demlin's page

Here's mine (though untested) https://github.com/BernhardPosselt/pf2e-kingmaker-tools/blob/master/docs/ho use-rules.md#battlecry-skirmish-rules

Sorcerer. So many spells, great flexibility in spell lists. I just lament the fact that melee sorcerer like dragon disciple isn't really working in 2e. I think paizo needs to print more class archetypes like the battle harbinger (which looks pretty cool in the game I GM right now) that alter the base chassis of a class more.

That being said, if I could, I'd like to play Oracle some time. Such great flavor and interesting mechanics, plus I like the divine spell list

The thing that causes the most complaints in the early game are leadership activities. There aren't a lot of use cases as you've mentioned so feel free to just skip it or reduce them until dealing with unrest becomes important.

I wouldn't touch region activities since those are very important and sparse.

I'd highly recommend to mix army combat with the rules from Battlecry since army combat is just too mechanically boring. Recruiting and equipping armies is fine, it's just the war minigame itself is incredibly shallow, since it basically boils down to rolling attacks all the time. There are no good 3rd action choices and the rout rules don't really work as intended; it's quicker to just kill an army than to try to rout it.

As for early game war: highly recommend it since you need a source of ruin and tension. Maybe you can get in some feeling of urgency by letting Pitax or Brevoy claim hexes.

Kingdom:

When: After they've defeated the Stag Lord, Jamandi sends help, providing craftsmen and materials to get you started

Why: Jamandi wants you as an ally to prevent Surtova from attacking Rostland. The Swordlords of Restov were loyal to Chorral and suspect that Surtova f+@+ed with him.

Craft Luxuries or Create a Masterpiece could be tied to small quests that unlock those activities. You can activate/deactivate activities easily on the Tools kingdom sheet. Interject those quests after 2 sessions. That way you don't get overwhelmed, lighten up the turns and don't get overwhelmed.

Players can use activities more than once. There are a couple exceptions to that. Reread the rules a couple times to get an idea and skip the unimportant ones to reduce analysis paralysis. Your kingdom should level roughly ever 5 turns with V&K adjustments. You need adventuring content after 2 turns to spice it up.

Apart from that I don't know what to recommend since you don't really list any issues

IMHO beast master as an archetype was a mistake and it should have been a class feature instead. That way you can tune the budget

Thank you :)

I think I've got a better picture now over how it plays out in combat.

So when including in combat, have you found that the vehicle itself will be focus fired or how long the vehicle survives focus fire? My players will be on a ship that will sink/fall out of the sky if it's destroyed.

In a similar vein PCs could just focus fire the enemy ship to take it out. How did that work out?

Given that my players will be on a single ship I'm also interested in if the Hardness will prevent me from setting them up against 4x level-2 enemies since the hardness will probably be much higher than an NPCs damage and Critical Hits (Level 9 Sailing Ship: 15 Harndess; Level 7 NPC moderate damage: 17). Have you used any ship weapons?

So I'm currently looking at vehicles and their cost and am having a hard time justifiying the gold investment for a PC. On the GM side, I can't figure out how to use them.

A vehicle has AC, HP and a fort save which roughly matches a creature of their level and has no listed weapons. Ballistas in Guns and Gears target Reflex saves which don't exist on a vehicle.

Is an Airship immune against Fireballs because there is no reflex save? Does the Airship fall out of the sky once it reaches its BT (which is easier than killing an on level creature)? If so, it's the easiest way to TPK a party. How are stats like AC and Fort even coming up during gameplay? How can I justify the Gold cost to make it worthwhile without homebrewing and replacing everything?

That document basically says: up to the GM.

Your familiar seems hostile to all creatures other than you, hissing at them if they get too near. When you Cast or Sustain a hex, your familiar can curse a creature within 15 feet of it, prolonging the duration of any negative conditions affecting it by 1 round. This is a curse effect. This prolongs only conditions with a timed duration (such as “1 round” or “until the end of your next turn”) and doesn't prevent conditions from being removed by other means.

First of all, what is a negative condition. Note that the word Condition is not capitalized meaning that it does not necessarily reference conditions like Stupefied or Clumsy but could be applied on a much wider scale

"This prolongs only conditions with a timed duration" does the timer need to be on the condition itself or does it also apply to spells that inflict conditions that have a duration? What about Sustained spells? The core rules specifically lists Sustained spells as having a duration of 1 round https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2242

If the extension only applies to conditions that have a specific duration and not to spells that inflict the condition for a given duration, what about https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1500 ? The spell lists the condition duration right next to the condition, but the Duration says 1 or more rounds (see below)

Thank you, so basically it's an optional reroll with a +2 circumstance bonus, but the GM is not allowed to tell you the outcome (most likely only applies to events then)

Inflation

Looking at the rules text:

You can call upon the solution to aid in resolving any Kingdom skill check made during the remainder of this Kingdom turn. Do so when a Kingdom skill check is rolled, but before you learn the result. Immediately reroll that check with a +2 circumstance bonus; you must take the new result

Is this a more convoluted way of saying that the next check gains a +2 circumstance bonus and the fortune trait?

Because if you roll the check you immediately know the result based off the rules, so I don't think this applies as a re-roll like supernatural solution. Unless of course you need to throw your dice under the table and re-roll immediately without picking it up :)

A Saga Lands setting book

A book with tons of class archetypes or new subclasses that also expands on existing skill and class feats

More 1e APs. I don't want massively expanded APs like Kingmaker that delay the release for years

APs that feel as one cohesive adventure where freelancers collaborate with each other rather than each one doing their own thing

A PLAY TESTED book with fun new subsystem akin to ultimate campaign (imagine what could have been if they play tested mythic rules)

Choral is a red dragon and I think 2e brought him back IIRC. What I did was to let him lose a wager with the lantern king which turned him into a giant dragon chess piece

PS: something that your homebrew doesn't touch, but just for completeness sake: armies also have the issue that time spent in kingdom turns blows up because you get more actions the more armies you amass.

How we solved that: armies are grouped together to form divisions and per army actions like healing, attacking and moving are performed for all units. That way we were able to cut down army actions to around 3 per turn.

In general we tried to get more meat out of the fun stuff which are kingdom events and expanding your kingdom, so at least in my opinion kingdom rules need to trim down the fat and emphasize the parts that require interesting decisions (which leadership, commerce, and most army and civic actions definitely aren't).

Hi Vance,

We finished the AP quite some time ago with your homebrew at that point and while I think there are some great ideas in this homebrew, there are also quite some things, that IMHO make it worse.

The Positive:

* XP from structures is a great idea
* Fortify Hex changes make sense
* Decoupling the capital from stacking with settlements is a great idea; it never made sense to build anything in a settlement other than utility buildings
* Retraining is a great thing
* The boating structure is a nice addition; I added an activity in my home game that allowed players to gain 1-2 additional region activities using boating

The Negative:

* I don't think phases added too much too the overall complexity. In fact it reduced the amount of actions that you were able to take, thereby reducing analysis paralysis; the changes to the commerce phase lead to additional book keeping while basically keeping the outcome the same
* Region activities were almost always way more powerful than Leadership activities; this problem is exacerbated when adding more players since that allows them to expand quicker; were 3 region activities too few overall? yes; but we fixed that with an additional leadership activity, that allowed you to gain more of those. IMHO cutting down on Leadership activities while slightly increasing region activities would have been better
* Increasing civic activities with the added benefit of getting more resource dice will grind games to a halt in the late game; this was an issue in our game as well and we only had 8 settlements
* Construction phase: only adds book keeping, no fun mechanics
* Settlements generating resource dice will greatly affect balance without counter balancing it by some negative modifier; Civ 5 for instance used Happiness to prevent settler spam
* I've been critical of letting invested bonuses stack with feats since feats that give bonuses to rolls make them a must pick. Furthermore, skill training is so impactful that there is basically nothing that competes with them
* Specialized skills will lead to massive analysis paralysis
* Tieing PC skills to kingdom skills just shuffles modifiers around and locks PCs into skills they wouldn't have chosen otherwise; I think the general complaint wasn't really about PC skills not translating to kingdom skills but more that choosing a leadership role overall was pointless; it might make more sense to follow Cyberpunk RED's model and add a special, powerful activity or skill that only a leader can take; the CRPG solved this by excluding a leader from participating in dangerous or beneficial events if they chose their specific action

Ideas & Feedback from my players

* Leadership activities: Too many to choose from, too many duplicated effects like reducing unrest, too little impact
* Ruin thresholds were too high to ever matter; we reduced it down to 3 which fixed it
* Unrest seemed to be balanced to counter a consistent source of unrest like the bloom; rather than always acruing it, rolling more than one event per turn and/or involving armies during Hargulka seemed to fix it
* Players liked building structures, but they didn't like micromanaging 8+ settlements; I think the obvious solution was to only allow players to build structures in the capital (with additional space and activities of course) while having a separate system for settlements that give you a fraction of those options:

--> additional spots for farms and worksites
--> additional storage and shopping capabilities (3 levels below the capital)
--> options for fast travel using portals and easier construction of roads between settlements
--> defensive properties
--> slighly increased consumption

Overall, I think you've identified a lot of issues, but I think more playtesting would be beneficial :)

Having less skills makes everything out of combat less fun

To me it looks like books will be remastered once they run out of copies, use WotC material or other OGL content.

You need to reimport the adventure. Keep in mind that this will override all imported actors, journals and maps.

To reimport, simply import the adventure like you did on your first run.

Hexploration ties into time tracking and traveling on the main map. You as a GM will need to set time limits for completing chapters. If players play efficiently they will have more downtime to craft and earn money. During kingdom turns, players will be able to build roads to make travelling quicker.

I use Survival a lot for recalling knowledge, traversal or in skill challenges. There are a lot of free hexes so you can add your own content easily

It's also used frequently in camping if you're going to use that subsystem

Hexploration: Yes you are correct. I'm using 8 hours for one day full of hexploration. If there's an encounter that takes longer than 10 minutes, I subtract an activity or more depending on how long PCs stay out. If you run it in Foundry, that's automated for you.

Survival: Long story short: it's not fun, don't track it. I've yet to encounter a mechanically great survival system. You want to get from one interesting PoI (Point of Interest) to the next one quickly.

Random Encounters: See them as an improv prompt. When I roll 6 Boggards, I'm thinking about how I can connect them to another PoI on the map or how it fits into the main storyline. If you are having trouble coming up with something on the spot, pre-roll them and make about 3 sentences of notes. Encounters at night can be deadly if you roll a medium encounter and no one notices it. I don't use hazards unless they are complex.

No plans for APs, next token pack will be for the NPC? Core book. AP tokens in general will only ever be sold with the AP itself and previous AP releases won't get any modules

I don't ban anything but I'm awaiting the next wave of errata until I allow war of immortals.

Crowdfunding stretch goals...

You know, those magic the gathering collector editions with full art/sketch covers? It's the same thing

There is no official conversion; they've just released the bestiary for 5e, nothing more.

I just wondered about another aspect of the policies this blocks: artwork commissions.

If this is an issue, it's always been an issue since the CUP explicitly forbids making money off it.

I think the main issue here is the removal of the CUP without advanced notice and appropriate alternatives since the new license prohibits so many use cases that are common nowadays.

It seems obvious this is a way to consolidate 3rdparty stuff on Infinite which serves both as an easy gateway for existing authors to sell stuff and give roll20 a 30% and Paizo a 20% cut rather than just offering it for free and a way to advertise this store to the community because they'll have to interact with it.

Personally, I don't want to enter into a license agreement that prevents me from distributing my content elsewhere since not only is that in direct conflict with Free Software licenses such as the AGPL but it also shuts down any collaboration that can occur on GitHub. Plus I don't like Roll20.

I'm currently removing the CUP parts from my software and will just fall back on the OGL license. It's a lot of pain and work to shoulder that in my free time.

Probably excellent quality again. However, there just aren't enough new APs that use exclusive monsters from Monster Core. Plus the previous token pack covers 2/3rds of Monster Core IIRC. Will get this on sale.

Yes import it again without overriding your state. Make a backup beforehand

Yes to all 4

On the action itself: you roll a Maneuver check against the highest Maneuver DC of the target army usually. Same applies to Morale.

The Maneuver DC is 10 + their Maneuver modifier

I've read:

* Exctinction Curse
* Agents of Edgewatch
* Rise of the Runelords (plan to run next)
* Parts of Crimson Throne

I've GMed

* Parts of Abomination Vaults
* Age of Ashes
* Quest for the Frozen Flame
* Kingmaker 2e (almost done)

If I had to rank them:

1. Kingmaker: really well executed, feels like it fits together; Kingdom Building and Army rules are better than in 1e but still plagued by issues
2. Rise of the Runelords: really well executed, classic, epic storyline
3. Abomination Vaults: really well executed, fits together very well
4. Quest for the Frozen Flame: the end of book 3 has severe issues, otherwise I think it's a fine adventure
5. Agents of Edgewatch: goes really hard on the theme and executes it well; if you want a detective AP, this is it
6. Age of Ashes: not terrible, not great. The last 3 volumes are good, but feel disconnected from the first bunch. Book 3 is very boring combat and story wise and falls flat if you haven't run Hell's Rebels
7. Extinction Curse: Overall ok if you figure out what to do with the circus gimmick. Still better than Curse of Strahd.

Looking at the rest of the APs:

* Fist of the Ruby Phoenix: supposedly really good but it's an Anime style tournament
* Strength of Thousands: none of my players want a Harry Potter AP
* Outlaws of Alkenstar: supposedly big issues in terms of lore and writing
* Blood Lords: can't judge yet
* Gate Walkers: big, big issues; was warned to not run it since you had to rewrite 50%
* Stolen Fate: read like a fast food style AP: tons of small encounters that each allow you to collect a card.
* Sky King's Tomb: looked solid but does not emit the wow effect that a Darklands AP should; looks like a giant fetch quest
* Season of Ghosts: supposedly really good, can't judge yet
* Seven Dooms for Sandpoint: follow up APs really depend on you having played/run the previous APs. Planning to run that after Rise of the Runelords.
* Wardens of Wildwood: this one looks like an AP that allows you to play leshies; that's it
* Curtain Call: why bundle an Opera with an epic event like killing a god; another one with a Gimmick that does not fit, getting Extinction Curse vibes

In general, 2e APs haven't really grabbed me theme and execution wise. Paizo has this big issue in their current process: it feels like the developers are not talking to each other but each one just works with a writing prompt, doing their own thing. 1e APs felt better in that regard, but there were more extremes: either the AP was fantastic or really bad with a couple mediocre ones in between. 2e suffers from almost everything being mediocre instead.

Looking at your requirements and at my list, I'd recommend Kingmaker or Abomination Vaults

I hate it. Ran it in frozen flame and it's useless

So much for the Kingmaker Errata, which definitely needs one pass because of the included systems.

My guess is that 3e will break things up a bit more and will allow a tad bit more unbalanced abilities back in, simply because building an effective character who is better than other characters is fun if it's limited.

The 2e chassis is fantastic though and just fine tuning them in a 3e would be enough to make me switch to that. 2e feels like it could on for another 10 years as opposed to 1e which broke down mechanically due to build shenanigans and feat bloat.

Fully agree with YuriP here. The core is fine, the issue more often than not is the actual content that they put into it and the huge amount of time it takes to filter through all of it.

Balance basically never comes up in APs, Tumble Through requires an important reason to risk a Reactive Strike potentially end up surrounded by enemies that doesn't come up in APs. It just needs needs a more generally useful application without the adventure designer specifically designing for it. At least magic skills are useful for disarming traps, identifying magic items and creatures which comes up multiple times in every session.

Personally, I think those are all bogus issues. The big 2e issues are:

* too many archetypes which are purely flavor without a lot of interesting mechanics
* too many items and spells with niche applications
* consumables feel bad
* items with an ability where the DC does not scale
* lackluster skill feats
* acrobatics needs skill actions
* simple hazards don't mesh well with free healing from treat wounds

Crunch isn't bad, however the added crunch here has no benefit with regards to tactical depth in the actual encounter. It just feels like 2e combat with all of the interesting bits taken out.

Nope, there are so many mistakes in there and no tactical decisions, I'm thinking about scraping them completely and instead go for a VP system

A long, long time. Expect a waiting time of around 2 years after the initial release

Wasn't really a challenge for us. You need support characters like alchemists and casters or scrolls to deal with invisible creatures.

If your party cut those, now is the time to let them feel the consequences of pure damage builds. Anyways, encounter should be fine

Right, the also made a Remastered pass of the Beginner Box for instance.

Yesn't. It's a way to earn more money and players like getting new stuff so I think it's almost 100% certain that we're going to see new remastered versions of books.

Since a significant amount of books are going to be errataed (Guns & Gears for instance), I don't see a reason why they won't make the reprint Remaster compatible in the same turn and add the new Remaster logo on the front page.

Interested in buying this for the art since I own the book. No use if the art supposedly looks bad.

If you hand out more activities, pressuring them with unrest will become tougher for you. It's like throwing 5 PCs against 4 PC encounters.

I hand out 1 activity or 2 with a town hall for 5 players

There's no Remastered conversion. You need creatures from the previous Bestiaries (as usual) or AoN. There are a couple of renamed spells that you need to look up in the Player Core under the new name.

What Remastered changes for you as a GM is the removal of Alignment and addition of Sanctification, a couple of additional actions for monsters in combat and small crafting changes. It's nowhere close to the 3.5 changes.

PS: When I started to read through the Remastered books, I was really disappointed. The text is the same on almost every page, the rules are still laid out kinda badly. As a GM, I think if you own the previous CRB, buying the Remaster is a waste of money. It's really just paid errata.