n8_fi's page

As someone who is unlikely to ever play a Necromancer (it's not the vibe of character I enjoy), I've found this whole discussion really interesting.

From people's descriptions of what "Necromancer" means and what they would want out of a class with that name, I'm getting the strong sense that it's simply not a concept that can reasonably be covered by a single class, sort of like "Elementalist" can be fit by a Wizard, Sorcerer, Kineticist, Druid...

I guess my question/concern is that these pop-up pseudo-minion mechanics are extremely interesting and have a lot of potential for wide-ranging flavors. But, if they get tied to a really strong thematic flavor like undeath at the output, it makes it hard/unpleasant to really reflavor it. There could be a lot more space for mechanical support of different themes, but would they make another class like this with a different flavor after Necromancer exists with the unique chassis? It seems unlikely, at least in the medium timeframe.

Runic reprisal is a special damaging rune etched onto your shield that ONLY invokes as a part of the reaction to shield block then otherwise goes away.

I think that's the intent at least. I don't think the intent is to repeatedly trace damage runes every time you raise shield and have them persist.

It is currently technically ambiguous, since the wording says "The traced rune doesn't have its normal effect." It seems obvious that the rune maintains its 'until the end of your next turn' duration, but it's not explicit at the moment.

When you shield block it specifically mentions you invoking that reprisal, not other runes

This is another point of ambiguity. Invoking the rune is not called out as a free action triggered by Shield Block, so technically multiple Runic Reprisal runes *could* trigger on the same Shield Block. Presuming the runes still last only until the end of your next turn as stated above, and given the once/turn frequency of Fortifying Knock, at most you could have two instances of Runic Reprisal active if the Shield Block triggered after Fortifying Knock on a second turn.

Tracing trance shouldn't allow you to fortifying knock.

You can't use the quickened action from Tracing Trance to use Fortifying Knock, but your "turn" only lasts until your three actions are used, which means you would be able to Invoke as a reaction *after* your turn affected by Tracing Trance ends.

The damage is fine. No one envies a caster dumping their top level slots into blasting, we pity them for playing suboptimally. But they can have a little damage a little above average for extra actions and resources sometimes, as a treat.

I've seen blaster casters work great on many occasions, dealing tremendous amounts of damage, especially when they were able to target weaknesses or get around resistances that martials typically cannot. And in those moments, the other players have envied the casters, we just have to remember to weight at-will abilities against nova bursts.

The proper comparison is to how much damage other martial classes can do, and how much support/utility the runesmith has left vs those classes other abilities if it focuses too hard on too many damaging runes.

While it's true that you can't consider damage in a vacuum as the end-all-be-all of a class, it's not true that runes should be compared to martial damage output alone. Martial Strike damage frequently has to contend with high AC or with physical resistance that reduces much of their actual damage potential. Runes grant access to different damage types and will almost certainly allow you target different saves (I'll eat my words if they end up only being able to target Fort saves, but that would feel awful mechanically and for verisimilitude).

The damage isn't even that bad sine at higher levels many monsters have a ton of fortitude save.

While the basic damage runes in the playtest target Fortitude, it seems quite likely that there will be runes that target other saves (frankly, I'm a bit confused as to why the Whetstone rune doesn't target Reflex). We shouldn't be basing damage considerations solely on the basis of Fortitude targeting, especially since existing spell damage doesn't seem to weight for high-save prevalence for the purpose of damage balancing.

Both of the runes are weaker side by side then a rank 1 spell, Thunderstrike or whatever.

A single damage rune invocation deals 0.78x as much damage as a max rank thunderstrike or acid grip (single target save spells) at all levels. More than 3/4 damage of a max rank spell is too much damage for an at-will ability, even with the range restrictions.

We should be comparing to other at-will abilities anyways. Invoked damage runes start at about 1.4x damage compared to single target save cantrips, which seems pretty fair given the either touch range or extra action. But, the scaling is such that, by 3rd level, runes are dealing 1.87x cantrip damage, by 5th level runes are dealing 2.1x cantrip damage, and they continue to increase up to 2.55x.

Ultimately, I think 2d6 + 1d6/(2 Levels) is the proper balance. It keeps the rune damage at 1.4x cantrip damage across levels and makes rune damage as a fraction of max-rank-spell damage scale as 0.78x at 1st, 0.58x at 3rd, 0.52x at 5th, and gradually down to 0.43x at 19th.

n8_fi wrote:

*snip*

With Thralls like this, I'm never walking anywhere, my butt will rarely leave my palanquin.

They will be bringing my a dinning room table with me most places, so my party can take cover behind it.
They will dig tunnels, deliver explosives/accelerants and set them off,break down walls,strip dungeons of treasure,gather wood for bonfires,drop stones on my enemies, redirect rivers,etc.

Their bodies won't need to become difficult terrain , they will bring the piles of junk with them.
Seriously, just tarps filled with whatever we loot from the dungeon (which will be everything) dropped when they are destroyed, should be plenty to clog up the battle field.

These are the kind of things I think of when you give me access to disposable servants
Fun for me, but could be a problem for the table.

Except very little of the above would be possible considering I've only been discussing Interacts and Strides as part of a grave cantrip (or other single-action effect).

I don't see how this actually causes any more problem for a table than any problem player would by trying to do things outside the actual mechanics of their abilities.

I know I've run into that more than once when people learn that Summoner doesn't actually want to do very much summoning.

Holy cow... idk how I only just realized that the mechanics of the playtest Necromancer make much more sense as the chassis for a class called "Summoner" (whereas the existing Summoner is more of a "Binder"). Well, that bums me out now...

It's possible, but it's also worth noting there's a significant mechanical distinction between flourish and 1/round, in that you can stack the latter but not the former.

True, which is why I think it's notable that circumstantial but significant evidence points to it being an oversight. It's certainly possible that the devs want us to test the limits on flourish vs 1/r, but as has been pointed out in other threads already, the action compression gets out of hand extremely fast.

Flourish hurts multiclassing combos options.

It doesn't hurt multiclassing options, it reduces action compression abuse. The established meta is that almost every action that grants improved action economy is flourish (unless the granted actions are severely limited in scope and power).

Looking at the whole playtest doc, there are 0 occurrences of the flourish trait. Moreover, the fact only action compression feats, including two-action Artist’s Attendance, have the “Frequency once per round” entry is suspicious.

Imho, it’s safe to assume the things listed as “Frequency once per round” should in fact be flourish actions.

I don’t think I’m understanding people’s issues with Interact actions. Thralls start from a position of “can’t act unless the Necromancer’s effect specifically tells them what to do.” Being able to Interact through a control spell lets them hold and carry items, sure, but it doesn’t let them make attacks with weapons. They also still couldn’t Activate Magic or alchemical items even with only Interact components (Activate is its own activity with Interact as a subordinate action); these are also actions which generally make sense to be too complicated for a thrall to perform. If there are other things people are concerned about, I’m pretty confident that viewing the thralls from this direction of granted actions would assuage the concern.

The only thing I can think that this actually requires in rules text is stating the Bulk limits of thralls; based on being level -1 creatures with no stats, it would be easy to just say encumbered 5, max 10.

Also I still prefer to put everything in the single cantrip. The idea is that all necromancers including its archetypes will have both cantrips so it doesn't makes sense it just occupy more book space with 2 cantrips instead of put everything into a single one.

The thing is that combining them into a single cantrip means you have to add a bunch more wording to make distinctions and clarifications in how things work. Realistically, it would likely come out to be a similar amount of book space but significantly more potential for confusion when reading.

I also noticed that n8_fi put an Interact action here. I don't think that's a good idea. We already have many strange restrictions that was added to Eidolons due Interact so I prefer to not enter (again) in this problematic situation. Also I like the idea of thralls being an stupid army of undeads that's is unable to open a door like most zombies movies are.

Many people have stated a desire for the thralls to do stupid simple things much like a phantasmal minion does. Opening up specifically single Interact actions does not open any of the restrictions that came with eidolons. Eidolons can take Interact actions, they are just limited in what gear they can use or wield. Being able to use an Interact action makes no change as to what other actions the thralls can use because they start out from a very different allowed-actions space than eidolons.

I also think that Subtle trait is too much. It's obvious who is controlling the undeads and I don't see too much reason to make necromancers immune to silence spell when all other casters (with exception of psichic) have to deal with it for almost every cantrip.

The subtle trait is not really a sticking point for me. Sure, it also makes sense for it to not have the subtle trait, I was just thinking of the way that this is a cantrip that essentially emulates the Sustain action of a normal summon effect, and that Sustain would not be affected by silence, counteract effects based on sight, etc.

Honestly this seems fine all by itself as a single action cantrip. You're essentially giving your thrall that 3rd action instead of taking it yourself.

Or, wait, no. Make this a free action that is triggered by you casting a grave spell (but not grave cantrips) or spell from a slot. Heightened versions might allow you to make a strike or take a skill action using your spell attack modifier rather than an interact with no roll, but probably also should consume the thrall in the process on anything but a critical success.

Heck, make it a 1 action spell by default and then let there be a feat that does the free version.

Yeah, I forgot to put in action symbols and can't edit now. But the Control cantrip is meant to be single-action. Having a feat that lets you do Control as a free action triggered by using a limited resource is also fun!

Actually, now that I think about it, there should probably be at least a couple grave cantrips that consume your Thrall as part of the cost instead of a focus point.

I think this is a good idea, and something that could easily be tied to the Grim Fascinations. Bone Spear could easily be translated to a grave cantrip with minor damage rebalancing, and weakened Muscle Barrier and Necrotic Bomb would make good grave cantrips for flesh magicians and spirit mongers, respectively.

Idk, I think its a fun design space that didn't really get dug into yet.

This brings me back to eliminating their ability to force a Tumble Through check.

I think the answer is that creatures auto-succeed Tumble Through against the thralls. Baked into Tumble Through is that squares in the creature's space you're moving through are difficult terrain. So functionally, without any rewriting, enemies just move through thralls as difficult terrain.

I think this is a pretty good stab at solving the thematic-mechanical balance concerns around the current Create Thrall as a core mechanic. I have a few suggested changes though: even condensing attacks to a single roll dramatically increases the potential edge cases that have to be clarified and the in-game cognitive load for GM and PC alike; and, I think it's best to separate the Create and Control cantrips, otherwise listing duration becomes tricky and triggering off creation vs just control gets weird.

Create Thrall

[Uncommon | Cantrip | Conc. | Grave | Manip. | Necro. | Thrall]
Range: 30 feet
Duration: 1 minute
You conjure forth an expendable undead thrall in range. When you cast the spell, you can have the created thrall make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d8 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.
Heightened (+3) You can create an additional thrall, however only one thrall may make the granted melee unarmed Strike; the Strike's damage increases by 1d8.

For the Create grave cantrip, I think a bulleted list like those for spells with multiple options like prestidigitation would be appropriate to reduce cognitive load. Similar to the Create cantrip, only one thrall should make an attack. I also added the Interact option that people have talked a lot about and added the subtle trait to put this command on similar footing to Sustains and Commands (I left manipulate in bc it seems like a lot of pointing/waving/etc would go along with these commands).

Control Thrall

[Uncommon | Cantrip | Conc. | Grave | Manip. | Necro. | Subtle | Thrall]
Range: 30 feet
Targets: 1 of your thralls
You issue a silent command to an undead thrall in range. When you cast the spell, choose one of the following effects:
- Move. The thrall Stands or it Strides up to your Speed.
- Interact. The thrall uses a single Interact action to perform a simple task that requires no skill check.
After resolving the chosen effect, if the thrall is still within range, it can make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d8 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.
Heightened (+3) You can target one additional thrall, but all thralls receive the same command and only one thrall may make the granted melee unarmed Strike; the Strike's damage increases by 1d8.

Since Pluuna, rune of illumination produces light in an emanation, and since, from the text on emanation areas,

Unless the text states otherwise, the creature creating an emanation effect chooses whether the creature at its center is affected,

the invocation for Pluuna, which effects creatures in the light, does not have to affect the rune-bearer if the Runesmith doesn't want it to.

Now, this is relying on an exact mechanical interpretation of emanations. Light sources typically report the area of the light as a radius so this doesn't typically come up, but if the rune-bearer were in darkness you could potentially decide that it remains in darkness by following the emanation rules specifically. That seems pretty odd when trying to envision it... So does that mean the rune-bearer must be considered to be "in the light"? I could also see an interpretation where they are lit up, but they aren't affected by the invocation since the flash is outward from them rather than something they are looking at.

*Aside: Pluuna's invocation seems really weak? A round of dazzled on foes in a 40' emanation is nice, but it's going to be really hard to not hit your allies with it too.

The more I think about it, the more I am frustrated by this. Runes either have a fixed tradition listed in their traits, or they can be any of the four traditions. Given how the magic traditions overlap, this feels pretty silly.

For example, Atryl, rune of fire, is a primal rune. Why can’t it be an arcane rune? Primal and arcane have equal access to the matter essence and fire spells, but I can’t etch an arcane fire rune?

The solution also seems pretty simple. Just put a “Traditions” entry at the top of each rune, right above the “Usage” entry. Frankly it’s probably easier to quickly read over than checking the traits of each rune anyway.

Martialmasters wrote:

At level 6 can apply one at range for one action

At level 12 your base rune range is 30 feet for one action

... But how?! I can't find anything like that.

Rune singer is once per minute, but it's 1st level. Don't see anything at 12th.

I think they’re tangentially referring to Tracing Trance for the 6th level feat and they’re misreading Distant Invocations for the 12th level feat (since it applies to Invoke, not Trace).

I do think it’s best that they remain tradition-agnostic, since in-setting runes appear using/as manifestations of all traditions and essences. But I do agree that if a choice is made to lock them into a tradition, arcane is the obvious choice.

People say this, but the argument is always using the spell lists as a justification, when my, and other's, position is that the spell lists are a mess

Whether or not people think the spell lists are a mess is essentially irrelevant at this point. Unless they're going to completely overhaul the spell lists, they are what they are (sparing minor errata).

Moreover, it is exceptionally un-magical to say something akin to, "This is the primal list. It can only have Matter and Life spells, nothing outside those strict boundaries." That system would suck imho. Cutting magic up in sharp lines doesn't work; tbf, even trying to cut up scientific things in the real world with sharp lines like that almost never works.

The current spell lists are a compromise between every class getting their own curated list (which is a massive hassle for developers and players alike) and a broader system derived more from a foundational background.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Since Necromancy is no longer a school post-remaster, then it does make sense to change Necromancy to be related to Occult magic rather than Arcane.

Since what you are doing with Necromancy is not "you are making a thing live again" but "you are putting something into a thing that is dead in order to make it do something."

Basically whichever Magic Traditions use Spirit should be able to do it, with Divine being able to do it via "vibes" and Occult being able to do it with "understanding."

We well could justify it with the spirit essence, but secrets of magic explains necromancy as vital essence. Hypothetical necromancy using spirit essence would probably never have the unholy trait, and the undead would logically neither have void resistance or immunity, nor void healing

The occult tradition is not barred from using magic tied to the Life essence. All of the traditions dip into essences other than their primary two: arcane has broad access to everything except the vital half of Life; divine frequently creates or manipulates fire, water, food, etc. from the Matter essence; primal manipulates thoughts and emotions with spells like fear and charm. There are many meta/mechanical reasons for Necromancer to fall under occult, and the only real reason I can think that they should be arcane or divine instead is bc of the 8 undeath-related spells that are on those lists that aren't on the occult list; but again, that's an incredibly easy remedy with a small aside in the Necromancer that adds those spells to the occult list for them specifically.

n8_fi wrote:

I also take slight issue with Traced runes only lasting until the start of your next turn,

End of next turn.

Ah, yes thank you. I had it right in my head and then typed it wrong in haste.

I also take slight issue with Traced runes only lasting until the start end of your next turn, but I haven’t quite solidified on the issue yet. My gut instinct is that making the duration longer requires the non-invoked buffs/debuffs to be much weaker, but then you’re incentivized to Invoke constantly, which means you’re right back to Tracing constantly…

Idk. I do feel like I’d be more satisfied with a 1 minute duration with weaker passives since I wouldn’t feel like I wasted a rune if I didn’t invoke it in time. Maybe even 1 minute duration or the target can spend a single Interact action to remove the traced rune?

I feel so split because on one hand I don't think we need to subclassify every god damn thing in the game, Fighter and Monk do just fine with only having feat selection as their build differentiators, but on the other hand a lot of these suggestions are really good. That said keeping the KAS as a solid Int is probably a good call if the subclass idea does go through

This was sort of why I started the topic. I think monk does really well without subclasses thanks to stances and qi spells, and fighter does okay with certain feat chains and picking your specialty weapon group. And so the urge to not just say “everything needs subclasses” is a good one, but it also feels like the Runesmith would actually benefit from some flavorful playstyle differentiation at the outset.

I do agree that the KAS should stay Int. They are a Crafting-focused class after all. I definitely see the argument for Cha-based rune-singer as a performative thing, but I don’t think it merits opening up the can of worms that is a variable KAS class. Especially since, flavor-wise, you still need to know and understand the runes you’re singing, which is the intellectual/practiced/precision-skill side of performances anyway.

n8_fi wrote:

I think some very good points about the cognitive load of Striding thralls, but I just can’t shake the non-mechanical urge that the horde needs to be able to move. As an alternate, and slightly addressing the too-many-bodies-on-the-field problem, what if Create Thrall allowed you to *either* summon a thrall in a space within range **or** allow a thrall within range to move to another space within range? That way there’s no movement Speed to track, it’s just take any thrall already within 30’ of you and put it somewhere else within 30’ where you could’ve summoned another one. I think it makes for an interesting tactical choice without getting into the minutia that makes minion tracking annoying

but like.... why would you ever do that though? outside of using a thrall to eat a reactive strike that is straight up inferior to making a new thrall at the desired location and still having the old one at the prior location

Yeah, eating Reactive Strikes from non-strategic enemies, or clearing space in a chokepoint or next to an enemy. Lots of folks are concerned about over-filling the battlefield, which becomes more and more likely as you increase in level.

The Mastery of Life and Death class feature means you deal Vitality damage to your thralls with effects that do Void damage, with no option not to do so, doesn't it?

Yes and no. Mastery of Life and Death (MoLaD) means you still deal void damage but use all targets' lesser resistance/immunity between void and vitality. But that's not all, many spells that deal void damage specifically to living creatures (e.g. void warp, grim tendrils), so they would not target the thralls which are specified as being undead. But you are right that MoLaD doesn't currently give you the choice to target the weaker resistance/immunity, so effects like necrotic bomb would destroy all of your thralls in the area of effect.

That said, MoLaD really needs some rewriting to even be executable in playtest material, since most spells and effects outside the playtest material make it obsolete by targeting parameters.

I think it's strange that a class as ready to be pulled in different flavor directions as the Runesmith doesn't have any subclasses.

There's the obvious divisions based on combat style, even supported by the 1st- and 2nd-level feat options: mauler (Engraving Strike), archer (Remote Detonation), and shield (Fortifying Knock). These might seem too close to the Magus' hybrid studies, which I could see as a reason they weren't divided this way.

But still, it seems like there should be some kind of subclass division here, especially to discourage simple poaching of class identity via multiclassing.

Thoughts? Do you feel such subdivision is missing or unnecessary? Is there some good line to draw them along?

It's odd that Engraving Strike, Fortifying Knock, and Artist's Attendance all came in with the "Frequency once per round" wording rather than just the flourish trait. I suspect it's a simple repeated mistake since there are no flourish actions in the entire playtest and these sort of action compression abilities are almost always flourish.

I don't think it's necessary to include "smithing weapons" as artisan's tools by default, but I do think it works to allow it via the Smithing Weapon Familiarity feat.

Regarding Smithing Weapons Familiarity, it is remarkably weak for a 2nd level feat. There are a total of 6 advanced weapons you get proficiency with: 1 from Player Core, 2 from Treasure Vaults, 2 from Lost Omens books, and 1 from an AP. Three are ancestry specific. None of them are significantly better than the martial weapons the Runesmith already has access to. This feat is essentially just for Archetype pick-up as is, and even then its worse than the 1st-level ancestry weapon feats in most cases. Now if this was the feat that let you treat certain weapons as artisan's tools, it would actually be worthwhile as a 2nd-level feat.

It's okay at 1st through 3rd level, honestly, but then it quickly falls into the problem inherent to the runic enhancement spells: you likely already have the best runes on your weapons the vast majority of the time at levels 4+, which means the spells are functionally useless at levels 4-10, 12-16, and 19-20 (70% of levels). It's especially bad since you are a Runesmith and have multiple other features that make you good at giving out those permanent runes to your entire party.

Definitely needs a tidbit of clarification. The diacritic trait text suggests they remain two separate runes, but anything that "removes or invokes the base rune always also removes or invokes the diacritic rune."

Transpose Etching acts as an edge case that begs the question of the above wording's specificity. Transpose says, "You move any one of your runes within 30 feet to a different target within 30 feet." This "move" does necessarily remove the base rune from the original target, so the diacritic must also be removed; however, the diacritic trait does not specify what happens when the base rune it reapplied elsewhere, so the result is technically vague.

A simple fix would be to rephrase the diacritic trait text as: "Any change to the base rune, such as removal, transfer, or invocation, also applies to the diacritic rune."

The two runes are still separate however, which is critical for the composite invocations since the diacritic can be a different tradition than the base rune. This seems to be one of the main benefits of diacritics as far as I can tell.

No engraving strike: you can trace, and get the guaranteed benefit of your trace.

Engraving strike A: you can TRY to strike, and if you succeed you get strike damage and trace as one action. Congratulations!

Engraving strike B: you can TRY to strike, and if you miss you wasted an action and get nothing. Don't you wish you'd just saved that dumb feat and traced the rune?

Basically think of it as spellstrike, but only if the spell being used could otherwise be cast for the same number of actions with a guaranteed result.

I think the feat needs clarification on how it functions. Reading it as explicitly as possible, I agree that it's not great, simply because invoked rune damage so massively outscales Strike damage that without Strike-focused options there is little reason for a melee Runesmith to do anything but single-action Trace, Invoke (or even Trace twice then Invoke if already adjacent to the target).

That said, I get the vibe from the feat that it's intended to provide at least one of the following benefits:
- You don't need a free hand to Trace the Rune if you hit, which opens up the ability to use higher-damage-die two-handed weapons.
- You don't directly Trace the Rune on the target, so the manipulate action of Trace doesn't trigger reactions.

I suspect the first benefit may be the goal, but the second benefit would be a nice option since I'm not seeing any other methods for melee Runesmiths to not get ganked by Reactive Strikes, even at a trade-off.

This feat specifically feels undercooked. It has a 'once per round' Frequency instead of just being a flourish action, Strike is not capitalized in the text, and it is technically ambiguous if the Trace a Rune on success adds to or replaces the success effect of the Strike.

In addition to the free-hand economy, there are a number of things in the Runesmith that point toward unarmed Strike support: Esvadir (whetstones) and Marssyl (impact) can both be applied to an 'unarmed Strike', Runic Tattoo exists and only really makes sense to use with one of those two unarmed attack runes or Pluuna (illumination) at the level you can take it, and Ghostly Resonance calls out that any 'creature or item' bearing one of your divine or occult runes gets the effects of ghost touch, which would affect such a creature's unarmed attacks.

I suspect the issues with Engraving Strike and Runic Optimization are just oversights in wording. Still worth noting in playtest responses though.

I just straight up think it's inconsistent with what has been established this far for necromancy to be occult. I'll shut up about this if I get a good explanation, lore is mutable, but secrets of magic really sets the precedent that divine and primal should be the only necromancers

I would argue that necromancy belongs in the space between divine and occult, since there are very few void spells on the primal list (those that are there are about directly killing things, no undeath spells). Void energy is a perversion of the Life essence which is more in line with the Soul essence - the one shared by occult and divine. That said, there are a handful of critical necromancy spells that are on the divine list and not on the occult list: harm, necromancer's generosity, sudden blight, necrotize, execute, and massacre. I think harm is the most egregious oversight.

Flavor-wise, I can somewhat understand the desire for necromancer to be occult, since necromancers in lore are often using mortal magics to spite the gods and natural order. Plus, occult has the spooky-overlord mental magics that divine lacks. I think it's a relative easy remedy to just adding the non-occult spells above to the Necromancer's list as occult spells.

I think some very good points about the cognitive load of Striding thralls, but I just can’t shake the non-mechanical urge that the horde needs to be able to move. As an alternate, and slightly addressing the too-many-bodies-on-the-field problem, what if Create Thrall allowed you to *either* summon a thrall in a space within range **or** allow a thrall within range to move to another space within range? That way there’s no movement Speed to track, it’s just take any thrall already within 30’ of you and put it somewhere else within 30’ where you could’ve summoned another one. I think it makes for an interesting tactical choice without getting into the minutia that makes minion tracking annoying

The document is also designed very well. May I ask what you used?

I just did things in Word. I've been making and tuning homebrew items, classes, etc. for 2e basically since its full release, so I just have a good Word template set up. There are better and easier options (like GM Binder and such), but I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to those things haha.

Out of curiosity, what program did you use to create these PDFs? I'd like to make some changes to a personal copy, but am not sure how to go about that -- I would imagine I'd need to first export from these PDFs into a document program that I could edit and then re-save to PDF. Is that what you did?

I rewrote everything and formatted in Word, since that process generally helps ingrain the rules in my head a bit better. Then exported from Word to PDF. If you want to make changes, I think using something like Adobe PDF would be a good idea to import the PDF doc, make changes, then re-export to PDF.

Hey! Sorry for the super slow response, I'm in grad school so the semester really sapped a lot of my time.

Special Units:

• Are all the possible special units provided by kingdom feats? Or did I miss one somewhere that's just always available?
  
• Is there a cost to add a special unit? It seems like there should be; at least it should require either a Train Army or Outfit Army activity (or something equivalent), but most of them are good enough that I feel they should come with some persistent cost.

Currently, all the special units are added by kingdom feats. The idea is that it's modular though, so potentially something else other than a feat could add them in the future.

There's no specific cost to adding a special unit, other than it requiring you to Train an Army that doesn't already have it. The real "cost" is that you can only have one special unit in an army at a time, which then causes you to have diminishing returns if you start taking multiple special unit feats or other kingdom choices.

Thank you again! My comments came out sounding a bit more defensive than I’d like, so I’d just like to reiterate that I really appreciate your feedback and that it helps point out areas for me to really think about why I have them a certain way.

Regarding Plains not being rough terrain, I see what you’re saying but I actually do think it’s appropriate that there’s no RP cost to develop in that terrain. First off, there’s still an action cost, which is still significant. Second, there are many actions which require similar or greater expenditure of resources (Provide Care, Send Diplomatic Envoy, Recruit Army) which do not require RP to perform. Then there’s also the thematic reasoning that putting in a road or irrigation or trenches (what Fortify Hex puts in by default) in a plains requires little to no resources, just man hours, which are generally not covered by RP. And finally, 1 RP is a negligible cost except in the earliest points in kingdom building, at which point you’ll likely be far more limited by the number of actions available given the massive amount of work that needs to be done at that stage.

Request Foreign Aid’s “neediness” penalty increases for each attempt; in your example, the DC for the second check with Mivon would be 24. This seems reasonably straight-forward from the current text as-written. I think only a long-winded example would spell it out more clearly, and I don’t think that’s a good use of page space. Also, I think the current function of the neediness penalty is justified seeing as your Allie’s are likely to hear of your inability to handle your own affairs and not look kindly on it; of course, at GM discretion, there’s always the possibility that an ally takes pity on you and you gain a circumstance bonus to your roll, or that you have an opportunity to enter an economic or political deal to get the benefits without rolling or with a reduced DC. For the most general cases, however, I do think the current iteration of Foreign Aid works though.

I made the leadership investment benefits a 50/50 split on abilities and skills intentionally, as I didn’t want to punish a leader going for a more generalist skill approach nor a build with more spread-out ability modifiers. Also, thematically I think it’s fitting that some leaders rely more on their proficiency in related skills while others rely more on raw talent and ability.

I've updated the general rules and skills (and some minor copy-edit changes to feats and armies) to v0.91 based on your comments!

There's a Changelog 0.91 for more detail, but to answer your questions/ observations in broad-strokes:

• I agree that 24 leadership activities was feeling like it was going to be a major time-sink. I reduced the number of leadership activities for NPCs to 1 (2 with a town hall or similar), which gives good reason to have PCs in leadership positions
• That's a very good point about Linzi and the purpose of the Counselor. Changed it to Wis/Cha instead of Int/Wis
• It actually makes a lot of sense to me that Amiri would be a great general but only a middling Warden. War and tactics are her specialty, not organizing people against Intrigue
• Crush Opposition was a feat I planned to include, but ended up feeling was unnecessary so left out. It's been removed from the table.
• Plains/Grassland aren't included in Building on Rough Terrain because they aren't rough terrain and don't incur an RP cost for building.
• "Shoreline" was meant to refer to those along seas and oceans, which aren't really pertinent to this setting, but may be in others. Tides and waves are more prominent in these areas which are worse to build on than lakes and rivers.
• You're right that I didn't include special armies because their stat blocks are easily managed with the altered rules as well. Also, I intended all of the rules expansions except the Events to be player-facing, so I kept the special armies out for spoiler reasons.
• Claim Hex's 10 XP was just a copy-paste error
• The variance of efficacy for Pledge of Fealty with different skills is basically at GM discretion, much as trying to convince or Influence someone with Deception, Diplomacy, or Intimidation would be different and should follow the general PF 2e "Setting DCs" guidelines
• The original Provide Care behaved as you noted, but as I had written it in v0.9, you get the reduction in Unrest and reduce Ruin on a crit. It doesn't reduce as much Unrest as Quell Unrest though, so it's still a moderate action economy.
• I changed the cost of Luxuries in Purchase Commodities to 12 RP, so that it's only less efficient to Craft Luxuries when you have d12 RD
• Much like in the base game, I think people undervalue the bonus from Aid when it comes to getting big bonuses and increasing your odds of a crit
• Quell Unrest is in fact once per kingdom turn total. The default for leadership activities are once per leader per turn, so the Special entry is modifying that, but I reworded to make it more clear.
• Repair Reputation should not be something you do overly frequently, as it isn't exceedingly common to accrue Ruin like it is Unrest. Unless you are super unlucky with Events or attempting too many checks where your odds of crit failure are high, it shouldn't be all that difficult to manage Ruins
• Take Charge before was meant as a way to apply your leadership bonuses to non-leadership activities, but that was a pretty minimal effect. Now it lets you basically trade leadership activities for region, civic, or army activities, which also helps alleviate the too-many-leadership-activities issue, especially at early levels
• Supernatural and Creative Solution are much like Focused Attention (Aid) and are more valuable than you might think, especially if your kingdom has high ranks in Magic/Scholarship
• The original rules were unclear with Request Foreign Aid and I just glossed over it. Good shout. I made it diplomatic-ally-specific but also generally increased the DC to make it less spammable as it's quite good
• Reducing the number of trade agreements that can be Managed and allowing any number of uses is a great idea. Included. (You always get the one for free during the commerce phase, but it can be a good use of leadership activities for a treasurer too)
• Region activities can be helped out by Take Charge now, which should help early on especially
• Splitting Clear Hex into Clear and Prepare is a good idea. Implemented
• Boating is pretty niche, but it would still be critical to a campaign with seafaring trade and war. The +4 bonus to Establish Trade Agreement is nothing to sneeze at either. But I did double the amount of Food gained by Go Fishing (which is also accessible through Take Charge as a leadership activity now)
• Wilderness-specific skill actions are a bit lackluster, but they do have Abandon, Claim, and Reconnoiter Hex which will be frequent

So yeah, very good feedback, thank you!

Will this still use any normal Kingdom Tracker we find online or Paizo official one?

Yeah, it is still compatible with the Paizo Kingdom Sheet. I'm working on a revised kingdom sheet as well, but part of that is going to come out of my players telling me which sections are most and least useful on the existing sheets, so it'll probably be around a month before I have that made.

all the different govt choices

The government choices I listed are the same options given in the existing Paizo kingdom rules. I thought about adding some more options, but I felt the existing options covered the range of probable government types.

I'll be happy to go over your Revised Rules but it may be a week or two before I can get to it.

Awesome, thank you! And for sure, I hear ya, moving slow in hobby space is usually a given, haha.

Hi everyone!

I've been working on revising the kingdom rules for almost a year now and literally this week my players are founding their kingdom and I got the rules into a beta state. This revision project was heavily influenced by Vance & Karenshara's work. There may also be a few things that slipped through with my specific game's rule-set which differ from the core PF 2e game.

But more to the point, I'm hoping other people can take a look at what I have here and see what might need a bit more fine-tuning. It's a tremendous amount of text, and much of it is still quite similar to what is presented in the core Kingmaker kingdom and warfare rules, so I also included a changelog to make notes on what has changed and why I changed it to be the way it is in my revision.

Anyway, please check out these Kingdom Rules, Revised.

PS: I honestly don't know what is and isn't fair-use when posting stuff like this online, so if I need to put some kind disclaimer on the PDFs or remove all the images from these versions I printed for my players, anyone who is more knowledgeable please let me know.

Solution 4: New Kingdom Feats:

Kingdom feats are lackluster and it would be great if there were more. We really tried to just fix what we had rather than homebrew many new things. New Kingdom feats is a great area for GMs to add content but we chose not to do so here.

I'm working on a "remaster" of sorts for the kingdom rules as my group is playing through the first few chapters, and I'm wondering if you or anyone else has posted any new kingdom feat ideas? Even just vague ideas like "what if Intrigue could be used for diplomatic relations" would be useful, as I'm strapped for inspiration at the moment lol.

And of course, thanks for being a fair and solid voice in fixing up the kingdom rules!

Hello! I've never used internet forums before, so hopefully this all works. I actually started making Occult Adventures class conversions months and months ago intending to post them all at once, but I've only really finished 2 and who knows how long the rest will take so I'm putting them out there now.

This is the first one I made: a Kineticist class with a multiclass archetype as well. Unlike the Legendary Kineticist mentioned above (which I recommend checking out btw, it's well put together) which is more focused on the kineticist as a caster, I made the kineticist a martial who wields raw elemental energy as a weapon. This came out feeling like a bit of a mix between a monk and a sorcerer I think, but it fills what I believe to be a unique niche in the game: a mystical blaster that isn't a real spellcaster. Some elements that carried through from 1e but with alterations are Burn (renamed Overexert) and Gather Power.

Take a look if you're interested. It's been beta read and edited multiple times to reach this draft, but additional feedback is always appreciated (especially actual play feedback)! :)

Link to the pdf stored on Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XgrjUgvBrmG8XqoITP_pp3X48ZlUNQ5k/view?usp= sharing

Hello! I've never used internet forums before, so hopefully this all works. I actually started making Occult Adventures class conversions months and months ago intending to post them all at once, but I've only really finished 2 and who knows how long the rest will take so I'm putting them out there now.

This is the second one I made: a Sorcerer Bloodline and a Psychic archetype as a means of converting the Psychic class flavor to 2e. Not everything from 1e is in it (no Phrenic Amplifications), but I like the way it turned out. The psychic spellcasting rules are also the baseline that I am using for the other OA spellcasting class conversions.

Take a look if you're interested. It's been beta read and edited multiple times to reach this draft, but additional feedback is always appreciated (especially actual play feedback)! :)

Link to the pdf stored on Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17wkEMVhOULsU9wkj7vGGHxIqNG7NQ_6k/view?usp= sharing