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I'm looking through the changes you made. One thing I want to do is to reduce the number of steps involved in going through a kingdom turn. Would it cause any problems to move the activities: improve lifestyle, tap treasury, trade commodities and manage trade agreements from phases in the commerce section to leadership activities. That simplifies commerce enormously and I don't see how any of these could be particularly abused. Also, that gives you a few more leadership activities to pick.

Has anyone tinkered with the kingdom rules? Or have a set of house rules? They're a bit too crunchy for my group as written.

If I have to rewrite I'm thinking of ditching the kingdom stats and skills and using PC skills instead. Only Wis, Int and Cha skills are used.
I'll eliminate unrest and use 3 ruins - corresponding to the three relevant stats: Wis(corruption), Int(decay) and Cha(strife).
I'll ditch the various kinds of actions and lump everything into the standard 3 actions/turn. The new kingdom turn would be: Upkeep -> Actions -> Events.
I'll remove the xp system and have the kingdom level up based on size alone (capped at the PC level).

The last two AP's I ran, I ran from PDF's. So I just printed out the handouts and gave them to the players. This time I'm going back to books. I can probably try to copy them from the book, but are the handouts for the AP available in a PDF other than the AP PDF (which at $50 is too much to justify)? Is there a map and handout PDF or something like that available?

A week of food is L bulk. A character with 10 Str can carry 5 bulk. So...a character could carry a year worth of food? Sure, they couldn't carry other gear, but it seems like a single horse or mule would solve all the carrying problems. Is this supposed to be how it works? It's kind of immersion-breaking. It seems like characters would never need to return to the trading post for supplies. I suppose they're more likely to need to return to sell off loot, which will weigh more.

The map is 28 tiles across, traveling half way across would take 2 weeks (assuming decent roads and a speed of 25). So going out and back from the center is a whole month (without doing anything else). It seems like all this travel wouldn't leave a lot time for running a kingdom. Is it expected by the time adventurers are traveling these distances, they'll have other means of transport? Is it expected characters will have access to teleport (which is uncommon) by that time? Are there other key transport spells?

Is there a guide to which rivers are navigable? For that matter, is there a map of which river is which? They don't seem to be labeled and looking through tile descriptions for the names is tedious.

n general, when adjusting, you want to go wide (more enemies), rather than tall (elite). The balance of 2e is such that always facing level +1 opponents ends up feeling extremely unfun to most players. So its probably save to slap elite on things that are below the party's level to adjust them up, but you'll generally want to avoid putting elite on things that start off above the party. Everything will turn into a non-fun boss encounter style feel if you add it too often, even with extra characters.

That makes sense, adjusting bosses from level+3 to +4 seems like it'd become very unfun. What about just adjusting hp of solo monsters and not changing other bonuses? A 25-50% increase? Thanks for the treasure advice too.

There's a printable version of the Stolen Lands map at the back of the Player's Guide, although if you put them in a four page spread they don't line up super well for some reason.

Don't know how I missed that, that should work. Thanks.

I just finished reading the AP. As a first 2E campaign, I'm dreading running this. So much going on. But, its what the players think they want (I still think Strength of Thousands is a better starter 2E AP, but I got outvoted). I've tried to make this spoiler-free.

I usually play with 6 PC's and it seems to me there's two ways to adjust: add 50% more enemies or make the enemies elite. Both adjustments seem to fit into the encounter guidelines. Which one I'll use probably depends on how much space the encounters allow for. Does it work though to elite a monster that's already an elite version or will that cause problems? Are there other adjustments to consider?

Any suggestions for adjusting treasure? I know there's guidelines in the gamemaster section for how much to add, does anyone have a good 2E random item generator?

Is slow leveling ok for this AP? It seems like there's a lot of content in this - and I usually add PC-specific side stories in too. I don't want them to always out-level content.

I'm not convinced the army rules are necessary, and this AP already has lots of new systems to learn. Is anything lost by glossing over this and using the guidelines from the intro paragraph of that section? Not having to manage armies seems like it'd make the kingdom maintenance easier because you don't have that consumption. Does that unbalance anything?

There are several points where there's a build-up of LP's or RP's. Is there any downside to reducing these? 30 LP in one part seems like it might grow thin before they're done.

Does anyone have alternative suggestions for Chapter 8? This chapter is really weak compared to the rest - it's too ambitious a concept for the page count it has. I can't imagine running this without rewriting it.

I assume there will be pdf maps available somewhere? I'm hoping there's a printable version of the hexmap specifically to help with kingdom building/tracking exploring.

I hope this is successful and we see more of the 2E material added. I'm looking at Strength of Thousands or Kingmaker after our current Legacy of Fire run. SoT in particular has great potential for interesting music and images for players. After converting two AP's to 5E, I'd love to be able to run something without spending time doing all the conversions and fiddling around with uploading assets to a VTT.

After reading book 4, I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to do this in a different order. Start the adventure with chapter 2. The adventures discover a lead to the Temple in their studies (or one of the students in book 3 does) and similar to book 3 they mount a research expedition. That's a better hook than the one in the adventure where Walkena sends them to a temple the book itself says he doesn't care about. There they discover the lead that sends them to the hidden city. There they are attacked. In the battle, the ritual doesn't erase all memory of the city, just makes it fuzzy for the attackers. After that they lead a diplomatic expedition to Mzali to settle a peace with outsiders. After that, as a reward Dimara-Diji comes to tell stories.

Wouldn't that order make more sense? You'd have to replace Worknesh in one of the parts or use a plot point to keep her alive, and adjust the difficulties some.

Also, what is the point of the group of conversants in chapter 1? They play absolutely no role in the narrative, so why are they even mentioned?

I ordered Hurricane's Howl and the Mwangi Expanse Book on Jan 2nd and I've heard nothing about the order since then - still listed as pending. I tried contacting customer service, no response there either. Is Paizo still shipping these products or what's going on?

So it sounds like there's a few edge cases, but you're usually best off doing something you're trained in if you can.

What would be the effect of the following changes:

Cantrips take 1 action to cast.
All spells that roll an attack or cause an enemy to save are considered attacks.
All offensive spells therefore have the MAP.
MAP also applies to spell save DC like attacks (so save DC of 20 goes to 15 then 10).
Nerf electric arc to bring it in line with other cantrips.
In addition to its other effects, quickened spell drops the MAP penalty similar to ranger abilities.

I'm not seeing the utility of aid. You have to make a check, which starts off reasonably challenging but seems like you'd quickly get to the point of often critically succeeding. Then, using an action and your reaction you give an ally +1? Two actions for a +1 bonus? It seems like many times you'd be better off just trying whatever the main action is yourself.

Or is the point that at higher level you're expected to critically succeed most of the time?

I've been creating PF2 characters and the War cleric is the first one that's very MAD (multi-ability dependent). They need strength to wear armor and for attacks/damage. Dex is useful for AC and attacks for some deities weapons. Con for hp if they're going to fight on the front lines. Wis for spellcasting. Cha for heals. They can dump only Int.

The war cleric I made has the same AC as the light-armor wearing bard I made, the only difference being +2 AC for a shield vs. +1 AC for the shield cantrip. Even the 1st level champion I made only has an AC 1 higher than the 14 Dex bard.

On the flip side, the war cleric's going to benefit from the 4-ability boosts every 5 levels in a way most characters won't. So more of a limitation at the start than later.

The other oddity is that if you don't worship a good god, there's little in the way of attack cantrips because you can't use divine lance. I'd made a cleric of Pharasma, so if you went cloistered, I'm not sure what you'd do in the way of attacks? I guess you're stuck with a sling or throwing daggers at people?

Do the bard and sorc archetypes suggest you can learn spells outside their tradition? "two common cantrips from the occult spell list, or any other cantrips you learn or discover" and "add a common occult spell or another spell you learned or discovered to your repertoire".

They also get an extra skill training.

Is that comparable to the spell book's flexibility? Seems like a valid trade-off.

Is hand of the apprentice supposed to have the range of a siege weapon?

Not as a Paladin, meant Champion. You have to play a religious character to get armor from a multiclass.

"You are bound by your deity’s anathema and must follow the champion’s code and alignment requirements for your cause."

Would have been nice to have an option to get armor from a multiclass without this condition.

The first line of the fighter multiclass says, "You have spent time learning the art of warfare, increasing your skill with martial arms and at wearing armor. "

Yet as far as I can tell nothing in the multiclass gives you much in the way of armor (short of taking parry or a shield feat). What am I missing?

Champion offers armor, but you have to play as a Paladin. The general armor feat only gives you one armor and never upgrades. Seems like something is missing here.

Isn't this rule a problem for some of the fey spellcasting?

"A summoned creature can’t summon other creatures, create things of value, or cast spells that require a cost. It has the minion trait. If it tries to cast a spell of equal or higher level than the spell that summoned it, the spell fails and the summon spell ends."