Ultimate Campaign: WAR! What is it Good For?

Do the army rules in UCmp make a difference between "ten ranger 9" and "500 warrior 1" (same CR) or is it still the same?
Also, are there rules for hiring mercenaries?

Anyone an idea what "ACR" stands for?

ACR=Army Challenge Rating

Ah okay. Makes sense since it's actually a different number than the combined CR of the creatures that make the army.

So what I see is mostly more Special Abilities and probably Tactics?

Then what's the point of having a grid in the first place? Why not just say, "36 lots to a district?" If the grid isn't going to correlate to the city, it serves no purpose other than to have an arbitrary restriction on where you can place certain buildings. (For example, must be adjacent to 1 house.)

Just because the grid doesn't exactly correlate to the terrain and roads of your city doesn't mean the grid doesn't have a role to play in the game mechanics of kingdom-building and some buildings requiring the proximity of other buildings.

Then what role does it have? And that thing about proximity to housing units always confused me. We does an alchemist have to be located in an area of high resident density?

Alexander Augunas wrote:

Then what's the point of having a grid in the first place? Why not just say, "36 lots to a district?" If the grid isn't going to correlate to the city, it serves no purpose other than to have an arbitrary restriction on where you can place certain buildings. (For example, must be adjacent to 1 house.)

Just because the grid doesn't exactly correlate to the terrain and roads of your city doesn't mean the grid doesn't have a role to play in the game mechanics of kingdom-building and some buildings requiring the proximity of other buildings.

I think you're underestimating the power of visual aids, SKR. If visual aids weren't powerful, handouts wouldn't be included in Adventure Paths and product art budgets would be considerably tighter. In a best-case scenario, the grid might remove all sense of imagination and creativity from a group of players as they all start to imagine their towns in the same perfectly planned grid. In a worst-case scenario, the disconnection between the visual aid and any true architectural planning the PCs might wish to engage in when building their city will break player immersion. Some players might be able to look past that, but I am willing to bet that they are a vocal minority.

If I've learned anything from 3.5, its that just because you can write in-depth game mechanics for a situation doesn't mean that those mechanics actually need additional depth (see 3.5 Grappling Rules). I think kingdom and city building rules are needed (and I am excited for tweaks that are made to the system), but the grid itself serves little to no actual purpose aside from making sure that it is worthwhile to actually build houses within a city. If this was the end goal, all such buildings could easily say, "increases minimum housing requirement by +1" similar to how Warcraft 3 has farm requirements and then call it a day.

Critique aside, I've basically been sitting at my computer refreshing my Inbox between episodes of Arrested Development hoping for an e-mail that I can pick up my subscription PDF. •.•

I agree with this blog post. One Tarrasque makes a damn fine army.

HA! Threeshades wins the thread.

I think you're underestimating the power of visual aids, SKR. If visual aids weren't powerful, handouts wouldn't be included in Adventure Paths and product art budgets would be considerably tighter. In a best-case scenario, the grid might remove all sense of imagination and creativity from a group of players as they all start to imagine their towns in the same perfectly planned grid.In a worst-case scenario, the disconnection between the visual aid and any true architectural planning the PCs might wish to engage in when building their city will break player immersion. Some players might be able to look past that, but I am willing to bet that they are a vocal minority.

Have you thought that perhaps you are the vocal minority? That maybe just such a possibility might exist? Just wondering.

Then what role does it have? And that thing about proximity to housing units always confused me. We does an alchemist have to be located in an area of high resident density?

Because certain kinds of businesses only succeed when there is a nearby population of potential customers. Remember that we're not talking about modern Earth where you can hop in the car (or on the subway) and travel for one hour to get to the outlet store or the mall, we're talking about a pseudo-medieval fantasy society where most people rarely go more than an hour's walk from their homes. And if you build a settlement, using the grid forces you to stick to organic/realistic town layouts (where taverns and markets are near housing areas) instead of putting anything you want wherever you want (like garbage pits next to temples and houses).

If you don't like the grid, don't use it, but there are reasons for using it.

Okay, that makes sense in some way. It's just not immediately evident when reading it in Kingmaker.

Sure, because completely explaining the why of every rule means rulebooks would be twice as long. ;)

Isn't the town building meant to be quite abstracted, though? I mean, at least in Kingmaker, the squares were 750 feet on a side. Presumably, there is something else in a given square besides a 562,500 square foot Stable. That houses would be mixed in also makes sense in that population was based on squares, not houses in a city. And while one needs customers, it seems like people are still going to need to walk to get to vital businesses (as everyone needs to go to the brothe... er... market, not just those adjacent).

Regardless, I'd be interested in the game mechanics reasons for this that you mentioned. While these are verisimilitude reasons for the grid, the only mechanical effect I found in the Kingmaker version was a bonus (in the form of more businesses per district/less need to spend BP on housing) for those that planned out the city ahead of time rather than just plopping things down.

I'm sure the Stable includes an actual stable for the creatures to sleep, an exercise pen, a couple of small residences for the stablemaster's family and stablehands, perhaps a small plot of land for growing or storing hay, a large pile of manure (probably sold to farmers and gardeners), and the gardens and outhouses for the people living and working at that stable. Again, you can't think in terms of modern businesses where you have a strip mall next to an office building and the apartment complexes are a mile away... most people live in the same building as their business, usually a little apartment on the second floor above the family shop.

And if you found that it's advantageous to plan your community ahead of time instead of building willy-nilly whatever you needed for that turn, good, that means the system is working. :)

I think the idea of the grid for city development is a good thing. The level of abstraction, or lack thereof, isn't the most important thing, IMO. I think it's the framework that it provides that's important. I also think Sean's examples of what constitutes a "building" for the grid are excellent.

However, the issue that I had with the concept of the grid/map is that it's not reflective of ANY Golarion city published to date as far as I can tell. This is hardly surprising since the City-Building Rules came out after multiple Golarion towns & cities saw print. Also, what constitutes a "good map" is usually what is visually interesting, not how logical a layout the city might have, as defined by the city-building rules.

Now, I'm not suggesting that it has to be taken into account when mapping Golarion settlements, but it definitely undercut my interest in building out the town grid. Not because it wouldn't be useful, but primarily because I couldn't see myself reverse-engineering something like Korvosa or Magnimar using the system. Yeah, I know, that's what happens when the only part of your life that supports OCD is your GM-side...

In much the same way as the settlement stat blocks can be applied to any settlement in Golarion, it would be a nice-to-have if future settlement maps had some planning/methodology that paid some attention to the City-Building rules.

Here's hoping the character sheet for Mythic Adventures will have a section for representing the mythic PC as an army. : )

Sean, didn't you mention something somewhere (or am I imagining things?) about alternate "grid" layouts for cities? I can see a good case for different ways to have them "mapped" - a long thin one for a city between a river and a cliff face, one with a large harbour that the city surrounds, one with a river running through the middle, etc, etc.

I'm well aware that the existing grid can be easily tweaked and carved up to accommodate something like this, but I'd be willing to fork out a few shekels for a handful of properly and professionally done options.

Attah meshalem be'shekelim? Shalom, yadid yisraeli!

Seriously though, you could probably just define the north face of the grid as the "river," and the south face the "cliff" or whatever. It actually recommends things of this sort in Kingmaker. If you want a proper map, it shouldn't be to hard to make it with copy/paste and a random map.

I'm not how to track 'Settlement' modifiers with the print sheets provided on Ultimate Campaign. On page 215 states that the modifiers apply only for skills checks within that settlement (So, if i build 4 barracks on a settlement the +4 Law modifier will ONLY apply to that settlement). But then the only place to track these modifiers are on the Kingdom Sheet, and then you will get the modifiers for your entire kingdom, not particular settlements.
Even those are not the ones you will use, because on "Expanding Settlement Modifiers" it states that in order to apply a modifier to influence the kingdom as a while you must add up all of them and divide the result by ten. In addittion, it will also say that you must use the highest modifier for a skill roll (settlement or kingdom).
In brief, i guess that my question would be: What is the use of the settlement entries on the Kingdom Sheet if (initially) you must track those modifiers for each settlement? Is there a sheet or place you could do so? Does the Kingdom Sheet assume you would use the Optional Kingdom Rules for Kingdom Settlement Modifier?

Sorry for the long post, just making sure i'm making myself clear.

Yes, in order to use them for your kingdom you would need to track them for your settlements (and terrain improvements). The aggregate divided by 10 is the kingdom-wide value, which you would use unless the local total is higher in whatever settlement you are making checks.