I almost regret starting them on Rise of the Runelords, as they're only up to the 2nd book, quite a lot ahead of us.
I've always wanted to develop a good system for PCs to start and manage their own kingdom, and now it seems i won't have to create the system myself! :D
A player came up with a feat he wants to use for his character; a cleric of Erastil. I'm thinking on allowing it.
Frontier Shepard (regional: River Kingdoms)
You have spent much of your time traveling between small hamlets and farms throughout the River Kingdoms helping those in need with your services. Often you had to survive outdoors on your wits and reflexes when between villages. Your independent nature give you Perception and Survival as class skills.
A player came up with a feat he wants to use for his character; a cleric of Erastil. I'm thinking on allowing it.
Frontier Shepard (regional: River Kingdoms)
You have spent much of your time traveling between small hamlets and farms throughout the River Kingdoms helping those in need with your services. Often you had to survive outdoors on your wits and reflexes when between villages. Your independent nature give you Perception and Survival as class skills.
That seems like a reasonable trait to me!
Correct; since the APG isn't out yet and, furthermore, since the classes aren't done being developed (and weren't even done being designed when we finished work on the first few Kingmaker products) they're not included in any of Kingmaker. Serpent's Skull will, though.
Oh...really? Hmmm...that's good to know. I could make use of that. ;-)
And, truth be told, I really wanted to use the Oracle class in Kingmaker at one point. And Fellnight Queen was crying out for a Witch. I foresee some interesting NPC adversaries in the days ahead. Of course, a freelancer's got to know what the final APG writeup is before making use of any new classes.
--Neil
Seriously, how often does Mr. Jacobs have to say "Web Enhancements create more work for little reward, so no Web Enhancements until we've got a solid buffer on the workload, so in about 2032." before folks will stop asking for them?
Seriously, how often does Mr. Jacobs have to say "Web Enhancements create more work for little reward, so no Web Enhancements until we've got a solid buffer on the workload, so in about 2032." before folks will stop asking for them?...on the other hand...
The adventure path Player's Guides, although they ARE web enhancements... are actually an integrated part of our work schedules. The Player's Guides are treated exactly the same as our print products, and go through ALL of the same steps up to the point where they're turned into PDFs... they just don't follow that last step of being shipped to a printer. They still get written, developed, laid out, edited, and PDFed... and we plan out when people are doing those jobs in the same way we plan out when folks do work on other products.
Something like "turn the extra 3,000 words from an adventure into a web enhancement" isn't figured into our work budget at all. Something like that would be stacked ON TOP of everything we're already doing, and would thus cause disruptions to work flow. That's a pretty huge difference when compared to a web enhancement like an AP Player's Guide that's fully integrated into our work flow.
