Well now I'm picturing a Bachelorette-style AP where the party either competes to win Sorshen's hand, or works to ensure that their preferred candidate wins.
It does something strange to my brain to think of folk playing DnD using Golarion as the setting, given how baked into PF2 Golarion is. How many people are playing DnD using Golarion as their campaign setting? I know you can just move Otari and AV into your own (or a published) campaign setting, but I’d still be interested to know if people are playing in Golarion using DnD (or Savage Worlds)… I just finished running a Kingmaker game using the 5E conversion Paizo put out for the anniversary edition. I loved it, and the book really sold me on Golarion as a setting and inspired me to switch to Pathfinder 2E for the next campaign. I also ran a (heavily abridged) 5E conversion of Crimson Throne set in Golarion, and I've seen some threads on these forums with other people running 5E conversions of APs. So at the very least, there's some audience for this kind of thing.
I'm currently running Chapter 8 (War of the River Kings), albeit with several modifications farmed from these forums. We started in late December 2022 and took a six-month hiatus this time last year, as one player became a new parent. Some general thoughts: 1. I find some of the monster stat blocks a bit bland in comparison to their PF2 counterparts, but I think that's as much a symptom of 5E monster design as anything else. They're still a good starting point for my own modifications, though. 2. For DCs, my general rule is to leave DCs below 20 untouched. For DCs higher than 20, I take half the Pathfinder DC and add 5 or 7, depending on what feels right. 3. We used the Kingdom Rules largely RAW (with the exception of giving Untrained skills a boost to keep them somewhat viable), but after Chapter 4 and running one in-game year, the players felt they had placed a good foundation and didn't need to micromanage things. We've switched to "Kingdom in the Background" and left most of it to roleplay. 4. I haven't used the mass combat rules, opting instead for a homebrew system with the army unit rules in the book as a rough guide. It's a marriage of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Unicorn Overlord, and the players have enjoyed it more than I expected!
I'm sure I'm too late for this, but my Kingmaker 5E players are within spitting distance of obtaining Briar, so here's what I've got. For context, I have it in three phases, inspired by Critical Role's Vestiges of Divergence and their Dormant, Awakened, and Exalted states. Briar (Dormant)
Briar (Awakened)
Sapping Strike. As a reaction, when you hit a creature with Briar, you can spend your Reaction to force it to make a CON save of 19 or taken 5d10 necrotic damage (or 1/2 on a successful save) as Briar saps the life from its target. Briar becomes Exalted when it acquires 16 Sharpness points or comes within 30 ft of [Redacted for spoilers]. Briar (Exalted)
Sapping Strike upgrades to 7d10. Convergence. The first time Briar's wielder strikes [Redacted for spoilers], they must make a DC 30 CON save or become Slowed until the end of their turn. Regardless of whether [Redacted] makes the save, the wielder gains Advantage against [Redacted]'s spells until the end of [Redacted's] turn.
There's a "Kingdom in the Background" sidebar near the start of each chapter that details the approximate size of the kingdom and major acquisitions that have occurred around the start of the chapter. You don't have to do any Kingdom management either if you don't want to! Personally, I have a world map in my game, and all I do re: kingdom management is update the borders based on the sidebar.
I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and I'm of two minds of it. Narratively I quite like it. Some of my group is having a harder time with it being more open ended... For my group, we ran Chapter 4 (Rivers Run Red) with the kingdom rules largely as written, and then we switched to the "kingdom in the background" sidebars. I think this struck a decent balance of not bogging the campaign down too much with the kingdom rules while also giving my players the feeling that they built the foundation of their kingdom themselves.
Maybe the ritual could be changed to contact Father Tobin? He hasn't been dead a whole lot longer in the grand scheme of things, and his treatment of Nualia caused the town a bunch of problems. Maybe Tobin's been trying to reach out from beyond the grave to warn Sandpoint as his own way of atoning for his hand in its troubles. Zantus has picked up on these vague hints, and he wants to conduct the ritual to see what Tobin's trying to say. The ritual can be less "forgive Tobin," and more "help Tobin manifest long enough for him to relay the message." If Nualia is alive, you could even present it as "help Nualia and her father reconcile." |
