Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign (OGL)

Yay, got my copy. Skimming through it now.

I wonder how long it will take someone to create a website or app for generating random backgrounds...

D20pfsrd im looking at you...

Jason Nelson, continuing to study the Kingdom building rules I am curious about three of the buildings, Bureau, Foreign Quarter, and Stockyard. These are the only buildings (that I saw) with penalties to the main 3 kingdom attributes (-1 Loyalty for the Bureau and -1 Stability for the Foreign Quarter and Stockyard). Is this a typo?

I can imagine that lawyers (Bureau) cause a loyalty penalty and Foreigners cause a Stability penalty but why would a Stockyard cause a Stability penalty?

Thanks in advance. :)

- Gauss

I have to admit, I'm curious about this one myself. Or does the Stockyard cause a loss in Stability because of having to deal with angry druids and offended citizens/subjects who aren't happy about wading through the road apples every day?

I'm a bit confused about teams. Do they have no maintainance costs?

Supposed I have a team of Soldiers which I send out every day to patrol the local area, thereby creating Influence for me. Because they are grateful I am keeping them safe from bandits.
But what does that cost me? These guys need wages and all I paid for was the recruitment cost. And I'm quite sure that unlike managers, I don't have to pay the recruitment cost daily, because 220 gp is a lot of coin. And it would be about ten times as much per man as the Lieutenant manager gets, so this can be ruled out.

The way I understand it, if they're out earning Influence it's going to cost coin from somewhere, because gaining capital from a business uses the same rules for Earned Capital as a character, where you have to pay a gold piece cost for all the earned capital (15gp per Influence in this case). Of course, you could have them out earning money instead, in which case as I understand it, you're just taking a cut of their profits ('cause you're the boss).

Say I have a building with six rooms generating capital and income. For the sake of discussion, say each room generates +8.

Why would I want to do 8+8+8+8+8+8+take10=58?
When I can do 8+take10=18, 8+take10=18, 8+take10=18, 8+take10=18, 8+take10=18, 8+take10=18.

Now this I'm curious about. For the cost of a little math, are we supposed to be able to make money separately from the stables, from the bath, from the bar, from the rooms, etcetera? Adding, say, 4 rooms together and then rolling, we get total bonus+1d20. If we can roll them separately (since adding them together was presented as optional), then the amount is total bonus+4d20.

Building some armies, I noticed that the rules really seem to be geared for massive combat. For small scale E6 warfare, it doesn't seem that great because I always end up with units that are only CR 1 and lower.

10 Hill giants are ACR 1 with 4 hp, 50 ogres are ACR 1 with 4 hp, 50 3rd level barbarians are ACR 1/2 with 3 hp, 100 elite archers (warrior 3) are ACR 1 with 5 hp, 100 cavalry (warrior 1) are ACR 1 with 5 hp and +2 DV and OM.

If you have small border towns fighting off raiders, those are actually quite substential forces and you are probabl not going to see anything much bigger.

Now I am wondering, would it make any difference if I simple move one of the colums of the army size table by one step, so that a medium unit consists of just 50 soldiers, or a small unit has an ACR equal to the CR of the soldiers? I don't think so, but it would bring more variety to the stats of the units.

They really aren't that good for small scale, but I guess it's because with forces that size the PCs can handle them on their on.

But if you want to use them for combats like that (I know I want XD), simple things like raising the HP of all units would help you a lot. Just consider fractional ACR as a penalty for offense and defense (1/2 -1, 1/3 -2,...) and multiply everyone's HP by 5 or 10, and then divide it by, for ex., 2 if the ARC is 1/2. This way the 50 3rd level barbarians would have 9 HP, 9 defense and -1 attack, barring other modifiers. Also, maybe you could consider bigger creatures to modify the army size by their size. 10 hill giants could be tiny instead of diminutive, and so on. After all, big weapons pack a mean punch when your foes are huddled together in the battlefield (remember Sauron?)

The bigger HP would represent the tendency for such small scale combats rarely pursuing fleeing enemies and the like - to risky losing 10 soldiers on such thing when you have only 50. Battles would probably take 2~3 more rolls than usual, but it might sate your needs.

Or you could just wait for the next book Jason Nelson is already wasting no time in promoting, that most likely will address such concerns. I hope so, the system is nice and quick, but a broader range of options never hurts.

That sounds a lot more complicated than just raising the CR for every unit by +2 or +4. Since armies always only fight against other armies and all army stats are based on the ACR, there shouldn't be any problem with that approach.
Unless I am missing something vital.

Just got my copy and just in time for my Oracle to start working on his plans for world domination mawahahahahahah.. ahem I mean world betterment.. yeah.. that's it. Overall it's a great product, but I've been concentrating on the downtime actions and building businesses etc. I worked up a spreadsheet that will do the calculations on costs (for both earned and purchased capital), time, and capital needed for creating organizations and buildings. Feel free for anyone to download and use it (if you see any errors, please let me know).

Hmm... Not that I can think of. When you raise the CR of everything both attack and defense will go up the same rate, so results will stay the same, just like attacking AC 10 with +0 to hit is the same as attacking AC 50 with +40. Your approach would indeed solve your problem XD

But if you remember page 247, determining army stats for powerful monsters (I think giants fit this bill) is "more of an art than a science". So I would still recmend considering giants and other big things as a one size (or more) larger. Both for stats and consumption. After all, they eat A LOT! XD

Sorry for over complicating things, is a tendency I have of trying to achieve more "realistic" (for the game world) simulations.

But as the game says, the important thing is to have fun!

This is odd. My copy, which I got this weekend from Amazon, had the first 33 pages replaced by the first 33 pages of the Core Rulebook.

Am I the only one?

There have been some mentions of missing and duplicate pages, but pages from a different book are indeed very strange. Send it back as a misprint and get a new one. I think Amazon does it without making any fuzz about it.

Pages from a different book aren't that strange, assuming that both books were printed at the same facility (which, for the hardcovers, is very likely).

Well, one more try before I give up: Sean, could you clarify if the accelerated crafting rules for magic item crafting mean that you can craft a total of 2.000 GP in one day or simply that you only need to craft for four hours to get to the maximum of 1.000 GP?

The text in the magic item crafting section seems to point to the first conclusion, but there is disagreement with my GM in our RotRL campaign.

Building some armies, I noticed that the rules really seem to be geared for massive combat. For small scale E6 warfare, it doesn't seem that great because I always end up with units that are only CR 1 and lower.

10 Hill giants are ACR 1 with 4 hp, 50 ogres are ACR 1 with 4 hp, 50 3rd level barbarians are ACR 1/2 with 3 hp, 100 elite archers (warrior 3) are ACR 1 with 5 hp, 100 cavalry (warrior 1) are ACR 1 with 5 hp and +2 DV and OM.

If you have small border towns fighting off raiders, those are actually quite substential forces and you are probabl not going to see anything much bigger.

Now I am wondering, would it make any difference if I simple move one of the colums of the army size table by one step, so that a medium unit consists of just 50 soldiers, or a small unit has an ACR equal to the CR of the soldiers? I don't think so, but it would bring more variety to the stats of the units.

Here's some house rules I use to make lower level armies more interesting.

Got mine in the mail today. Everything appears to be in order. No missing pages from what I can tell. And no pages from other books. I'll finish checking it out in a bit. Hoping I dodged that bullet.

Also, where do we stand on getting a PDF of the various sheets for printing? |

The Kingdom Sheets and Army Sheets specifically.

You can now find the worksheets found in this book on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Resources page.

Random questions I thought I might drop by with:

Why does a 40 GP pit produce anything, and why don't people just stack heaps of them? Why do they produce Labor at all?

The Office 'evolves' (Pokémon FTW) from the Storage. The Office has no earnings, or pretty much any obvious purpose at all aside from being 'attached' to random buildings. Why? Especially given as the Storage grants a bonus. Shouldn't it provide some bonus, or at least be mentioned under other Rooms as giving them a bonus? (ie Each storage in the same Building as an Office gains a +2 bonus to Earnings generation, maximum 4 Storages per Office)

The Office 'evolves' from the Storage, but has the exact same cost. So... I can convert a useful Storage into a useless Office... for free? Well, that's good I suppose. Not done yet...

A shack can be built for 3G/2L. For +1G/+2L (total of 4G/4L) you can make a wooden shack into a brick or stone one. Despite these costs, it produces nothing. Why?

The aforementioned Shack can 'evolve' into a Storage. Normally, this costs an 'upgrade' of 1L. OK, that's fine. What if I 'evolve' it from the STONE Shack? Do I still have to pay 1L more and thus get a "Stone Storage" (not listed, but hey, why not?) or does it cost nothing (as the Shack has a greater cost) and it just magically transmutes into a standard (wood, I suppose) Storage? Or is it impossible to evolve the Stone Shack as it does not have a separate entry?

Can the Stone Storage been then upgraded again, for free, as a Stone Office? Or for more cost into a Stone Vault? Or does that really matter, as the original Brick/Stone Shack provides no benefits anyway? Can this be 'deconstructed' to apply to any room to thus make a difference in the building materials?

Sorry, bit longwinded. Any help is appreciated.

You can now find the worksheets found in this book on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Resources page.

Awesome! Thanks, Chris!

I love the fact that you have moved away from an economy based on selling other people's stuff (my players, not so much). One major question though: Why do Waterfronts still cost 90BP and Magic Shops cost 68BP? After all, not only can't you profit from selling their major items, but the upper limit of a settlement's Base Value is set by settlement size, so their boost to bv is insignificant: any settlement with basic buildings will hit that limit in short order.

So, now for a Waterfront you pay 90BP for +4 Economy, +2 Productivity, and halving the Loyalty penalty to Taxation edicts? Really? Build a Bank, a Mill and a Shop for 42BP and you get +6 Economy, +1 Stability, +2 Productivity (and the penalty to Loyalty is too small to worry about unless you have an Overwhelming tax level; in which case build some Parks).

And for a Magic Shop, you pay 68BP for +1 Economy? At least a Luxury Store you only have to pay 28BP for. Better yet, pay 6BP for a Library, Mill, Smithy or Tannery, and you get the same +1 Economy.

Shouldn't these have had their costs adjusted to account for the new Economic model being followed?

There's also a problem with Magical Academies (58BP for +2 Economy), Academies (52BP for +2 Economy and +2 Loyalty), and Bardic Colleges (40BP for +1 Economy, +3 Loyalty, and +1 Stability). The most expensive gives far and away the least benefit.

I'm switching to the new eceonomic model, but will need to give the players some compensation for the 2 waterfronts (different settlements) and the Magic Shop they carefully saved for and built to get the magic items. If not, the ruler and general (my wife and son) might be a bit hard to live with for a while.:{

Ooh, good questions.

--------

Just for comparison's sake, here's the Settlement Size and Base Value chart, translated into Lots:

Nerd note: I find that the lack of parallelism in the Drawback names annoys me. They should be all adjectives. The nouns just draw me out of the system. :)

I agree..That is nerdy. :p

Those nerds are a threat to our way of life.

;)

I'm a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there's GMs here tonight. When you went to Paizocon you might've been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you're a nerd or not, why don't you just come down here and join us. Okay? Come on.

I love the fact that you have moved away from an economy based on selling other people's stuff (my players, not so much). One major question though: Why do Waterfronts still cost 90BP and Magic Shops cost 68BP? After all, not only can't you profit from selling their major items, but the upper limit of a settlement's Base Value is set by settlement size, so their boost to bv is insignificant: any settlement with basic buildings will hit that limit in short order.

For the benfits of piers and waterfronts check out page 232 bottom right hand side.

Excuse me if I've misinterpreted this but the clause everyone's getting so aria-ted about with regards to creating items for other characters refers to the wealth by level used by new characters entering the party, correct?

It's nothing to do with items being crafted once the party is formed.

I think it's completely meta-gaming to create *anything* for another party member with your starting wealth-by-level wealth.

Surely, your wealth-by-level is supposed to represent where you are personally at a particular moment in time. If anything, you've been adventuring with another party somewhere, and they all got killed or you left, and you're just meeting up with your new colleagues for the first time. There's no way you're going to be carrying around anything that's suitable for them, and I think it extremely unlikely that you'll have survived to whatever level you are by carrying all of your wealth around in coins.

On another topic - the viking funeral thing. My rule on this was that once a character dies or retires he becomes an NPC, and NPCs never give their treasure away (even dead ones). Helping yourself to a dead PCs wealth is robbing their family / estate, it's an evil act, and they should come after you to get it back.

Richard

Further to the above, if we accept that as a player you only have one PC, then everyone else is an NPC, including any characters you might have "waiting in the wings" to be brought in at some higher level.

Your new character only becomes a PC when you switch. Until then the only way to control him is with Leadership.

Sure when you take him over you and your GM can talk about background or what have you, but to claim that he's been working for your party, e.g. by making magic items for you at cost price, even if he's only going to "sell" them to you now, still means you've basically been running two PCs.

Richard

GrumpyGM wrote:

I love the fact that you have moved away from an economy based on selling other people's stuff (my players, not so much). One major question though: Why do Waterfronts still cost 90BP and Magic Shops cost 68BP? After all, not only can't you profit from selling their major items, but the upper limit of a settlement's Base Value is set by settlement size, so their boost to bv is insignificant: any settlement with basic buildings will hit that limit in short order.

For the benfits of piers and waterfronts check out page 232 bottom right hand side.

That only helps if one is planning to establish long-distance trade routes. (Due to the way the rules are set up, Trade Routes are virtually impossible to establish with the Kingdom-next-door, but much easier if you want to trade with Tian-Xia.) They certainly aren't worth the cost if one wants near term benefits.

The old-school grognardy response would be to say that they built a Waterfront and Magic Shop because they wanted their city to be a port city and to have a magic shop in it, which is what they did. Heaven forbid they do not provide the optimal numerical benefit! They shouldn't cry over not being able to min-max a broken system, which is what they were trying to do.

The new-school nicey response would be to halve the cost of major magic item producing buildings, since they are no longer infinite piggy banks full of money.

In between the two, I'd say that some of those buildings were kept were they were price-wise for the sake of consistency with the original rules. There are also other substantial benefits, such as:

Discounts - a Waterfront provides a 50% discount on building on 4 buildings, adding up to a 78 BP discount on building them. It also provides a Productivity bonus (not as big a deal as the main 3 kingdom mods, but relevant).

Magic Items - Those magic item slots are not worthless just because they are not an infinite money machine. If your PCs are trying to buy magic of their own, each slot gives them more choices of what is available. Also, if you use Ultimate Rulership, those item slots can be accessed by you with Commission Edicts to custom-order magic items to be built or improved. No medium/major slots means no medium/major items for you.

Not to mention that you basically need a Waterfront if you want to seriously consider making trade edicts with a kingdom that's on the other side of an ocean from you.

Love the book. My only complaint is that there _still_ is no product that includes a design/build traps crunchy bits. I was hoping it would have been in here.

there is a guideline for building traps in the Game Master's Guide, and Rogue Glory's got a whole expansion of the trap system, including environmental traps (building traps that don't cost money, but instead soak up time,) and that attaches ranger traps to the Craft (Traps) skill, if those might be what you're looking for.

I was considering picking this book up in hopes of running a campaign later this year but is it worthwhile if I have no interest in large scale battles? I've heard the back story section is cool and read lots of the posts here about starting a business, which I think would be handy. I guess I'm not sure how much I can take from the book that the players would run with.

You could wait some more until the hard rules are added to the Pathfinder Reference Document and take a look youself.
Since almost everything in that book is rules mechanics, almost everything from it should become freely available for online lookup.

There are four chapters L8, the first is about character backgrounds. The second is downtime. The third is optional rules systems to implement. The last is kingdom building and mass combat, so only about an eighth of the book is mass combat related.

And Mass Combat is even relatively short compared to the rest of the Kingdom Rules. It's really just 17 pages out of 250.

I'm big into character backgrounds, insisting players do them so I have some way of building hooks into the campaign that are unique to each character's story... so that section will definitely interest me. Downtime may as well.
So many books, so little cash :)

I just received my copy yesterday. I had never waited with such anticipation for any of the printed books apart from the CRB's 1st printing.

I like the new paper better too. Now I just need to check for misprints :-))

The old-school grognardy response would be to say that they built a Waterfront and Magic Shop because they wanted their city to be a port city and to have a magic shop in it, which is what they did. Heaven forbid they do not provide the optimal numerical benefit! They shouldn't cry over not being able to min-max a broken system, which is what they were trying to do.

The new-school nicey response would be to halve the cost of major magic item producing buildings, since they are no longer infinite piggy banks full of money.

In between the two, I'd say that some of those buildings were kept were they were price-wise for the sake of consistency with the original rules. There are also other substantial benefits, such as:

Discounts - a Waterfront provides a 50% discount on building on 4 buildings, adding up to a 78 BP discount on building them. It also provides a Productivity bonus (not as big a deal as the main 3 kingdom mods, but relevant).

Magic Items - Those magic item slots are not worthless just because they are not an infinite money machine. If your PCs are trying to buy magic of their own, each slot gives them more choices of what is available. Also, if you use Ultimate Rulership, those item slots can be accessed by you with Commission Edicts to custom-order magic items to be built or improved. No medium/major slots means no medium/major items for you.

1)The sarcasm is unnecessary, and inappropriate to my players, despite my caricature of their response. The first two buildings they constructed were a Brewery and a Tavern - partly because they were planning for an Academy and figured those would attract students, and partly because one of their characters is a follower of Cayden Cailean (which makes for an interesting interplay with the Ruler, who is a follower of Iomedae).

2)Perhaps I was wrong, but the impression I had was that the reason the Magic Shop and Waterfront were the two highest cost buildings was that they produced the major magic items which fueled the system as presented. Perhaps I should have adopted some of the changes to the economic system others suggested on these messageboards, but I didn't. I can't fault my players for driving through a gaping hole in the rules as presented them, nor for objecting when the loophole is closed (I should note that I greatly caracitured their reactions). My point is simply that if the economic model is completely overturned (as it should have been) by removing the selling of magic items and capping the base value based on the size of settlement, adjustments should be made to buildings which were designed for and had their costs based on the old model.

3)If the original rules needed changing (as they did) why insist on consistency with those rules? "Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative." - G.K. Chesterton

4)Actually, my players are enjoying being able to use item creation feats and have been making their own items.

5) I had not even heard of Ultimate Rulership until Ultimate Campaigns came out (which is surprising to me as I'm usually all over that sort of thing), but I had thought of doing something similar with the Caster's Tower (possibly increasing its cost while lowering the Magic Shop's), using the suggestion (p.193) for magic item creation as a form of taxation/community service built into the caster's lease.

6)Finally, it is really hard to find a major magic item one can put into those slots whose value is less than the Base Value of any size settlement (even a Metropolis, which is capped at 16,000gp), as is required (and emphasised) by the rules on p. 213).

That being said, I have one further question: In the magic item creation section, there is one sentence which puts a RAW-interpretation based decision of my RotRL GM in question. The sentence is as follows:

"If he has fewer than 8 days before the next adventure, he’ll need to finish his crafting while traveling or use accelerated crafting in town to speed up the process."
My RotRL GM has so far interpreted the accelerated crafting rule in the way that you still can't craft more than 1000 GP per day, but can do so in half the time per day, i.e. 4 hours.
This sentence seems to imply that accelerated crafting functions instead in the way in which I always have interpreted it in my campaigns, meaning you can double your crafting output to 2000 GP per day by crafting a full 8 hour day with accelerated speed.

Accelerated crafting lets you increase your magic item crafting output to 2,000 gp per day.

I found it quite amusing that Scofflaws upgrade to Bureaucrats.

Someone forgot to do a search and replace for all the mention of brothel in the Kingdoms and War chapter. At least 3 buildings list it for a Discount and it gets alot of mention, but it is not listed as a building that can be built.

Someone forgot to do a search and replace for all the mention of brothel in the Kingdoms and War chapter. At least 3 buildings list it for a Discount and it gets alot of mention, but it is not listed as a building that can be built.

As I recall Dance Hall = Brothel. Horizontal dancing I guess...

5) I had not even heard of Ultimate Rulership until Ultimate Campaigns came out (which is surprising to me as I'm usually all over that sort of thing), ....

It hadn't been announced until Ultimate Campaign came out, so there was nothing to hear.

6)Finally, it is really hard to find a major magic item one can put into those slots whose value is less than the Base Value of any size settlement (even a Metropolis, which is capped at 16,000gp), as is required (and emphasised) by the rules on p. 213).

Well, there's always major magic wands, major magic scrolls, major magic potions... Although wands of 4th level spells are out, so I hope you like lots of 3rd level spell consumables... :/

-------

Seriously. Everywhere I turn, table 4-5 is in direct logical opposition to the rest of the rules, even the rules that reference it. Instant small towns from building a single building. Base values which are trivial to reach and too restrictive for the magic item rules....

I plan on excising all references to that table from my game.

6)Finally, it is really hard to find a major magic item one can put into those slots whose value is less than the Base Value of any size settlement (even a Metropolis, which is capped at 16,000gp), as is required (and emphasised) by the rules on p. 213).

Um...

"Minor Items/Medium Items/Major Items: This line lists the number of magic items above a settlement’s base value that are available for purchase. In some city stat blocks, the actual items are listed in parentheses after the die range of items available—in this case, you can use these pre-rolled resources when the PCs first visit the city as the magic items available for sale on that visit. If the PCs return to that city at a later date, you can roll up new items as you see fit. See page 461 of the Core Rulebook for the number ranges determining how many items can be found in a community."

So that's actually a non-issue... roll up a Major magic item and even if it costs 200k+ gold put it on the city's list of items. The base value is only for when a character goes looking for a specific item, not for determining what fills the city's item slots.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/settlements.html

Alan_Beven wrote:

GrumpyGM wrote:

I love the fact that you have moved away from an economy based on selling other people's stuff (my players, not so much). One major question though: Why do Waterfronts still cost 90BP and Magic Shops cost 68BP? After all, not only can't you profit from selling their major items, but the upper limit of a settlement's Base Value is set by settlement size, so their boost to bv is insignificant: any settlement with basic buildings will hit that limit in short order.

For the benfits of piers and waterfronts check out page 232 bottom right hand side.

That only helps if one is planning to establish long-distance trade routes. (Due to the way the rules are set up, Trade Routes are virtually impossible to establish with the Kingdom-next-door, but much easier if you want to trade with Tian-Xia.) They certainly aren't worth the cost if one wants near term benefits.

Well.... Yes. Piers and waterfronts are key economic drivers in worlds that lack aircraft. If your settlement does not want to trade there are better options. Water hex trade routes are easier to establish and can bring in a lot of BP.

I've got it, I've got it, I've got.

Too bad I'm a teacher and exams are on their way, because otherwise I just might have to stay home "sick" ;)

Piers and Waterfronts are also relevant in the upcoming Ultimate War. Just sayin... :)

magnuskn wrote:

That being said, I have one further question: In the magic item creation section, there is one sentence which puts a RAW-interpretation based decision of my RotRL GM in question. The sentence is as follows:

"If he has fewer than 8 days before the next adventure, he’ll need to finish his crafting while traveling or use accelerated crafting in town to speed up the process."
My RotRL GM has so far interpreted the accelerated crafting rule in the way that you still can't craft more than 1000 GP per day, but can do so in half the time per day, i.e. 4 hours.
This sentence seems to imply that accelerated crafting functions instead in the way in which I always have interpreted it in my campaigns, meaning you can double your crafting output to 2000 GP per day by crafting a full 8 hour day with accelerated speed.

Accelerated crafting lets you increase your magic item crafting output to 2,000 gp per day.

Many thanks, Sean! :D Yay! :)

Piers and Waterfronts are also relevant in the upcoming Ultimate War. Just sayin... :)

So... Naval combat?

Stone Ghost wrote:

Just got the book today and I also see the paper quality as being matte, though some pages come off as semi-gloss. Doesn't really bother me that much, just takes a bit to get used too.

Does seem though that I got a misprinted book though. Pages 161-192 are printed twice in my copy. Anyone else seen this as well?
Already got a replacement being shipped from Amazon, so no worries there. Just hope the replacement is correct.

That's an error that sometimes happens at the factory where the book is printed and bound. Having the seller (Amazon?) send you a replacement copy is the way to go.

You mean that I could simply ask Paizo to send me a replacement Bestiary 1 as most of the pages are double from the first few monsters?