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General Chaos

Jan 30, 2012, 02:44 pm

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Having worked on a few 6 player conversions, and run through all of them, here's my suggestions:

Use links for unmodified monsters. A link to PF SRD will save you time.

In most cases increasing the number of opponents is superior to advancing them. Obviously this doesn't work so well on solo encounters, but watch the AC and damage output. You could also give them 1-3 hero points, giving them chances to reroll, or take extra actions without changing their stats.

Individual area thoughts: (Unmentioned ones seem OK to me)
F. Give Soggy a character level. This happened in chapter 5 of Rise of the Runelords, you could do it too. I'd probably go for barbarian. OR... Give him the giant template.

G. Again, character level. Not sure what I'd go for him. Probably barbarian again.

H. Add 12 goblins (evenly between the houses), don't touch Gutwad part. Gutwad nearly wiped my 4-man party by himself, he doesn't need to be more powerful.

K. Stats on your advanced skeletons look wrong... They should have AC20 (which is way too much at level 1). Add 2 normal skeletons and call it even.

L5. Add 3 skeletons.

L6. Tsutamu is already a monster, and has been famed at wiping out many whole parties. Give him two skeletons as backup, tops.

Brinewall: Increase the number of Dire Corbies by 50%. They'll go further that way.

T4. This makes Flatbelly into a 'boss'. I actually don't mind it. :P

T5. Add another wounded Ogrekin

T6. Give Kinoku a character level instead of advanced. 22AC is nigh unhittable to level 2-3 characters.

T9. Make it a giant monitor lizard

T11. Give her another level

T15. Increase buttersnips HD using the monster manual information, if anything. AC24 is super nasty at this level.

T16. Add Giant template. It's not going anywhere already.

T19. You didn't increase the save DC on drain energy for increased stats... But I also recommend you increase his HD instead for that very reason - or give him a character level.

U7. Save yourself some time and just bookmark and link the last entry.

U12. Add HD to the attic whisperer. Those increased save DCs will be killer otherwise.

U15. Add an advanced dire corby to make up the 600XP instead of powering her up.

U17. Good thinking. Though they will have to fight her at some point, it will most likely be right after Kinoku.

V8. Add a level. Again; AC25 will be almost untouchable. (E.G. Fighter 3, +4 str = +7 to hit, only hits on 18-20. He has a lot of hp too.)

V10. This could be quite dangerous... Have the advanced Dire Corbies be affected by the sense of doom as well.

W1. Add HD instead of advanced.

Thoughts on advanced template:
It's very easy to simply "Advance" any monster - you just add 2 to every modifier, and 4 to AC and CMD. But this can be its downfall. That +4 to AC will often mean that less optimized characters will simply not be able to do anything to the target, while the optimized ones will barely even notice either the increased AC or hitpoints... So use it sparringly.

Kingmaker: The Syxland (Thoughts on the completed campaign)

General Chaos

Jan 12, 2012, 07:49 pm

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It's been a long year and a half of playing Kingmaker. 61 three-four hour online sessions (using Fantasy Grounds) and my 6-player group is ready (or not) to face Nyrissa, and I though I might share some thoughts on things that occured, and ideas we tried.

Prologue
I had my players meet with King Surtova to get their orders to explore the stolen lands. I had intended to make trips to Brevoy a large part of the RPing for my group, but lack of interest and motivation meant that didn't happen.

The Stolen Lands.

Spoiler:

An excellent introduction, though early on my players showed they were less interested in slowly going from hex to hex around a map basically without aim (and would often bee-line serious threats instead of pacing themselves). In the first 3-4 sessions I used day to day weather in an attempt to keep things interesting, but a large number of exploration encounters, especially before the whole party is mounted means they often won't get more than a single encounter per day.
The mite lair had too many ineffective enemies. The area dragged out and was very little fun.
The kobolds were more interesting, as they routed Tartuk and make good friends with the pests - a fact that came back to bite them several times in the future...
The Stag Lord's fort was fun. I think it works especially well when the players play along, and get into the fort in disguise rather than assaulting the walls directly. The earlier placed grog and prisoner information was great for leading the players to that conclusion, rather than railroading them.

Rivers Run Red

Spoiler:

Probably the most forgotten chapter. There were trolls (which was a nice, if a bit pointless, dungeon). There was the giant owlbear - which could have been better used to forshadow Nyrissa, but we played that before chapter 6 was available, so I didn't have the information to make the changes I could have.
The Kingdom running rules went right over the head of at least one of my players, and only had the interest of one or two. We played with 'hidden values' variant in an attempt to keep interest - but I scapped running the subgame for a more roleplaying focused idea later...

Varnhold Vanishing

Spoiler:

I quite liked this chapter. The town had enough evidence for my players as written to go chasing the Centaurs, then on to Vordakai's lair. This whole adventure was a bit on the easy side however, except the piscodaemon who almost TPK'd the group thanks to some bad saves against his stinking cloud. By now my players had all but stopped exploring except on their way somewhere.

*Realm of the Felnight Queen

Spoiler:

Due to the lack of exploring, my players were about 2 levels under recommended at this point, so I found myself a copy of Felnight Queen to bolster them a bit, and also try out some mass combat rules I'd written where players would be able to make their own actions as well as their armies. They turned out ponderous and unfun, but overall the module worked nicely, if a bit easy. It was very easy to change some names - make the town Tatzlford, and the marriage couple Loy Resbin and his defacto wife.

Blood for Blood

Spoiler:

I was in the process of re-writing my mass combat rules when we started this module, so I ended up running it as written. The infiltration of Drelev Demesne and Fort Drelev was quite fun, with much self control my players only killed the giants and arrested the nobility - almost no human loss of life - which lead into an awesome RP sess putting the former leaders on trial. The old Baron was sentanced to death, and in the process the party bard swayed Quintessa so well she fell in love. Took a bit of convincing to prove she actually quit working for Irovetti - which wasn't helped by the Poison Plot quest when she was fed misinformation. Armag's dungeon was quite fun, my players dodging the most deadly of the traps. 6-player improved Armag himself proved to be extremely difficult - not evil so not subject to smite, and he took down 3 players (of 5 in the session) by himself from full health. Also it was around this chapter when I implemented RP kingdom running. Once a game month I would present certain players with difficulties that the kindgom had to face, to present to the group. If I'd had more time to develop this idea I think it would have been a better way to make kingdom running less crunchy.

War of the River King

Spoiler:

My new mass combat system was finished by this point. Each army was effectively a character that had several abilities. It was quite simple in execution (though I'd crunched a lot of numbers on my side) so players just had HP, number of attacks and damage (not even AC - attacks would automatically hit) - and special 'powers' that would do other things, like an army of clerics could swift-heal themselves or adjacent armies. And after every battle the army would get a new power or type equipment, or more men.
Meanwhile the tournement was interesting. The boasting was by far the most fun. Jousting least. My players ended up losing the tourney to 6 player version of Villamor.
My players didn't understand why they should keep searching White Rose Abbey when they confirmed with Gaetane there was no 'secret weapon' and whatever Irovetti found there was removed years ago. And then when they cleared out the ghost they all but ignored the waterclock with Evindra in it - the one serious bit of Nyrissa forshadowing in the game. In the end I had to drop the subtleness and have one of the NPC rulers 'accidentally' release her.
Irovetti's palace had some good encounters and some bad encounters. The throneroom was one of the best encounters I've ever run. The roving bands of guards, Alasen, Geovidius, etc were very plain in comparison. Having read noted from the writer it sounds like it was originally a much more interesting place overall, but oh well. Due to a confusion in the stair cases my players managed to miss the Remoraz completely.
I felt Irovetti as a bard was very weak, and made him into a Magus. A couple of bad moves meant that he failed to escape in the end, to haunt them another day.

Sound of a Thousand Screams

Spoiler:

The blooms of this section worked marvelously. The players knew they had to take the fight to Nyrissa soon, but when these started popping up they got worried. Mostly due to luck they uprooted the realm after their second fight in Thousand Voices. We're all pretty tired of the campaign by now, so I've decided that the timeloop still functions, though the rest of the House of Knives does not, meaning all foes are staggered, which is still eating resources and means they will not face Nyrissa at full power, but also stops them from resting and recouperating, while Nyrissa just sits and waits. My players only have the defaced nymphs, Phomandala, and Nyrissa, unless they stop their current trend of running straight towards the finish. I still plan on using the upgraded 6P Nyrissa. I'm not sure my exhausted party will have a chance, but it's the end. I'm OK with a TPK. :P

Conclusions:
Kingmaker is a good AP, though with weak linking components, which can be fixed by a dedicated GM with access to all of the books up front. It's also not for everyone, if your players aren't interested in exploring every nook and cranny they're going to miss out. (Mine literally never entered/claimed the hex with the dehorned unicorn.)

I've run three different ideas for kingdom running now. In Rise of the Runelords I had a very precise system of income, staff and such, which was too much work for the GM and not very interesting for the players.
Kingmaker's kingdom builder, which could be interesting for some groups earlier one, but my group and I found it very dry - and as multiple people have worked out the magic item economy makes or breaks it. And now an RP one, where they have to make policial decisions, and have outcomes based on that, which requires the most creativity, but especially in sandboxy games makes a large difference, plus it answers questions about the kingdom "What do we do about unemployment?" for example.

15 minute work day is to be avoided. Kingmaker is very guilty of making these happen. Even interesting combats, if there's only one in a day, it's either super life threatening, or steamrolled. I think this could be avoided by clustering 2 or 3 locations into a single hex - which would leave more hexes blank but also make things more interesting, IMO.

6 player mods to a 4 player adventure path. A few others and I went to a lot of work to make sure there was enough XP and treasure to go around by expanding encounters for 6 players. In practice a lot of these encounters ended up going wildly wrong. Irovetti's guards were still a pushover, but gave more XP. 15 minute working day encounters took longer to resolve, but didn't provide more of a challenge. Armag became so powerful he was taking out tanks in a single full round action. Some of them went right, like Kankerata. Rebuilds worked well too, like Irovetti as Magus and Zorek as Oracle. This raises a fundemental problem in PF (and 3.5) - that a higher effective party level does not mean they can handle single higher level bad guys.

Objective. It has to be clear. Chapter 2, 4 and 5 are all about protecting the Kingdom, which is good. It works. But my players would be like "What do we do now?", even with a plate of sidequests still on the table. All of the antagonists in Kingmaker were too short lived, or not antagonistic enough.

I'm sure I had more stuff I wanted to say, but that's all I can think of. :P

Converting Kingmaker: Varnhold Vanishing (Chapter 3) for 6 PC's

General Chaos

Oct 6, 2010, 04:21 am

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Alrighty, got a basically complete.

Link

All my usual proof readers are playing in my Kingmaker game, so there's probably a bunch of errors. Let me know, or any improvements.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed beefing up the encounters. }:)

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