so, because I'm bored and I never get to play tabletop RPGs, I occasionally daydream up weird adventuring parties (all dwarves, all mermaids, etc.) My latest obsession is a 5-man group who a) make a decent adventuring party, and b) can be wicked good at farming, building roads, mining, etc.

So, I'm thinking: during a Kingmaker AP section of downtime, how would someone go from zero to building a bridge?

First, can Profession skills make things? And if so, shouldn't they be Craft skills? Say I wanted to make plans for a bridge. Clearly Knowledge (engineering) is out, because that's only for identifying things or getting clues (generally all the Knowledge skills are like this). Craft (plans) doesn't exist (or at least it isn't 'common'), so that leaves Profession (engineer).

So, Profession (engineer) is a way to turn nothing into gold pieces. Same for Profession (miner), Profession (shepherd), Profession (farmer), and Profession (woodcutter) (for the record, I don't think Profession (clay-gatherer) is a skill). I would argue that these skills also generate raw materials for Craft endeavors. The question is, how much? Clearly the cash you make from Profession skills is good for eating and spending as actual coins (or else Profession (soldier) and Profession (merchant) users would go hungry), so there has to be some extra stuff created after your Profession use is over.

I propose there be a 'cash multiplier' for certain raw material Profession skills, that can serve as the gold component for using associated craft skills. Or just spend enough downtime mining and pick up a stone card from your Catan game. :)

Second, how much does a bridge cost? There's prices for weapons and armor and such, but not for things like castles or bridges or roads.

Third, just for my Catan example, there are Profession skills that gather raw materials that Craft skills can clearly put to use, with two exceptions

Profession (farmer) -> Craft (???) (what Craft skill makes iron rations?)
Profession (shepherd) -> Craft (cloth) (which I understand is both weaving and spinning, I guess)
Profession (woodcutter) -> Craft (carpentry)
Profession (miner) -> Craft (stonemasonry)
Profession (???) -> Craft (pottery) (Is there really a skill involved in pulling raw clay out of a river-bed?...same with Craft (baskets), right?)

Profession (shepherd) confuses me, because it can also lead to use of the skills Profession (tanner) and Profession (butcher). These skills seem to translate 1 raw material (sheep) into another (workable leather or edible sheep parts). I assume that Craft (carpentry) is used to turn logs into 2x4s, and from there into houses, but Craft (leather) turns tanned leather into armor (but not shoes, because that's a different skill).

Anyway, last question: what is the difference between Craft (stonemasonry) used by a standard castle-maker and the same skill used by a druid? Or, what does a druid's natural eco-castle look like? Or, are elven roads magical items, or just non-magically built the 'elven' way to, you know, do the standard elfy things of looking pretty, lasting forever, and being at one with nature? Or, can an orc build a road (or a mine) faster than an elf?

Anyway, this is what happens when I think too hard about using Craft and Profession skills to accomplish in-game goals. I end up with more questions than answers. Looking forward to Kingmaker!

Building bridges (and lots of other kingdom/city building stuff) is a HUGE part of Kingmaker. I'm actually finishing off the rules for building and running kingdoms and cities right now; the article will be appearing in Pathfinder #32.

Building bridges (and lots of other kingdom/city building stuff) is a HUGE part of Kingmaker. I'm actually finishing off the rules for building and running kingdoms and cities right now; the article will be appearing in Pathfinder #32.

Any skills in particular we should be looking at when making our characters?

Man, Brevoy must be sinking some serious cash into this venture. Building anything in D&D is mind blowingly expensive. I wonder what they want out of it...

Man, Brevoy must be sinking some serious cash into this venture. Building anything in D&D is mind blowingly expensive. I wonder what they want out of it...

Fortunately, this isn't D&D. This is Pathfinder, and we're not bound to the relatively arbitrary and goofy costs for buildings from the Dungeon Master's Guide. 1,000,000 for a castle? Really?

Whoops, I always do that... Only reason I even looked up the building costs was I wanted to make a Wizards Tower added onto Fort Rannick, lol.

Is there somewhere in the Pathfinder books that lists building costs? Or is #32 pretty much just gonna knock that out of the park.

James Jacobs wrote:

Building bridges (and lots of other kingdom/city building stuff) is a HUGE part of Kingmaker. I'm actually finishing off the rules for building and running kingdoms and cities right now; the article will be appearing in Pathfinder #32.

Any skills in particular we should be looking at when making our characters?

Probably. That's what the Kingmaker Player's Guide will cover. Off the top of my head, I'd say that it'd be good to have a few PCs who don't dump-stat Charisma, for sure!

Scipion del Ferro wrote:

Man, Brevoy must be sinking some serious cash into this venture. Building anything in D&D is mind blowingly expensive. I wonder what they want out of it...

Fortunately, this isn't D&D. This is Pathfinder, and we're not bound to the relatively arbitrary and goofy costs for buildings from the Dungeon Master's Guide. 1,000,000 for a castle? Really?

Don't forget medieval castles may have had stone or brick facings to their defensive walls, but were often built with a core of rubble, earth and/or sand; those things weren't often solid stone, which I assume reduced the building costs & construction time (though made them easier to breech).

Yeah, I do wonder about using magic to aid in the construction of roads and buildings. At 1,000 gp a day it must go at a pretty fast clip...but since magic items have to be, well, magic (there's no such thing as a magic +0 sword), it's going to add somewhat to the cost.

Seriously, even if there was a feat like 'Craft Construction Project' that required the user to have the base raw materials at hand (say, bricks for a road), then even a small gang of brick makers could supply the wizard with bricks at the clip he'd use them. Mmmm, you might need a few teamsters to move all those bricks from the brick pit to wherever said wizard has gotten to, and there's a road right there even.

1,000,000 for a castle? Easy. 1 wizard, 1 mountain, 500,000 in cash, say the enchantment: shiny (oh, a shiny castle would add 5,000? to the cost), and a little under 3 years (_really fast_ for stone castle construction), and you've got a nice shiny castle. (Now I'm thinking of the castle in Castle of Cagliostro that had associated rings that unlocked a lake hiding priceless Roman ruins...a hidden treasure castle?)

Anyway, I meant to say: it's time to go fishing! My guess for a new Kingmaker race trait

Crafty Dwarf (dwarf only): Your Charisma counts as 2 higher for the purpose of building stone structures or anything underground.

Lots of Fabricate?

Kobold contractors. They'll at night too.

Just to manage expectations: The nation/city building element in Kingmaker is not going to be SUPER detailed. The AP is still primarily about a group of PCs having adventures. The rules for building roads and farms and buildings and castles and all that are going to be very quick and simplified, with some concessions toward ease of play and fun seeing a necessary lack of nail-by-nail realism and simulation.

Just to manage expectations: The nation/city building element in Kingmaker is not going to be SUPER detailed. The AP is still primarily about a group of PCs having adventures. The rules for building roads and farms and buildings and castles and all that are going to be very quick and simplified, with some concessions toward ease of play and fun seeing a necessary lack of nail-by-nail realism and simulation.

Sounds perfect I think. Considering the only rules before hand were that they cost milionty-billion gold pieces and you can't do it.

Sounds perfect I think. Considering the only rules before hand were that they cost milionty-billion gold pieces and you can't do it.

Correct. The kingdom-building rules in Pathfinder #32 will actually be using an even more abstract system of build points rather than GP costs, in hopes that it will help to keep things from being too disruptive on the micro-economic level of PC gear and wealth and all that. It should work out pretty well.

Hooray! I love those types of systems.

This sounds great! Looking forward to reading it.

Correct. The kingdom-building rules in Pathfinder #32 will actually be using an even more abstract system of build points rather than GP costs, in hopes that it will help to keep things from being too disruptive on the micro-economic level of PC gear and wealth and all that. It should work out pretty well.

I've always been a fan of the dominions/mass combat rules from the old Companion D&D boxed set. Unworkable? yes. Did they make sense? not really

But they were fun. And, their first module, 'Test of the Warlords', was always one I wanted to play. It's a very compelling, epic story.

I'm glad to see you're going to abstract the mechanics of dominion-level play. I think it's the only way to really make it work. Will we see mass-combat rules as well?

Will we see mass-combat rules as well?

I quote James Jacobs in this thread:

There will be opportunities for mass combat for sure. More in the later half of the AP than in the earlier half. If your players are itching to go crazy with mass combat, you might want to wait until Pathfinder #35 when the big battles really hit the fan so you'll have some support rules. (There MIGHT be some in #34... although I suspect we'll end up handling those mass battles more like in a Victory Point type rubric.)