Kingdom Building: Leader Salary?


Rules Questions


I've been pouring over the Kingdom Building Rules, both in Ultimate Campaign and In Ultimate Rulership, and there seems to be a big thing missing. Where do the NPCs (or for that matter, the PCs) filling Leadership roles get their income? Buildings built with BP don't automatically belong to the Leaders and so shouldn't earn them any kind of capital (Downtime rules), but if they are staying with their kingdoms and not adventuring, are they stuck using Downtime rules to earn all their gp, etc? No personal economic benefits at all for filling a leadership role? You have a General that you're not paying and you expect her to be loyal? This seems like a big hole in the believably of these rules. Must a Leader also be an adventurer to earn any kind of decent living?


If it was overlooked at least its a very easy fix/house rule.


Wouldn't mind some brainstorming on how to adjudicate it though. I'm still brand new to these Kingdom building rules and my head is still struggling to hold it all in without exploding. I'm doing a rough play-test at the moment to see how it all fits together and this question came up very quickly.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

The kingdom rules do not include options for a salary for characters in leadership positions. There are a number of possible house rules (do a quick search in the Kingmaker forum for "kingdom salary"). Personally I say that the leaders get 10 times the kingdom size per month in living expenses, which can be subsidised out of their own pocket, so even a starting kingdom grants all of the leaders average living conditions (using the Cost of Living rules from the CRB). You could go further with it and allow 100 times the size, divided by the number of leadership slots filled, which amounts to roughly the same figure (depending on roles filled). Even for very large kingdoms (which would be paying the equivalent of 2,500 gp+ to each leader), the amount is a drop in the bucket compared to income from taxation, so it's not worth calculating it as BP.

Edit: also, please strongly consider getting Ultimate Rulership from Legendary Games, which expands upon the core kingdom rules and provides a number of options for increasing the detail and precision of the rules.

Edit 2: And if you haven't found it yet, may I suggest the Ultimate Campaign Kingdom Tracking Spreadsheet, a thread for which can be found in the Community Use Projects forum?


I have been using Ultimate Rulership, as I made an attempt to mention in my first post. Both options you present seem very useful, and relatively balanced as we start out. I'll use them provisionally and see how it plays out in testing. I want to much more thoroughly understand these rules before I tackle Kingmaker. Still open to more ideas though, if anyone has any. I'll update as I go.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

In our KM campaign, we don't get any kind of pay what-so-ever.

However, we are assumed to be living according to our stations, but those are actually pretty low.

As Queen, I live in the castle with a bunch of attendant's that staff the place, with a Hat of Disguise (soon to be greater) and a Rod of Splendor, that covers a lot of wardrobe and feasting. But being followers of Erastil, I tone the gaudy way, way down. The castle is more a massive hunting lodge than something from Disney.

The Druid/Councilor lives in the woods with his cats. The Magister lives in the Caster's Tower and is your classic Wizard type. The Swamp Ranger/Warden lives in a swamp. The new Barbarian/Enforcer is a classic Conan type. Not exactly a bunch of spoiled nobles.

So overall, we are pretty rustic. The NPC Council members on the other hand, are much more rich aristocratic types (now).

We're not really keeping track of cost of living as most of those costs are simply done by NPC servants/staff. Anything that costs more than a BP, or a couple of BPs, that the players want to do for the Kingdom can usually be hand waved or simply deducted from the next month.


If you want a salary, you need to extort salt from your people. Salt is present in bodily fluids such as blood, sweat, and tears. So you need to work your people until they bleed, sweat, and cry. And you need to tax them for their work, which they won't like very much.

Or you can skip the salt part and just tax them. Convert your influence or materials into some sort of stipend.


Currently playing Kingmaker.

We play under the assumption that general living expenses are provided for, so that you can live the lifestyle of a Noble. Some PCs go for the classic aristocrat, others for the CrusaderKing style, while others keep it down to being close to nature. So you dont have to calculate expenses and income for normal items that a wealthy noble would not really care about. Like food, lodging and servants. they come with the job.

Only for expensive art and magic items you have to save up. Also the King converts some BP into cash each month, for the purpose to hand out from time to time, or for other expenses that cant be properly bought with BP.

Dark Archive

Guru-Meditation wrote:

Currently playing Kingmaker.

We play under the assumption that general living expenses are provided for, so that you can live the lifestyle of a Noble. Some PCs go for the classic aristocrat, others for the CrusaderKing style, while others keep it down to being close to nature. So you dont have to calculate expenses and income for normal items that a wealthy noble would not really care about. Like food, lodging and servants. they come with the job.

Only for expensive art and magic items you have to save up. Also the King converts some BP into cash each month, for the purpose to hand out from time to time, or for other expenses that cant be properly bought with BP.

Having finished Kingmaker that's very much how I ran it, as the kingdom leveled up I increased the value of non magical goods the players could 'assume' to have for free, 50g for a Barony, 100g for a Dukedom, 150g etc. Their living quarters were assumed to be as opulent as that afforded and anything else under that value they were assumed to just have on hand or be able to get within a few minutes, anything up to three times that value they could obtain within a few hours or a day at most. Anything magical or costing more than that, they had to pay for or use BP to obtain (and they were warned that if they tried to just get tons and tons of 'free' stuff and keep or sell it they would be losing BP commensurate to the value, as if they're mass requesting/selling items the goods had to come from somewhere).


I seem to remember there being a way to take gold out of your Kingdom, it causing minor amounts of unrest, then you being able to make a Kingdom check to remove the unrest.

That sounds like tax season in the US, so I think that's how you're supposed to run it.


Yeah, the 'withdrawal' from the treasury is the way to 'pay' for your leadership. 1 unrest per BP withdrawn, and the bp -> gp conversion depends on kingdom size.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

The BP withdrawal, yes. When our group played Kingmaker, this question came up and we basically realized we were acting like entrepreneurs who needed to dip into our own profits (BP) to pay our "salaries". Unfortunately for me, our treasurer had scruples, so taming that area wasn't nearly as lucrative a venture as I'd wanted it to be!


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Yossarin wrote:
The BP withdrawal, yes. When our group played Kingmaker, this question came up and we basically realized we were acting like entrepreneurs who needed to dip into our own profits (BP) to pay our "salaries". Unfortunately for me, our treasurer had scruples, so taming that area wasn't nearly as lucrative a venture as I'd wanted it to be!

Royal Enforcer trumps Treasurer.. :-)


Yeah, I second the idea that a certain standard of living would be part of the kingdom maintenance costs.

Incidentally many roles in real world were not paid, or had very basic stipends. One was expected to cream off a little extra for yourself from the tax collection or budget. As long as the skimming didn't get too audacious it was tolerated.


The Sword wrote:

Yeah, I second the idea that a certain standard of living would be part of the kingdom maintenance costs.

Incidentally many roles in real world were not paid, or had very basic stipends. One was expected to cream off a little extra for yourself from the tax collection or budget. As long as the skimming didn't get too audacious it was tolerated.

Which is why in the rules, the withdrawal adds unrest - and if you have enough things that reduce unrest (like a royal enforcer, and good stability rolls), you can skim quite a lot without anyone actually getting upset with it (2,000gp/month or more for large kingdoms).

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