I plan on doing basically the same in 2e as I did for my 1e group. For my players I have laminated copies of the poster maps and I covered each individual hex with a post-it note cut down to the shape/size of the hexes on the map, then removed it when the players fully explored the hex. The post-its were color-coded to a terrain type and represented the out-of-date map(s) the players started with, including the fact that the post-it color didn't always match the underlying terrain. Players could draw on the post-its or the map itself to indicate points of interest and kingdom boundaries, and they had a small card with some sticky-tack on it that they moved around to indicate what hex the party was currently in. As far as regional divisions go, 1e ran a bit differently as encounters were more or less restricted by book to a single map (as on pg. 628-631 of the AP), so some encounters in 1e (like KL10 and NM4) were much higher CR than their 2e counterpart because the map they were on was in a later book even though they were in the same "region". However, at least for my group, there was a lot less concern that PCs would explore into an area too far outside their level since they only had a single map at a time that they were concerned with, rather than having all four of them available from the start. Even with all of the maps starting out though I'm not too worried about players going into zones too far outside their level for the first half of the AP, but parts of the later half are concerning, see spoiler for thoughts. Spoiler: Their initial exploration charter from page 40 says the PCs are pretty much just supposed to explore zones 1 & 2 with a few hexes in zone 3, so they should be capable of handling anything they find there during chapter 3 and if they deliberately head outside of those areas it's on them. During chapters 4 and 5, zones 9 and 10 basically form natural boundaries due to possessing different terrain, so it's pretty easy to drop the hint that those areas are too difficult for them at this time. Chapter 6 mainly takes place in zones 7-9, with the PCs expected to finish it level appropriate to start exploring zone 10 (helping trigger Chapter 7 part 1).
The concern comes around Chapter 7, as zones 11 and 13 and zones 12 and 16 don't really have easily established in-game boundaries. Going back to the map-by-book situation in 1e, the split for the map used in book 4 (Chapter 7) and the one used in book 5 (Chapter 8) is pretty much exactly the edges of those zones, so that's why the zone breaks are there. This is pretty much the one instance I can see where, as the GM, I'm likely to (figuratively or literally) draw a line on the map for the players at a meta level with little or no in-game justification and say "beyond here is above your level, enter at your own risk", especially for the zone 12/16 boundary. After Chapter 7 I feel like the zone boundaries are mostly back to having justifiable in-game reasons for their boundaries, and so I see it being pretty easy to drop players warnings ahead of time about them.
James Jacobs wrote:
This question came up because "Kingdom Event Descriptions" on pg. 553-554 says (emphasis added): Quote: The kingdom's event modifier is the value you apply to the kingdom's level to determine the event's level, for the purposes of determining XP rewards (so if a 1st-level kingdom is experiencing a +1 event, that event's level is 2). Which seems to say that kingdom events are either supposed to give XP in addition to the flat 30 XP they normally give, or that the 30 XP is supposed to be modified up/down based off the kingdom event's event modifier.
1. No, because nothing says they're only usable with Leadership Activities. 2. Whenever you make a Kingdom skill check you can choose to use the Creative Solution to reroll that check with a +2 bonus, taking the new result. If at the end of the Kingdom turn you haven't used the Creative Solution to reroll a check, you lose that use and gain 10 XP.
valdis43 wrote:
For alternatives for content taken from the 1e version of the AP (chapters 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10) I'd suggest looking through the 1e Kingmaker forum here since it has 12-ish years of GM feedback and alternative ideas on it. There's a printable version of the Stolen Lands map at the back of the Player's Guide, although if you put them in a four page spread they don't line up super well for some reason.
RicoTheBold wrote: It would add more work in that you'd need to manually convert all the building construction DCs, and consider adding arbitrary level limits on when you could build them. Structures already have levels independent of their construction DC and can't be built until a Kingdom is at least that level.
Hopefully I'm missing something with the Army rules here, but it looks to me like they very easily allow the Kingdom to have a new Army virtually every turn for no increase in Consumption: Recruit Army happens during the Leadership Activities step, allowing the Kingdom to recruit a new Army in a Settlement of their choice, and choose that Army's starting tactic. Live Off The Land is a Tactic 1 that reduces an Army's Consumption by 1 if they're not in a hex with a Settlement or garrisoned during the Upkeep phase. The Army Activities step, happening after the Leadership Activities step, lets an Army move up to 20 hexes with the Deploy Army action. So (aside from poor dice rolls) is there anything stopping a Kingdom from recruiting an Army with a Consumption of 1 every turn, giving it Live Off The Land as it's starting tactic, Deploying it to a non-Settlement containing hex (reducing it's Consumption to 0), and just letting it sit there at no cost for the foreseeable future?
Cydeth wrote:
All tables, images, and sidebars in the Player's Guide are in basically the exact same place in the AP book itself. Page 63 has the Army Activities table, so somebody probably just mixed up the page numbers for the table when changing the page reference (as the AP references the correct page).
So I find it kind of concerning that the Kingdom Building rules are supposed to be spoiler-free here, but all of the side bar NPC side quests that were in them in the AP book itself have basically been left intact. As a GM, I don't really feel comfortable giving this to my players and telling them it's spoiler-free when it's got 12 quest descriptions/triggers that basically say "when you do X a quest will trigger" and the trigger on the 13th that literally says the NPC's quest "is linked to an in-game event—you don’t need to do anything to trigger the start of [their] quest" so when/if that NPC shows up it'll immediately red flag the players that something is happening.
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?
After step 7 of Kingdom creation, the only thing that having a Leadership role Invested does is give an explicitly non-stacking status bonus to checks with the associated attribute, and which roles are Invested can be changed with the New Leadership Kingdom Activity (without needing to change who is holding a role). As such, having more than four roles Invested does basically nothing, assuming that you've assigned the Invested roles to give a bonus to each attribute. Comparatively, on Kingdom Events a bonus is given only if a PC holds the associated role, so having more than four PCs holding Leadership roles is decidedly beneficial here. One thing I'm not sure on is if assigning Companion Guide NPCs to their chosen Invested Leadership roles in Step 7 of Kingdom creation gives additional Trained skills, or if that's an intended hard cap of 4 skills.
tomeric wrote:
I completely overlooked that bit. Personally, I think that's kind of a dumb rule so I'm going to ignore it in my own games. Just like how I think it's kind of dumb that Villages have 0 Influence and thus there's no real way to offset their Consumption without a Kingdom needing to spend at least one of their three Region Activities nearly every turn to generate Food for them, so I'm going to let Villages Influence a single Hex (not all adjacent Hexes, just one) so they can actually be self-sufficient from a Food standpoint.
So it looks like the "Resource" tag on a Hex (in Chapter 2 at least) just means there's Terrain Feature in that Hex, not that the Hex actually gives a bonus on Commodity production. The rules for the Resource Terrain Feature (on pg. 536) say that the Hex's encounter text will state what Commodity will be doubled if a Work Site is established there, and the vast majority of Hexes with the Resource tag don't say they double the production of a Commodity, but instead say they give a Kingdom a different Terrain Feature. In the case of the specific Hex in question, the Terrain Feature granted is a Structure Terrain Feature, not a Resource Terrain Feature. The Rot Grub "The Rules Lawyer" wrote: So long as I might have the team's ear, did the team have a chance to playtest these rules and see how long it would take to reach 3rd level? And the adventure says to let the players get more kingdom turns to get the kingdom level to at least 2 levels below the party's level (preferably closer even). I was surprised that Farmlands are closed off at the beginning, as that runs counter to my years of playing Civilization-type games. Not Dev team, but I ran through some (very) basic math in the Kingdom XP thread that, following RAW, you're probably looking at at least 18 turns to go from level 1 to level 2. I didn't math it, but level 2 to 3 will likely take longer as 1/3 of 1-2's XP was from one-off Milestones. Later levels can go somewhat faster, if desired, due to larger RP production, but there are a lot of potential variables that can speed up or slow down how long it takes.
Phntm888 wrote: Question 3 was largely because I expect to have more than 4 players. I noticed in the Companion Guide that certain Companions automatically Invest certain Leadership roles if they are placed in those roles. Since that would seem to imply that more than 4 roles being invested is not unbalancing, I was wondering if allowing each player to Invest their chosen role would be unbalancing to avoid one or two players feeling like their character(s) is(are) less important than the others. I don't anticipate using the Companion Guide due to the number of players I expect I'll have, so that wouldn't be a factor. The only benefit Investing a Role gives is the bonus on checks related to the Role's key ability, and that bonus doesn't stack with itself, so there's very little value in having more than four Roles Invested as at least one Role will be providing no benefit. If the PCs' chosen Roles don't give a bonus to all four abilities starting out, they can use the New Leadership Kingdom Activity on their very first Kingdom Turn without needing to change any Roles and, as long as they don't get a Critical Failure on the check, reselect which Roles are Invested to give a bonus to all four abilities. As such, if you have more than four PCs it wouldn't be unbalanced to allow all of them to be Invested in their roles because it doesn't really do anything and it's already trivial to get the bonus to all attributes. Kingdom Events are given a bonus based off if a PC is in the role, not if the role is Invested:
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.) So having more than 4 PCs in Leadership Roles absolutely does give a benefit without houseruling.
James Jacobs wrote:
Thank you. With the feat already increasing Magic checks and allowing Magic checks to be used in place of Engineering checks (which looks to be a fairly powerful ability), having it remove the randomness from the cost for Hire Adventurers seemed like it might have been a bit much.
The Kingdom Assurance Kingdom Feat lets players, instead of rolling, take a result of 10 + the chosen skill's proficiency bonus, applying no "other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers to this result" on a check with the chosen skill once per Kingdom Turn. Does this mean that if I have a level 2 Kingdom and am Trained in the chosen skill, my result will be a 14? Because if so, there seems to only be four levels (3, 4, 7, & 8) where using this ability gives a Success against the Kingdom's Control DC if we ignore the Control DC Modifier from Kingdom Size or the Kingdom has 1-9 Hexes, one level (3) where it gives a Success when the Kingdom has 10-24 Hexes, and at no point does it give a Success when the Kingdom has 25+ Hexes. Which doesn't really seem to fit the feat's flavor of consistency when other things are going poorly (unless things going poorly is considered consistent). So am I misunderstanding the feat, or it is really supposed to be extremely narrowly applicable?
It seems slow to me as well, and I really feel like I'm missing something. A Kingdom just starting out rolls 5d4 for RP (average 10 RP) and can only claim one Hex per turn (assuming they don't get a Critical Success), so assuming the only thing they spend RP on is Claim a Hex they're looking at an average of 19 XP/turn. Once they've claimed 10 Hexes this goes to 5d6 for RP (average 17.5 RP), or 26.5 XP/turn. A Kingdom Event happening is a DC 16 flat check, reduced by 5 for each turn an event hasn't happened, so there should be an event every other to every third turn on average - we'll call it every other turn so that means 15 XP/turn on average. Relatively easily achieved Milestones (1st Landmark, 1st Refuge, 1st Village, Kingdom size 10, 1st Diplomatic Relations, 8 filled Leadership roles, 1st Trade Agreement) give 360 XP total. All this together means it should take around 18 turns to go from level 1 to level 2, assuming basically zero actual Kingdom development and the benefits from good Kingdom Events wash with the penalties from bad Kingdom Events. Not going to math it out, but going from level 2 to level 3 should take a fair bit longer due to not having easy Milestones giving nearly a third of a level's worth of XP. To be honest, and assuming I'm not missing something, easiest solutions I see here (off the top of my head without any balance testing) are either making events and Milestones worth more XP, or breaking PF2's constraint of "a level is always 1000 XP" and having the XP requirement be something like "new level x 100 XP" (so 1 to 2 is 200XP, 2 to 3 is 300XP, etc.) to expedite the first few levels and slow later levels where Kingdoms generate surplus RP faster.
NielsenE wrote: Some of the organization is feeling a little off and lots of flipping back and forth between different parts of the book. Makes me wish for a Beadle & Grimms treatment -- normally I HATE their single hardcover -> multiple-softcover approach, but I think for Kingmaker I'd prefer a separate book for the maps/regions/exploration/kingdom/army rules, split out from the AP, since often you want both open at once. The pdf download for the main book has a "chapter per file" option that helps a bit with this. It's not super helpful when it comes to things like the full Kingdom Building rules that require lots of jumping around inside the same "chapter" though.
Zi Mishkal wrote:
Chapter 3 of the Bestiary is titled "Hazards and Traps" and claims to contain all of the hazards and traps from the AP and the Companion Guide.
Anguish wrote:
Actual thing, although it's typically done with a multiplier indicator so something like ten thousand seven hundred would be written as 10.7k (where "k" indicates 1000s), not just as 10.7, so it's clearer what the value actually is.
While I'd love to see a full set of minis for all of the races in the Advanced Race Guide (like what the Orcs and Halflings have), I recognize that that is a lot of work.
Also, a set that consists of the monsters (Gargantuan/Colossal/Colossal+ sized) that have been left out of the various Pawns product boxes would be awesome. Keep up the good work though, I love the sets and use one or more of them every session I play.
So I tend to view the Kingmaker AP as more of a story of a kingdom than of any specific people in that kingdom, and because of that there are always more stories to tell. So what I'm thinking of doing is introducing elements of a living style campaign into Kingmaker as outlined below:
Thoughts? Anybody have any experience with this type of thing?
The kingdom building rules in Ultimate Combat are slightly different in the order that things go and numbers than in the original rules found in Rivers Run Red.
In my campaign she's being worshiped as a minor deity known mainly as "The Forgotten Queen", taking roughly the niche that Gyronna normally would have. Most of the major villains are followers of her, knowingly or unknowingly furthering her grand plans for the Stolen Lands. Remember that most don't really know much about her so depending on who the speaker is they may not always refer to her as "Queen."
There are tatzlwyrm minis in the Kingmaker Paper Minis set |