Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Campaign (OGL)

GrumpyGM wrote:

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

Yes, that is what it says on page 204 of the Game Mastery Guide. It also is what the Core Rules say. BUT...

Page 213 of Ultimate Combat:

"Filling Item Slots: ... This item's price cannot exceed the base value for the settlement (reroll if the item's price exceeds the settlement's base value....
Example:... If she had rolled anything more valuable than the 200 gp base value of her settlement, she would have to reroll until she got an acceptable result."

It is possible that you get a major item slot even though all major items exceed the settlement gp limit, yes.

In that case, the slot either remains unfilled until the gp limit increases, or it gets filled with a medium item. GMs pick.

Ooh, good questions.

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

1-8 lots: Small Town (1000 gp)

9-20 lots: Large Town (2000 gp)

21-40 lots: Small city (4000 gp) 36 lots = 1 district

41-100 lots: Large City (8000 gp) 72 lots = 2 districts

101+ lots: Metropolis (16000 gp) 108 lots = 3 districts

So a single Waterfront takes up 4 lots, and caps out your town until you've reached 41 lots.

An Inn and a Shop together will take 2 lots and cap out your town until you reach 21. At which point you could build the above watefront, or just a market, and either way you'll be capped out again...

On the other hand, Base Value means very little any more.

--------

I do think that this book is a significant improvement over the original rules, but it feels like they over-corrected in some cases.

I am not sure where you found your 1-8 lots: small town. Population has always been the determining factor for a settlement, small town population of 201-2,000 (pg. 203 PFGMG). 1 district (36 sub lots) would be the the absolute smallest one could honestly imagine for a small town; minimal population (201) and 1 district a small town that had 36 houses (36 sub lots) there would be about, 6 people per house. Best suggestion I can say is base your settlement type off of population and your kingdom off of districts.

On a personal note, I am not a fan of the scale they added for the sub lots, a urban house has a 750 x 750 lot associated to it? City roof jumping just got a lot harder. I am using 100 x 100 sub lots for my scale, which is still huge for a city; about 1/4 acre.

Kingdom Sheet

Does anyone have a clue what would grant the bonuses/penalties to:

1. Kingdom Stats: Economy, Loyalty and Stability for Resources, Skill, and Government

2. Settlement Stats: Corruption, Crime, Law, Lore, Productivity and Society for Edicts, Events, Leadership, Resources, Skill, Unrest and Vacancies

3. Settlement Stats: Productivity for Alignment, and Government
Did Productivity become the Economy stat for settlements on the Kingdom sheet?

Seems like there are some holes with the book, and I dislike paying for a hardback that requires I look at errata to fix.

Any thoughts, opinions, or official answers are welcome about these 3 inquiries.

It is possible that you get a major item slot even though all major items exceed the settlement gp limit, yes.

In that case, the slot either remains unfilled until the gp limit increases, or it gets filled with a medium item. GMs pick.

But that's the problem: the gp limit (16,000gp for a Metropolis) will never be high enough for a truly major item.

What about converting a building's bv bonus to a percentage (+500gp = +5%)? These percentages are then added together (maximum 100%); then multiply the base value (and Purchase Limit?) by this percentage. This not only makes the bv bonus of big ticket items meaningful again; it is also in keeping with the settlement rules provided in the Game Mastery Guide, where settlements have Qualities (Feats for Cities) which affect the 6 settlement modifiers as well as base value and spellcasting limit.

And also, revert to the Core Rules & Game Mastery Guide policy of magic items needing to exceed base value, not be capped by it; or hybridize and simply let the dice determine what is in the slot, above or below bv.

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?

Contact Paizo customer service, I don't know if there's a time limit on it or anything like that.

Mul, Bobson is translating the 250 people per lot into the number of lots for each city type. He is correct. Until a lot is "completed" (filled with a building) it is empty of people. This is stated on UCa p212.

Also, lots may not be '1' building but many buildings of the same type. Even a Castle doesn't fill it's lot. A castle and all of its grounds will fill the lot.

To answer some of your questions on what I think they are:
1) In Kingmaker resources are Lair (Cave), Landmark, Resource, and (maybe) Roads.

In the new Kingdom rules what I am using the resource column for anything in the hex that is an economy, stability, or loyalty bonus. This includes: Aqueduct, Fort, Highway, Mine, Quarry, Road, Sawmill, Watchtower, Lair, Landmark, Resource, and River.

Skill column: I use that for the (optional) skill component of the leadership scores.

Government, I think this is just for the second section and does not apply to Economy, Loyalty, and Stability.

2) Near as I can figure they are not used for that section of the table.

3) On GMG p206 it states that Alignment never affects economy (productivity).
On GMG p207 there are government types that do affect economy on a local level. Similarly, on UCa p231 there are national government types that affect Productivity (economy).

Yes, productivity is the old Economy for a settlement. This is stated on page 215 right above the Academy listing.

- Gauss

Mul, Bobson is translating the 250 people per lot into the number of lots for each city type. He is correct. Until a lot is "completed" (filled with a building) it is empty of people. This is stated on UCa p212.

Also, lots may not be '1' building but many buildings of the same type. Even a Castle doesn't fill it's lot. A castle and all of its grounds will fill the lot.

To answer some of your questions on what I think they are:
1) In Kingmaker resources are Lair (Cave), Landmark, Resource, and (maybe) Roads.

In the new Kingdom rules what I am using the resource column for anything in the hex that is an economy, stability, or loyalty bonus. This includes: Aqueduct, Fort, Highway, Mine, Quarry, Road, Sawmill, Watchtower, Lair, Landmark, Resource, and River.

Skill column: I use that for the (optional) skill component of the leadership scores.

Government, I think this is just for the second section and does not apply to Economy, Loyalty, and Stability.

2) Near as I can figure they are not used for that section of the table.

3) On GMG p206 it states that Alignment never affects economy (productivity).
On GMG p207 there are government types that do affect economy on a local level. Similarly, on UCa p231 there are national government types that affect Productivity (economy).

Yes, productivity is the old Economy for a settlement. This is stated on page 215 right above the Academy listing.

- Gauss

Thanks Gauss. Glossery / Index could have been better in this book :-(

What does this mean:

"You can only recruit a team if the character levels of its individual members are equal to or lower than your Leadership score."

The level of the individual members or the combined level of all members?

And what leadership score? The score you would have if you had the Leadership feat?

If this book gets a second printing, it really needs major overhauls with the editing.

What does this mean:

"You can only recruit a team if the character levels of its individual members are equal to or lower than your Leadership score."
The level of the individual members or the combined level of all members?

See boldface.

And what leadership score? The score you would have if you had the Leadership feat?

The very next sentence (page 91, paragraph 3, sentence 2) after the one you quoted above says:

If this book gets a second printing, it really needs major overhauls with the editing.

Okay.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

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! :)

Indeed! Many thanks, Mr. Reynolds. m(_ _)m

SKR and company;

Oddly enough I'm having no problem reading or understanding the book despite any minor issues. You people have really thick skins. Good thing. Good book even if I'm only planning on using parts of it. It's an interesting read.

Thank you.

I agree..That is nerdy. :p

Lol! Thanks for confirming, Steve. :)

I want to chime in here as well and say how much I am also enjoying this book. It is great to see Paizo tackling these areas of the game with rules codification. Some of these systems are going to be trickier to adjudicate the the more traditional core rules, I would expect that some of the player base will take a little while to get their heads around these rules.

One overarching comment on the rules in chapter 3, these rules could have used some cross standardization. Contacts operate across a 1-5 range, fame 0-100, relationships to 40ish if I recall. A standardized new set of stats that were uniformly graduated may have been a bit less fiddly. Love this chapter however.

What does this mean:

"You can only recruit a team if the character levels of its individual members are equal to or lower than your Leadership score."

The level of the individual members or the combined level of all members?

And what leadership score? The score you would have if you had the Leadership feat?

If this book gets a second printing, it really needs major overhauls with the editing.

I haven't had any issues with the editing. Perhaps it's a user-side issue ;)

I tease :D

Hi love the book but I've run into a huge issue in the Downtime section of the book, but first a bit of back story.

I'm running a Pathfinder game in the City of Freeport setting. The party went through the modules, Death, Terror, Madness, Vengeance, Crisis, and Hell in Freeport. The first campaign ended with an epic battle with a gestalt paragon wizard/cleric that had been causing them trouble throughout the adventure, and they ended up 20th level. I'm continuing the next campaign with a new group of adventurers, with their epic level characters as a side story, as both fend of the invasion in Black Sails over Freeport.

The biggest problem I face now is that it has been ten years. Some of these characters have plans for businesses and their own organizations. One of them, a rogue/fighter is investing in the employment of gnomish Gunsmiths and selling firearms for a whole lot of money.

Firearms are emerging right now, but as a result of ten years of making them they will more than likely become Commonplace in Freeport.

The first problem I'm having is that I see no upkeep costs for him, as he is the manager, and has paid these craftspeople their 200, and created a Artisan's Workshop, and set them to work. Do teams not cost money over time? We settled for the idea of a yearly cost, and he increased their pay to 360 gold to keep them happy. Although with the money he's making they might just go on strike and demand more. Also is there no upkeep for the buildings themselves? I'd think there would be a bit of maintenance, and of course taxes.

The second issue I'm having is that there's no craft DC for firearms, so per the Gunsmithing feat, he's crafting a couple muskets every three days. And since we're working on ten years here, we've sped up the phases for a whole month. Per his three gnomes he's making 20 muskets at 15,000 gp profit, 990 packs of 30 firearm bullets at a profit of 26,730 gp, and 30 kegs of black powder at 27,000 gp profit.

That's a grand total of 68,730 profit.

Month two, he got bolder. He now has 10 Artisan's Workshops, 1 Forge, 1 Leather Workshop, 4 Lavatories, 1 Office, 1 Storage, 2 Storefronts, 1 Vault. Each of these fortified. He has 12 crew of Craftspeople and a crew of Bureaucrats as his Storefront merchants.

Second month resulted in the income of 690,480 gp. He's reached his value in gear level in profit, and is wanting to start a shipping business to start selling his goods around the world.

This of course is assuming he's selling all of his goods, but I don't know the best way to determine that. And its more than likely I am missing something here, so please correct me.

Eventually I will be shifting firearms to Commonplace as a result of this which will greatly hurt his profits, but the damage to the economy will be done. The local Clockwork Firearms won't be able to compete, and every pirate, half-orc, and Yellow Sign cultist in town will be shooting each other!

So as you see I am in dire need of assistance! Please help!

Edit: Forgot to mention that for the time require of building and hiring teams he had these built/hired in the previous month before they started production. And sorry for the long post!

Hi love the book but I've run into a huge issue in the Downtime section of the book, but first a bit of back story.

I'm running a Pathfinder game in the City of Freeport setting. The party went through the modules, Death, Terror, Madness, Vengeance, Crisis, and Hell in Freeport. The first campaign ended with an epic battle with a gestalt paragon wizard/cleric that had been causing them trouble throughout the adventure, and they ended up 20th level. I'm continuing the next campaign with a new group of adventurers, with their epic level characters as a side story, as both fend of the invasion in Black Sails over Freeport.

The biggest problem I face now is that it has been ten years. Some of these characters have plans for businesses and their own organizations. One of them, a rogue/fighter is investing in the employment of gnomish Gunsmiths and selling firearms for a whole lot of money.

Firearms are emerging right now, but as a result of ten years of making them they will more than likely become Commonplace in Freeport.

The first problem I'm having is that I see no upkeep costs for him, as he is the manager, and has paid these craftspeople their 200, and created a Artisan's Workshop, and set them to work. Do teams not cost money over time? We settled for the idea of a yearly cost, and he increased their pay to 360 gold to keep them happy. Although with the money he's making they might just go on strike and demand more. Also is there no upkeep for the buildings themselves? I'd think there would be a bit of maintenance, and of course taxes.

The second issue I'm having is that there's no craft DC for firearms, so per the Gunsmithing feat, he's crafting a couple muskets every three days. And since we're working on ten years here, we've sped up the phases for a whole month. Per his three gnomes he's making 20 muskets at 15,000 gp profit, 990 packs of 30 firearm bullets at a profit of 26,730 gp, and 30 kegs of black powder at 27,000 gp profit.

That's a grand total of 68,730 profit.

Month two, he...

Well good news for you, when it comes to selling items, he'd actually have to make Profession checks to make the money, not Craft checks. Essentially, just because he can craft these items doesn't mean people in the area can buy them. So, he'd have to make Profession (Merchant) or (Gundealer) or whatever you decide.

I haven't had any issues with the editing. Perhaps it's a user-side issue ;)

I tease :D

I am just saying: In the Pathfinder Products forum, ten of the twelve most recent threads are about people not getting their head around unclear rules from Ultimate Campaign.

I havn't watched the launch of previous books closely in the past, but I think the amount of "What does this mean?" and "Where is that covered?" threads is a bit of an issue.

Odraude wrote:

I haven't had any issues with the editing. Perhaps it's a user-side issue ;)

I tease :D

I am just saying: In the Pathfinder Products forum, ten of the twelve most recent threads are about people not getting their head around unclear rules from Ultimate Campaign.

I havn't watched the launch of previous books closely in the past, but I think the amount of "What does this mean?" and "Where is that covered?" threads is a bit of an issue.

Nah, numerous threads always spring up asking all manner of questions. Its just the simple side effects of having a new hardcover book launch.

Ultimate Campaign is nothing but rules systems; long stretches of text with many intricate rulings. Nothing small and easily digestible like archetypes, and usually everything in this book appeals to everyone whereas in past books players would skip right to their favorite class(es) and stick with that for a while.

In short, larger audience, larger chunks of rules, larger number of questions about those large chunks of rules.

Will this be added to the PRD?

Is there a value to components listed anywhere? In the book it says Mithras crystals are worth 10gp per pound, and it lists a couple other examples but that's it. I am trying to find values so they components can be worked into magic item creation as in the example.

Will this be added to the PRD?

Eventually it should. All the PFRPG books have been added so far. But it usually takes about a month until everything is edited and reformated before it goes online. d20pfsrd.com already has the traits added to their database.

I asked this elsewhere, but I'll ask again here. Page 86, there are rules for researhing spells.

Should we consider these new rules replace the spell research rules presentd in the GameMastery Guide (p. 114)?

I just wanted to reiterate what I've said elsewhere on this forum, I love the content of this book! The downtime rules in particular are very good for non-casters since they now have tons of stuff to do while the wizard is crafting items or scribing spells.

The editing isn't terribly bad, but there are a few topics that could benefit with a bit of attention - especially a blurb on "salaries and upkeep" in the rooms and teams section would be handy. From what I understand, the recruitment cost of teams is part of it, the cost of earning non-gold capital is part of it, and if you earn gold the cost is deducted before you get your income - if I understood that correctly then it would probably be better if it was spelled out a bit more clearly. It might also be good to cover expenses/upkeep of a structure or a team that is (for whatever reason) not in use for a period of time.

@ RenScotsen, I answered your PM. Btw, I missed it, but firearm crafting DCs are on page 101 of Ultimate Combat. A bit squared away in a hidden spot, but the table is there.

I am sorry in advance if this has already been answered. I've spent all night pouring over the book and the internet, including the 900+ posts here and I am starting to feel very silly. I cannot find the answer, and can only find even one person referencing it which likely means I have missed something obvious somewhere.

Under the Ruler Leadership role, there is this passage, page 201:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat applies to all Kingdom attributes you affect-"

What leadership bonuses are these in reference to? I cannot find this /anywhere/ and my eyes are near to bleeding. It cannot possibly be the Leadership score, that would compound with the Charisma bonus and be absurd, but I cannot find anywhere that Leadership the feat gives you a bonus to something. Is it squirreled away in this book somewhere?

Please. End the madness and point out the obvious for this poor soul. Thank you in advance.

Any chance someone is going to take some of those excellent spreadsheets people made for Kingmaker and update them for Ultimate Campaign? I'm loving all of this new stuff and would like to plug it into a Way of the Wicked campaign I'm running, but I think my players may go cross-eyed if they don't have an automated way to track all of it. Purty please? :-)

@ Rykka -- I was scratching my head at the same thing. Maybe it referred to modifiers you received for your leadership score (e.g., reputation)?

What leadership bonuses are these in reference to? I cannot find this /anywhere/ and my eyes are near to bleeding. It cannot possibly be the Leadership score, that would compound with the Charisma bonus and be absurd, but I cannot find anywhere that Leadership the feat gives you a bonus to something. Is it squirreled away in this book somewhere?

I'm guessing this might refer to the bonuses (and penalties) listed in the feat decription under "Leadership modifiers".

I am sorry in advance if this has already been answered. I've spent all night pouring over the book and the internet, including the 900+ posts here and I am starting to feel very silly. I cannot find the answer, and can only find even one person referencing it which likely means I have missed something obvious somewhere.

Under the Ruler Leadership role, there is this passage, page 201:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat applies to all Kingdom attributes you affect-"

What leadership bonuses are these in reference to? I cannot find this /anywhere/ and my eyes are near to bleeding. It cannot possibly be the Leadership score, that would compound with the Charisma bonus and be absurd, but I cannot find anywhere that Leadership the feat gives you a bonus to something. Is it squirreled away in this book somewhere?

Please. End the madness and point out the obvious for this poor soul. Thank you in advance.

I'm not completely sure, but I think that the Leadership feat adds a +1 to whatever bonus you get from your ability score for your role in the kingdom (Ruler, Magister, General, whatever).

Rykka wrote:

I am sorry in advance if this has already been answered. I've spent all night pouring over the book and the internet, including the 900+ posts here and I am starting to feel very silly. I cannot find the answer, and can only find even one person referencing it which likely means I have missed something obvious somewhere.

Under the Ruler Leadership role, there is this passage, page 201:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat applies to all Kingdom attributes you affect-"

What leadership bonuses are these in reference to? I cannot find this /anywhere/ and my eyes are near to bleeding. It cannot possibly be the Leadership score, that would compound with the Charisma bonus and be absurd, but I cannot find anywhere that Leadership the feat gives you a bonus to something. Is it squirreled away in this book somewhere?

Please. End the madness and point out the obvious for this poor soul. Thank you in advance.

I'm not completely sure, but I think that the Leadership feat adds a +1 to whatever bonus you get from your ability score for your role in the kingdom (Ruler, Magister, General, whatever).

That is correct.

If you have Leadership, it increases the bonus you provide to Stability, Economy, and/or Loyalty by +1 for the kingdom role you have.

It's written that way so that if you change roles, the bonus goes with you even if now you're affecting a new kingdom score.

Under the Ruler Leadership role, there is this passage, page 201:

"If you have the Leadership feat, the bonus from the feat applies to all Kingdom attributes you affect-"
What leadership bonuses are these in reference to? I cannot find this /anywhere/ and my eyes are near to bleeding. It cannot possibly be the Leadership score, that would compound with the Charisma bonus and be absurd, but I cannot find anywhere that Leadership the feat gives you a bonus to something. Is it squirreled away in this book somewhere?
Please. End the madness and point out the obvious for this poor soul. Thank you in advance.

It's referring to the bonus mentioned on page 201, under Leader Statistics, in the Benefit subsection: "This explains the benefit to your kingdom if you

So a General (page 202) adds Cha mod or Str mod to Stability; if the General has the Leadership feat, that bonus increases by +1.
The Ruler adds Cha mod to one attribute for Size 1-25, two attributes for Size 26-100, and three attributes for Size 101+; if the Ruler has the Leadership feat, that bonus (or those bonuses) increases by +1. The text you quoted means "that +1 extra bonus from Leadership gets added to each of the kingdom attributes the Ruler affects." (In other words, the Ruler of a Size 101 kingdom adds Cha mod + 1 to three kingdom attributes... it's not Cha mod + 1 one attribute and just Cha mod to the other two.)

I asked this elsewhere, but I'll ask again here. Page 86, there are rules for researhing spells.

Should we consider these new rules replace the spell research rules presentd in the GameMastery Guide (p. 114)?

The GMG method expands and clarifies the brief info presented in the Core Rulebook, and is a system where you make weekly checks.

If you are using the downtime system, use the method presented in Ultimate Campaign. If not, use the Core Rulebook/GMG method.

Is there a value to components listed anywhere? In the book it says Mithras crystals are worth 10gp per pound, and it lists a couple other examples but that's it. I am trying to find values so they components can be worked into magic item creation as in the example.

The mithral crystal 10 gp/pound is just an example, same as the dragon heartblood example ("dragon heartblood might be worth 10 gp per drop"). The value-per-unit doesn't really matter, it's just a way of adding flavor to the otherwise-boring magic item creation process. So it doesn't matter if a vial of devil blood is 50 gp or 100 gp or 500 gp... it's just used as a trade good, so you'd "spend" amounts of the talismanic component as if it were money.

So after fighting a CR 2 imp, the GM may decide that as part of its CR 2 treasure (550 gp on average), 30 gp worth of devil blood can be salvaged from it. And if you fight a CR 8 erinyes, the GM may decide that as part of its CR 8 treasure (3,350 gp on average), 500 gp worth of devil blood can be salvaged from it.

The second issue I'm having is that there's no craft DC for firearms, so per the Gunsmithing feat, he's crafting a couple muskets every three days. And since we're working on ten years here, we've sped up the phases for a whole month. Per his three gnomes he's making 20 muskets at 15,000 gp profit, 990 packs of 30 firearm bullets at a profit of 26,730 gp, and 30 kegs of black powder at 27,000 gp profit.

If he wants to use his gun shop to craft guns for profit, he's not using the crafting rules from the Core Rulebook and selling them to customers at full price. He's using the downtime system to generate income from his buildings (page 82, Income Phase, Step 1). Using your shop to make money means you make checks with the downtime rules.

In other words, just because you can craft 6 muskets per week doesn't mean you're able to sell 6 muskets per week, which is why you use the Income Phase rules to determine your profits rather than the crafting rules.

RenScotson wrote:

The second issue I'm having is that there's no craft DC for firearms, so per the Gunsmithing feat, he's crafting a couple muskets every three days. And since we're working on ten years here, we've sped up the phases for a whole month. Per his three gnomes he's making 20 muskets at 15,000 gp profit, 990 packs of 30 firearm bullets at a profit of 26,730 gp, and 30 kegs of black powder at 27,000 gp profit.

If he wants to use his gun shop to craft guns for profit, he's not using the crafting rules from the Core Rulebook and selling them to customers at full price. He's using the downtime system to generate income from his buildings (page 82, Income Phase, Step 1). Using your shop to make money means you make checks with the downtime rules.

In other words, just because you can craft 6 muskets per week doesn't mean you're able to sell 6 muskets per week, which is why you use the Income Phase rules to determine your profits rather than the crafting rules.

Yeah, I shot him a PM a bit ago going into more detail about making money. I actually do think, however, that the GM could have a random collector roll through every so often and buy a firearm right then and there. That's more in the realm of GM fiat though.

You guys are amazing, thank you! I knew it had to be something obvious that I was missing and I was right. A bit embarrassing that it was on the /same page/, but hey. At least I know now.

If I can bother everyone with one more question before I slink off to re-bury myself in absorbing this book?

Is there any sort of system for determining City Size (And probably other things) for kingdoms you acquire and do not make? My players are running a sort of expansionist campaign in the River Kingdoms, trying to collect all of the kingdoms one by one. At the moment, they only have the Pitax region and a chunk of the Stolen Lands, but I am at a loss on how to adapt these rules to account for what we already have with City Size being problem number one.

At this point, I think my only real option is to use the miles to hex ratio in conjunction with the RK map to try and gauge how many hexes that region is composed of.

Do the maestros of this book and forum have any suggestions towards this or other rules in terms of adopting a pre-existing kingdom when trying to stat it out? Probably a touch out of the purview of the book, but I want to get it as inline with the rules as I can so that I can use it for future expansions and events.

Thanks again for the leadership answer, it was driving me nuts!

Mul, Bobson is translating the 250 people per lot into the number of lots for each city type. He is correct. Until a lot is "completed" (filled with a building) it is empty of people. This is stated on UCa p212.

Also, lots may not be '1' building but many buildings of the same type. Even a Castle doesn't fill it's lot. A castle and all of its grounds will fill the lot.

To answer some of your questions on what I think they are:
1) In Kingmaker resources are Lair (Cave), Landmark, Resource, and (maybe) Roads.

In the new Kingdom rules what I am using the resource column for anything in the hex that is an economy, stability, or loyalty bonus. This includes: Aqueduct, Fort, Highway, Mine, Quarry, Road, Sawmill, Watchtower, Lair, Landmark, Resource, and River.

Skill column: I use that for the (optional) skill component of the leadership scores.

Government, I think this is just for the second section and does not apply to Economy, Loyalty, and Stability.

2) Near as I can figure they are not used for that section of the table.

3) On GMG p206 it states that Alignment never affects economy (productivity).
On GMG p207 there are government types that do affect economy on a local level. Similarly, on UCa p231 there are national government types that affect Productivity (economy).

Yes, productivity is the old Economy for a settlement. This is stated on page 215 right above the Academy listing.

- Gauss

One question I missed on this, where does it say that houses, buildings, etc. "may not be '1' building, but many of the same type". Page 214 states that Lots is how many lots the building fills. By the use of the word fill, I would take it as fills, meaning uses the area/lot completly.

Gauss wrote:

Mul, Bobson is translating the 250 people per lot into the number of lots for each city type. He is correct. Until a lot is "completed" (filled with a building) it is empty of people. This is stated on UCa p212.

Also, lots may not be '1' building but many buildings of the same type. Even a Castle doesn't fill it's lot. A castle and all of its grounds will fill the lot.

To answer some of your questions on what I think they are:
1) In Kingmaker resources are Lair (Cave), Landmark, Resource, and (maybe) Roads.

In the new Kingdom rules what I am using the resource column for anything in the hex that is an economy, stability, or loyalty bonus. This includes: Aqueduct, Fort, Highway, Mine, Quarry, Road, Sawmill, Watchtower, Lair, Landmark, Resource, and River.

Skill column: I use that for the (optional) skill component of the leadership scores.

Government, I think this is just for the second section and does not apply to Economy, Loyalty, and Stability.

2) Near as I can figure they are not used for that section of the table.

3) On GMG p206 it states that Alignment never affects economy (productivity).
On GMG p207 there are government types that do affect economy on a local level. Similarly, on UCa p231 there are national government types that affect Productivity (economy).

Yes, productivity is the old Economy for a settlement. This is stated on page 215 right above the Academy listing.

- Gauss

One question I missed on this, where does it say that houses, buildings, etc. "may not be '1' building, but many of the same type". Page 214 states that Lots is how many lots the building fills. By the use of the word fill, I would take it as fills, meaning uses the area/lot completly.

I think it says that on the same page, under "Building Name".

Some of the descriptions, e.g. for House, also make it clear that a lot contains many actual buildings. Other descriptions are less clear about that point but can be inferred, e.g. the description for Magical Academy "An institution for training students in spellcasting, magic item crafting, and various arcane arts." - this could mean one building or several. Still others state explicitly that is represents one building, e.g. the Mansion - although I think that the manor's kitchen for instance would be separated in case of fire.

In the end, you should probably take a certain amount of artistic license with the description; if it makes sense that a Building should consist of several separate structures, then it should be. If not, then not.

Gauss wrote:

Mul, Bobson is translating the 250 people per lot into the number of lots for each city type. He is correct. Until a lot is "completed" (filled with a building) it is empty of people. This is stated on UCa p212.

Also, lots may not be '1' building but many buildings of the same type. Even a Castle doesn't fill it's lot. A castle and all of its grounds will fill the lot.

To answer some of your questions on what I think they are:
1) In Kingmaker resources are Lair (Cave), Landmark, Resource, and (maybe) Roads.

In the new Kingdom rules what I am using the resource column for anything in the hex that is an economy, stability, or loyalty bonus. This includes: Aqueduct, Fort, Highway, Mine, Quarry, Road, Sawmill, Watchtower, Lair, Landmark, Resource, and River.

Skill column: I use that for the (optional) skill component of the leadership scores.

Government, I think this is just for the second section and does not apply to Economy, Loyalty, and Stability.

2) Near as I can figure they are not used for that section of the table.

3) On GMG p206 it states that Alignment never affects economy (productivity).
On GMG p207 there are government types that do affect economy on a local level. Similarly, on UCa p231 there are national government types that affect Productivity (economy).

Yes, productivity is the old Economy for a settlement. This is stated on page 215 right above the Academy listing.

- Gauss

One question I missed on this, where does it say that houses, buildings, etc. "may not be '1' building, but many of the same type". Page 214 states that Lots is how many lots the building fills. By the use of the word fill, I would take it as fills, meaning uses the area/lot completly.

It's right at the beginning of the Building Descriptions section, under the subhead Building Name:

"The type of buildings contained in this lot. In most cases, each lot represents numerous buildings of that type, rather than a single edifice."

I also spend some time on this subject in Ultimate Rulership, talking about the concept of lots and neighborhoods and also exceptions to that general rule, buildings that for one reason or another are not just multi-building blocks that you could easily pass through, either because they are literally huge like an Arena or Cathedral or because they represent a secured area like a Garrison or Barracks.

Perhaps this has been answered above although I have not seen it.

In the Core Rulebook, magic items which have a purchase price of the Base Value or less have a flat 75% availability, while the rolled items must be more expensive than that. This does make some sense, in that you wouldn't want to roll a bunch of cheap items, because they're already (almost) certainly available.

In Ultimate Campaign however, the Base Value is a cap on the price of items available. This also makes some sort of sense, as otherwise you get the (small) possibility that a thorp of 20 people has a Harp of Charming (7,500 gp) available for sale.

Which is it? Does Base Value mean different things for player-ruled settlements as opposed to ones that the party wanders through during adventures? How do we mesh these two? The Ultimate Campaign book also (p. 212) repeats the "There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale in the settlement with little effort." sentence, so I'm not sure why we would bother to generate the other items - is it to say "these items are guaranteed to be for sale and if you want other items, there's a good chance that they will also be available, but nothing above the Base Value"?

When I was running the Kingmaker AP, one of the players (who is quite mercenary) said something like "What sort of salary do we get for running the kingdom? Why should we bother if we don't get one?"

It does occur to me that this is a problem with the interface between the Downtime and Kingdom system. If you own an Inn in the downtime system, you can earn a small amount (compared to adventuring, but still) of money by running it.

However if you are running the entire Kingdom, it seems you can only get money out of it by BP withdrawal and running the risk of citizens rioting in the streets via increased Unrest.

Am I missing something? Are NPC rulers generally supporting their lifestyle through BP withdrawal and conversion, or is this only supposed to apply to PC-ruled kingdoms?

Another item is that the Taxation Edicts seem to not generate much - the difference between Taxation level of "None" and "Overwhelming" gets you at most 1BP/turn, which can mean a lot when you're starting out, but certainly very little if you have a 100-hex Kingdom with several Cities. Any suggestions for scaling this, e.g. as a percentage of the Economy?

As far as salary, if you are ruling the kingdom you should probably be able to cash in a fancy lifestyle in an abstract "sure, why not?" kind of way. Their personal wealth as adventurers isn't really increased, but they are enjoying all kinds of feasts and parties and finery and being able to boss people around and plan what others will and can do with their lives.

It's an amusing attitude that rulers are doing the ruled a great favor by ruling them. Their salary is paid in obedience, loyalty, fame, adulation, and control, rather than in cash money. If a character doesn't value that, then he is under no obligation to accept a rulership role. He can certainly live just fine as one of the many hangers-on and homeskillets lurking around the castle and basking in the reflected glory of the leaders of the nation. :)

As for the latter question, yes you're right. There are alternative methods proposed in Ultimate Rulership which might better please your sensibilities.

In days of yore, English monarchs made a lot of money from their private holdings. Is there anything stopping your PCs from having private estates of their own?

The new rules on Investment are potentially helpful as a tool to reward Kingdom ruling PCs. If the PCs use their noble influence to gain access to and steer business to the best investments in the nation, a GM could reward their royal charter investments with slightly lower risk and potentially higher returns than other investments of a similar kind.

There is nothing in the rules that either prevents it or enables it. It's not set up as a money machine, mostly because in a Pathfinder game personal wealth for PCs translates into more magic items and personal power and combat effectiveness. While there's a certain logic to say that the king should have all the best stuff, when it comes to PCs there's also a game balance issue in that allowing PCs to rake in tens or hundreds of thousands of gp in raw cash would allow all rulers to become ultrapowerful superheroes.

Of course, kingdoms ARE BP machines, and the PCs are earning large amounts of valuable tangible and intangible resources that have a cash value of tens or hundreds of thousands of gp, which they can spend as they like on improving the kingdom. It's a difference between saying "The kingdom earned 60 BP (worth 240,000 gp), I'm going to buy an awesome Cathedral!" and saying "The kingdom earned 240,000 gp (worth 60 BP), I'm going to go buy a staff of power!"

But, all things considered, it's not that hard to get rid of Unrest. If you wanted to just skim a couple of thousand gp every month and offset it by building a House and/or other improvements each month to offset it. You just need to be careful and hope you don't get bad luck with a kingdom event.

In days of yore, English monarchs made a lot of money from their private holdings. Is there anything stopping your PCs from having private estates of their own?

English, like German and Skandinavian, sovereigns were often elected leaders of a kind of confederation of autonomous principalities. The ruler who owns the whole country, or in other words "is the state", is a relatively modern concept. But as a first among equals, he would also have his own lands from which he gains a direct income for himself, just as all the other lords get their income from their lands. Often, there was no such thing as a national budget, and instead the king had to pay for a lot of the things that concern the country from his own coffers.

The Kingdom rules in Ultimate Campaign are rather mislabled, as the vast majority of cases would probably be much smaller independent principalities consisting of the lands of a single lord. Who might call himself a king, but wouldn't be anything anywhere near historic kings. (In the same way that "Armies" are actually Units, and "Units" are actually individual soldier.)

Thank you to Paizo and all involved; Ultimate Campaign is a superb product.

I posted a quick UCamp Kingdom Building question regarding settlement consumption over in the rules sub-forum.

Question

Unless I missed it somewhere, the new UCamp text regarding Consumption seems somewhat different and potentially less explicit than the Kingmaker text.

Is settlement contribution to overall kingdom consumption still equal to 1BP per district?

Thank you!

Is there any sort of system for determining City Size (And probably other things) for kingdoms you acquire and do not make?

That's really a GM call. The premise is that you're building your own kingdom from the ground up, not acquiring parts of other kingdoms (such as cities).

Perhaps this has been answered above although I have not seen it.

In the Core Rulebook, magic items which have a purchase price of the Base Value or less have a flat 75% availability, while the rolled items must be more expensive than that. This does make some sense, in that you wouldn't want to roll a bunch of cheap items, because they're already (almost) certainly available.
In Ultimate Campaign however, the Base Value is a cap on the price of items available. This also makes some sort of sense, as otherwise you get the (small) possibility that a thorp of 20 people has a Harp of Charming (7,500 gp) available for sale.
Which is it? Does Base Value mean different things for player-ruled settlements as opposed to ones that the party wanders through during adventures? How do we mesh these two? The Ultimate Campaign book also (p. 212) repeats the "There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale in the settlement with little effort." sentence, so I'm not sure why we would bother to generate the other items - is it to say "these items are guaranteed to be for sale and if you want other items, there's a good chance that they will also be available, but nothing above the Base Value"?

The Core Rulebook system is a generic, low-detail system for randomly determining if and what items are available in a settlement the GM hasn't planned out.

The Ultimate Campaign system is a specific, high-detail system for determining what items cannot be found or may be found in a settlement the PCs built or control.

The nature of the settlement determines which system you should use. In other words, if you wander into a neighboring land and go magic item shopping, and the GM hasn't planned out what items are in that settlement, use the Core Rulebook system. If you return home and are doing your kingdom phases and want to see what items pop up in your settlement's available magic item slots, use the Ultimate Campaign system.

My reply from the other thread: At one point we had specific district, consumption, base value, and other stats for villages, towns, and cities, but we changed that in development. Add the number of city districts to your kingdom's Consumption (just like the Kingmaker rules).