Warped Savant's page

My suggestion is (from over HERE):

The discrepancies in the Player's Guide versus what's presented in the AP books between the Silver Ravens being unheard of and, at the same time, them having just disappeared from Kintargo is easy to fix. Change any recent mention of the Raven's to the Bellflower Network and it all makes a lot more sense.

What I told my players in regard to the Player's Guide is that it has some errors and to change it according to this:
Page 9: Meeting a Contact - Replace all instances of "Silver Ravens" with "Bellflower Network"

Page 12-13: Star Struck - With the exception of Jackdaw (who is simply known as a folk hero from the end of the civil war and hasn't been seen in the last 80 years) the people listed have nothing to do with the Silver Ravens of old, nor the Bellflower Network. They are simply people that would have issues with Barzillai Thrune and haven't been seen since a few days after Barzillai came to town and instituted martial law.

Page 20 "Silver Ravens" section - Replace all instances of "Silver Ravens" with "Bellflower Network"

That fixes the contradictory information as to if people know of the Ravens or not (most people don't know about them), makes it so that it doesn't seem like the previous lord-mayor, Jilia Bainilus, as well as the lictor of the Order of the Torrent have ties to the Silver Ravens (because that seems really weird and out of place), and it shows that the Bellflower Network was established before Barzillai came to town and therefore gives more weight to what Laria has to say about what not to do.

The two that I'm the worst at:
1) Concentration/casting defensively (specifically, d20 roll + caster level + ability mod? No ability mod? I dunno... look it up. And yes, it's d20 + CL + ability mod)
2) If SLA provoke AoO (Yes, they do)

(And then other things like spells, conditions, carrying capacity, anything on a chart, etc.)

Regarding Rebellion Rules:
I removed them completely but had consistent, not main NPCs that would react to actions the group took. When the group wanted to get their allies to help with something I'd use the rebellion rules as a guideline. It allowed me to have the NPCs refuse if they didn't like what the leaders were trying to get them to do without having the players assume they could do a thing because the rules said so. This helped the players to keep their actions a little in check and not run around causing chaos. It also made it so that interacting with the NPCs was something they had to keep in mind. Some were more chaotic/violence minded, others were peaceful. It was the player's choices as to which ones they wanted to appeal to more.

I had 72 civilians die after the number was reduced from masquerade points.
I was surprised it was so low, but at the beginning they REALLY focused on saving people and opening the front doors.

If you look around online you can find some really good ones by someone that uses the name "jpstod" on cartographersguild.com
I don't have time to find them right now, but that's a good place to start.

Those maps look really good, physicist-pi! If my campaign wasn't already finished I'd totally be using them.

I had the random encounter guards in the Devil's Nursery be aggressive guards that were looking to cause problems for the tieflings.

People on here won't give you a definitive answer as people will have different opinions.
And it's not our opinions that matter. Ask your GM. If they say it's evil there's likely nothing you can say to change their mind.

At 0 hit points the character/enemy is down. (Having a different rule for being at an exact hit point number seems weird to me and is a hassle. It's also worth noting that the PCs get the enemies to exactly 0 hit points a surprising number of times!)

CorvusMask -- Paizo has said somewhere that the bestiaries will be available as PDFs once the book is released.

STUFF

Are rivals actually Throne loyalists? No, probably not. Are they going to spread the word that the Ravens are saviors of 300 people without anything to really show they did anything? Also no, probably not.

Sure, proving that Jilia and Shensen aren't fake is easy. Convincing people that don't support you/people that do support Thrune is going to be the difficult part.
As for proof, Hats of Disguise prove nothing. A couple of dottari are easy to be disbelieved, especially if Thrune loyalists spread word that those dottari were obviously plants/turncoats/bribed/the Ravens are lying about the dottari actually saying that.
All of the other things you mentioned the Ravens doing before the masquerade had them get more supporters, yes. But not 200 per PC in the group. And each of those things were things that were happening and the group stopped as a reactive thing. Stopping the masquerade/massacre is proactive and therefore not seen as a threat by most people unless you can convince them that Thrune was going to kill a bunch of his own supporters.

And no, of course it doesn't make sense to walk into the trap!
But being able to point at Thrune and say that he just tried to kill 300 civilians is a lot easier to prove if he actually tried to do it rather than it coming down to what the Ravens say versus what Thrune and his supporters say.

Candlemere addition is unlocked; I'm happy!
Anything else that unlocks before the end is nice, but I don't feel like something was left out. (Even though, yes, more story additions would always be nice but I can't imagine we'd get even close to unlocking the next one. And I'll remain hopeful that Paizo will put in at least a 2 page write-up & stat block for each of the NPCs from the computer game).

Really looking forward to seeing what they change about the AP!

Only 17 hours left to back this!
And the next stretch goal unlocks a new dungeon (that's in neither the original AP nor the CRPG) on Candlemere!

So, if they sneak around in the basement they'll likely get caught fairly quickly.
Have a devil see them (probably the bone devil as it seems to like hanging out in the basement, and add in a couple of bearded devils), a bearded devil teleports to Thrune, Thrune has Fake Thrune and everyone else that's supposed to attack at the masquerade show up (maybe do it in waves so you don't overwhelm them... devils teleport in, some come in though the orchestra hole, others come down the stairs), that way it's still the same CR (roughly) and you can have reinforcements show up as needed. But if your group goes in early and you've overcompensated and the fight is too much for the group it's a lot harder to justify NPCs showing up to save the day.
Hopefully the group has a way to let NPCs know if they're in trouble so that the NPCs can cause a distraction on a different floor (cause a riot outside the opera house, break in the front door, jump in through windows, etc) so that if the fight is too much you can have some of the enemies leave to investigate the new threat. (Because why would the rebellion not be attacking on multiple threats and the PCs might just be a distraction from the real goal).

The bearded devils, erinyes, dottari, cockatrices, etc are all just speed bumps, that's their purpose. When used during the massacre, they're there to force group decide between going directly after Thrune or saving some people by killing the minions first.
When used in a situation like you might have, with the fighting all happening without civilians around, the minions are simply cannon fodder so that Fake Thrune isn't killed in the first two rounds (hopefully).

What's the premise behind the boost in supporters - the pc's demonstrated they're good dancers? I would think it's because the pc's saved people from Thrune's massacre.

There's a difference between saying that Thrune was going to kill everyone and him actually attempting it and the Ravens saving most of the attendees.

As for the Ravens using a fake Thrune as proof, sure, that could get people to wonder. Bring out Jilia and/or Shensen... wait... what's to say they're not fake too? And if they're fake then maybe the Ravens made the fake Thrune!
Hats of Disguise? No one saw those devils with hats on.... they must have been planted on them. Or maybe they just wanted to fit in and look more human without being attacked by all these anarchists!
Dottari know the plan? I figured they were just told to lock the doors and not let anyone out. (I changed the scenario a little and changed his speech so maybe the dottari do know about the plan, but I don't remember the book saying that).

Hitting the Opera House early is morally the right thing to do.
Strategically though? You haven't convinced me of that yet.

See page 40 of the book, under "An Early Start" for general ideas. If they're caught and Thrune finds out the next book starts right away and the masquerade is cancelled. If they kill anyone they had better be sure to clean up after themselves as a dead body would raise a lot of concerns and might prompt an early start to book 4.
As for evidence, Thrune going nuts or rescuing either NPC in the basement of the Opera House should provide enough proof for the general population that Thrune isn't to be trusted.
But the rebellion probably shouldn't get the "Upwelling of Support" mentioned under "Concluding the Adventure" on page 56.

Dawnflower Dervish Bard is quite good for the AP. Decent damage, decent front-liner, good versatility, lots of skills.

Swashbuckler would also likely work quite well for your group. Yes, lower hit points, but really god at not getting hit.

So the devs just offered a mix of everything. This guarantees they’ll get complaints, but at least they didn’t leave any potential fan out in the cold. In fact with this campaign Paizo has really gone out of its way to offer at least something to every faction out there.

Yes, they have. I have huge respect for Paizo for managing to offer something that everyone will want.

I'm with Chromantic Durgon... the assumptions from the "never fudge" crowd as to when the "fudging is fine sometimes" crowd is willing to fudge seems ridiculous.
When someone says that they occasionally fudge what the die says I'm fairly certain they don't mean "I want this thing to happen so I'm going to completely ignore the dice" and actually mean something more akin to "if my dice are rolling really high all night and it's going to result in a PC death that isn't fun then I'm going to miss a little more often/not confirm this crit" rather than "it doesn't matter what my players do, I'm never going to kill them based on the dice that I roll"
When a GM is fudging dice they have to be so incredibly careful so that the group doesn't figure it out. Constantly missing/the PCs always succeeding based on die rolls the GM makes out of sight would likely make the group think the dice are being fudged.
Enemies using stupid tactics is a terrible option and I'd suggest subtracting 2 from each attack roll and see if the enemy still hits or lower the amount of damage you're doing instead. Bad tactics are obvious and the players will probably feel insulted by them; doing 26 damaged instead of 34 won't be noticed by the players.

Occasionally saving a PC from a disappointing death brought on by a bunch of high rolls in a row isn't taking away their agency, it's making them not get frustrated at dying due to 3 crits in a row.

Never fudging a die roll is fine, so long as your group doesn't get frustrated/mad (and hold on to that for a long time) when a PC dies a disappointing death due to the enemies rolling stupidly well all night.

Fudging to save an NPC you/the group likes seems ridiculous.
Fudging so that the players succeed at a knowledge check/perception check seems weird to me because I prefer my players to roll those checks and I trust them to act accordingly. If there's something they NEED to know/find either make it so that it's not so unknown/well hidden or have more than one way for them to learn/find it.

I'm honestly kinda confused about order of stretch goals yeah. Like Candlemere expansion sounds lot more interesting (if you have played the AP or CRPG, you know its related to certain thingy) than some of the add ones. And the way companions were spaced out makes it impossible to get all of them( I wouldn't have been surprised if we didn't get Octavia&Regongar and tiefling twins at all since both of those are basically "pair of characters sharing a story line", but Ekundayo, Jaethal and Harrim didn't have any chance to get in it seems :'D Kind of wondering why Amiri got priority over them since as iconic having her be tied to one of aps more strongly feels weird)

Like honestly, I think it would have been better to have no companion book at all than having nagging feeling of missing few from complete baggage. That way stretch goals could have been reserved for other stuff and there wouldn't be feeling of "this book is gonna be incomplete"

I haven't played much of the CRPG yet, but I assume that Season of the Bloom will add important bits to the story and help integrate the ending better. (Assuming they don't change the AP as much as they did the CRPG and have the BBEG so active.) So having that in the book before expanding Candlemere makes sense, especially since Candlemere being as it was originally written is fine. It doesn't feel like something is missing.

Not getting all of the companions from the CRPG is a huge disappointment for me. I find there's not enough NPCs in the original AP to really feel like you have many choices for who's going to fill the kingdom roles (which, yes, as a GM is easy to fix by adding more NPCs of your own creation, but the CRPG characters seem really interesting!)
Although we likely won't unlock them all, I'm hoping Paizo includes at least a low level stat block for each of the CRPG characters and a brief write up, like what they do for a few NPCs in the current AP books.

Paizo -- Please have at least a 2 page write-up with a stat block for each of the CRPG characters!

I don't mind the players not figuring everything out. Sometimes, in life, you don't get all of the answers. How did Strea end up in the hands of a half-succubus? There's nothing in the area to indicate how it happened. Let the players run wild with it.
I think, in my head, the Mahathallah cultists were working against Thrune, as was Natsiel, so Natsiel was willing to grant the cultists a favour and, in return, the cultists had to kidnap Strea from Thrune. Natsiel wanted Strea in the hopes that the idea of rescuing Strea would lure Hetamon into a trap.

But then I messed up and had Hetamon at the Ruby Massacre so apparently Natsiel was too subtle in her clues to Hetamon about where Strea was being held. (And she was being held in the Silver Star as a way to mock everyone in town in a "ha ha, I'm hiding in a place that matters to your precious heroes and you have no idea" type of thing.)

Oh, and Natsiel had removed the feeble-mind effect so that she could get some information from Strea.

Or something like that.

As a cool side point though, my group of very veteran gamers had no idea that the Hargulka's Monstrous Kingdom stuff was not part of the AP as written, which is very much a big time kudos to Dudemeister. His stuff was so well laid out that it was easy to flow it seamlessly into the adventure.

My group had the same thing! I added in most of DMs suggestions and the group had no idea what was different versus what would've been written into the AP (including a player that had played through most of the AP before but had forgotten a lot of it).

Yeah I plan to use the marriage contract too, though I have a feeling my players will simply shrug and say "Well, sucks to be you." I mean, this is the group that signed a treaty with Hargulka and gave the keep in Varnhold to the spriggans. We'll see what happens when/if they actually manage to rescue the remaining Varnholders of course.

WOW!!

And I don't know which one I'd prefer to see happen.

I fudge, but consider it courteous to sometimes let the GM know.

*laughs*

That being said, I have told players that if it makes the game more enjoyable for them it's fine if they cheat from time to time.
Or I've told them to pick a different D20 and try again if they've had a night of particularly bad rolls.

The 1E Bestiary also will include updated versions of characters that already existed in the original KM AP, but were only using Core Rulebook rules. So the Old Beldame will likely be restatted as a witch, Baron Drelev as a swashbuckler, and so on. Equipment might likewise be tailored to incorporate new magic items from Ultimate Equipment and later books. Exactly how many NPCs will get those kind of updates is yet to be determined, but there will be a fair amount of them.

That is awesome to see and might convince me to get the 1E Bestiary to go with my original soft covers.

Changing Irovetti to a Magus or something would also be amazing!

Hate to break it to you but i'm 99% sure that line is in the Pathfinder rulebook, as well as in just about every GMing section in just about every tabletop rpg ever.

Page 402 of the Core book:

Edit: Ninja'ed but keeping it as I wrote it anyways.

I couldn't imagine fudging dice to save an NPC!

I don't fudge dice rolls because I don't think I'd be good enough to hide it from my players.
And if the players know you occasionally fudge dice rolls to save their lives then they know that what they do doesn't matter as much so they don't care as much about the game.

But at the same time, I understand why someone would fudge dice rolls if it would result in a disappointing death or would cause a large, unwanted stall in the game. But I wouldn't do it myself and I wouldn't want a GM running a game to do it either.

I kept Strea in the Silver Star and the only change I made to the place was that Hetamon wasn't there.
But I ran Hell's Rebels are an incredibly heavily modified Kingmaker and I had told my players from the beginning that I wasn't planning on changing much and that some things (at least one) might stand out as odd/out of place.
Once they did the Silver Star they laughed and asked if that was the one that seemed out of place compared to everything else and we all had fun with it.

A game is about fun. If something is occasionally out of place or doesn't make all that much sense most people don't actually mind, so long as the GM can make fun of it too.

I use Dudemeister's suggestion and had Brevoy send a noble down during book 3 that had a contract for marriage to Varn's daughter (that didn't exist as written but DM added in). It created a fun challenge as the group had to figure out a way to convince her to get out of it, figure out a way she could get out of it, and that entire area was on the line if they failed.
Later, in book 5, I again used a suggestion from Dudemeister and had Brevoy working with Pitax and attacked from the north/east as Pitax was attacking from the west.

More and better maps, that's one of my most repeated issue

Allow mass combat earlier

Yes! Both of these!

...not using a teleport ring and then finding it could raise some interesting questions

But it's a ring of spellstoring, which is why I suggested switching out the spell to Heal (but have since noticed that Heal is too high of a level so would suggest Cure Critical instead, or Dimension Door as Latrecis suggested.)

3. Which by the way points out a subtle flaw in Book 6. The pc's arrive at the Tower of Bone, get the info from Oughorthan, say "Thank you very much" and go home. And write Abrogail a letter - "Thought you might like to know... Pretty sure you don't want this to happen and this seems more in your backyard than ours... Looks like Asmodeus and Mephistopheles are trying to screw you... Let us know if we can help... How are the kids... Etc."

Yes, but Kintargo/Ravounel gets screwed over first and it's kind of implied that it takes a long time before he's a threat to Cheliax so Abrogail might just wait until things have died down from the Glorious Reclamation and her forces have gained its strength back.

Why I don't like the idea of him teleporting away and returning later to his imminent death during the Silver Span Celebration:
1) It's disappointing for the players when an enemy flees, especially since they killed a version of him a book ago only to learn it wasn't really him
2) They haven't killed him yet so the PCs/players are likely expecting him to return and having a celebration seems out of place unless you wait a long time, in which case him coming back exactly at the right time seems too contrived
3) Going through the Temple of Asmodeus likely used up a lot of the party's resources whereas attacking the celebration they'll be at full strength and he won't have many (if any) allies with him as back up
4) Teleporting away only to return to what he should realize is certain death makes him look stupid whereas not running from a temple of his god makes sense. (Especially if you have him plead for assistance from Asmodeus right before the players kill him)
5) It's disappointing for the players! (because it's worth repeating.)

As for where he is in the Temple:
I didn't have him anywhere in particular because I wanted to make sure it was an enjoyable fight. The party didn't see most of the main space until they had cleared out nearly everything else so I had him down there with everyone else.
No, wait... the part cleared out most of the top floor of the temple, got the attention of the main room, had to flee due to a death in the party, and when they came back Thrune was in the main area, as was most everyone else. (Minus those searching the place and patrolling for when/if the PCs came back).

As for one round fights with him:
If the PCs die in one round from him they did something very wrong.
If Thrune dies in one round from the party you likely should've had more enemies between him and the party. He knows their tactics. If there's a way that thy can kill him no matter what within a round find a way to counter that tactic.
Hell, switch out the teleport spell in the ring that you don't plan on using and replace it with a Heal spell and put a contingency on him so that when he drops below zero hit points the spell goes off and he's back up to nearly full hit points.

Same here. It just charges you for the difference mach1.9pants so you have nothing to fear.

But some cards have fees per time used, especially if you're in a different country than the one charging your card.

It would be disappointing, but understandable, if they don't print it as a pocket book.
It's one that I'd like to have in the smaller version, but yeah, it didn't go over very well so likely wouldn't sell well, and when you really look at it, it's one book of what essentially comes down to one variant rule.

But if they did decide to make it, I'd buy it on the first day!

How are people managing the life/death of specific non-combatants, the friends and rivals of the PCs? Are you just having them automatically survive? Are you putting them on the map in combat?

I figured out rough percentages based on how many people died and added or subtracted from that based on what they likely died/where they were likely situated and rolled for each of them.

Time restrictions can result in a TPK if the players have unfortunate rolls in one combat. And not necessarily the final combat.
For example, my group is playing Mummy's Mask, they are aware it's more advantageous to get through a particular dungeon without resting. But then there was a fight where they consistently rolled low so the spellcasters have one spell left each, the healer is out of spells (but has a wand), and the other two are fine as they don't require expendable things nearly as much.
If they continue on, which they likely will as they feel as if they have to, they will eventually have to retreat or it will end badly for them. They've been good about conserving resources, but some things had to be used or they would've already died.

Time restraints can be a killer.

But on the flip side, if they were going nova every fight and holing up somewhere safe, that's really boring so having some pressure is good.
Finding that happy medium is difficult.

Valantrix -- Paizo responded on the Game On website saying to contact Paizo's customer support team and they'll help you out putting your order together.
e-mail them at: customer.service@paizo.com

Valantrix -- Google Chrome keeps asking me if I want to translate the page even though everything appears to be English. There's a button in the top, right-hand corner that allows people to change languages, even though that only appears to change a small amount of the text.
Perhaps it's due to that button that your text to speech software isn't working properly?
I don't know if your software can bypass that or not, but I've posted on the campaign asking if anyone knows a way around it and I've reached out directly to the company for you.

If you want to reach out to them their e-mail address is: contact@gameontabletop.com

Hopefully they can figure something out for you. I'll let you know when I hear from them.

Put more simply, there are 300 attendees. Each round some of them die and some of them escape. Until either they are all gone or until the pc's take out Cizmerkis and the killing of attendees stops. But even in this case the escaping continues until they are all gone or there is no need to escape...

Yeah, that seems about right.

Jebus, that's a lot of masque points!
Do you have more than 4 players? If so, I would adjust the math just a little (maybe reduce the masque points by an appropriate amount. Say, if you have 6 players, 50/6*4 so that you get the equivalent amount of points to adjust for the amount of players the AP is written for? Maybe do 2 masque points = 1 extra survivor if you have more than 4 players and didn't adjust the difficulty of the fight?)
But it is possible that everyone survived! I'm just surprised as my group had a decent amount of points but 73 people still fell.

To answer your question though:
47 of the 300 civilians fell during the fighting but because of the masque points total number of people that fell during the massacre is reduced by 50, so all 300 lived.
If 28 escaped, increase that number by the amount of masque points, so 78 escaped during the fighting. The remaining 222 still survived, they just didn't escape during the fighting but the fighting is done so they're all safe too.

Not escaping doesn't mean they die, but escaping means that they can't die. So if the fight goes on too long, 200 people have escaped and the GM has only killed 100 civilians the GM stops killing civilians. Out of the people that 'died' some of them managed to escape however you choose to describe it (I went with a 'left for dead/need serious first aid'). So [masque point amount of people] also escaped instead meaning only 100 minus [masque point] people died.

Does that make sense or am I talking crazy talk again?

@Warped Savant, Does figuring out HP values with skills add to the role play value at your table? Does it take something away from the fun?

The players seem to like it. But it's important to be aware that I almost never have them roll for it.

But actually telling the players hit points (with or without a roll) isn't something that I think takes away from the game. I ask them to roll when they want to know and I think it will add to the game. If it's a generic/common monster I'll just flat out tell them. ("Hey, you're using this super powerful spell on a skeleton. Skeletons have, like, less than 5 hit points and your minimum damage is 37... are you sure you want to use that spell?")
If it's something rare/that they haven't experienced before and is a weird thing AND they haven't hurt it yet, I'll totally let them use the high level spell and then say how much in the negatives the monster is because that kind of overkill should be kind of obvious and it makes everyone laugh. ("Yeah, so it takes 45 damage, so it's at negative... umm... 39.")

BUT I've known some GMs that refuse to do anything like that and are terrible at letting you know how damaged monsters are.
I've been a player with a GM like that and it drove me nuts. That's why I'm really open and obvious about it with my players. I like showing them "under the hood" because they all seem to enjoy the game more when it's like that.
I use a computer program for the monster (Combat Manager) otherwise I'd likely write out the current hit points (or possibly just how much damage the monsters have taken) right out in the open.

I want my players to win and I want them to have fun doing it. The games that I run have never felt like it's me versus them and if they get a laugh out of realizing that the monster only has 2 hit points left due to a roll being low damage but then the monster gets a major hit on them they laugh and like it because that 30 damage could have been avoided if only they had rolled a 5 instead of a 3.

As for lethal/non-lethal damage I let players know how dazed creatures are, especially if they're humanoid, and if the player is likely to accidentally kill someone that they're trying to knockout I'll usually tell them so long as they have points in the heal skill or have them roll for it.

Wooo! Level 20!
Now to wait and see if there's a way to pick up how I ended the original AP and run it for a few more levels...

I'm curious as to what people think this project would do on Kickstarter.

Looking at Kobold Press, which is well-established and makes high-quality products funded through Kickstarter, Tales of Old Margreve barely cleared $100k and their current one, Empire of Ghouls, is at $84k. Both seem like successful campaigns.

Granted, their monster books pulled in $200k+, but I suspect that monster books are bigger draws than adventures.

Now, Monte Cook Games regularly does half a million dollars or more through Kickstarter. I don't know what their secret is, but they also don't seem to do adventures through the platform.

The Kingmaker computer game almost cleared $1 million on Kickstarter, but we're talking a much larger audience there.

Do those who would prefer Kickstarter think the campaign would do Monte Cook numbers on Kickstarter? Or just that it would have cleared a few more stretch goals by now?

Kickstarter would have gotten more eyes on the product, and more eyes = more buys.

Something to keep in mind is that there are GMs out there that don't come to the boards. I think I GMed 4 different modules before I even glanced at the Paizo website, so there are GMs out there that would love this and may not learn about it in time. And, as I've said before, I think it's a shame that the campaign is only running for 15 days rather than 30 or 45.

Would they be at double their current number? No, I don't think so. But I think they'd be pretty close to it.

I'd allow it to work because otherwise it would be easy to argue that if the veiled eye was taken off after being blinded and then put back on it wouldn't work. (And having to wear something 24/7 seems like a terrible idea).

As a GM, how do you give hints as to how much would knock an opponent out instead of killing them?

Do you give actual numbers or more vivid descriptions?

Do you allow PCs to make knowledge or skill checks? Or are the players responsible for estimating CRs and levels?

Thank you for your comments!

When half the hit points are gone I'll describe them as 'bloodied' due to one of my players always using the term. Typically I go for a description rather than numbers and when the enemy is nearly dead I'll make sure people are aware that the enemy is barely standing. Once it's at the point that a single hit will do it I'll ask the player if they can do "XX" damage because they all seem to like that.

But that does depend on the monster.
Sometimes I'll involve heal check or monster lore checks as appropriate (but not very often). People want to have fun and for their characters to be aware as to how close the enemy is to dropping and it should typically be fairly obvious on a percentage base roughly how hurt characters are.

I had a thought about this today... Will the kingdom building and mass combat rules be printed in the collected AP or will that be a separate book?

Sure, you need those rules to run the AP, but you also need the core rulebook and that won't be printed in the AP.
Both kingdom building and mass combat rules can be used in other campaigns so they should be in one of the 'core' PF2E books and not just in the Kingmaker AP book. But it would be weird to print the entire set of rules in the AP as well as another book... My assumption would be that the kingdom and mass combat rules won't be in the AP collection, similar to how the rules for the core game won't be.
Am I right in that assumption or will the AP have the kingdom rules in it?

My wife pointed out a flaw in my thinking... The AP will have to include the kingdom building and mass combat rules otherwise the people buying the 5E and/or PF1E bestiaries wouldn't be able to run it.

Taking on Choral for the end of the campaign would be amazing!
And provides a different ending from both the original AP and the CRPG.
Tie it in with something as simple as destroying Nyrissa/her realm releases him and his armies as she had captured him trying to test her abilities or some such thing.

I had a thought about this today... Will the kingdom building and mass combat rules be printed in the collected AP or will that be a separate book?

Sure, you need those rules to run the AP, but you also need the core rulebook and that won't be printed in the AP.
Both kingdom building and mass combat rules can be used in other campaigns so they should be in one of the 'core' PF2E books and not just in the Kingmaker AP book. But it would be weird to print the entire set of rules in the AP as well as another book... My assumption would be that the kingdom and mass combat rules won't be in the AP collection, similar to how the rules for the core game won't be.
Am I right in that assumption or will the AP have the kingdom rules in it?

Fair point.
(That being said, I signed up as soon as I had the chance even though I have the original books and don't plan on running Kingmaker again but I wanted to own the updated collection because I love Kingmaker.)

And yeah, I'm happy if it gets to level 20 and the map folio, but I have no idea what other plans they have for stretch goals. Some might really appeal to me, we'll have to see.

If Paizo funded this project in their usual way, they’d have to make all the decisions in the dark (without knowing how things would sell). As such, we’d end up with a compilation more limited in scope - like the Curse of the Crimson Throne compilation. With no idea of the market for addons and expansions, they’d have been more conservative and we’d have got less in the way of options/content.

I agree with you, but there's also the fact that if some of the stretch goals aren't reached people will be disappointed.

I prefer to have the thought "Aw, too bad they didn't do this thing I wanted" instead of "it's too bad that they didn't get enough money so they aren't going to do this thing I wanted."