Kingmaker. The shadows behind the throne.

Game Master DBH

What is our spending cap on any one item right now? Social post coming later today.

I'm ruling that your city rates as a metropolis, the population might not be 25000+ but you're the center of a large area with many smaller villages and towns in the surrounding areas.

Plus you have trade from the nations around you as you've made the region safer and merchant caravans are using you as the route to reach Brevoy, Mivon, Galt and the River kingdoms etc.

So that's a spending cap of 16000gp for one item.

Payout for each PC is 43,050 gold pieces.

Whoops, sorry. Also 4 silver pieces for each PC.

NK is going to acquire a headband of Vast Intelligence +4. I'll get to the mechanics of updating the character sheet when I can, but things are still kind of busy for me.

Well, it turns out I have a bit of time for this:

A headband of vast intelligence has one skill associated with it per +2 bonus it grants. After being worn for 24 hours, the headband grants a number of skill ranks in those skills equal to the wearer’s total Hit Dice. These ranks do not stack with the ranks a creature already possesses. These skills are chosen when the headband is created. If no skill is listed, the headband is assumed to grant skill ranks in randomly determined Knowledge skills.

1) Arcana (ancient mysteries, magic traditions, arcane symbols, constructs, dragons, magical beasts)

1d10 ⇒ 1
1d10 ⇒ 7

The only Knowledge skill NK doesn't have is Local (6), so no new skill ranks from this item.

There, Zelera's equipment is done. I didn't spend everything but I cam close enough for now.

I'm enjoying the socializing.

When you're ready to move on just let me know.

I'm still waiting for Colwyn to respond to Marten's plea for advice here!

Vibenia's shopping is done:
Arrowmaster's bracers 13,900
Hosteling quality added to her armor 7,500
Trackless Boots 3,500
100 bolts 100

Total 25,000gp

Ok, grabbed the aforementioned belt of physical might +4, headband of alluring charisma +2, and mithral chain shirt +1.

Was thinking of making a dedicated item creator recruit, but the more I think about it the more I think I should just have Tessara start doing that role, so there's an out-of-game excuse for her to spend more time with the party (making magic items for us) to go along with the in-game excuse that she is Marten's partner.

That does leave a recruit slot open, so thinking about what to put there.

That does leave a recruit slot open, so thinking about what to put there.

One idea:

I was going to see if I could create a wizard cohort (as a hypothetical, NK isn't spending a feat on it) who specializes in all of the spells that we might use to help build buildings or terraform hexes. NK passed over numerous spells that are thematically appropriate: Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Oasis, Move Earth, Transmute Rock to Mud (and Mud to Rock)... Permanency for spells like Alter River. There are others, but I'd have to do some research to make the cohort work.

The original item creator idea that I made was a wizard-engineer, and I could still go that way, but all of the useful construction spells are higher level and as a recruit he won't have access to them until at least another level up (spells like wall of stone at 5th (wizard 9) and move earth at 6th (wizard 11)). I don't really have any better ideas, though, so I'm happy to keep that if you wanna have someone who can handle that stuff in downtime (or provide a means for you to get those spells into your own spellbook).

DERRRR

I will just do both! I'll have Tessara start picking up item creation feats AND make a new recruit who's a wizard-engineer with some item creation powers as well. Suboptimal? In theory. Do I care? No! It's more fun to have both the item creation AND the flexibility in who to take on adventures.

Sorry no update. As usual it gets busy this time of year.

Ready to move on yet? The last part is a major dungeon crawl & heavy fighting. So be prepared. :)

Yeah, I sort of petered out when we started talking about fantasy distilling practices. Too niche for me, sorry. :)

No rush if the others want to continue their conversations, of course.

FYI, I'll be traveling from 12/23 to 01/03, so my activity will most likely be impacted.

No problem, I thought it was a funny side scene. Yala is a veteran drinker and she has figured out that after you drink certain Numerian chemicals (like antifreeze) you can survive if you follow it with hooch (because the ethanol gets processed by your liver first, which makes the ethylene glycol go through your kidneys instead, so you don't die).

Honestly it might be wise to wait on moving forward until after Christmas since I imagine everyone will be busy the next week or so.

All good with me. Vibenia doesn't really have anyone to interact with at the moment so...

Sorry V!

I'll make it official.

No updates this week. We'll see how much time people have next Monday and maybe pick up again if there are enough of you back.

Happy holidays all. Hope you have a good break.

Happy Holidays!

Having trouble with my vision this weekend so I won't be able to post much. I am hoping it will be better this week but it is making it impossible for me to look at Paio's website well enough to read anything, it's just too bright and they don't have a darkmode that I can find.

Dang, that sucks, Zelera. Interesting to learn that about darkmode for you, because darkmode actually hurts my eyes, sometimes. It's hard for me to transition away from a dark background to a lighter background, or even just see a bright ad on a site that's on darkmode.

Anyway, I hope your vision situation improves.

I am fortunately doing better today than yesterday. I still can't look at this website very well but I was able to set my computer to night mode display and with the help of sunglasses it is possible to read a little anyway. I still can't read enough to do much here but hopefully in a few days I will be back to normal.

And yeah, I normally don't like Darkmode very much but it seems that bright colors, whites, yellows, pinks, etc, are what give me troubles right now.

Surprise, surprise. Looks like putting holidays in the middle of the week means that weeks a write off. :)

Lets start again on the coming Monday.

Hope you're all having a reasonably good holiday season.

Happy New Year, gang!

Happy New Year, friends, but unfortunately I'm going to have to start the year off with some bad news.

I'm going to have to retire Colwyn and bow out from the game.

Even before the holidays lull, my growing responsibilities for family and work have been keeping me from giving the game the attention it deserves. Rather than continuing to hold everyone up while you wait for me to have time to post, I think I should just excuse myself from the game.

Thank you for many years of gaming fun. As a forever GM, this was a very rare chance to actually play a character, so this will always be a special experience for me.

Sorry to see you go Colwyn but I understand the reasoning. Take care of yourself.

What a way to start the new year. Best of luck to you and hope to see you around the boards sometime.

Sorry to see you go Colwyn, take care.

The Kingmaker Curse strikes again. I've seen no less than 5 Kingmaker games over the years where the person selected to be ruler eventually bows out or disappears. It's a really odd phenomenon.

Sad to see you go Colwyn. Your character came a long way from his humble beginnings. :)

So, does anyone want to step up as ruler?

Do we recruit another player?

I can see the party running the kingdom as regents until a new ruler is sorted.

Is there anything that says we can't just leave Colwyn as an NPC in charge of that role and make the decisions ourselves as a "council"?

Not a bad idea, he can stay in the capitol in wedded bliss and make proclamations while we are out doing stuff :)

Another question is if we go that route will we be getting another Player?

I could see that route working, though we would still need someone to speak for the Kingdom when dealing with other rulers.

With Marten's cohorts, we likely can fill any gap we might need combat-wise.

Although: "If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat applies to all kingdom attributes you affect (one, two, or three attributes, depending on the kingdom’s Size).

If you marry someone of equal station, you both can act as Ruler. You both add your Charisma modifiers to the kingdom attribute (or attributes, if the kingdom is large enough). As long as one of you is present for 1 week per month, you avoid the vacancy penalty."

Colwyn as the NPC Ruler is a good solution.

The Party is currently an Arcanist (the only original character. Please don't go Niadroub!), Cleric, Ranger & Paladin.

I suggest another player. Does anyone in the party have trap finding at the moment?

I've never been very fond of having cohorts make up numbers in a party when you can get more players. Had to do it once in a live game when we were very short and it's just more work for the player and the GM.

Gunoke doesn't have trap finding but I am tempted to tweak his feats to take extra trait and get it that way. I would generally prefer to see an actual PC for the role though.

I'm all for adding another player to fill the rogueish route if trapfinding is a big issue, or for whatever reason. Though designed for 4 PC's AP's tend to be better with 5.

Sorry to see you go, Colwyn! I have noticed that your posting frequency had dropped, but that's what happens sometimes. I loved gaming with you! Colwyn is a great character. He's a light-hearted, fallible rogue that showed a lot of growth as we played. Hope to continue to see you around!

Colwyn sticking around as an NPC ruler is great. I hope he and Melianse have lots of baby humans with the fey-touched monster template.

I'm for recruiting a new player over using a cohort, also. Playing with other people is one of the main points of this game, anyway.

In which case does anyone know of someone they would recommend to join the party?

As long as they've got some trap finding ability they can make what ever they want. :)

I'd love an addition, but players are kinda thin on the ground. Could maybe post in Recruitment?

If no one else can think of anyone they'd like to join us I'll put up a recruitment post.

What we will say is happening is that the population of your kingdom has reached the stage where while they do appreciate the party going out and dealing with problems, they would prefer the ruler to be there in the town available to consult with on the day to day running of the kingdom.

I sent a PM to someone, we'll see what they say.

Any response Vibenia?

If not I'll start a recruitment thread tonight.

Actually yes, they should chime in soon.

Hello all, I did message GM_DBH to see if joining was okay, but Vibenia posted I would chime in soon, so I am going ahead. But if the GM says no I will quickly delete, recant, shuffle backwards and other such actions, and be patient.

I'm John by the way. Been in several games with Vibenia (and
Marten and Zelera), in another game of GM_DBH, and would like to join your merry band, if you all are willing.

Hello John! As our GM has mentioned, as long as you have trapfinding, you should be good to go. :) (Oh, and Not Evil, since Marten's a paladin.)

:) I'll work on a classic rogue that is not evil. Making a level 12 character is lovely. If there is any skill or teamworking thing that anyone would love please let me know.

Hi John! Welcome!