Questions About 2e Kingdom Building

Before getting the 2e AP, I was curious if the fundamental issues with Kingdom Building from 1e had been addressed at all. Is anyone able to comment on if any of the following have been rectified, and in what ways? (taken from here)

1. The players control both their bonuses and their target numbers. The Control DC for the kingdom is 20 + size + districts + unrest. The first two variables are entirely under the player’s control. Unrest isn’t, but it’s also pretty easy to get rid of with Houses. It’s also easy to avoid once you only have a 5% chance of failing a check. And once the BP are rolling in from static income (mines, quarries, sawmills) and tax collection, stacking up your bonuses is simple. This is the first and most important failing of the system, because there’s no clear way to fix it.

2. Very little happens in the kingdom. Regardless of how big it is or how many cities there are, there’s still only 0-1 events each month, with a very slight chance for more. The bigger the kingdom is, realistically, the more problems there should be. And the more events that happen, the more chances that “1” could come up in a d20 roll. Instead of one roll for events each turn, maybe the DM should be rolling once per settlement, and then rolling again for every 10-15 hexes in the kingdom.

3. Most events don’t have much impact. In the early days, a +2 for a turn can be a lifesaver, but it’s meaningless once the kingdom has matured. And since even continuous events are resolved with kingdom checks, which are rarely failed at that point, they don’t stick around for more than a turn or two. I would like to see more events with minimum lengths, but also events that have more of an impact on the kingdom. Ore veins get tapped out. Extreme logging leaves a forest hex depleted. Resources disappear, landmarks vanish, rivers get dammed, labors go on strike, border regions try to secede. International events wreak havoc on your exports, hurting your economy. Your nobles demand a war against a neighbor. Enemies stir unrest within your borders. And so on. And maybe some events just happen, and can’t be resolved with a too-easy kingdom check.

4. More specific to Kingmaker itself, the adventure path itself doesn’t interact with the system much. You get some BP as treasure, and maybe a kingdom bonus as a quest reward, but aside from the pre-planned events in book 2 (and some in book 6) the whole AP runs almost parallel to the kingdom building, instead of being integrated with it. I suppose they did this on purpose so that groups uninterested in the kingdom could still enjoy the AP, but if that was the reason then I strongly disagree with it. If you’re playing Kingmaker, it’s because you want to be kings, dammit.

1. The players control both their bonuses and their target numbers. The Control DC for the kingdom is 20 + size + districts + unrest. The first two variables are entirely under the player’s control. Unrest isn’t, but it’s also pretty easy to get rid of with Houses. It’s also easy to avoid once you only have a 5% chance of failing a check. And once the BP are rolling in from static income (mines, quarries, sawmills) and tax collection, stacking up your bonuses is simple. This is the first and most important failing of the system, because there’s no clear way to fix it.

Not arguing, but I just want to make sure I understand: Your issue here is that the setup of the rules makes this aspect of kingdom management too easy, with little risk or challenge. Is that the issue you have?

Has anyone done the kingdom with five or six PCs? Does adding invested leaders for each PC make anything too easy or hard?

I have five PCs. I want to give each an invested leadership position. Near as I can tell it doesn't look to cause too many issues and should invest the PCs in this part of the game.

4. More specific to Kingmaker itself, the adventure path itself doesn’t interact with the system much. You get some BP as treasure, and maybe a kingdom bonus as a quest reward, but aside from the pre-planned events in book 2 (and some in book 6) the whole AP runs almost parallel to the kingdom building, instead of being integrated with it. I suppose they did this on purpose so that groups uninterested in the kingdom could still enjoy the AP, but if that was the reason then I strongly disagree with it. If you’re playing Kingmaker, it’s because you want to be kings, dammit.

Wanting to be kings and wanting to interact with the Kingdom Building system are two very different things, and don't necessarily overlap. Some groups don't like the fiddliness of the system; mine didn't, aside from me, in PF1E, but had a blast being rulers.

Wanting to be kings and wanting to interact with the Kingdom Building system are two very different things, and don't necessarily overlap. Some groups don't like the fiddliness of the system; mine didn't, aside from me, in PF1E, but had a blast being rulers.

Sorry, but according to lore, you can't be a ruler without a spreadsheet.

The Control DC I see in the book or the player's guide for the PF 2 version isn't 20+mods; it's a DC scaling with kingdom level (going up on average more than once per level) and also modified by 'size category' and various penalties like unrest. So I don't think it ever really reaches the point where failure chance becomes trivial except for the Kingdom's top proficiency tier skills. A specialist kingdom's stat+proficiency+item bonuses will advance ahead of the level curve (the kingdom has abilities much like a character; PC skills or abilities don't matter) and thus become easier, but a skill that's only left at trained will only keep up from the stat increases and item bonuses from buildings, and may fall behind if the kingdom is big or people don't have applicable buildings. And the 'item bonuses' for buildings only go up to +3 (and won't be at +3 for a while since you need to have a high level kingdom to get that much of a bonus).

And untrained skills don't keep up at all - there's no easy access to +level to all skills like there is for PCs. That means an event resolved with an untrained skill will pretty much always fail at higher levels and will often critically fail. There are ways to mitigate that via activities, but those aren't completely reliable (see point 1) and can cost resources.

The events also scale with kingdom level - presumably that's why there are relatively few of them. Only the biggest problem for the month is the event; the smaller troubles that can be resolved more easily but still take some work are just part of the background.

Basically the kingdom rules are almost entirely different other than that they have similar leadership roles, building grids for settlements, etc. And the ability to jump start a powerful kingdom by kicking in some treasure early and then turning that into PC items later seems pretty limited on both ends.

The Control DC I see in the book or the player's guide for the PF 2 version isn't 20+mods; it's a DC scaling with kingdom level (going up on average more than once per level) and also modified by 'size category' and various penalties like unrest...

Thank you for actually answering the question! I'm digging through the rules in the Player's Guide and liking what I am seeing, so far.

Has anyone done the kingdom with five or six PCs? Does adding invested leaders for each PC make anything too easy or hard?

I have five PCs. I want to give each an invested leadership position. Near as I can tell it doesn't look to cause too many issues and should invest the PCs in this part of the game.

You can only get 4 benefits at most if you invest a role. There are only 4 ability scores.

There is however the issue of 3 leadership activities per players. There isn't really a lot of actions that you can do because many actions can only be taken once per turn. I cut that down to 2 for 6 players.