tomeric's page

Paizo shipped replacement hero point tokens, and I must say that customer support response time has increased quite a lot compared to a few months ago. So as of right now I'm a happy customer again.

I received my package today (Netherlands). Unfortunately, the 60$ worth of Hero Point Tokens that I pledged were not in the box, and when I double checked the shipment mail, I saw they were also missing from the manifest. Hopefully this can get fixed by Paizo in the new year.

I must say that being a European customer of Paizo hasn't been easy the past year. We're paying ridiculously high shipping costs, had to deal with being charged VAT twice for several months and are last in line to receive this product. And even the fulfilment of that is not without it's issues. I really hope that Paizo can do something about this in the future (perhaps open a local office or partner with a European distributor so you can package and ship products from Europe?).

Checking through the AP, it looks like there's only 3 quests that award Kingdom XP that PCs can reasonably complete before Part 2 of Chapter 4 kicks off (by which point the Kingdom is expected to be at least level 3), and they award 30 Kingdom XP each.

Even if those quests awarded 10 times as much XP, it's still likely to take several years in-game for a Kingdom to reach level 3.

Ah, I think this is something that should be clarified, but I think you get XP for an event TWICE. Once for experiencing it (30 XP), and once for resolving it (30-160 XP based on the Event Modifier). This little piece of information is "hidden" in the "Kingdom Event Descriptions" section: The kingdom’s event modifier is the value you apply to the kingdom’s level to determine the event’s level, for the purposes of determining XP rewards (so if a 1st-level kingdom is experiencing a +1 event, that event’s level is 2).

Agreed. This was not well play tested at all. I like the spirit of the rules and what they were going for, but it’s very clear that these rules, and really the AP as a whole, was not well play tested. The treasures awarded doesn’t even comply with the general rules in the GM section. This is going to take a lot of work to run.

To be fair, I'm not sure I share that opinion.

I think the system itself is mostly fine and needs a handful of small rules changes or clarifications to work properly. Removing the level requirement from upgrading to a Town fixes at least a large part of the issues.

The DCs becoming so high that only Trained skills can successfully do skill checks is _not_ an issue in my opinion. Most skill checks can be circumvented with the Supernatural Solution skill (which does require magic), and you can technically train a skill each level by either spending a Skill Increase on them or by taking the "Skill Training" feat.

It might seem boring to take that feat at first, since you probably wouldn't consider it on a PC, but in the Kingdom Building system that we have now, getting training in a skill unlocks new activities for your kingdom, grants you access to new structures and increases your modifier, so it's actually a lot more "fun" than it appears to be at first glance.

I do wish that there was a better mundane alternative to Supernatural Solution. Creative Solution attempts to be that, but it also requires a Culture-based check (Scholarship), and it does not scale (and you usually have a circumstance bonus already). But I also like the idea that big, successful kingdoms on Golarion got that way because of Magic, or by knowledge (Skill Training).

I think the progression of the kingdom being slow is not ideal, but it's easy to fix per table by either increasing the RP to XP conversion rate or by applying an XP multiplier when the kingdom is under levelled (I personally use 3× for a 3-level difference, 2× for a 2-level difference and 1.5× for a 1-level difference, as this follows the XP awards by level table).

But even if you don't fix progression, it's only a "problem" at the lower levels. Once your kingdom grows it will be claiming tons of hexes and generating a lot of RP and just organically level up every year or so. It's just those early years that are slow and boring right now.

So overall, I think the system we got is pretty good and fun once you reach level 3.

Most groups will probably start off in the hex with Stag Lords Fort, granting them a free Town Hall. This seems to be intended. To avoid having an overcrowded settlement, they're also required to build at least 1 residential structure (Houses / Tenements). Assuming they do this on their first Kingdom Turn, that means they've filled up 3 of their lots with structures already.

The rules specify:

Village: Settlements start as villages, consisting of a single block of 4 lots. When you Build a Structure (page 518) in a lot, you must select a lot in that block.

Town: Once your kingdom is 3rd level and you’ve filled all four lots in your village, as long as your settlement is not Overcrowded (page 543), the next time you Build a Structure in a lot, you may choose a lot in any block adjacent to your current block. As you do so, your village becomes a town. A town consists of 2 to 4 blocks of 4 lots each. The blocks must be contiguous, but they need not be a square—they could form a T, L, or S shape if you like. When your kingdom gains its first town, gain 60 kingdom XP as a milestone award (page 538).

So if I'm understanding this correctly, until the kingdom reaches level 3 (which will take ~2+ years of in-game time), the PCs are only able to add 1 more structure to their capital. Is this really the intention, or is this a rule that we are better off ignoring, for instance by removing the "your kingdom is 3rd level and" part of the Town description?

I've changed the credit to the "Paizo community", but if you have any suggestions on how to best credit people for it, I'm all ears! I would love to hear your thoughts later!

I just finished the last work on my version of the kingdom sheet and it should now be feature complete. I still have some stuff I would like to add in future updates, but let me know what you think, what you're missing, what's broken, etc.

Royal Kingdom Sheet for Pathfinder 2E - 1.0.0

There's nothing stopping you from building Farmland Hexes before Kingdom level 3, building them just doesn't give any benefits until then.

I don't think this is true, since once of the prerequisites is "the hex is in the influence of one of your settlements" and your influence is still 0. Would love to be wrong about this!

This sheet is still very much work in progress (I still need to finish adding all activities for instance), but it might still be useful and/or inspiring:

Royal Kingdom Sheet for Pathfinder 2E - ALPHA

My goal is to make a fully fledge spreadsheet that will take ALL of the work of calculating modifiers out of the player's hands. When it's finished you should be able to walk through a kingdom turn with this sheet in a couple of minutes and automatically keep track of the results of that turn.

I still have quite a bit of work to do on it, but it's been a fun way to get to know the new system and also make something that I will use when I restart my Kingmaker campaign next year.

My Dark Archive shipment also arrived (in The Netherlands) without having to pay extra VAT.

Unfortunately, the luck I had last month has ended and this month I had to pay VAT+ for my shipment from June (Netherlands) again. I have forwarded the invoice to customer support, but thought I would keep everyone in the loop here as well.

Thanks for the update Brian, I just e-mailed my PostNL receipts to the customer service e-mail. Store credit is a fine solution for me.

Thanks Brian, I appreciate it quite a lot, especially the commitment to keep us informed. I think I hated the lack of acknowledgment or any reply to my support request more than the actual issue (which is also bad). Knowing that someone at Paizo is at least aware and working, makes me feel a lot less bitter about the whole ordeal.

There have been quite a lot of posts asking about updates on support requests in the last few weeks, so I don't think it's limited to European customers...

Some good news from my end. I just picked up the box with my May shipments from the local pickup point and for the first time in a long while I did not have to pay anything extra. No VAT or administration costs!

I don't think you understand. I bought the pdf and then the Foundry module, and SAVED money by doing so. This is Paizo telling customers who already own the AP that the correct way to buy their Foundry product is to first buy the collected pdf that they don't need or want.

I have no particular bone in this fight, but when I compare the price of the PDF ($ 38.99) it's equal to the discount for the Foundry module (59.99 - 21 = $38.99). You get the PDF for free if you buy the Foundry module, so how are you saving extra money by buying the PDF first?

Hi,

I just received the order notification for the Pathfinder Bestiary 3 Battle Cards in the Pathfinder Accessories Subscription I have, but I think 46,29$ shipping costs is a bit too much for me to swallow, especially since I will also have to pay VAT when the product arrives in the EU.

Seeing as the subscription doesn't offer that many benefits over just buying the products locally, I would like to cancel my subscription. If it's somehow possible to also cancel the pending order (Order 36631334 ), that would be appreciated as well.

In addition to this question I was wondering if there are any solutions in the work for EU subscribers, since with the new VAT rules that now apply, it's become very expensive. I love Paizo and all the products that you release, but I feel like I'm paying more for the shipping than the products themselves and that sucks :(.

Thanks!

Gunslinger is the only class that multiple of my players want to play that is unavailable at launch, so I hope that we can get some form of that in the future.

Magus is another class that has been played at our table, but we can kind of simulate it with multiclassing in 2E. I would still love to see 2E's take on it.

I'm also really interested to see the Witch return as well as the Inquisitor, because I want to see 2E's take on Hexes and Judgments.

I guess I just don't want to eyeball everything ;-). I've been doing that for the stuff that I've run so far and feel pretty confident about it at lower levels, but at the higher levels that confidence erodes and I'm looking for some guidelines.

There's a nice Conversion Guide to convert 3.0 to Pathfinder 1E. All I want to know is if we can expect something like this for 2E.

Will the Core Rulebook contain any guidelines to help convert the 10 years of Adventure Paths and Modules to the 2E ruleset, or will these be shared in another way (maybe a now GameMastery Guide???) after release?

I've been trying to convert the Price of Immortality trilogy to the Playtest rules, but I feel like I'm mostly guessing what all te numbers should be.

I would like to also say that getting the PDFs is one of the main reasons I subscribe, since packages take weeks to ship to Europe and it allows me access to the content right away. I also use them heavily during prep by copy-pasting text or extracting maps to annotate and use on a VTT.

Sometimes the packages have enough stuff inside that I need to pay extra sales tax before I get my package (which is fine), which can increase the price to a point where it would have been (a little) cheaper to pick it up at a LFGS. The added value of the PDF is what makes it worth it though.

How do you know what skill applies for a monster? I've been looking in the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary, but I haven't found anything.

For instance, the first first enemy in Doomsday Dawn would be identified with the Dungeoneering skill in 1E, but I don't think there's an equivalent skill in 2E, so which one do you use?