Liccorice's page

Paizo doesn't disappoint! Thank you for this.

Liccorice wrote:

If players care about managing their kingdom they will always put PCs in four roles with different key abilities, which seems to go against the new system's idea of "Ability scores don't matter anymore, so you can take on any role you want without worrying about optimization".

It does but, again, it doesn't. Nothing says only roles held by PCs can be Invested (just that when creating a Kingdom they're preferentially assigned to PCs), and the New Leadership activity lets you change Invested roles without changing leaders on any result other than a Critical Failure, so PCs can still choose whatever roles they want and, as their first action and with trivial effort, change which roles are Invested to ensure a bonus to all four attributes.

The amount of effort involved in ensuring all four roles are Invested is low enough that I'm honestly tempted to just houserule that at Kingdom creation the players can pick which roles are Invested regardless of whether or not a PC is in that role.

I believe that kingdom rules got more complicated compared to the 1e version and any simplification would be welcome. Since there are basically no special mechanics tied to investment, at this point it would be easier to just get rid of it and give the status bonuses to all skills by default as long as all/some roles are filled. At least that's how we've been ruling it for now, doesn't change much, if anything.

Our party is a group of misfits - An "ex"-thief elf magus, follower of Nocticula, who wants to "steal" the Stolen Lands, life oracle tengu looking to build a better and fairer place where everyone's voice is heard, magic academy dropout goblin alchemist-wizard, and a dwarf liberator of Cayden Cailean who was a human who passed out during a tavern party and got turned into a dwarf with almost no memories of his past life.
There was little hope for this band of weirdos when they were sent into the safest part of Stolen Lands, but they proved everyone wrong, survived, and are now ruling their own kingdom where everyone is welcome, no matter how weird, as long as they're willing to be nice to each other. They're friends with local fey, mites, kobolds, the boggard, lizardfolks and a single troll (the sole survivor from Hargulka's army).
Along the way some members became less regular, so they met a bard running away from Pitax to avoid his debt, a kobold sorcerer who wants to be a dragon, and a couple of leshies - a local earth sorcerer looking for the dead unicorn's killer to cleanse the surrounding land from corruption and a travelling monk looking to establish a new monastery for his people.
They are doing an amazing job ruling their kingdom, I replaced classic companions with custom NPCs they've already been friends with because when we started the campaign the 2e version didn't exist, and we're all having a blast exploring the lands, building a CG kingdom of art and magic, and achieving personal goals.
I'm very excited to see their NPC friends come alive with the new companion rules :)

Very nice to see new backgrounds like in 1e's guide, as well as guidelines towards ancestries and classes. Its a shame there's no lore in it - I felt comfortable giving 1e's guide to my players knowing they'll have a pretty good knowledge of the setting, where it happens and where it will go from there, the parties involved, and why their characters are there in the first place. Although a lot of it is explained during the feast in Restov by NPC's I feel like there still should've been at least a little bit of lore in the guide.
Also a bit disappointed in quests still being in the book. The characters don't know a man will show up once they'll build a brewery, and even if you could argue that players deserve to know it, why give them the quest's hook too, as well as the guy's art?
I feel like reading "NPC name, hook description, quest trigger" is very un-immersive and takes away some roleplay opportunities. Why describe the man who approaches the PCs and tells them his woes if they've already seen him, read everything he's got to say on the sidebar and have been waiting for him to show up the moment the required trigger has been reached? Some even have the reward listed. Maybe it would've been nicer to just leave a hint that "this building might attract a certain type of individual" or something.
But in the end we can always censor the parts we don't like, and I guess copy the lore from 1e's guide. Everything else is very handy, and its nice to not have to explain everything to the players or ask them to avoid certain pages or sidebars.

Because there could be a way to get a status bonus to that skill from some other source is all, as far as I can recall. It's been close to a year since I've had my head deep in those rules and I'm peeking in here on a day off so I can't do a deep dive at the moment though.

Thank you for your reply.

I'm just very confused by this sentence. It seems to imply that a role would need to be invested to, for example, resolve some event or use a certain action, or build some special building.
But in the end I guess the best choice is always to invest one Culture, Stability, Economy and Loyalty role, and its never good to invest two roles with the same key ability, since bonuses don't stack. Even if we get a status bonus from another source, only the highest will apply, so it doesn't matter if the role is invested or not, and not investing will always be a waste.
Did I get that right? I just want to make sure, because the books seems to imply there's something more to this rule, and the logic in general just seems weird.
If players care about managing their kingdom they will always put PCs in four roles with different key abilities, which seems to go against the new system's idea of "Ability scores don't matter anymore, so you can take on any role you want without worrying about optimization".

Mr_Shed wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

And as noted, having more roles invested is better for kingdom events—be they random kingdom events or the set kingdom events in the adventure itself.

But it doesn't though?

Per the rules for Kingdom Events on pg. 554 (and the rules for Leadership Roles on pg. 514), whether a role is Invested or not doesn't matter to Kingdom events, just if a PC is in it:

Kingmaker Anniversary pg. 554 wrote:

Leader PC leaders are particularly helpful in resolving events. If the leadership role listed here is occupied by a PC who is not incurring a vacancy penalty, the check made to determine the event’s outcome gains a +1 circumstance bonus; this bonus increases to +2 once a kingdom reaches 9th level, and to +3 at 15th level. (The General leadership role never appears in this context, as the General focuses their specific influence on Warfare related activities; see Appendix 3.)

Which, honestly, has struck me as a bit odd since Investing a Role seems to only give a (non-stacking) bonus to a Kingdom attribute despite the rules for Leadership Roles seeming to imply that it does more. Was it originally intended that an Invested role gave a bonus on Kingdom Events, rather than it being a PC holding the role?

Also, keep in mind that the Companion Guide is optional. I was very wary of building in elements to that book that gave off a "Pay to win" vibe. If a group just plays with the 640 page adventure, it'd suck if they felt like they had to buy another book just to get the full experience. As part of that mindeset, I tried to make the presence of the NPC companions as additive, not required.

If you've got both books in your game, feel free to expand the limit for invested skills if you want—granting a kingdom more skills will make it more specialized and make dealing with events and kingdom activities less of a tactical question since you'll increasingly always have the right tool for the job. Some groups enjoy the challenge of having to work out...

Can you please help clarify investment benefits? Our group was playing Kingmaker 2e with homebrew kingdom rules before the rulebook dropped and now we're trying to rebuild our kingdom from scratch. Everything is more or less clear, except investment.

On page 511 it says "Since status bonuses don’t stack, you may want to invest one role that benefits each of the 4 kingdom abilities—but since each leadership role offers other unique benefits to the kingdom, spreading out the roles in that way may not always be the best choice!"

We still haven't found anything that requires a role to be invested. So why does it say that investing 4 roles with different attributes is not always the best choice, if its the only thing that is actually affected by investment? What did we miss?