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There is the Kingmaker Adventure Path 2E Errata thread, which is attempting to compile all errors in one place and offer fixes for them, but it's also unofficial. Paizo doesn't do errata or updates on a product unless it receives another physical printing, and APs generally don't have multiple print runs.


Until a Kingdom is level 15+ the number of blocks a settlement can contain is limited, and the capital isn't excluded from this, so it's impossible for a single settlement to supply all possible bonuses in a low/mid level Kingdom. Since Kingdom Activities other than Region or Civic Activities generally don't specify exactly where in the Kingdom they take place, while Region and Civic activities generally affect a specific Hex or Settlement, it's probably better for the Kingdom's capital to focus on building structures that provide bonuses to Region and Civic activities (as they provide that bonus everywhere) and other settlements to focus on structures that provide bonuses to non-Region/Civic activities (as those checks are not reliant on location within the Kingdom).


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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 The post-its were color-coded to a terrain type and represented the out-of-date map(s) the players started with, including the fact that the post-it color didn't always match the underlying terrain.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.


Phntm888 wrote:
If you mean the random events, I think they're in the Player's Guide.

They're not, as they're considered "GM only" content.


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James Jacobs wrote:
VanceMadrox wrote:

James thanks for all the responses!

The 2e version of Kingmakers only exists because of you and all your efforts.

There are a lot of us who are super excited to run this and we can't thank you enough.

On Specifics thanks for clarifying about "experiencing" an event.

One last question then.
For random events do they just grant 30 XP or should the reward be modified by the Event Level?

As written, they grant 30 XP regardless of Event Level.

That said, I think it's a really good idea to change that to 40 XP, so that the XP granted matches table 10–2 on page 489 of the Core Rulebook. That way you can easilly adjust XP up and down depending on the level of the event. I wish I had a time machine to go back and change this in print to this mechanic, honestly... or at the very least had been able to do a preview of the kingdom rules for folks to look over and give feedback on before we went to print, but there was already far too much going on at Paizo and in the world in 2021 when this would have been an option so that hope died on the vine.

But anyway. Changing the event XP rewards to match table 10–2 is a great fix and should also help get those kingdoms more XP.

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.


tomeric wrote:
Mr_Shed wrote:

Checking through the AP, it looks like there's only 3 quests that award Kingdom XP that PCs can reasonably complete before Part 2 of Chapter 4 kicks off (by which point the Kingdom is expected to be at least level 3), and they award 30 Kingdom XP each.

Even if those quests awarded 10 times as much XP, it's still likely to take several years in-game for a Kingdom to reach level 3.
Ah, I think this is something that should be clarified, but I think you get XP for an event TWICE. Once for experiencing it (30 XP), and once for resolving it (30-160 XP based on the Event Modifier). This little piece of information is "hidden" in the "Kingdom Event Descriptions" section: 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).

Yeah, that's still kinda unclear as it doesn't actually say that the event awards the Kingdom XP instead of awarding XP for the players, while all other mentions of Kingdom XP awards I can find are explicit that the Kingdom is the one earning XP.

Secondly, I'm referring to encounter/quest rewards that require actual PC involvement, not Kingdom Events that can be resolved with just a d20 roll. Hex encounter KL1 (pg. 78), and chapter 4 part 1's "Event 1" (rewards on pg. 191) and "Event 3" (rewards on pg. 196) are the three quests I was referring to that have Kingdom XP as part of their rewards that the PCs can be expected to do before the Kingdom reaches level 3. And, reading more closely on it, "Event 3" isn't supposed to happen until the PCs are basically ready to start part 2 (by which point the Kingdom is technically supposed to be at least level 3 to stick within the PC level -1 or -2 assumption), so it probably shouldn't have actually been included in the count.


FWCain wrote:

In their defense, they have mentioned that they have seeded numerous encounters for boosting the kingdom's XP into the Adventure Path, especially early on.

I would guess this was a deliberate choice -- specifically, how to balance growing your first settlement (your capital) quickly in the beginning, but =without= also speed-growing your subsequent settlements later on. Hence, the rules giving you that delay, but the adventurers encountering lots of kingdom XP.

Checking through the AP, it looks like there's only 3 quests that award Kingdom XP that PCs can reasonably complete before Part 2 of Chapter 4 kicks off (by which point the Kingdom is expected to be at least level 3), and they award 30 Kingdom XP each.

Even if those quests awarded 10 times as much XP, it's still likely to take several years in-game for a Kingdom to reach level 3.


Brett Alexander wrote:
are there just very few resource hex terrains? and it seems they are all mines

Yes, but what a Resource Terrain Feature does is double the amount of the stated commodity produced if you Establish a Work Site of the appropriate type in that hex. You can still produce commodities when you Establish Work Site in hexes that don't have the Resource Terrain Feature, they just produce a single commodity per turn rather than two.


https://paizo.com/products/btq02e1s?Pathfinder-Kingmaker-Pawn-Box

Like most other Kingmaker related accessories, it's on the Kingmaker AP page, not with the rest of it's accessories line.


1. In several other places Investment is said to give a bonus to all checks using the associated attribute. Notably in the section that describes how Leadership roles are written it says "When this role is invested, all Kingdom skill checks based on this ability gain a +1 status bonus."

2. It's a bit of an odd one, especially considering that Investment is also written to imply that it does more than just give a Status bonus, and the feats do grant benefits other than just a status bonus. Personally, I'm considering homebrewing that Investment gives an untyped bonus to allow it to stack with itself and the feats.

3. Focused Attention doesn't say the check has to be made by the end of the Leadership Activities step, or by the end of the Activity phase, just that the check has to be made the same Kingdom turn - meaning that it can also be used during the Event phase to give a bonus on a check for an ongoing event.

4. Terrain Features don't grant a Kingdom benefits until the hex they're in is claimed (Terrain Features, pg. 535: "Many hexes have features that grant benefits once claimed.") so, even if a Kingdom could theoretically use Establish a Work Site in an unclaimed hex, as a Terrain Feature a Work Site in an unclaimed hex wouldn't do anything for the Kingdom.


aiglos wrote:
As far as I can make out the 5D4 RP that you get at the beginning of each Kingdom turn are the equivalent of the 50 BP from 1st Edition, representing Labour and Colonists, representing Labour and Colonists, My problem is that there is no way with the RAW that you start with the other half of the equation, which are the Commodities (Lumber, Ore, Stone, Food and Luxuries) and with no way to purchase any prior to the Command phase of the 1st Kingdom turn (Purchase Commodities). Also, if the PC's start their village at the Stag Lords Fort, the nearest source of Lumber is in an unexplored hex, and Lumber and Food are the two most important commodities at the start.

In 1e terms that 5d4 RP is actually the Economy check you'd make at the end of Step 3, being the recurring "income" your Kingdom generates for further development. There's no equivalent in 2e to the BP gained in 1e, because there are no story-based awards of resources for the Kingdom starting out.


Moochiepoochies wrote:

Hi There,

Not sure if this is the right spot to post this but I am wondering about how compatible both the Kingdom Management AND Army Building/Fighting subsystems are with D&D 5E?

My understanding is that the 5E Bestiary includes monster and companion conversions but I haven't seen anything that details if these additional systems are, or need to be, converted.

Do any modifications need to me or can they be played as is?

Thanks

Overall the Kingdom Building and Army rules are system agnostic and don't require (much) conversion to work with different systems.

The notable exception is that Structures sometimes give bonuses to either the level of certain magic items that can be found in the Settlement, or to specific skill checks made in the Settlement, and these are 2e specific. There's no official conversion for these bonuses to other systems, but they're minor enough that a GM can either fairly easily convert them or simply ignore them.


KawasakiNinja wrote:
Iirc the 1e AP did give you BP, so I'm surprised to hear 2e gives nothing. Seems like an oversight?

Kingmaker 1e gave the PCs 50 BP to start, but the Kingdom turn order also had you generate income after all of your expenditures so it would have been otherwise impossible for a starting Kingdom to do anything of value (like claim their first hex and found their first settlement) on the first turn.

2e's rules have you generate income at the start of the turn, and any leftover RP is converted to XP at the end of the turn, so gaining a bunch of additional RP turn 1 is less useful since there's an effective cap on how much RP a Kingdom can spend in a single turn (they only have so many actions). I think it's still a bit of an oversight given how necessary Commodities are that the Kingdom doesn't start with any, so a GM could pretty comfortably have Rostland give them a few of each Commodity starting out since it'll be at least turn 4 before the Kingdom is seeing production in all of Lumber, Stone, and Ore.


aiglos wrote:
I am hoping the game has some way for the kingdom to start off with at least some commodities?

As written it doesn't. However, the players acquire a fair amount of treasure at the end of Chapter 3 that's noted as possibly being useful to start their Kingdom (that they found at the start of Chapter 4), so I think it'd be reasonable to either swap some of the treasure for one of each Commodity or to allow them to use the Capital Investment leadership activity (normally unavailable until at least Kingdom level 5) on their first Kingdom turn (or first few turns) to convert some of those treasures into additional RP.


valdis43 wrote:
The map is 28 tiles across, traveling half way across would take 2 weeks (assuming decent roads and a speed of 25). So going out and back from the center is a whole month (without doing anything else). It seems like all this travel wouldn't leave a lot time for running a kingdom. Is it expected by the time adventurers are traveling these distances, they'll have other means of transport? Is it expected characters will have access to teleport (which is uncommon) by that time? Are there other key transport spells?

The rules simply require spending a week doing the downtime activity of running the Kingdom to avoid the vacancy penalty, with no actual restrictions on where the character is when they take the activity, so it's not like they're required to spend that time in their capital (or technically even in their Kingdom) so it's reasonable to say they could be spending their time running the Kingdom from a base camp or settlement nearer the border rather than needing to spend a week each way trekking to and from wherever their current exploration target is. The vacancy penalty also isn't too terrible since it's either take the penalty listed for the role or the PC loses one of their (three) leadership activities.

PCs are also pretty much just assumed to have horses or some other form of transport faster than walking (especially since their first story-advancing encounter in the Stolen Lands has an extremely high chance of netting them four horses if they didn't already have them) and in a worst-case scenario if movement times are really becoming an issue you as the GM can either give them a faster method of movement or adjust time requirements to suit how fast your group moves so they get there at the appropriate time.

valdis43 wrote:
Is there a guide to which rivers are navigable? For that matter, is there a map of which river is which? They don't seem to be labeled and looking through tile descriptions for the names is tedious.

If it's shown on the map, assume it's a navigable waterway unless a specific hex description notes otherwise (at least one hex has a section of falls which are noted to not be navigable). For labels I'd suggest finding a copy of the hex map from 1e - it's the same map, but things on it are actually labeled.


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You should have gotten an email on or about August 31st from Paizo with the title "Get Your Kingmaker PDFs today!" with a redemption code in it.


Phntm888 wrote:
Reverting to the 1E format would help increase suspense, but Villamor still wins automatically. He has enough damage/high enough to hit that he can still wreck a log in one hit, he just now has to Stride in between logs. Rage lasts the entire time, so figure he destroys one log every odd-numbered Round, then 2 logs every even-numbered round, for 15 logs total by the time it's over.

That appears to be at least in part an issue with how 2e handles damaging objects, namely that materials seem to have a fixed HP rather than it being based off their thickness - the logs in 1e had 120 HP each (10 HP/in x 12 in thickness) rather than the 20 HP they do in 2e, so they were more difficult to destroy with Villamor expected to destroy 4 and damage 1 and Dizon and Timsina coming in a close second by destroying 4 each.

The other issue is that Villamor just does so much more damage per round than his competitors. While in 1e Dizon and Timsina did nearly as much as he did and (if the GM actually rolled the dice out fully) could possibly beat him, in 2e even if they use a fully optimal strategy (which their given Strategies aren't) they can't out-damage Villamor and I'm not familiar enough with 2e to say if this large of a damage differential is because they're built "poorly" compared to Villamor or if Villamor is just over specced for damage.


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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.


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valdis43 wrote:

Does anyone have alternative suggestions for Chapter 8? This chapter is really weak compared to the rest - it's too ambitious a concept for the page count it has. I can't imagine running this without rewriting it.

I assume there will be pdf maps available somewhere? I'm hoping there's a printable version of the hexmap specifically to help with kingdom building/tracking exploring.

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.


Paul Zagieboylo wrote:
Boasting: Does Ankus's ringer actually provide any benefit if he isn't spotted? Obviously this isn't likely as Perception DC 36 is probably pretty easy by this point for at least one of the PCs, and they get three chances, but just in case.

I would assume his published stats for rolls already include any intended bonus his ringer is supposed to be giving him (they did in the 1e version), as the two conditions here are basically that the PCs spot the ringer and he's disqualified or they don't spot the ringer and he makes his rolls as stated.

Phntm888 wrote:
I suspect this event didn't copy over from the 1E book very well - you're absolutely right that basically everyone else is competing for second place. Since his tactics call for him to rage first, it should take until the first action of round 3 to finish off all the logs. If he doesn't rage, you should probably lower his damage a little bit, although it likely won't make a difference.

I agree with this event not copying well, including the fact that the MC's spiel for the events (on pg. 339) describe it as "a test of strength using handaxes or greataxes," despite 2e's version not allowing for handaxes like 1e's did. I don't honestly see how to quickly fix it either since the entire nature of the event has changed from 1e where it was a contest to see who could destroy the greatest number of logs spaced 10' apart in 1 minute, rather than it being fastest to destroy 4 logs that are functionally adjacent.


Ageron wrote:
Tiberius Cailean wrote:

On page 515 of the adventure page, under the description of the key ability score for leadership roles it stats to following:

“Since status bonuses don't stack (see Attempting Kingdom Skill Checks on page 515), 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!”
I have been looking throughout to book and I cant seem to find any other benefit of having an invested leader, other then the Status bonus. I’m I missing something?
Certain leader roles get bonuses to resolving Kingdom events (if that role is filled by a PC).

Which has nothing to do with whether the role is Invested or not, just if a PC holds it.


You're not missing anything, Invested roles only give a status bonus. See also this thread: Companions in Leadership Roles


FWCain wrote:
Q2) Can any one specific PC leader receive benefits from the leadership activity Focused Attention, from more than one (other) PC leader, all for the same skill check?

Bonuses of the same type don't stack unless they say they do, and nothing I'm seeing says they stack in this case, so there's no benefit for having multiple allies succeed on the check.


Phntm888 wrote:

Supernatural Solution is a pretty good fallback for resolving Events that use skills you are Untrained in, and that could carry a 1d4 RP - 2d6 RP cost. However, you won't be able to Establish a Work Site, because your capital's Influence is 0. You can't establish a work site until your settlement's influence is at least 1, and becomes a Town at Kingdom level 3.

You can't build a farm, either, until then.

If you don't want to build houses, the Inn is also a Residential building that qualifies for relieving Overcrowding.

Where does it say you can't Establish Work Site outside a Settlement's Influence? Because while Establish Farmland clearly says it can't be done unless the hex is in a Settlement's Influence, I can't find where Establish Work Site is under the same restriction.


mattdusty wrote:
So basically a village and a town can never have two buildings that stack item bonuses because their max item bonus is only +1?

Correct. You can still put a single +2 or +3 Structure in a Village or Town and get the full bonus, but putting two identical Structures does nothing because the stacking caps at +1.


mattdusty wrote:

Can someone help me understand the following regarding Max Item Bonuses:

"Normally, item bonuses do not stack, but if you build multiple structures of the same type in the same settlement, their item bonuses stack up to this limit." And then I reference the Settlement Types table and see that there is a column for Max Item Bonuses.

What does that mean? Does that mean that if I build three Breweries in a settlement, which a single Brewery grants a +1 item bonus to Establish Trade Agreements, that they all stack to make it a +3 item bonus to that activity since all the +1 items bonus' of the same type stack?

I also don't understand what 'stack up to this limit' means.

Also, what if you build the same building in different settlements - do their bonuses not stack?

If that's true, what is the benefit of building more than one settlement?

It means what it says - item bonuses from multiples of the same structure in a Settlement stack up to that limit. The normal stacking rules otherwise apply, so multiple different Structures that give the same item bonuses don't stack.

As an example:
If your Kingdom is level 15 and you have a City (max item bonus +2) with a Festival Hall (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in it, that Settlement gives you a +1 to Celebrate Holiday checks.
If you build a second Festival Hall in that City the +1 bonus stacks, becoming a +2 bonus. If you then built a third Festival Hall in that City you don't get an item bonus from it, because the maximum item bonus you can get from identical structures in a City is +2 ("stacks up to this limit").
If instead of building an additional Festival Hall you instead built a Shrine (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, your Celebrate Holiday bonus remains a +1 because you have two different Structures giving a bonus to Celebrate Holiday and their bonuses don't stack.
If you built a Cathedral (+3 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, you get a +3 on Celebrate Holiday checks even though a City's "Max. Item Bonus" is a +2 because you're not stacking the bonus from identical Structures, you're taking the bonus from a single Structure.

If you have a City with two Festival Halls and you build a third in any other Settlement in your Kingdom the bonus doesn't stack.
However, per pg. 542, item bonuses from Structures in Settlements, other than your capital, only apply to hexes in that Settlement's area of Influence while Structures in your capital apply their item bonuses to all hexes in your Kingdom. While it's unclear how this works for checks that never apply to a specific Settlement or hex inside the Kingdom, an example of how it does apply is that if you had a non-capital Settlement with a Foundry (+1 to Establish Work Site (Mine)) in it you would only get that bonus on Establish Work Site (Mine) checks made on hexes within that Settlement's Influence, while if you tried to establish a mine outside of that Settlement's Influence you wouldn't get the bonus. If you have two non-capital Settlements with a Foundry each grants a +1 bonus on Establish Work Site (Mine) with their respective areas of Influence.

Since a Settlement's maximum size is determined based off Kingdom level, it's generally not possible to gain all the possible item bonuses you'll want on Kingdom Activities just from Structures in your capital and so you'll want/need to create additional Settlements to gain those bonuses. An example on this would be to build a Settlement bordering several forest hexes, building a Lumberyard in that Settlement, and then using the bonus the Lumberyard grants to (slightly) more easily Establish Work Site (lumber camp) in the adjoining forest hexes.


Leadership activities: On turn one PCs should have a group available to Send Diplomatic Envoy to and, on a success, can use Establish Trade Route (setting themselves up to be able to Manage Trade Agreements on turn 2 for additional RP/Commodities on turn 3) and optionally use Request Foreign Aid for additional RP this turn (or the next).


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.


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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.


Kelvorn wrote:
Any thought to help enhance this thought exercise?

My personal thought on it is that a decent rough size for the total number of people involved in an army is about 200 per Consumption.

An Infantry or Skirmisher Army is roughly 100 combatants in the field and roughly 100 support staff that are spread between being with the army (cooks, blacksmiths, medical, MPs, etc.) and various places throughout the Kingdom (headquarters staff, messengers, logistics personnel, etc.).
A Calvary Army has the same 100 combatants with the higher Consumption coming from to the need to feed/manage their mounts and the corresponding increase in support personnel (around 200 support staff total).
A Siege Engine Army is around a dozen siege engines of various types and their crews (about 50 people) and around 120 support staff, with the remainder of the Consumption going to the fact that siege engines are just overall more expensive to create, use, and maintain than Infantry.


Kelvorn wrote:

It shouldn’t be though in my opinion and this is why:

Having a standing army cost Consumption. And Consumption can cost 5RP. So I am hoping to attribute a Cost for a size so if my players want to have several standing small armies vs one gigantic army I would know how to calculate that.

Because from what I can tell you just have an army that cost generally 1 consumption every month

But if my heroes need multiple armies to fight on two fronts then the Abstract number suddenly becomes an issue. What if there is an approaching Orc army 400 strong coming from the East but there is also a neighboring Kingdom with hostel intentions creeping ever so closer from the West with an army 1000 strong. How long can they hold out with such a large army before consumption becomes an issue? Maybe while this is happening my players are interested in going undercover in said City and sabotage food supplies or create unrest to force recalling the Army back.

I also couldn’t find a cost for RP (I know it’s abstract supplies) but we had a GP cost in P1. So would it be along the lines of 100gp= 1RP?
If that was the case then to build a Castle would cost 54,000gp worth of supplies. Anyone want to help me out here?

My group and I love the Crunch of PF and always have. I think if I can find a GP value for a RP then RPx5 would be the cost for “an army” monthly. From that you can guest the reasonable size based on food/payment

Ideas anyone? Thank you

Per the Settlement Types table, 1 Consumption feeds between 200.5 and 4166.7+ people, depending on Settlement size. Since maximum Settlement size more or less corresponds to the Kingdom's level, a possible tie to Army size would be that any single army's size is related to it's level using Settlement populations divided by their Consumption - level 15+ is functionally unlimited, 9-14 is 500-4165 people, 3-8 is 200-500 people, 1-2 is a max of 200 people.

Alternately, you could take the Infantry sample Army's description of being "a platoon of armored soldiers" literally which puts an Army at (per Wikipedia) between 10 and 100 soldiers, averaging about 50. If you consider the Army rules to include both combat units and non-combat (support/logistics) units in their Consumption cost (which would make sense), then you can basically double that number.

As for converting gp to RP, the Leadership activity "Capital Investment" lets PCs do that, but it's not a fixed ratio - gp required is based off Kingdom level, and additional Resource dice are awarded based off how they do on a Trade check. You could run math and figure something resembling the average RP awarded per gp per level, but there are a fair number of variables involved that are going to be very Kingdom specific.


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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?


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Cydeth wrote:
S. J. Digriz wrote:
It seems that the basic armies by level table, which should be on page 63, is missing from the players guide.
I thought the same thing, and looked for it several times. I finally found it on page 69. I'm betting it got moved, and the editors didn't catch the error.

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).


Unlike the 1E rules the number of individuals in an Army has no rules impact, so it's whatever you want it to be.


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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.


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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?


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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.


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tomeric wrote:
Mr_Shed wrote:
There's nothing stopping you from building Farmland Hexes before Kingdom level 3, building them just doesn't give any benefits until then.
I don't think this is true, since once of the prerequisites is "the hex is in the influence of one of your settlements" and your influence is still 0. Would love to be wrong about this!

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.


Phntm888 wrote:
You can't build farms until your Kingdom reaches Level 3 and you can expand the capital into a town (exerting influence), so I actually don't think Agriculture is mandatory at the start. However, at level 1, you will want to train one of Agriculture, Boating, or Wilderness to improve your chances of gathering the necessary Food Commodities to pay for your first settlement's Consumption. You have to spend 1 Region activity each Kingdom turn doing that, or use Purchase Commodities as a Leadership Activity to buy Food via Trade. You'll need to do that activity for other commodities as well, like Lumber, since you don't have a way of generating your own yet.

There's nothing stopping you from building Farmland Hexes before Kingdom level 3, building them just doesn't give any benefits until then. And given the lower DCs at lower levels, if you have Settlements that you know you'll be investing in heavily (like the Capital) building sufficient Farmland for them well before it's needed might be smart to do rather than dealing with the investment needed at higher levels.

Of the three skills that offer actions that produce Food though, I'd probably rank them Agriculture > Wilderness > Boating. Boating looks to be pretty much the least useful Kingdom Skill overall since it's never used for a Kingdom Event (or story event), all of the Kingdom Activities it can be used for (generating Food, Establish Trade Agreement, and Rest & Relax) can also be done with other skills that are already needed for other things, and it's only needed for two Structures (Pier and Waterfront).


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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.


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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.


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James Jacobs wrote:
Mr_Shed wrote:
The Practical Magic Kingdom Feat reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to 1 RP (from 1 Resource die). Should this have reduced the cost by 1 RP?

This is correct. Practical Magic reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to just 1 RP.

Normally it costs a number of RP equal to the result of a Resource Die roll to Hire Adventurers. Since a Resource Die grows larger as your kingdom grows bigger, that means that the bigger the kingdom gets, the more potentially expensive it can get to Hire Adventurers, but you can always luck out and find a group that's willing to do the work for 1 RP if you roll a 1 on your Resource Die.

With the Practical Magic feat, that always happens. As your kingdom grows larger, the amount of magic being used day-to-day in the kingdom makes it more attractive and welcoming to adventuring groups, and so there's more of them to hire, and so there's less of a monopoly, so you can get away with paying the minimum.

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.


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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?


Snake0202 wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:

Main thing you missed is that sidequests themselves give kingdom XP, adventuring itself gives kingdom XP.

Basically, looking at kingdom rules it seems to have assumption that you can't just passively grow it up fast?

Where do you see the side quests that give kingdom xp?

As an example, the sidequest on page 79 awards 30 Kingdom XP. Many of the sidequests found in areas players are expected to explore at/after level 4 award Kingdom XP, but there's only a small number of them that are level appropriate for players that have just founded their Kingdom and the XP awards are insufficient to offset the fact that it will still likely take several years worth of Kingdom turns to acquire enough XP to bring the Kingdom's level equivalent to the player's (especially since these side quests also always give more XP in total to the players than the Kingdom).


Most sidequests available to players at their Kingdom's founding seem to give 30 Kingdom XP, and there's only a half-dozen or so. I don't remember seeing where adventuring gives Kingdom XP, can you please direct me to that page?

The idea that you shouldn't be able to spend turns to (reasonably) quickly grow the Kingdom level also seems to be counter-indicated by the AP itself (pages 187-188):

Quote:

The pace at which the PCs’ kingdom gains levels should roughly follow the PCs’ own level increases.

While the mechanics of kingdom building are self-contained, many events assume that the party’s level and the level of their kingdom are within 2 of each other, if not equal. If you find that the PCs are getting 3 or 4 levels ahead of the kingdom’s level, consider slowing down exploration and encounter play to focus on running several Kingdom turns in succession, allowing the kingdom to catch up.


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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.


The Practical Magic Kingdom Feat reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to 1 RP (from 1 Resource die). Should this have reduced the cost by 1 RP?


NielsenE wrote:
If the list of random encounters was maybe ~4 times longer with more non-combat/rumor sources, or even just interesting observation/discovery that percentage of random encounter might work, but as it is it feels like its too much (and would likely double the expected XP if you were tracking such things). I think I recall KM 1e's random encounter list being longer, but then again, it was probably ~3 of these zones combined with the much greater swingyness of CR that brings.

Worth pointing out that many of the Zone random encounter tables have a chance (typically on a roll of 1-5) of having you roll on a previous Zone's table (which can result in nesting back several Zones), so as the players progress the potential size of the random encounter table increases. The limited number of random encounters is, IMO, simply a side effect of PF2's rules using a d20 rather than a d% roll to determine them, and I wouldn't be surprised to see expanded lists fairly soon.


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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.


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Zi Mishkal wrote:


One thing that stood out for me was the traps. I just glanced through the bestiary and I don't think I saw traps in them. So you may be on your own for those.

And yeah, a lot more encounters.

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.

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