Mackenzie Kavanaugh's page

Cyrad wrote:

Make tracking the rations easier and more fun. Whenever they buy rations, give them a card that represents one day of rations. When a day passes, they must give you one ration card.

Reminds me of time in Irrisen! Good times, except when I hit on barmaid and ended up getting turned into newt.

I certainly hope you got better.

Something I've been considering is tracking rations at a party level, where the GM can easily take care of the bean-counting aspects. Then it's just a matter of reminding the party when they're getting low on rations (especially if they have X days worth of rations left and are X days of travel away from the nearest resupply point) and they don't have to be bothered with tracking it themselves. Similarly, having a nice spreadsheet on your tablet that tracks all of the bonuses and penalties for the kingdom so that the players don't have to do any math both speeds up the game and removes most of the tedious bean-counting from the kingdom-building parts of the campaign.

It depends pretty heavily on how much you're interested in customizing stuff, but I would definitely say that Fey Revisited has a lot of useful material for a fey-oriented campaign like this. Dragons Unleashed contains a dragon who actually lairs in the Stolen Lands and isn't even mentioned in the Kingmaker books, so that might be handy for adding an interesting and thematic encounter also. Also, the Quests and Campaigns book is a pretty good companion to Ultimate Campaign. Ultimately though, there's no books on Brevoy itself, and a lot of what is useful depends on whether you intend to play Kingmaker straight or supplement it with original content of your own design.

Certainly I would recommend considering books like the Revisited series, because the format of Kingmaker benefits by presenting the party with unique and difficult challenges to overcome. Some people complain that the tendency for the party to face one encounter per day results in the party being able to blow all their resources in one go and easily overcome the challenge. I feel that this actually represents a unique opportunity to present greater challenges to the party. Instead of facing off against challenge ratings close to the APL, use much higher challenge ratings for that one encounter per day, and make it something unique and memorable. Dhirgiska from Mythical Monsters Revisted is an interesting CR 13 encounter who would present a formidable challenge to players starting Blood for Blood, and a great match to the terrain being explored.

I would so have a chat with them if you haven't done so already. As a gm, if a player is making it to where I am unable to have any fun, either they shape up or they are gone. When a gm has to do that much prep work only for some to ruin it, it ruins the fun of GMing. So have a private chat with them and give some sort of warning on what you level you feel appropriate. Also try to educate on the differences between the two.

Oh, we chat regularly about stuff and even bounce ideas off each other. I keep some stuff secret so as not to spoil things which I feel will be more fun as surprises, but those are things which are my own custom additions to the campaign, and Kingmaker all but begs for the GM to add custom stuff.

Personally, my stance on gods vs demigods and the topic of death is this: demigods can be killed by PCs, gods can be killed by plot devices. A good example would be the Azlanti goddess Acavna, who died shattering the aboleth-summoned meteorite which caused Earthfall into a thousand pieces, or Amaznen, who was so distraught over Acavna's death that he sacrificed himself to drain away all the magic remaining in those fragments, thereby saving Golarion from utter annihilation.

However, and this is a BIG however... those were minor deities. Full deities, yes, and thus not entities you would actually stat up and allow PCs to fight, but still minor deities more or less only worshiped on Golarion. By comparison, Pharasma is the goddess of the Boneyard everywhere and is many orders of magnitude more infinitely powerful than any other deity in Golarion's pantheon save perhaps Asmodeus and Rovagug.

Similarly, Aroden was pretty much only worshiped on Golarion, and so his death was, in the grand scale of things, not actually a very big deal, and was perhaps for equally important reasons as Acavna and Amaznen's. Indeed, he might have given his life using all his divine power to accomplish one single goal in intentional emulation of two of the deities he would have once worshiped as a mortal.

I tried to DM Kingmaker, but thanks to it being over virtual tabletop, I came to the realization that one of the players had a map of the area open and knew where everything was located. That put a halt to that game.

I don't care if players have plenty of knowledge of the campaign I'm running, and I'm actually GMing a Kingmaker campaign right now in which one of the players is the GM of a Kingmaker campaign in which I am a player. However, there's a lot of players out there who don't understand the concept of player knowledge vs character knowledge and exploit the frelling dren out of stuff their character couldn't possibly know, and that does indeed kill the fun and ruin the game. As a player, I might happen to know that ______, but if my character doesn't know that, my character isn't going to act on that, and may actually take actions based on what my character does know that are deleterious and would never be taken given that knowledge. But that describes only about 10-20% of gamers I've ever played with.

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

The tendency for major cities to lay on rivers has more to do with transportation than drinking water.

True, but that doesn't mean that rivers weren't used for drinking water with some crude filtration. We're spoiled by modern standards... If you got a drink of water in the middle ages, chances are it would frequently not be the crystal clear we're used to today.

That's why most families served wine at dinner... even to the children... it was a lot safer to drink.

Actually... it was far more economical to mix said wine into water, which would result in the alcohol sterilizing the water and making it more or less safe to drink, while diluting its effects to much safer levels.

I think spells like unseen chef make sense; they WOULD exist in the world, after all. At this point, those types of spells are more interesting to me than new ways to do hit point damage.

Have you considered stealthily adding those sorts of spells via the Adventure Paths? Occasionally adding a flavorful spell here and there that can be easily explained in just a short little block of text by comparing it to an existing spell so that casting time, duration, etc don't need to be spelled out? It certainly seems like it might be a place you could get away with it every now and then...

Mackenzie Kavanaugh wrote:

Perhaps this is a silly question... but if Runelord Sorshen were planning an overnight excursion to the Abyss to hang out with some friends, what are the first three things she would pack in her overnight bag?

Amulet of the planes

Iron flask
Iron bands of binding

But only because I assume she'd be wearing and/or carrying the things she thinks she'd really need.

An emergency escape tool and some bondage gear certainly seem like good choices, (essentially the equivalent of keys and chains from George Carlin's list of essential Stuff) but I find myself wondering whether she'd be taking an empty iron flask with the intention of filling it up, or one that was already full.

What are your thoughts on wizards coming up with spells like unseen chef so that they can have gourmet food prepared on their whim without ever worrying about being poisoned, or an hours/level version of levitate so they can stop trying to find a perfectly comfortable bed to sleep in at night?

The non-rules content.

Also, can I just say that the non-rules content of Paizo literature is truly awesome and always worthwhile. At least half the books I've bought from you guys would have been worthwhile purchases even if I never once played using the Pathfinder system. (In my opinion, at least. Also, the GameMastery Guide has got to have been one of your best offerings EVER.)

Perhaps this is a silly question... but if Runelord Sorshen were planning an overnight excursion to the Abyss to hang out with some friends, what are the first three things she would pack in her overnight bag?

Stop me when I'm saying something unreasonable, but we have an enormous sample size here that suggests that discrimination in the campus itself is likely not the problem - it did little to hinder women in any other occupation in the past few decades, even in areas that were initially at least as male dominated as the hard sciences.

I am actually rather quite inclined to agree with you. I don't believe that it is a problem at colleges, and that any problem must exist well before the college level. I say this because I earned my degree over a relatively long period of time, taking time off to work at a full-time job so that I could graduate without any debt... and female student enrollment in math, science, and tech courses more than tripled during the ~7 years it took me to earn my BS. For every one student starting a degree in science or technology when I started, there were three doing so when I graduated.

That implies that something was taking place long before students made it to college that was discouraging them from even attempting to pursue a career in those fields, and that the effect had drastically lessened in less than half a generation, such that classes that might have had 1-2 girls at most previously now actually had half a dozen.

It is also important to consider role models though. My mother went to college to be a civil engineer, making her an excellent role model for me. One of my best friends growing up had a mother who was a partner in a prestigious law firm, also a great role model. However, not everyone has that, and it's especially difficult for young students to find female role models in STEM fields, especially when the accomplishments of great female scientists are regularly glossed over or ignored to focus on men instead. Ask an average American student to name a famous female in STEM and they'll probably name Marie Curie and maybe Sally Ride... at best. Ask them about famous men in STEM and they'll still be listing people tomorrow. That's a problem in need of correction, and it crops up LONG before college, and influences the aspirations of the college-bound.

To be honest, I think 50SoG mockery peaked with the celebrity readings.

Did anything ever actually surpass Gilbert Gottfried's reading of selections from 50SoG for awesome mockery though?

Yeah, it's easy to forget that consumption costs for armies are weekly, not monthly, so you pay the army's consumption four times each month, which adds up to quite a bit VERY fast.

If you want a good book, don't read 50 Shades of Grey (read any Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett instead)

If you want to see a good film, don't go to watch the film based on 50SoG ("In the Heat of the Night", with Sydney Poitier, would be good)

If you wan't a good and healthy relationship with a (wo)man, don't base you love life and sex life on 50SoG.

Be yourself.*

That's it.

*Hey, maybe you will find yourself to be kinkier than anything found in 50SoG, but at least it will be on your own will, with the right person, in the right moment. Don't let anyone judge you on who you love and what you love.This is YOUR life, YOUR choices.

If you're interested in BDSM, go read the (extremely NSFW) Sunstone graphic novel on Deviantart, by the extraordinarily talented Stjepan Šejić.

Also, there's been some rather awesome comics on the topic of 50 Shades, BDSM, and other related topics at the (again, extremely NSFW) webcomic Oh Joy Sex Toy, by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan.

Mackenzie Kavanaugh wrote:

Lord Snow wrote:

Pregnancy is tough. You can't blame a woman for wanting to get pregnant young because bearing a child later in life is more risky and less likely to succeed and most people want children. You can't blame an employer for preferring to hire the worker who will not deactivate for months every two or three years (or in this context, for giving tenure to the researcher with the higher output, likely to be the one who didn't have children). You can't blame men or women who are unwilling to get pregnant that they do anything wrong by taking the job of a woman who does wish to get pregnant - you see an opening, you take it. A woman with high chances of getting pregnant in the foreseeable future has to struggle to stay competitive with people who aren't. Clearly a sane society will have to take some series measures to fix this problem, yet not much is done. Pregnancy and it's repercussions is definitely one of the very real problems that our culture needs to solve before truer equality could happen.

The problem is that ace women who have no interest in procreating are treated exactly the same by prospective employers. Whether you have any interest in actually having children and thus removing yourself temporarily from the workplace doesn't matter, just the fact that you theoretically could.

Or lesbian women.

Or heterosexual women with no interest in procreating.
And as far as I know, there's nothing inherent to asexuality that implies "doesn't want kids". Any more than there is about homosexuality. Or that heterosexuality means "Wants kids".

And people change their minds about "Wants kids", unlike (usually) sexual orientation.

The more obvious and generally better solution to this problem is paternal leave. Don't put the whole burden of childcare and it's effect on the rest of life and career on women. Obviously, they'll still be doing the actual pregnancy and birth part, but if men also routinely take months off to support a child...

Sorry, I was speaking for myself in my post and should have made that more clear. *is ace and not interested in ever getting pregnant*

Pregnancy is tough. You can't blame a woman for wanting to get pregnant young because bearing a child later in life is more risky and less likely to succeed and most people want children. You can't blame an employer for preferring to hire the worker who will not deactivate for months every two or three years (or in this context, for giving tenure to the researcher with the higher output, likely to be the one who didn't have children). You can't blame men or women who are unwilling to get pregnant that they do anything wrong by taking the job of a woman who does wish to get pregnant - you see an opening, you take it. A woman with high chances of getting pregnant in the foreseeable future has to struggle to stay competitive with people who aren't. Clearly a sane society will have to take some series measures to fix this problem, yet not much is done. Pregnancy and it's repercussions is definitely one of the very real problems that our culture needs to solve before truer equality could happen.

The problem is that ace women who have no interest in procreating are treated exactly the same by prospective employers. Whether you have any interest in actually having children and thus removing yourself temporarily from the workplace doesn't matter, just the fact that you theoretically could.

This is an incredible thread, and now I have to steal all the ideas from here!

Well...

The kingdom should be size 100 at a minimum by the start of Book 5. Assuming that's half farms and half mines/quarries/sawmills, that's 50 BP per month before accounting for Economy, which should be around 120ish to cover the high Control DC, producing another 40+ BP per month. That's a total of 90+ BP per month. And it's quite possible to have a much larger kingdom than that.

After much consideration and a whole BUNCH of reading, I have decided to accept the following four characters:

Alexis Crownguard
Arisl'arial Tathmir
Astor Bastion
Faunlara Daedys

I wish the best of luck to everyone else on getting into a campaign, but I am now entirely full up on how many campaigns I feel confident in managing simultaneously. A discussion thread will be up momentarily.

Suffering some bad headaches at the moment, so I'm not in the best condition to judge the submissions. Check back here tomorrow afternoon.

Mackenzie Kavanaugh wrote:

...

The death of Aroden was a big deal, but it was over one hundred years ago, which means it's about as recent to humans of Golarion as WWI is to us. In many parts of the world, Aroden was never heavily worshiped and so his absence was far less felt, especially in the northern nations, though certainly Sarkoris and Mendev felt the after-effects of his death quite keenly.
...

But don't forget that there are long-living species in the world.

I don't forget that, but Aroden was the god of humanity. The death of Haile Selassie was pretty darned important to Rastafarians and the people of Ethiopia, but beyond that demographic, barely a footnote in history.

Keep in mind that we're talking about a world that doesn't have the Internet, and how much time has elapsed since various events transpired. For someone in Brevoy, they are certainly going to have an opinion on the Mendevian Crusades against the Worldwound and probably on the revolution in Galt, but Cheliax is so distant that it might as well be another world, and anything heard about it is going to be tinted heavily by the filter of thousands of miles of distance. The death of Aroden was a big deal, but it was over one hundred years ago, which means it's about as recent to humans of Golarion as WWI is to us. In many parts of the world, Aroden was never heavily worshiped and so his absence was far less felt, especially in the northern nations, though certainly Sarkoris and Mendev felt the after-effects of his death quite keenly.

Consider how the most important issues for someone from Varisia would be completely different from someone from Alkenstar, and that those issues would change over time. In a Shattered Star campaign, intended to be set after the events of Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, it would be unthinkable for someone from Varisia to not have an opinion on those events, while someone from Taldor might not even have heard of any of those events, let alone formed an opinion yet.

Hotaru: It would actually make plenty of historical sense to have two warhorses that you alternate in between, so that neither gets too tired out, so that works awesomely.

Katlin: Well dang, I might have to start reading through this now to be done by the time recruitment closes up on Friday.

I imagine time does get weird for iconics, especially with all of the alternate dimensions and such. Are you aware of whether the Kyra living in the dimension where you reign as Queen in the castle of Owlbearton ever abandons her post as High Priestess to become your Consort/Queen? I must say I really enjoyed reading the journals of that particular incarnation of you, though I can't find anything stating what happened after trapping the second manticore to plague the fledgling kingdom inside a silver mine.

There are a number of different sources that list such facilities, but usually only magical universities get much attention. The University of Lepidstadt is the only 'mundane' higher learning facility I can recall off the top of my head.

There seems to be some sort of confusion about my character creation guidelines, which lists the available races and specifies that you select any two traits AND one of my custom campaign traits.

The game will be starting in Desnus of 4710, during the lull between the Fourth and Fifth Mendevian Crusades.

DM Variel - I have a plan for how to keep things moving smoothly in the kingdom building phase, especially by eliminating democracy. Instead of everyone bickering over where to expand, what to build, etc, each of these would be assigned to one interested party with 100% control over that aspect of the kingdom. If more than one player is interested in something, control would rotate monthly, and the discussion thread could always be used to advise, negotiate, etc, but if Player A is in charge of Expansion this turn and wants to claim Hex B, that's what the kingdom is doing unless you all quickly talk Player A out of that course of action before I announce the results of what happened that month.

Filled out aliases are easy, but I don't have any specific requirements. Feel free to look here for an example of a character sheet of mine from a Kingmaker campaign.

BigP4nda - I have no idea what you're talking about.

Pathfinder Zoey - Fairly strict while you're exploring or under siege, not strict at all under 'normal' conditions. Also, keep in mind that the Stolen Lands are rich with game, so you can always take it slow when exploring and catch some food to cook.

Movin - Can non-wizards access wildblooded bloodlines? I thought that was exclusive to wizards, hence why you can't select a wildblooded bloodline with Eldritch Heritage.

Gideon - I probably wouldn't have even caught that regarding the darkwood buckler, had never noticed that before.

Katlin - Step 1: replace several instances of 'pour' with 'pore', unless you're meaning something drastically different from what is implied. (Yes, you pour your heart and soul into something, but you pore over old books... unless you're pouring honey over them for some odd reason.) I would be willing to allow a child character, but the feat you're asking for is really two feats at once. The bluff and diplomacy is essentially the trait Student of Philosophy, so all four skills would be two traits or one full feat, and adding/substituting a different stat for a save or other major score would be a full feat. (Much like using Cha for initiative or Dex for melee attack rolls.)

There ought to be plenty of opportunities for roleplaying in a siege situation. Give xp for successfully rousing the morale of the defending troops through inspiring speeches or grand heroics.

Regarding magic... a problem one often runs into is that there are very few truly practical spells in the system, because practical spells have little to no meaningful impact of adventuring. So while an actual wizard would certainly invent a spell that could bake a cake automatically, you'll never see such a spell in an official source. That said, however, there are some interesting spells which show up from time to time and give somewhat of an idea of how much more powerful spells might be when targeting more specific situations. Blessing of the watch for example is a 1st-level bless spell with a duration of hours/level that is restricted to working in the caster's home town and in jurisdictions of that city's town watch. It would make sense for mages employed by a nation's military to develop defensive spells intended specifically for protecting against an enemy caster's spells during a siege.

Also consider that a single 1st level witch can be more useful than a dozen 1st level clerics, since a witch with Healing Hex can cast cure light wounds an infinite number of times so long as it is always on a different target. Also, note that you cannot make a saving throw against silent image unless you interact with the illusion, so it's possible to use that spell to hide a breach in the wall or major structural damage.

For the sake of simplicity, and because I would rather choose between one dozen submissions rather than two dozen submissions, which could take me quite a while to read through, I am going to limit everyone to one submission. You will still be able to make limited changes if accepted, so don't worry too much about overlapping a campaign trait, since it is possible to swap if necessary, and I trust that anyone whose submission catches my eye will be able to maintain a high quality after any edits.

I slept in a bit...

Spend as much as you like on an item. If you want to spend all 3000 gp on one item and have nothing left but the clothes on your back, knock yourself out.

I am going to be aiming for a post every day. I may sometimes miss a day, I may sometimes post 2-3 times, especially if everyone else is active that day. Feel free to take a look at the campaigns I'm in for examples of what I post/generally expect.

Unfettered eidolon - Sorry, but no.

Crafting feats for alchemists - Sure, why not?

Hit Points - Max at first, half + 1 every level afterward, as per PFS.

Favored enemy - Yes, that should still generally hold, but beware that while I have drastically increased the quantity of some foes, a lot of single monster fights have been replaced entirely.

Rapid Reload - It really ought to apply to slings, but I'm not so sure about flask throwers. Let me ponder.

Crafting - No reduced prices up front, but there will be lots of opportunities to craft items for reduced prices later.

I am intrigued because of the option to play a Kobold. Will the ability to create traps be useful?

That would depend quite heavily on the play style of the party. Is it possible that the ability to create traps might be useful? Yes. But I cannot say that it will or will not for certain, because that will depend very heavily on the players/characters in the final group.

Campaign Traits

Cartographer
You were selected for this expedition because of your skill with a pen rather than with a sword. The Stolen Lands have been abandoned for over a century, and Brevoy's maps of the area are woefully inaccurate and out of date as a consequence. If you are to claim the Greenbelt and found a new fiefdom there, the land must be properly mapped, and a chronicle of the expedition will serve to inform the Swordlords of your progress in completing the task of taming the region.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Knowledge (geography) and Profession (scribe) checks. You begin play with a free chronicler's kit and wayfinder. (Perhaps you are a junior member of the Pathfinder Society, perhaps it was handed down to you by a family member, or perhaps you simply happened to 'find' one.) When constructing roads or highways, you may reduce the cost by half to a minimum of 1, but must still pay full price for any bridges. You may build a Pathfinder Lodge (treat as a Bardic College that grants no discounts on other buildings) for a discount exactly once.

Guard
The expedition needs to deal with any number of bandits, monsters, and other dangerous threats, and you were hired specifically because of your skill at arms. As a veteran soldier, you are no stranger to combat, and you fully expect that any new fiefdom in the region will face any number of military threats.
Benefit: You gain a +2 trait bonus on Profession (soldier) and Ride checks. You begin play with a free combat-trained heavy horse, studded leather barding, military saddle, saddlebags, and a bit and bridle, or may alternatively choose to begin play with free masterwork leather lamellar barding. You may double the Defense benefit granted by any one building in each city you control; this benefit may only be gained once per hex.

Magistrate
The Swordlords of Restov selected you for this expedition specifically because they trust you to represent the forces of law and order with the Greenbelt. Abadar in particular is a popular god among the Swordlords, but with bandits plaguing the region and threatening to spread the lawlessness of the River Kingdoms right up to Restov's doorstep, the most important thing is that you will uphold the laws of Brevoy and mete out justice to brigands and other lawbreakers. Trade through the region is vital for maintaining Restov's economy, and so your job is perhaps one of the most important: show that lawlessness will earn only a hangman's noose, so that caravans may once again travel through the region unmolested.
Benefit: Choose one of the following skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate. You gain a +1 trait bonus on checks with that skill, and it is always a class skill for you. You begin play with four sets of masterwork manacles with superior locks. Whenever you build a Jail or Town Hall in a city you control, you may increase any one benefit granted by that building by +1.

Medic
The Swordlords recruited you because of your ability to keep others alive. Perhaps you are a servant of one of the gods, perhaps you are merely skilled at crafting curative potions, but regardless you are quite skilled at healing injuries, and your companions are quite likely to suffer all sorts of wounds at the hands of those who would oppose your mission.
Benefit: Choose one of the following skills: Craft (alchemy), Heal, or Use Magic Device. You gain a +1 trait bonus on checks with that skill, and it is always a class skill for you. You begin play with an antidote kit, a healer's kit, and a wand of lesser restoration with 5 charges. The first Alchemist, Herbalist, or Hospital built in any city you control may be built at a discount.

Quartermaster
Every expedition needs someone to bring along all the equipment needed, and there's no telling what might be needed in the Greenbelt. The Swordlords selected you for this expedition because you are known as the sort of person who is always prepared for any situation, able to plan ahead for scenarios nobody else would have even predicted.
Benefit: Choose one of the following skills: Knowledge (local), Sleight of Hand, or Survival. Once per day, you may make a check with the skill selected at a DC of 10 plus the cost in gold pieces of any one mundane item of equipment. You just 'happen' to have that item in your backpack or other storage container capable of containing the item in question, though you must actually still pay for it. You begin play with a pavilion tent, heavy horse, pack saddle, and a traveler's any-tool. Once each month, you may spend 1 BP when the kingdom would suffer Unrest in order to reduce the amount of Unrest gained by 1d4, to a minimum of 0.

Scout
The Swordlords selected you for this expedition because of your skill at sneaking into places undetected, and to then carefully observe whatever you find there. Your skills will be crucial in ensuring that your companions don't walk straight into an ambush and have the information they need to deal with bandits who have had months to establish hideouts in the region.
Benefit: Gain a +1 trait bonus on Perception and Stealth checks. You begin play with a deluxe dungeoneering kit and a potion of invisibility. You lower the DC to locate any hidden features in a hex you are exploring by 5, and such features are automatically located if the hex is claimed by your kingdom.

Surveyor
The Stolen Lands are thought to contain any number of abandoned mines and other interesting sites, including untapped resources. The Swordlords have selected you for this expedition because of your skill as a surveyor, able to locate likely sites for mines, to appraise the value of rare trees, or simply to assess the best site for building a new city.
Benefit: Choose one of the following skills: Appraise, Knowledge (dungeoneering), or Knowledge (nature). You gain a +1 trait bonus on checks with that skill, and it is always a class skill for you. You begin play with an adamantine wire saw, masterwork survival kit and a spelunking kit. Whenever you explore a previously unexplored hex, there is a 10% chance you will locate a valuable Resource that can be exploited when that hex is claimed.

You're up remarkably late/early... what prompted such late night activity? Or are you typically a night owl? (Or possibly night owlbear?)

For more than two hundred years, the bickering twin nations of Issia and Rostland have been united under the banner of House Rogarvia, descendants of Choral the Conqueror, who forged the kingdom of Brevoy with the fire of red dragons from the Icerime Peaks to the east and the blood of countless Sworldlords and their retainers from Restov. So thorough was the defeat of his foes his family's rule went unchallenged for generations until one wintry night two hundred years exactly after Choral was crowned king, the entire line of House Rogarvia vanished, beyond the reach of divination.

In the chaos that ensued, House Surtova sat one of their own scions upon the Dragonscale Throne as Regent until the Rogarvias could be located, though few were truly interested in seeing the brutal tyrants restored to power. Yet there has never been any love lost between Issia and Rostland, and the Surtovas are the most Issian of the great houses of Brevoy. Peace might have been possible had Noleski accepted a bride from House Lebeda, but a decade layer he remains unwed, the Rogarvias have still not been located, and the Swordlords of Restov prepare to make war for the first time in two centuries.

Yet Restov has far more enemies than just House Surtova and whoever might ally with them: to the east, tribes of centaurs in the Nomen Hills have been stirring and attempting to expand into the fertile Shrive River Valley, which Restov sits in. To the south less the wilderness of the Stolen Lands, once part of Brevoy and settled by the same Taldan settlers Rostland traces ancestry to, but abandoned over one hundred years ago to monsters. Beyond the Stolen Lands lie the River Kingdoms of Mivon and Pitax, ruled respectively by traitors who fled Choral's invasion two hundred years ago and by criminal families who would betray their own mothers for a copper piece. Normally the Stolen Lands would be a safe barrier against these bandit nations, but word is spreading that bandit activity has all but shut down travel in the region, and the Swordlords fear this means the River Kingdoms intend to exploit Brevoy's internal conflict to expand.

You are an experienced adventurer, contacted by Restov to join one of several expeditions they are hiring to settle the Stolen Lands and end the threat of war on multiple fronts presented by the River Kingdoms. Granted a charter by the Lord-Mayor of Restov and the Council of Swordlords, you have been given the right of conquest within the Greenbelt region of the Stolen Lands, along with three others. All you need do is quell the bandit activity in the region and slay any dangerous monsters, and as reward the Swordlords have promised enough funds and construction material to found a new fiefdom. They care not which among you takes the title of baron or baroness, only that you bring the torch of civilization to the region and support Restov's claim to the lands of the vanished Rogarvias.

Character Creation

● Level 3
● 20-point buy, no more than one score below 10 before racial modifiers
● No 3rd Party content
● No synthesists, master summoners, gunslingers, or 'eastern' classes (ninja & such)
● No Playtest material
● No 3rd Party content
● 3000 gp starting wealth
● All core races plus aasimar*, changeling, kobold*, skinchanger, and tiefling. (* aasimars receive one less bonus trait, kobolds may select any one kobold racial feat for free)
● No 3rd Party content
● No content from modules or adventure paths other than Kingmaker
● Select any two traits (unless playing an aasimar) and one custom campaign trait from the list I will be posting shortly. You may select any of the traits from the Kingmaker Player's Guide as a regional trait.
● No 3rd Party content
● No evil alignments

This campaign will be making use of the rules from Ultimate Campaign, including Downtime, with a few minor modifications. These house rules will be found on the campaign info page shortly. Note that your character doesn't *have* to be from Brevoy, but your background should reflect what you're doing in Restov if you were born in say... the Shackles, why the Swordlords would pick you for this expedition, and how the campaign trait you select fits your character. I have set no specific requirements for background, description, or personality, because there are several methods I enjoy, but please note that this is the most important part of your application. Bad crunch can get you rejected, but only a good write-up will get you accepted.

Recruitment will run until 5 PM PDT next Friday unless I decide too many people have applied, in which case I might choose to close recruitment to new applications, though anyone who has at least expressed interest and articulated a character concept will still have until Friday at 5pm to finish their submission.

Finally, just to be clear: this is not out-of-the-box Kingmaker. The locations may be familiar to those who have played before, as well as many of the villains, but if accepted, you will quickly learn why this is starting at level 3.

Maybe you're the wrong person to ask, but what is the process Paizo uses for deciding when to add creatures from the backs of Adventure Path books and other such sources to one of the Bestiaries? I keep forgetting that stats for certain creatures exist, such as the selkie, which I just rediscovered in the back of my copy of Jade Regent part 2.

I had actually missed the question and answer regarding multiple currencies, but after I went back and read it... I would like to say that I really like that there are different canonical names for the various types of coins depending on region. A gold piece is a gold piece is a gold piece, but being able to describe a treasure hoard as containing crowns, measures, sails and even scarabs adds a bit of interest, since the coins came from all over the Inner Sea region.

Given their nature, would it be particularly odd for a dragon to become obsessed with collecting Thassilonian or Azlanti coins for their hoard, both of which must be fantastically rare to find in the modern era, and yet not intrinsically worth any more than coins of the same sort minted yesterday in Absalom?

Pretty sure feet aren't the only thing bare when it comes to dryads, so that doesn't actually imply much, whereas a pregnant dryad would be quite interesting. I'm fairly certain reproduction for dryads was covered in Fey Revisited, but I can't find my copy at the moment, but I don't recall them needing 'help' to reproduce, so the result of actually having a child with one would be intriguing.

I wanted to pop in and mention how awesome it is that you grace us with your dinosauric awesomeness over in the Kingmaker sub-forum, thanks! Since a lot of APs, Kingmaker included, have material suggesting what might happen if certain pivotal villains survive their initial encounter with the party, I would like to ask:

Which villain(s) from the first five books of Kingmaker do you think would make the most fun/interesting recurring villain through the remainder of the AP?

If they are linked and his death fails to flush out Nex, she still wins by denying Nex one of his most powerful allies/tools/etc, and Geb won't have any reason to suspect her motivations, because she's not directly going after Nex. Yet.

Any rate, glad you liked the suggestion.

If depends a lot on how you define 'engaging'. Shattered Star is remarkably coherent and each book flows well into the next, but it didn't actually get me engaged in Thassilon nearly as much as Rise of the Runelords did. RotR piqued my interest in the Runelords and set me to wondering, "Who are these people? Are there more of them? What if one wakes up and isn't immediately defeated?" It got me interested in the mystery of all the ruins around Varisia, and what secrets they might hold, such that I started envisioning an extra-slow progression campaign that explored Varisia in far greater detail and rather than culminating with Karzoug continued on to deal with the other Runelords, like Krune, Sorshen, etc.

Kingmaker had an even more pronounced effect on me, even though it is one of the more disjoint, less cohesive APs. It drew me in more than any other AP since.... but that was all on me. It's not what is in the AP, it's all the unanswered questions left afterward. For me, unresolved plot hooks are awesome, because that's what gets my brain going. But not everyone will feel that way, and from a player perspective, Kingmaker is easy to run poorly and end up not being engaging at all.

More political intrigue, less math. If you're playing at a table, bring a laptop tablet with a spreadsheet that can calculate all of that quickly, and don't let the party spend too much time on decisions. And definitely assign various checks to appropriate players so that everyone has a chance to roll... but don't be a Nazi about it. Players can be really superstitious about dice, so if someone is scared to roll, don't make a big deal about someone else rolling as long as the game keeps moving. 5-10 minutes per month should be more than enough time, especially if everyone comes to the session with an idea of what they want built. Early on, there might need to be votes, but keep them informal and build the first thing a simple majority of the party agrees with... and don't be afraid to offer suggestions from the NPCs if the party can't pick something. Keeping it flowing is key, because then you can keep it a lot like combat. Then use the extra time to flesh out interesting events and make sure *everyone* can participate. Sure, the Ruler needs to seal any diplomatic treaties, but the Grand Diplomat negotiates the treaty, the Spymaster discovers dirt you can use for a better deal, the Treasurer appraises the economic repercussions of the treaty, etc.

Moving along... introduce Nyrissa early, and keep her as a malevolent presence. Whatever you do, don't let her existence surprise the players or they will come up with their own goals, and will resent you trying to railroad them with some faerie queen they've never heard of. Book one has the unicorn, but that's easy to miss, so give them other opportunities. Book two has Hargulka, so have him actually worship her as a divine being. An altar to a nymph in a troll fort should get the players paying attention. Book three contains the area where Eranex from Dragons Unleashed, who might make for an interesting ally.

Didn't Count Ranalc vanish right about the time Nex launched his war on Absalom? It wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that there's a connection there, and that finding + killing Count Ranalc might flush out Nex from wherever he's been hiding the past centuries. Given Count Ranalc's connections to the Plane of Shadow, evil fey, etc, it would be easier to persuade PCs to take on Ranalc, especially since he's not a thousands-of-years-old archwizard. Sure, he's still a demigod, but I for one would rather fight Nocticula than Sorshen.

Should Taldor be read as a sort of mix of the British and Roman empires then?

I've noticed a definite trend with the more recent hardcovers to release Golarion-specific content immediately after, such as Advanced Class Origins right after the Advanced Class Guide. Was that a direct response to the limitations of keeping the rulebooks setting-agnostic? Do you think an 'Advanced Player Origins' would have remedied some of the problems with the Advanced Player's Guide?

I feel like this thread has partially become an indicator of who reads the entire (one page) thread before posting and who just read the OP. Pretty early in the thread I linked to an announcement about an upcoming mythic AP. My link was followed by people saying "nope, I don't think future mythic products will happen".

I'm glad to know I am not alone in skipping to the end of threads:)
The above is not intended to make fun of anyone other than me. Tone doesn't transmit very well over the internet. If you feel I was unfairly critical of you or mean in my post, just assume I was criticizing my own poor communication skills.

By the way, I don't mean to tease with spoilers, but just last night I got an e-mail from Jason Nelson. Attached was a file containing more than 2000 mythic spells. Its cover page attributed it to the same people who wrote Mythic Adventures. Being a mythic kickstarter backer is awesome:) <--Also completely serious.

I scanned right past your original post because a post consisting of nothing more than a link that reads 'clicky' tends to set off my 'do not click' alarm. Also, as leo1925 pointed out, it's still only in the development stages right now, rather than an already existing 3pp mythic AP. Jason Nelson is a pretty awesome guy and has some pretty awesome products, but an adventure path is a massive undertaking, and so far as I know, all that Legendary has produced so far is modules and supplementary materials, nothing nearly so ambitious as a full adventure path. I really do hope it's awesome and provides a great option for people who want to play mythic campaigns other than WotR, but all I see right now is a bunch of eggs and no chickens.

It occurs to me to wonder... have any of the Third Party Publishers created a mythic adventure path of their own yet? If not, the 9 layers of Hell are pretty much all fair game as far as I'm aware, and could make for an especially mythic extraplanar campaign, as opposed to the mere dabbling in non-Golarion settings you get from the Paizo APs. If I found myself out of a job tomorrow, that might be something I would look into.

Basically, yes. The only expenses other than any building manager(s) a character may have hired to maintain their business in their absence are those expenses you as the GM rule they must pay. In Kingmaker, however, most such potential expenses simply don't make sense. Taxes would be paid essentially to yourself, the land isn't owned by some other lord who wants a regular cut, and if the kingdom's Spymaster is doing an even half-decent job, there's no need to pay protection money to the local thieves' guild.

It IS possible to lose stuff to attrition and events, but the first is only an issue if the character is absent for extended periods of time and/or has a disloyal building manager, and the second is generally offset in the long run by positive events. Do note that a building manager IS important in Kingmaker, as the character will be too busy to run their business for at least one week each month, and will often be absent for 1-3 weeks at a time when going exploring.

As a further note, the Downtime rules from Ultimate Campaign assume that you are rolling every single day, and that's just plain ridiculous. Condense everything into weekly rolls, dividing by 2 instead of 10 for income, and just assume that one event takes place every week and roll randomly to see what it is. That means four downtime periods per month, one of which is guaranteed to be spent on kingdom management, but the players' businesses can still earn income that week if managed by an NPC or cohort.

The difference between standard and slow progression is typically about 10 APL+0 encounters per level for a party of 4, which isn't actually very much content, especially when you consider that APL+1 is 150% of the xp of an APL+0 encounter, APL+2 is about the same as 2 APL+0 encounters, and APL+3 is about three APL+0 encounters worth... so you could fit in an APL+3 boss, an APL+2 lieutenant, two APL+1 elites, and 2 APL+0 encounters, which comes to a grand total of six encounters, or about one small mini-dungeon per level. Judging by the Kingmaker AP, which is the one I have handy, that's about 4-6 pages worth.

Here's the thing though: simply running one extra module per book would yield enough xp to make up the deficit if you run an AP on the slow progression chart. Or just take what's already there and add some appropriate encounters. At any rate, the difference between level 18 (1,800,000 XP) and level 16 (1,350,000 XP) isn't especially harsh for experienced players, who might actually enjoy the epic challenge of taking on the final boss of an AP when they're only level 16. (Level 17 requires 1,900,000 XP, so slow progression lags less than a level and a half behind standard even at high levels.)