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For anyone who needs to access the old version of the PRD but doesn't want to make a local copy, you can browse the GitHub html as a webpage using this link: htmlpreview.github.io/?https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mekkiss/pathfinder 1.1/master/paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/index.html.
Excellent list! This thread is a very good summary of how most of the rules "feel" to a group that's very familiar with both P1 and 5e. I felt like I was right there in the room with your group flipping through the book. Hilarious how their three response modes are like, hate, and ridicule. Desire for backgrounds to give training in a couple skills and then a skill feat of the player's choice from one of those skills. That's a great idea!
Three Likes: 1. Cleric Class - The cleric class is a favourite of mine, and I feel the Playtest version captures the spirit of the class even better than Pathfinder 1. I like the new take on deities, domains, and anathemas. 2. Monster Special Abilities and Presentation - The monsters have a lot of unique and interesting abilities, and they are presented in a way that looks easier for the GM to run than Pathfinder 1. 3. Status Effects - The statuses seems logical and clear. I like the way special effects like haste have been codified as statuses. (4.) Dev Team Attitude - Not really a feature of the game, but I'm very impressed by the dev team's openness, responsiveness, and willingness to listen to criticism. This gives me hope for the quality of the finished game, despite many concerns about the rules presented so far. Three Dislikes: 1. Class-Locked Feats - This feels like a step backwards. I loved the attitude of D&D 3.0 where many class features were presented as bonus feats, so other characters could still qualify for them. Even if a feat is less useful for a ranger than for a rogue, it should be the player's prerogative to make that decision. The only feats that should be restricted to a class should be those that require a class ability to use (and in that case, the ability should be the prerequisite, not the class). I also believe in the principle that the same action should use the same rules, so I don't care for the idea of having (for example) different two-handed fighting feats for the fighter, the ranger, and the rogue. 2. Ancestry - This has already been heavily criticized on these boards, but it is insane that you start as a nothing and evolve slowly into your race. That said, I think it would be the basis of a solid system if (a) obviously genetic traits like darkvision were folded back into the core race description, along with flavourful but low-power options that will otherwise never be used; (b) the remaining racial feats are more carefully balanced; and (c) each character starts with two or three racial feats at level one. 3. Removal of Take 10/Take 20 - These aren't a character power, they are a wonderful (and very logical) tool to speed up gameplay. It is much better to be able to skip quickly over low-stakes encounters than to try to force stakes in with irritating crit fail effects. Assurance adds insult to injury by asking you to spend a feat in order to skip uninteresting rolls.
One virtue of the traditional saving throw arrangement is that it tends to allocate the task of rolling large numbers of dice to the GM rather than to players. In my experience, GMs are often faster at rolling and resolving large numbers of dice. Players are more likely (for whatever reason) to do awful things like rolling each one individually.
"A burst of fire explodes, dealing 6d6 fire damage to creatures in the area, depending on their basic Reflex saves." The word "depending" is perhaps not the right one, since it makes it sound like they may or may not take the damage at all. A different word such as "modified" or "adjusted" might be clearer. "Each creature takes 6d6 fire damage, modified by a basic Reflex save".
Unsusceptible is the right meaning, but it's long and hard to spell. Also I'm not sure if it's a real word, or if it's supposed to be insusceptible. Immune makes it sound very permanent. Immunized is the clearest, but sounds a bit too medical. I can see why they had trouble finding the perfect word.
One of the most wonderful and helpful usability features in Pathfinder 1 is the presence of one-line summaries of every spell in the class spell lists. By way of example, I am speaking of the lists that look like this. Every beginner player I have ever observed uses these lists when choosing spells for the first time. It makes the process of learning to play a spellcaster simple and painless. These lists are very helpful for experienced players too, when you want to remember the difference between Sound Burst and Shatter at a glance, or see if there is anything on your class list that could help in a given situation. Unlike Pathfinder (and D&D 3.5 and 3.0), D&D 5e lacks these spell summaries. The results are miserable and painful. New players stare at their spell lists in confusion, unable to tell what the words mean. Their confusion turns to despair as they realize they will have to look up dozens of spells separately to choose which ones to take. Worse yet, each spell they look up has a long, technical description. They're still trying to get their bearings about what their options are, and they're forced to wade through paragraphs of technical detail. I was very disappointed to see that the current playtest document features only the bald spell names in the spell list. Hopefully this is just because it is a playtest, and all will be well in the final book! Thus my humble petition: please, by the merciful gods, include spell summaries in the Pathfinder 2 spell lists.
I hope this is one of the newly added spells!
Methinks you are seeking this thread here: Redcelt's Game of Thrones Scroll down and you will find the tables you are looking for.
Nope. My players killed him.
Lebeda - I think of them as being known for their finery and elegance, so I imagine they would focus on knights. Maybe even war chariots, finely carved and rolling out in a perfect lines. Chariots would be suitable in the lowlands Lebeda controls, though less use in more rugged areas. Garess - With their (vanished) dwarf alliance and their hammer-and-anvil symbol, I imagine they would focus on heavy infantry. Plate armour, polearms, heavy crossbows. They might field phalanxes (which per the Phalanx Fighter archetype would use polearms and tower shields at the same time). Their armies might even be supported by some iron golems. Orlovsky - I like the idea of Orlovksy having squadrons of giant eagles. This gives them an advantage in reconaissance and mobility, though they are cautious of sending the eagles into battle directly because they can easily be picked off by archers. On the ground, I imagine their forces to be well-drilled and professional. Medvyed - They are forest people, hunters and woodsmen. They eschew heavy armour, favouring stealth and mobility. Their armies include many rangers that specialize in ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. I imagine their armies are also supported by some druids or by clerics of Erastil. Lodovka - They are very attached to the sea, so maybe they field special units armed with hooks, nets, and tridents, like Roman gladiators? That's all I've got. I imagine Lodovka being less orderly and more rowdy, so they probably don't have such organized and regimented armies. Surtova - If I recall, their armies are statted out already in Kingmaker 6.
Pathfinder has a better animal companion system than 5e. It is nice customizing your pet and seeing it grow like a secondary character. In 5e, you just choose an animal from the monster manual. Wildshape is also better in Pathfinder. The 5e version is oddly balanced, leading to strange spikes and dips in the power of the druid class at particular levels. Oh, and summoning is better in Pathfinder. It is nice being able to summon tyrannosauruses and the like at higher levels. In 5e, you just summon larger and larger quantities of weak animals. This is silly and makes a mess of combat. So Pathfinder is better at everything to do with animals. I also prefer the negative hitpoint system from Pathfinder to the death save system from 5e. In 5e, it feels like you have a big safe cushion at the bottom of your hit point pool and you can bounce on it safely whenever you want.
In the Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg - Fighting Hargulka. Castle Jam from Stronghold - Kingdom management.
I just finished RRR, and it feels like a running joke has been established with all the owlbears we have met to this point. The players have speculated that there will be an even bigger owlbear in the next book, and then a swarm of owlbears in the book after that. Sadly, the next three books are distressingly owlbear-free. The last book does have those wonderful flying owlbears, but I feel bad leaving my players in suspense so long. It feels like they deserve at least one scene with owlbears in each book. So -- what are your ideas? Where would you add owlbears to VVV, R4R, and WotRK?
I decided it was finally time to unleash Grigori upon my players. Among other (more accurate) criticisms of the kingdom's leaders, I slipped in the accusation that Akiros was secretly a werewolf. This wasn't an unreasonable supposition, since he had been bitten by the last werewolf, although in fact he had made his saving throw. The players seized onto this accusation as something they could decisively refute. They agreed to tie Akiros to a stake in full view of the public on the night of the full moon, so everyone could see him not turn into a wolf. The players also insisted on tying Grigori to another stake, to make sure that he wasn't a werewolf, either. The appointed night arrived. Even tied to a stake, Grigori continued egging on the crowd and mocking the leaders. As they waited for the moon to rise, someone in the crowd threw a tomato at Akiros. It looked like a riot might break out. The party cavalier rode up in front of Grigori, ready to poke him in the face and tell him to be quiet. Then, in front of everyone, right in the saddle, the cavalier turned into a wolf. (Amazingly, in making their plans, the players had forgotten that the cavalier had also been bitten by a werewolf during the previous session.)
While exploring, the party got in a fight with a bear, and ended up knocking it out instead of killing it. The cavalier wanted to heal it and let it go, because it had only attacked the party to defend its cubs. But the inquisitor wanted to put it down, because it had almost eaten the wizard. They all started trying to intimidate each other and use combat manoeuvres to keep each other away from the unconscious body. It was starting to look for a few minutes like the whole party might turn on itself. But finally, the sorcerer settled the fight by suggesting a reasonable compromise: take the bear back to the capital and make it stand trial. So today was the day when my players arrested a bear.
They called the kingdom Midroy. (Because it's in the middle, between Varnhold and Fort Drelev.) The capital is Olegopolis. They built their second city on the Thorn River, where the rickety bridge used to be, so they called it Thornton.
I had the same problem as you did. The PCs could easily win fights by going nova. But the players spent so many days in the wilderness that if I were to run multiple encounters each day, the game would become boring and repetitive. My solution was to alter the rate of resource recovery. Basically, I changed everything from a "per day" basis to a "per expedition" basis. I got the idea from the Dungeon Master Guide from D&D 5e. The exact wording of my house rule is as follows:
So far (we're about a third of the way through Rivers Run Red), I think this new rule has been a big success. Players were a little leery of the change at first, especially the party wizard. But they quickly got used to it. They generally don't exhaust all their resources before returning to town, but they are using them much more cautiously than they used to. I like the rhythm this variant provides, too. It gives the party a reason to head back to town, rather than exploring straight through huge swathes of the Stolen Lands on each expedition.
Lost in the woods, the party hears shouting and stumbles across the confrontation between Melianse the nixie and the band of loggers led by Corax. I describe the scene and start acting out some of the argument. Corax: It's impossible for a man to make an honest living anymore, with these accursed fey always interfering!
At this point, I turn to the players and ask what they do. There is a pause. The party has sold logging rights for this hex to the Gronzi Lumber Consortium, so they don't really want to interfere. At last, the player playing Akiros takes the lead. Akiros: Um... Does anyone know the way to the Temple of the Elk? The scene continues a bit. Corax tries to get the PCs on his side. Corax: Come here and lend us aid! This wicked creature has put a curse on two of my men!
Corax does. Violent combat ensues. The players stand on the sidelines, cracking jokes and taking bets on who will win. Godev (the party's sorcerer and magister): It sure feels odd to be having a combat where we're not involved.
Combat continues. Corax wounds Melianse with arrows, while she kills most of the other loggers. At length, Godev starts to feel uneasy. Godev: This doesn't feel very heroic, not intervening. Don't you think we should do something?
"Eldritch Smackdown" is Godev's signature spell. It is really Magic Missile combined with the Tripping Spell metamagic feat. The spell succeeds and Corax is knocked prone. Kreesh (the party wizard and treasurer): Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I cast hideous laughter on him while he's down. Corax is swiftly killed. The last remaining logger tries to flee from the scene. Akiros charges him and kills him in one hit. Akiros: I guess I'm never going to be a Paladin again.
Pathfinder does a good job of filling in the "dead levels" of each of the player classes from D&D 3.5. Sadly, a few classes were overlooked. I am referring of course to the NPC classes. The most egregious example is the Commoner class, which does not receive a single class feature at any level. It seems clear that the class fails to fulfil its design itent. There is no sound reason to continue pursuing the class rather than multiclassing into Expert or Warrior. Even the Farmer in the Gamemastery Guide's NPC Gallery is a multiclass Commoner 1/Expert 1. I have sought to rectify this problem with an improved version of the class.
Alignment: Any. Hit Die: d6. Class Skills
Skill Ranks per Level: 2 + Int modifier. BAB: 0.5/level Good saves: none. Level / Class Features
Class Features:
All of the following are features of the commoner NPC class. Weapon and Armor Proficiency: The commoner is proficient with one simple weapon. He is not proficient with any other weapons, nor is he proficient with any type of armor or shield. Favoured Crop. At 1st level, the commoner chooses a type of crop from the commoner favoured crops list. The commoner gains a +2 bonus on Profession (Farmer) checks made to farm this crop. A commoner may use Knowledge (Nature) untrained to gain information related to his favoured crop. At 6th level and every five levels thereafter (11th and 16th levels), the commoner may select an additional favoured crop. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus for any one favoured crop (including the one just selected, if so desired) increases by +2. Commoner Favoured Crops: wheat, rice, barley, millet, oats, rye, olives, grapes, apples, turnips. Commoner labours. Hard work builds character. Starting at 2nd level, a commoner gains one commoner labour. He gains an additional commoner labour for every 4 levels of commoner attained after 2nd level. A commoner cannot select an individual labour more than once.
Favoured Animal. At 3rd level, the commoner chooses a type of animal from the commoner favoured animals list. The commoner gains a +2 bonus on Appraise, Handle Animal, Heal, and Ride checks relating to his favoured animal. At 8th level and every five levels thereafter (13th and 18th levels), the commoner may select an additional favoured animal. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus for any one favoured animal (including the one just selected, if so desired), increases by +2. If the commoner chooses herd animal or horse as a favoured animal, he must also choose an associated subtype, as indicated in the list below. Commoner Favoured Animals: cat, chicken, dog, duck, donkey/mule, herd animal (aurochs), herd animal (cattle), herd animal (goat), herd animal (sheep/ram), horse (light), horse (heavy), horse (pony), pig, rabbit, yak. Commoner's Bond. At 4th level, the commoner forms a special bond with one of the factors of production. This bond can take one of three forms. Once the form is chosen, it cannot be changed. The first is a bond to the land. While on his own land (or the land he works for a master), the commoner gains a +1 bonus to Fortitude saves against disease and to Constitution checks to stabilize while dying. The second option is to form a close bond with his fellow workers. When the commoner uses the Aid Another action to assist another character using one of the commoner's class skills, the bonus granted by the commoner is increased by 1. The third option is to form a close bond with a masterwork tool. The commoner gains a +1 bonus when making a check with his bonded tool, in addition to the +2 bonus granted by the tool itself. The commoner can have only one bonded tool at any time. If the tool is lost or broken, or if the commoner chooses to end the bond, he cannot bond with a new tool for 30 days or until he gains a commoner level, whichever comes first. The bonus granted by the commoner's bond increases by 1 when the commoner reaches 12th level, and again when the commoner reaches 19th level. Tool Wielder. At 5th level, the commoner becomes better able to defend himself with weapons resembling farm implements. He suffers only half the usual penalty for attacking with a flail, scythe, sickle, or sling with which he is not proficient (-2 instead of -4). Watchful Eye. Beginning at 6th level, the commoner gains a +2 bonus on perception checks made to notice any creature moving within 30 feet of an animal belonging to the commoner. This bonus is doubled if the animal is the commoner's favoured animal. Commoner's Stealth. Beginning at 9th level, the commoner can add his favoured crop bonus to stealth checks made within a field of his favoured crop. Improved Watchful Eye. Beginning at 12th level, the commoner adds his Watchful Eye bonus to all perception checks to detect the presence of hostile creatures. Advanced Favoured Animals. Starting at 13th level, a commoner can choose one of the following animals whenever he could select a new favoured animal: axe beak, boar, herd animal (bison), herd animal (camel), elephant, riding gecko. Greater Watchful Eye. Beginning at 19th level, the commoner only adds half the usual modifier to the DC of Perception checks made while asleep (+5 instead of +10). Paragon of Labour. At 20th level, the commoner becomes a paragon of labour, whose skill and efficiency are recognized by all. When using a Craft or Profession skill to generate income, the commoner always earns the maximum amount, as if he had rolled a 20 on his Profession check.
----- I realize these abilities may not fit all commoners, so I have also created two archetypes to fill other niches. Commoner archetypes: Favoured Tree. At 1st level, the lumberjack chooses a type of tree from the lumberjack favoured trees list. When using a saw to cut a tree of his favoured type, the lumberjack deals an extra 2 points of damage per round. The lumberjack applies half this bonus when using a saw to cut any other object made from the wood of his favoured tree. A lumberjack may use Knowledge (Nature) untrained to gain information related to his favoured tree. At 6th level and every five levels thereafter (11th and 16th levels), the lumberjack may select an additional favoured tree. In addition, at each such interval, the bonus for any one favoured tree (including the one just selected, if so desired) increases by +2. This ability replaces Favoured Crop. Lumberjack Favoured Trees: acacia, ash, cedar, elm, fir, hawthorn, hemlock, larch, maple, oak, palm, pine, rowan, spruce, sycamore, walnut, willow. Lumberjack's Axe. At 5th level, the lumberjack becomes better able to defend himself with axes. He suffers only half the usual penalty for attacking with an axe with which he is not proficient. In addition, when using an axe to attack an object made from the wood of his favoured tree, the lumberjack adds half his favoured tree bonus to his damage roll. This ability replaces Tool Wielder. Lumberjack's Stealth. Beginning at 9th level, the lumberjack adds his favoured tree bonus to any stealth checks made to hide behind his favoured tree. This ability replaces Commoner's Stealth. Tree-Fence. Beginning at 13th level, when using his favoured tree to gain cover, the lumberjack adds half his favoured tree bonus to the AC bonus granted by the cover. At 18th level, the lumberjack can add his entire favoured tree bonus in this way. This ability replaces the improvements to the commoner's Favoured Animal feature at 13th level and 18th level. ---
Master of Flocks. At 1st level, a shepherd selects his first favoured animal. He gains another one at 3rd level, and then every five levels thereafter (for a maximum of five favoured animals at 18th level). This ability replaces the commoner's first Favoured Crop. Pastoral Eclogues: At 2nd level, a shepherd adds Perform to his list of class skills. This ability replaces the commoner's labour gained at 2nd level. Seek the Lost. Beginning at 6th level, a shepherd can add his favoured animal bonus to Survival checks to track his favoured animal, as well as to Perception checks to notice when one or more animals are missing from a flock or herd of his favoured animal. This ability replaces the commoner's second Favoured Crop. Shepherd's Instinct. Beginning at 9th level, a shepherd can use his Handle Animal bonus (including his favoured animal bonus if applicable) in place of his Sense Motive bonus against animals, and in place of his Perception bonus to see through the disguise of a creature disguised as an animal. This ability replaces Commoner's Stealth. Protector of the Flock. At 11th level, a shepherd learns to act quickly to defend his flocks from harm. Once per round when an animal belonging to the shepherd is hit by an attack in combat, and the target is within the shepherd's reach, the shepherd can attempt a Handle Animal check (as an immediate action) to negate the hit. The hit is negated if the Handle Animal check result is greater than the opponent's attack roll. This ability replaces the commoner's third Favoured Crop. Handle Herd. At 16th level, a shepherd's becomes skilled at leading multiple animals at the same time. When the shepherd makes a Handle Animal check to command or "push" an animal, the shepherd may voluntarily take a -2 penalty to his roll in order to apply the result of the check to a number of animals of the same species equal to the shepherd's Charisma modifier. This ability replaces the commoner's fourth Favoured Crop.
See this thread here for details:
Great writeups and descriptions of the representatives. I think I'll be using some of those. It's always interesting reading someone else's take on the noble houses. I don't think it would hurt to have more than 50 BP. It would just mean the kingdom could get a little more set up before having to slow down and start depending on its own meagre income. If anything, having less than 50 would be more of a problem. Kingdom turns with no money and a tiny kingdom aren't very exciting, and people sometimes comment on these boards that player kingdoms expand slower than expected by the AP.
I'm running a Kingmaker game right now with the house rule that characters only regain their spell slots and daily powers with two days of downtime in a safe location (such as Oleg's, or one of their cities later), rather than with a night's rest. (Inspired by the "Gritty Realism" variant in 5e.) Based on my experience so far, I highly recommend this variant. It lets me think in terms of "encounters per expedition" rather than "encounters per day", and re-introduces a sense of attrition where multiple weak encounters over the course of a weak can wear a party down.
Thanks for posting all this stuff! I can foresee some of the amped up encounters coming in handy, since I've got a pretty powerful party.
It's fine. I assume the lack of response means, "Nope, nobody has!" The extra sites are a bandit hideout in a bog, a haunted ruined tower, a ford with an ambush, a lizardfolk town, and a magic tree, and an underground area with golems. There's about a page of description for each of them, and they are all supposedly somewhere in the Stolen Lands, but there are no stats or specific locations given for any of them, so they're a bit open to interpretation.
I recently started a new Kingmaker game where I let my party create their own (decidedly minor) noble house to originate from. One of the PCs is a young lordling -- second in line to inherit, needs to prove himself, etc -- and the others are the loyal bodyguard, the hired retainers, the family spirit guardian, and so on. It is working very well so far, better than my other group that I had using the campaign traits. They've all gotten into the spirit of saying, "Look, my lord!" and "Run, my lord! Save yourself!" So you don't have to feel bound to the campaign traits as printed; in fact, it might be better to come up with a more coherent reason the party know each other and are working together. If you don't think they want to be involved in Brevic politics, perhaps they could all be part of a mercenary band, or have ties to an organized crime group, or many other things. You could also check out Dudemeister's Toolbox thread for some other reasons a Kingmaker party might come together: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kpjz?My-Kingmaker-Toolbox#1 In terms of extra help, it is truly not too hard of an adventure path for a party of six (even using the 6-player conversion), and the players should be able to figure most things out just by exploring. You might want to start out without the extra help and then see if you think they need it.
In The Varnhold Vanishing book, there is a series of extra Stolen Lands adventure sites created by Ed Greenwood. I'm curious -- has anyone incorporated these into their Kingmaker campaign? If so, when did you introduce them, and where in the Stolen Lands did you place them? I haven't seen a thread on this topic, but please point me in the right direction if there already is one.
I'll be PM'ing you. Although if you have time, you might save yourself a lot of PMing if you make a thread with your added content. People on this board love them some additional content.
If they capture the leader of the enemy army alive, they may be able to get a ransom for the prisoner. This depends who the enemy is, of course; I don't imagine Hargulka paying a ransom for the return of one of his henchtrolls.
On the heights, all the paths are paved with daggers. (we're quoting ominous proverbs, right? I think that's what we're doing)
Since the whole point of the Stolen Lands gambit was to provide Rostland with allies to the south, it certainly makes sense for the Swordlords to expect aid from the players' kingdom. If the players don't want to send troops, the Swordlords could ask them to send resources (weapons, food, or simply BPs). For refugees fleeing from the north, you could allow the players to choose whether to admit them, if their border is fortified. If the refugees are let in, then they could cause some penalty (such as increased consumption or a penalty to stability) until the players are able to build a certain amount of houses or tenaments to house them. If the players don't get involved and the Rostlanders are crushed, let them hear from time to time that such-and-such a Swordlord who previously gave them BP has now been captured and executed for high treason. That should chill them a bit. Then later, you could have some of the surviving Swordlords show up in the Stolen Lands, looking for refuge. If allowed to join the players' kingdom, they will likely advocate for future war against Surtova in the north. Comparisons with Mivon (Swordlords who fled from the previous war) may be apt. If Noleski Surtova does consolidate his position as king of all Brevoy, his eye may well turn south, towards the other kingdoms the Swordlords caused to be founded. He might demand that the players swear oaths of loyalty to him, or ask for tribute (so many BP per month), etc., with an implied threat of war. Surtova's hand might also easily play some part in the machinations of Drelev and Irovetti, depending how well this works with your other plans for these sections of the campaign. Drelev strikes me as the sort of leader who would likely want to suck up to the Surtovas if they came knocking. (I love the whole Brevic political setup. I can't wait until my players get to around the same place in the campaign so I can start inflicting the same sorts of war and politics on them...)
For maps, it depends what system you use. If you use an erasable mat, then of course you can sketch out a new chunk of forest each time, though it can get tedious drawing all those trees. You could also make a bunch of trees and rocks and things on graph paper and cut them out, then rearrange them for different encounters. If you use a flip mat, don't worry about it too much, the repeated terrain isn't too much of a problem. Another thing you could do is make a list of different terrain circumstances that would change the feel of an encounter and the options for movement. Then you could roll or select from the table for each fight. For example, for forest you could have:
A lot of those things could be accomplished on the same mat, just be redefining the meanings of the tree, bush, path, and open tiles. A calendar is a really good idea. There's lots of options as others have noted, though I'm a big fan of this excel table: LINK Giving the players a calendar of their own is also a good idea and something I wish I had thought to do. Let them see that winter is coming and worry whether they'll be done exploring in time. To make the exploration portions less repetitive, something I found fun was to prepare little vignettes -- scenes or puzzles the players would come across, where they could learn something or avoid a hazard based on taking actions or using their skills. For example, I had one hex where the players came across a bunch of dead birds, and guessed they may have been killed by insect-borne disease. Then a little later, they were all being surrounded by clouds of mosquitoes, and those who didn't take precautions like covering themselves with netting had to save against disease. I had another one where they found an abandoned nest, and by studying the tracks and fur in the area with Survival, they were able to determine it had been an owlbear nest. Later, they met a mother owlbear with a young cub. You definitely don't have to have everything ready all at the start of the campaign. Honestly, between fairy pranks, "random" encounters, bandit activities, new NPCs, wilderness vignettes, and political events, you can spend a near endless amount of time preparing material for this campaign. If you have the time, the results can be very engrossing and rewarding. If you don't, then don't worry, just focus on the parts you think will be most interesting to your group. That said, reading over the rest of the AP as soon as possible is a very good idea. You can skip a lot of the dungeons, just make sure you know the key plot points. And you will probably want to have all the scripted encounters on the current map ready as soon as possible, since you never know where the players will travel next. If you want more miscellaneous advice, it's all over the forum, but one particularly concentrated thread of it is here: LINK
Interesting ideas! I like the idea of delaying Vordekai's appearance until the players are ready to fight the full lich.
One thing to keep in mind about the Kingmaker campaign is that, especially in the first book, the players will often only fight one encounter per day. This can make the fights a lot easier than they would be in a dungeon crawl campaign. You could start out with just the party of three and only add the monk if the game seems too dangerous; if you don't need the DMPC, then that frees up more time for you to concentrate on all the other endless fun stuff that a Kingmaker GM gets to think about. (But make sure to sometimes give them multiple encounters a day, to keep them on their toes.) I would second Pennywit's advice to make sure your random encounters aren't all just "monster attacks party." I would prepare a list of about 20 different ways you could meet a monster -- come across it while it is eating, find its tracks, find it sleeping in its lair, see it from across water, find it fighting another monster, find its corpse, etc. -- and roll or choose from it whenever I rolled up a random encounter. And when the monsters are attacking, be sure to have them attack in different ways at different times. I fell into a bad rut in my campaign of most of the monsters attacking the players' camp during the night; it became very predictable after a while but I had a hard time thinking of alternate scenarios on the fly. Pregenerated weather is great. There is a very handy tool in this thread here. Whenever the party is taking downtime, smile and tell them how there are now only n months left until winter.... Very specific piece of advice: If running Stolen Land over again, I would ignore the book's suggestion to have the two fey perform one prank each every day. With the multiple days it can take to explore each hex, the pranks become far too dense and predictable. Instead, I would spread the pranks out and have the pranks occur whenever the players least expect them. Get them to suspect everything they see is an illusion until it has dealt damage to them. Also: check out the Clawbat monster described in the back of The Varnhold Vanishing. It's a CR 1 monster that can provide endless fun whenever your players start dragging around the blood-drenched carcass of a giant boar or something.
Would Nugrah really reincarnate the Stag Lord, though, given how much they hate one another? You could consider a new balance of power, with Nugrah or Dovan taking charge, thus explaining the switch to new tactics. Or if they do bring back the Stag Lord, he could be reduced to a subserviant role, another reversal in the relationship between the Stag Lord and his father. If you want to have Nugrah fighting the PCs in the open, note that he has the Natural Spell feat. So he can wild shape into an eagle, fly over the party, and drop Call Lightning on them. Very fitting for a druid of Gozreh, and it gives you the airstrike part of the Vietnam War vibe. (As a variant on that idea, I may as well toss out a link to my forest fire encounter. There's no kill like overkill!) Another somewhat more out-there idea: Nugrah's backstory includes him having used black magic and human sacrifice to try to resurrect his dead wife (presumably before he got access to Reincarnate?). It's not normal druid magic by any means, but perhaps by drawing on the evil aura of the monastery, he could use black magic to raise the Stag Lord as an undead slave. The Stag Lord would work well as a skeleton, given his deer skull helmet. He could even lead the zombies from the haunted hillside to rise up and attack Oleg's; it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise if the players encountered the zombies before.
On a simple level of strategy, yes, using leadership to get followers and then forcing them to make things for your benefit is a good way to generate wealth if it is allowed. As a DM, I would be disappointed and somewhat frustrated if all my players dedicated their feats to trying to game the wealth by level system. But then, I wouldn't have allowed the first player to make his underlings craft things and give him all the profits to begin with, so it's hard for me to judge how things will be in your group. It sounds like your DM has a fairly mechanical view of alignment, so it may be that he feels the same about Leadership and thinks it is only natural that players should try to squeeze every benefit out of it according to the letter of the rules. If it were me, I think I would consider talking to the DM about this. I would tell him that I would like to start a knight's guild and feel like this would be the most realistic for my character, but I feel like the party is short of gold and that I will be penalised by not using the feat to make gold by crafting. You might be able to reach some compromise where you are able to earn money in another way; or it might be that he already feels the party is too rich, and that's why he's throwing plots at you so thick. It's a bit of a sticky problem, because it is probably hard for the DM to keep the game and the party balanced when one person is going out of their way to game the system for gold.
The Erastil and Calistria folks may not get along. He's about structured society and traditional gender roles; she's about liberality and sexual freedom.
The rules for siege weapons in Ultimate Combat talk about a certain number of full-round actions required to aim and load siege weapons. For example, a light catapult takes 2 full-round actions to load. I can see two possible interpretations:
How have others interpreted this? Is there a passage I am missing that clarifies it? I had originally assumed that A was the correct interpretation. However, I noticed recently that the old siege weapon rules (in the Environment chapter in the Core Rulebook) state: "It takes four full-round actions to reaim a heavy catapult (multiple crew members can perform these full-round actions in the same round, so it would take a crew of four only 1 round to reaim the catapult)." I know that the Ultimate Combat rules are intended to replace the old siege weapon rules, but I couldn't find a clear statement in Ultimate Combat as to who needs to take these actions. Now the old rule is making me wonder whether interpretation B above was the intention. This would make a big difference in the effectiveness of siege weapons in round-by-round combat scenarios.
The players have some relatively repentant bandit prisoners, and are trying to decide how to reintegrate them into society. Cavalier: Hmm... I might be able to make room for a squire. Rogue: Actually, I wouldn't mind an assistant around my shop. Wizard: We're not hiring all the bandits!
From my experience (just finishing up Stolen Lands), the key purpose of rations is that it forces the players to go back to Oleg's regularly. Aside from giving you the chance to introduce all the sidequests at Oleg's, this has the wonderful effect of burning through those calender days, bringing the dreaded Brevic winter closer and closer. My players don't mind ration-tracking at all (and dilligently ask how many days of rations to mark off when they travel somewhere), but if they did, here is what I would do: I would get them to figure how many days worth of rations the party could carry and assume they get that many (for free, the price is irrelevant) whenever they return to Oleg's. Then take your campaign calendar (a good idea if you don't have one, makes it easy to preroll all the weather) and mark when they will run out of food. If they get to that day and haven't gone back to Oleg's, they have to start foraging.
I ran this encounter today, and it went pretty well! I thought I would share the details of what I ran in case anyone else wants to do something similar. Thanks again for all the suggestions. I think I used pretty much all of them. FOREST FIRE CHASE Chase Cards:
1. Dry streambed A: Jump over (Acrobatics DC 10; on failure, player falls in and must attempt to climb for subsequent attempts) B: Climb the bank (Climb DC 15) 2. Thick and tangled vines
3. Clearing -- No obstacle.
4. Fallen logs
5. Elk stampede
6. Game trail (no obstacle)
7. Bushes and undergrowth
8. Clearing (no obstacle)
9. Down a crumbling bank
10. Escape by water
11. Safety
The Fire:
The Fire The fire advances 2 cards per turn, on initiative count 0. There are 3 waves, each 2 cards apart. The first wave reaches the first card on turn 2. Wave 1: Smoke hazards
Wave 2: Fire hazards
Wave 3. Full forest fire effects
Being on Fire
Clawbat Swarm On turn 4 of the chase, a swarm of panicking clawbats comes rushing through the woods. Each character must cower (missing their next turn) or suffer a clawbat flyby attack.
NOTE: Clawbats have been a recurring presence in the Greenbelt in my campaign. You may want to replace them with something else if this is not the case in your campaign.
Playtest Notes: A "reverse chase" like this turns out to work very well. Requiring all the players to get through the obstacles together makes it more of a team challenge than the other type of chase where only the fastest player needs to catch the fleeing goblin. My players were level 3, and got through without any deaths, though they left their wagon behind to burn. The inquisitor fell unconscious going down the slope on card 9, and had to be dragged across the water to safety. The last of the party escaped down the crumbling bank to the water just a turn before the third wave reached them. Honestly, the chase could probably be made a little deadlier; I originally designed it when the players were level 2, but didn't have a chance to unleash it for some time. When running this I actually also ended up drawing a simple map for the bandit ambush card. The players seemed eager to stop and fight the bandits, even with the fire close behind them. I gave a couple of the bandits tanglefoot bags for added fun. The most fun part of the chase was the cute owlbear cub. The players couldn't bear to leave it because it was "cute", even though they are usually happy to slaughter owlbears. It cost them several increasingly desperate turns before they finally forced the bear trap open with a crowbar.
This isn't at all what the rules say, but I think I would be more inclined to split it four ways, with one improvement allowed from each category: Economic improvements (1 per hex): City, Sawmill, Farm, Fishery, Quarry, Mine, Vineyard. Defence improvements (1 per hex): Fort, Watchtower. Road improvements (1 per hex, plus bridge if necessary): Road, highway. Water improvements (1 per hex): Aqueduct, canal. It's not unreasonable to want to cross your roads and aqueducts, or put up a fort to protect your mine. Conversely, slapping a city, a mine, and a farm in the same hex feels like getting way too much for only 1 blip of control DC.
I came up with a different approach -- farms can only be built in the spring months. This gives me just enough realism to make me happy while keeping the calculations simple. And it adds a certain rhythm to the kingdom year, with the most expansion happening in the spring. (I've been playing around with kingdom rules variants and running test kingdoms for months even though my players are still only on book 1... the kingdom system is too complicated and fascinating not to fiddle with!) Your ideas do sound interesting, though! I would think stockpiling food would contribute to stability if to any of the stats. If you wanted to play up the survival element, you could impose stability penalties in the winter if the kingdom lacked enough granaries or food stockpiling improvements.
Tyg's spells and Perlivash's Greater Invisibility are spell-like abilities, so they wouldn't have any verbal or somatic components. Other than that those are some very good points.
You know, that was probably the price of spun wool. ...oh. That... makes a lot of sense. And this just asks for a mini adventure with the PCs playing the bandits as they capture Kressle. Ah, that might have been fun! It didn't occur to me at the time, since we were still just starting out with the main characters. And it's all wrapped up and done with now...
In my campaign I decided to replace some of the mites at the Old Sycamore with stronger gremlins, to keep things interesting. In the common room encounter, I happened to replace the two gremlins playing guitar with nuglubs. When I describe their long, greasy black hair: Cleric: Oh no! Gremlin rock stars! The two nuglubs promptly run up and use their Shocking Grasp attack. Monk: Ouch!
The fire cleric shoots off her burning hands wand, killing all the weaker gremlins and leaving only the two nuglubs. Cleric: Whew! We got all the groupies!
Eh, perhaps. I can see what you mean, but I think it's reasonable because: 1. Nugrah is a heretic druid and a convert to Gozreh, a god who is more about the destructive powers of nature than about preserving the wild. The AP mentions him "finding strange solace in all the violence and impassive cruelty in nature", so he might even find the needless collateral damage aesthetically pleasing. 2. The Stag Lord has tortured and intimidated Nugrah into doing whatever he wants. So if the Stag Lord tells him to burn the forest, he probably goes along with it.
Thanks for all the suggestions! You've given me lots of ideas to make it a fun, hectic encounter. (And, indeed, what kind of villain wouldn't send his minions into a burning forest to kill the heroes!)
Oh, that's not a bad idea at all! That will probably work much better, and give us a chance to try out the chase rules that we haven't used much before. Thank you very much for the suggestion. |