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Before getting the 2e AP, I was curious if the fundamental issues with Kingdom Building from 1e had been addressed at all. Is anyone able to comment on if any of the following have been rectified, and in what ways? (taken from here)

1. The players control both their bonuses and their target numbers. The Control DC for the kingdom is 20 + size + districts + unrest. The first two variables are entirely under the player’s control. Unrest isn’t, but it’s also pretty easy to get rid of with Houses. It’s also easy to avoid once you only have a 5% chance of failing a check. And once the BP are rolling in from static income (mines, quarries, sawmills) and tax collection, stacking up your bonuses is simple. This is the first and most important failing of the system, because there’s no clear way to fix it.

2. Very little happens in the kingdom. Regardless of how big it is or how many cities there are, there’s still only 0-1 events each month, with a very slight chance for more. The bigger the kingdom is, realistically, the more problems there should be. And the more events that happen, the more chances that “1” could come up in a d20 roll. Instead of one roll for events each turn, maybe the DM should be rolling once per settlement, and then rolling again for every 10-15 hexes in the kingdom.

3. Most events don’t have much impact. In the early days, a +2 for a turn can be a lifesaver, but it’s meaningless once the kingdom has matured. And since even continuous events are resolved with kingdom checks, which are rarely failed at that point, they don’t stick around for more than a turn or two. I would like to see more events with minimum lengths, but also events that have more of an impact on the kingdom. Ore veins get tapped out. Extreme logging leaves a forest hex depleted. Resources disappear, landmarks vanish, rivers get dammed, labors go on strike, border regions try to secede. International events wreak havoc on your exports, hurting your economy. Your nobles demand a war against a neighbor. Enemies stir unrest within your borders. And so on. And maybe some events just happen, and can’t be resolved with a too-easy kingdom check.

4. More specific to Kingmaker itself, the adventure path itself doesn’t interact with the system much. You get some BP as treasure, and maybe a kingdom bonus as a quest reward, but aside from the pre-planned events in book 2 (and some in book 6) the whole AP runs almost parallel to the kingdom building, instead of being integrated with it. I suppose they did this on purpose so that groups uninterested in the kingdom could still enjoy the AP, but if that was the reason then I strongly disagree with it. If you’re playing Kingmaker, it’s because you want to be kings, dammit.

I'm working on making VTT maps for the Mysterium in preparation for eventually running this AP, and I wanted to put some simple mosaic designs on the classroom floors on level 1. Obviously the white/dark mask of Nethys is one, but I'm not a big Golarion buff so I'm not sure what might be appropriate for the other three. Are there some symbols of related gods, or symbols related to whatever kingdom the Mysterium is located in, or other symbols for knowledge/learning/Nethys?

Spoilers for Sound of a Thousand Screams, of course.

While prepping the last half of book 6 for my campaign, I was struck at how odd the setup of the Fable was.

It has 4 levels, with each level being reachable through a different gateway placed somewhere in the House. The first two layers are normally infinite spaces, but if the realm is uprooted, they become 20′ wide circular rooms. The other two layers are always 20′ wide circular rooms, which is an insultingly-sized area to fight an epic battle in. There doesn’t seem to be any method to move between the levels, though presumably Nyrissa can do so at will. Or does she have to exit the Fable and re-enter from a different portal? The adventure doesn’t say, or not that I can find.

The levels of the Fable are all pretty boring. There’s a pleasant field, an infinitely tall tree whose branches the PCs could fall from if they weren’t capable of flight for some bizarre reason, a room with a statue of Nyrissa and a scrying pool, and another room that’s her bedchamber. It’s not really clear what the purpose of the separate levels is in the published setting – Nyrissa is said to avoid the PCs, so they will have to hop in and out of the different areas of the Fable, as there’s apparently no way to progress through them, until they find the one that she is in. And the levels that are empty of Nyrissa are also empty of obstacles.

When Nyrissa is encountered – probably on the third level, from which she can scry upon anyone in the House – there’s not enough room to have a proper battle. She’s has druid spells and could theoretically summon gigantic allies – but there’s not enough space for that. She can fly – but the ceiling is 20′ high. She has area of effect spells – but she will be caught in their area along with the PCs. All in all, I find the whole design of this area very puzzling. What is the point of the different areas if the players are just going to pop into them, see there’s nothing there, and then leave? Why such a small area for the final confrontation?

I ended up making a bunch of changes for my game so that it would make sense to me (see the above link) but I’d be curious to hear how this played out for other groups, or how DMs changed around the Fable for their own campaigns.

Our group lost a couple of players to life circumstances and we are looking for 1-2 new players to fill out the party.

Who we are:
3 professionals in our 40s and 1 student in his 20s
2 of us are married & have children, 2 are single/no children (all men)
3 of us are potential GMs, I suppose I'm the primary GM
we've mainly been play D&D-type games and Call of Cthulhu-type games, and the occasional boardgame, of late although we're not locked into any one game/system
we're currently in the middle of a long running Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign (see here) but have taken breaks to play other games
we're all pretty big nerds although we also have substantial outside interests
we meet every other Tuesday evening - that could maybe be moved to Wednesday evening but there's not a lot of wiggle room because of family schedules and whatnot
we currently meet at a bar (3 of us are casual drinkers, 1 of us does not drink) in Normal Heights but we're not tied to that location - it's just where we ended up after the one player that hosted the game had to drop out

Who we are looking for:
a reasonably socially well-adjusted gamer
age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality not important
would be willing to jump into the Kingmaker campaign! currently the players have two melee types and a cleric, could really use a druid or full arcane caster
- and I just want to reiterate that we won't be playing Pathfinder all the time, but it will be the bulk of our gametime until the campaign is finished

PM me if you're interested!

My Kingmaker players have become embroiled in the long-simmering Brevoy civil war, and it looks like it's head towards a big massive battle. And so I come here looking for ideas!

This is my question for the super-creative posters of the Kingmaker forums: if each of Brevoy's surviving Great Houses - Surtova, Lodovka, Lebeda, Garess, Medyved, Orlovsky, along with the city-state of Restov - had a unique or unusual army unit that the others did not, a unit that represented their character or skills or reputation, what do you think those army units would be? (and if you have the time, why did you chose that particular unit?)

No spoilers for Strange Aeons!

Chapter 3 of the Strange Aeons adventure path is out, and the gazetteer section is on the Sellen River (including the East & West branches). The East Sellen, of course, runs right through the Hooktongue Slough, site of Blood for Blood.

Anyway, there's an item in there that in 4714 (so, 3-4 years after the usually assumed start time of the AP, if I recall correctly), Noleski Surtova had "The Chain" installed across the East Sellen, just inside Brevoy's borders. Its stated purpose is to keep River Kingdom traffic out of Brevoy... although if said traffic could make it through the swamp and the lake, I don't think a chain is going to stop it! :P

The item also refers to Noleski as "King", which is a departure from the status quo in Kingmaker.

Spoilers for VV!

So many of you are probably aware that the 6-player conversion posted in these forums adds a cyclops anti-paladin graveknight to the final encounter of the adventure. The anti-paladin levels never quite sat right with me, given the tomb's and the BBEG's heavy investment with Abbadon and the Four Horsemen.

Vordakai is a worshiper of Charon, the horseman of death, and I began to think that it would be cool if the graveknight was a follower of the horseman of war instead of a demon-lover. Then I started to think it would be neat if V had other lieutenants, for famine and pestilence. A complete set, so to speak.

Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary has templates for the different horsemen, but they are primarily mounted combatants, which didn't really fit into V's tomb. So I just went with some custom undead cyclopes. They are:

Cyclops graveknight (cold) fighter 2, herald of famine (frost/winter themed)

Cyclops skeletal champion cleric of Apollyon 6, herald of pestilence (disease themed)

Cyclops bloodknight kineticist (blood kineticist) 5, herald of war (blood themed)

Full stats can be found here, if anyone is interested.

So I was compiling a timeline of Thrusmoor's history for my own purposes when I came across some discrepancies between In Search of Sanity and The Thrushmoor Terror.

Both say the Vanishing happened around 4050 AR.

ISoS says the fort that became the asylum was started in 4315 AR to deal with pirates, and then abandoned when the land was found to be cursed. Thrushmoor itself wasn't resettled until 4584, or 4596 AR. Both dates are given in different places, although 4596 doesn't match up with other dates so I assume that's a mistake.

The asylum was built in 4585, Zandalus enters the asylum in 4687.

TTT says that Thrushmoor was re-founded in 4288 AR, before the fort construction began and three centuries before ISoS says that happened! It goes on to say that Iris Hill was built in 4487, which also predates the founding of Thrushmoor stated in ISoS.

So, how old is the current incarnation of Thrushmoor? 400+ years as TTT says? Or 100+ years as in ISoS?

I suppose that since the town was re-settled by Hasterton I and we're currently on Hasterton IV, and we know there was a a Pragmus I in there (he's the one who built Iris Hill), the ISoS dates aren't possible.

I rolled this up for my group's kingdom. Supposedly it's a beneficial event, I guess in the sense that you might eventually get a free farm/mine/etc., but it certainly hurts in the short-term. Anyway, that's not my issue. What I don't get is the resolution of the event:

Overeager settlers claim an unclaimed hex and construct a Farm, Mine, Quarry, or Sawmill at their own expense, but are fighting over ownership. This hex is not part of your kingdom, so you gain no benefits from it. <kingdom penalties, Unrest> If you construct an identical improvement in an adjacent hex during your next Edict Phase, remove this event's <kingdom penalties>.

Why is the solution to a gold rush to build a mine (or whatever) in an adjacent hex? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Have you had this event in your game? How did you explain it to the players?

Now that my game has gotten into book 2 proper, I'm curious as to how other games handle the kingdom events.

Do you just say, "Slavers are stealing your citizens. Make some kingdom checks and maybe they will stop."? Do you roleplay the PCs taking an interest in/trying to solve the event - and then make the kingdom checks? Do you turn it into an encounter or mini-adventure? Or is there some other way? Do you vary methods based on player interest?

It just seems like the "make some kingdom checks, done" method (i.e. the RAW) is rather bland and boring. An exercise in die-rolling and number-crunching. And since the PCs have 3 weeks off each month, why wouldn't they be looking into ongoing issues in their kingdom?

Please help me figure out how to run this. My group hasn't hit its first proper event, yet.

So, 10 years prior to the start of Kingmaker, the entire royal bloodline (House Rogarvia) disappeared, and Noleski Surtova appointed himself regent.

Question 1: What are your ideas for what happened to Rogarvia?

Now it's 10 years later, and the balance of power is so delicate that Restov can't be seen to be annexing the Stolen Lands. However, according to the map of Brevoy in Kingmaker #1, Rogarvia controlled about 1/6 of the nation in the southeast, which includes Restov.

Question 2: What happened to Rogarvia's lands? Who controls them now?

I've read the PRD, studied the flowcharts, and searched the forum, and it's helped some, but I still don't quite understand how grapple works for grabby-type monsters. The rules are great for humanoid grapplers, but it's not clear to me how some of the monster special abilities are supposed to work.

1) Single attack + grab + rake

The tatzylwyrm has a single bite attack with the grab special, and 2 rake attacks. Please correct any mistakes in my process here.

a) The wyrm rolls a bite attack as a standard action, and it hits. The target takes bite damage.

b) The wyrm gets a free grapple CMB vs. the target's CMD. If this succeeds, the two are now in a grapple.

c) The wyrm does not get the rake attacks at the start of the grapple, as per the rake description.

d) On the wyrm's next action, does it get to make the rake attacks automatically? That's what the rake description seems to imply. Are they made at -2 to hit because the wyrm has the grappled condition? If so, is there ever a time when a rake attack wouldn't be made at a -2 to hit?

e) The wyrm then rolls a grapple CMB vs. the target's CMD (assuming the target has not escaped) with a +5 bonus as a standard action. If this roll succeeds, it maintains the grapple and deals bite damage.

2) Multiple attacks + grab + constrict

For example, shambling mounds. 2 slams with grab, plus constrict.

a) The mound rolls a slam attack against target 1, and it hits. The target takes slam damage.

b) The mound gets a free grapple CMB vs. the target's CMD. If this succeeds, the two are now in a grapple.

c) The mound gets to now also deal constrict damage automatically? Is that correct?

d) What happens to the mound's remaining slam attack? Can it slam someone else? What happens if the 2nd slam hits target 2? Can the mound deal constrict damage again to a different target with a successful CMB check? And if so, I assume the additional attacks are all -2 to hit.

e) On the mound's next action, it rolls a grapple CMB vs. target 1's CMD (assuming that target 1 has not escaped) with a +5 bonus as a standard action. If this roll succeeds, it maintains the grapple and deals slam and constrict damage. Target 2, if grappled, automatically escapes if he/she had not done so already, correct?

f) What happens to the mound's other attack? If it is lost, why should the mound maintain the grapple when it can deal so much more damage with a full attack?

g) It's said the FAQ that you can still make full attacks while grappling. It doesn't say what happens if you're the one controlling the grapple. Do you basically have to let go in this case to full attack?

Please help, this has been vexing me for a few months now. After several encounters with bears and owlbears and now the above two creatures, I just don't know what I'm doing in these combats.

I want to have the fey that the party runs into dropping hints about Nyrissa long before they meet her. The fey know of her But I imagine that they only know her by some title or nickname, like the Dancing Lady in RRR (and I don't want to spill all the beans right away). Does anyone have any ideas about good names for her?

She's a nymph, she's green, she named her realms Thousandbreaths / Thousand Voices. She appears to mortals in dreams.

This is what I've come up with on my own:
Queen of Whispers (playing off the breath/voice thing)
Queen of Dreams (not very interesting, IMO)

...and that's it. "The Beauty Queen" or "Green Queen" are just going to make the players groan.

Help?

It reads a little strange to me that by the time the PCs get to both Varnhold and Fort Drelev, both "kingdoms" only consist of 1 hex. Has anyone put some effort into expanding these nations? Drelev in particular seems like it should be more of a threat than a lone town waiting to get crushed by its much larger neighbor.

During step 4 of the income phase (collecting taxes), the players "Attempt an Economy check, divide the result by 3 (round down), and add a number of BP to your Treasury equal to the result." My question is, does the Economy check have to be successful (vs. the kingdom's control DC) to get the BP? The text just says to make a check. It doesn't say anything about it needing to exceed the control DC.

Characters trained in Survival always know where north is in relation to themselves, no check required and no listed action needed. Does this pretty much make the Getting Lost rules useless if the party contains a character with 1 rank in Survival? It seems like a hard sell to tell a player that his character has been heading west instead of south for a few hours when said character has a compass in his/her head.

My group just started running the Kingmaker AP. I can see from a quick glance that there are some differences between the kingdom building rules in Kingmaker #2 and Ultimate Campaign, but I'm wondering if anyone can summarize what they are, or what their impact will be in play?

Basically I'm looking for a good reason to pick one set of rules over the other. Can anyone with a good grasp of the rules help me out?