The rules assume that a BP is worth more or less 4000gp. Since a "House" is not really a single house but a housing-focused neighbourhood, probably with some non-descript minor merchants (baker, butcher, etc.), the PCs would have to pay about 12,000gp out of their pockets to gain the same benefits.
In the same way, building "a Road" on a hex doesn't usually mean a single road crossing, but a complex network of transportation, with a main and well-maintained road and smaller roads leading to thorps, hamlets and farmlands (because approx. 200-250 people live in each hex...).
What Chuckbab said... :)
Plus - each square on the gridmap is what?...750ft per side or something? I forget.
That's a lot of 'houses'... :)But specifically - by 'stump up' I meant front up with the moolah = cash baby!
:) 'stump up' is slang here for exactly that.So - stumping up the BP worth of it = they pay the full amount of BP x 4000gp
to buy that with their own money...which as our more eloquent friend has
pointed out is 12,000gp for a 'house'...which isn't actually just one house.
So... even if the PCs built it themselves they would still have had to pay 12k to build it or they would have to pay whatever they didn't spend on the construction to make it count as a house hex?
Bingo...
..or at least that's the way I'd play it. Otherwise it's just far too easy to
game the system.
But it is your world, you own it.
There is no need to add complex requirements that make no sense and have no basis on reality?
There is no need to add complex requirements that make no sense and have no basis on reality?Of course - it's always up to the GM & their players...
All I was trying to say is that - unless you use the rules as a basis for
building, what's to stop your players from building a single cottage &
saying "Cool, we've just populated that block with 250 people..."From now on in - up to you on how you run it.
The fact that that also isn't realistic and also is not 95 square feet of housing, unless that single cottage is 95 square feet.
Isn't one city district supposed to be one square mile in area? If so, there are almost 28 million square feet per district, and with 16 blocks per district, that leaves a lot of square footage per block.
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The problem, in my opinion, is that your PCs seem to play like they are building contractors and see BPs as their own personal money.
I made clear with my players from Day 1 that BPs, while reprensenting some money and physical resources, also represent intangible things, such as ambitious merchants looking for opportunities, work force, political capital, etc.
So when they decide to build a "house" on one city square, they are not commissioning a team of builders to erect a single cottage. They are creating the political conditions that encourages new settlers to come to the kingdom and to build their houses using their own "private" resources, while merchants and experts use this opportunity for profit created by new citizens having needs for food, clothes, etc.
The leaders are not controlling the actions of every single person in their kingdom, but they have the means to influence the future of their realm, using BPs as leverage. But for the sake of simplicity in the mini-game (because that's what kingdom-building ultimately is), we pretend that they have complete control over the development of the kingdom.
The problem, in my opinion, is that your PCs seem to play like they are building contractors and see BPs as their own personal money.
I made clear with my players from Day 1 that BPs, while reprensenting some money and physical resources, also represent intangible things, such as ambitious merchants looking for opportunities, work force, political capital, etc.
So when they decide to build a "house" on one city square, they are not commissioning a team of builders to erect a single cottage. They are creating the political conditions that encourages new settlers to come to the kingdom and to build their houses using their own "private" resources, while merchants and experts use this opportunity for profit created by new citizens having needs for food, clothes, etc.
The leaders are not controlling the actions of every single person in their kingdom, but they have the means to influence the future of their realm, using BPs as leverage. But for the sake of simplicity in the mini-game (because that's what kingdom-building ultimately is), we pretend that they have complete control over the development of the kingdom.
I would agree with you on everything but houses, shops and whatnot yes that would require BP to fill but I just don't see houses as requiring BP...
Well, unless you can build a single house on a square plot over 660 feet on a side (quarter of the area of one city block), then, yes, they should be worth BP.
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To mix in the Downtime rules a little: a house takes up a maximum of 44 squares, for 1,290 gp. That's 1,100 square feet. A lot is 750x750 feet, or 562,500 square feet. A single lot can squeeze in 511 houses, with zero space between them. That would cost 659,190 gp, or 164 BP. It's far more reasonable to give people space, though, so saying that 3BP = 12,000 gp, which works out at 9 houses, allowing each house a good plot of land (roughly 250x250), plus roads, which seems reasonable.
Definitely let them build houses on their own, but until they spend around 12,000 GP doing so, don't let it count as a house for the purposes of the Kingdom rules.
Well, unless you can build a single house on a square plot over 660 feet on a side (quarter of the area of one city block), then, yes, they should be worth BP.
Why does it have to be a single house? Why can't it be a series of houses?
Definitely let them build houses on their own, but until they spend around 12,000 GP doing so, don't let it count as a house for the purposes of the Kingdom rules.
Why? They are still houses, people can live in them, what makes them not houses unless they magically lose the additional gp it takes to spend a total of 12k?
@felinoel
We either have totally different views over kingdom-building and the game as a whole (since you looks like a rules lawyer to me), or you're playing devil's advocate just for fun, but anyway, here's how I view it.
Kingdom Building is a mini-game inside Pathfinder, and as such, uses resources that are different from the "base game". Although you can convert BPs in GP and the other way around (I personnally prohibited both transactions in my game), they're not the same things.
To me, the "Building a House lot" kingdom action is not the same as "paying for some houses" character action, unless you also recruit 250 settlers, build basic roads, find more city guards, organize new trade routes to get more food in the city... Because "Building a House lot" means developing your city in a way that encourages more citizens to come and live there. It represents the action not only of the PCs, but of the NPC administrators, of the local authorities, of the community in general, etc.
"The Kingdom" works to have the job done, and at the game table, "The Kingdom" is played by the players together in addition to their individual PCs, and "the Anti-Kingdom forces" (as well as the NPCs who oppose the kingdom) are played by the GM.
The two systems influence and complement one another, but they do not merge.
@felinoel
We either have totally different views over kingdom-building and the game as a whole (since you looks like a rules lawyer to me), or you're playing devil's advocate just for fun, but anyway, here's how I view it.
Kingdom Building is a mini-game inside Pathfinder, and as such, uses resources that are different from the "base game". Although you can convert BPs in GP and the other way around (I personnally prohibited both transactions in my game), they're not the same things.
To me, the "Building a House lot" kingdom action is not the same as "paying for some houses" character action, unless you also recruit 250 settlers, build basic roads, find more city guards, organize new trade routes to get more food in the city... Because "Building a House lot" means developing your city in a way that encourages more citizens to come and live there. It represents the action not only of the PCs, but of the NPC administrators, of the local authorities, of the community in general, etc.
"The Kingdom" works to have the job done, and at the game table, "The Kingdom" is played by the players together in addition to their individual PCs, and "the Anti-Kingdom forces" (as well as the NPCs who oppose the kingdom) are played by the GM.
The two systems influence and complement one another, but they do not merge.
Wait... buying the house lot automatically convinces people to live in your town?!
I didn't realize that, ok if it automatically spawns people living in the houses too then it requiring X amount of gold/BP be spent makes sense.
Aha! And thus we find the root of the disconnect. Yes, every lot built in a settlement under the Kingdom rules increases the population of that settlement by 250.
As an abstraction, you're not necessarily building enough houses in a House lot for that number of people, since it will also include the builders, the guys who make roads, the odd small time greengrocer, and what have you, moving into the city to help service the people who do move into the houses that are built there.
That is a very different result than just building a few houses, and that's why building some houses independently of the 3 BP should not count as a House under the Kingdom rules.
Aha! And thus we find the root of the disconnect. Yes, every lot built in a settlement under the Kingdom rules increases the population of that settlement by 250.
As an abstraction, you're not necessarily building enough houses in a House lot for that number of people, since it will also include the builders, the guys who make roads, the odd small time greengrocer, and what have you, moving into the city to help service the people who do move into the houses that are built there.
That is a very different result than just building a few houses, and that's why building some houses independently of the 3 BP should not count as a House under the Kingdom rules.
Weird but ok.
Also there is a small population being convinced to leave their current homes of persecution and genocide so if those people move then yeah the player-built homes would count but otherwise I see why it wouldn't.
A problem popped up quite recently, kind of relevant to the discussion...
How do yo consolidate the kingdom building rules with downtime rules for creating businesses?
I understand making teams, teams fit quite nicely fit the overall downtime. But if A player builds a tavern or opens an alchemy shop. builds a brothel, spending own gold but still it's quite a deal cheaper than spending BP on the same building. Do you add these building as lots or what? I feel individual buildings do not contribute that much to the whole settlement as of whole, when players build a tavern with BP they actually build a lot of additional infrastructure and it's not really one building, more like a sub district that features several buildings with a spacey tavern included.
I feel individual buildings do not contribute that much to the whole settlement as of whole, when players build a tavern with BP they actually build a lot of additional infrastructure and it's not really one building, more like a sub district that features several buildings with a spacey tavern included.
I believe that that is precisely the idea, so a single Downtime building should certainly not equate to a whole UC lot.
Yeah, I feel it's micro vs macro. In this case micro-economy of having a household and a macro-economy of actually investing into the infrastructure and subsidizing the population to build this or that, ending up in a nice district with a tavern as a crown jewel.
It's better to think of buildings built with BP's as a neighborhood of Taverns, and buildings built with the downtime rules as just one single Tavern.
The two and four space buildings are best thought of as a Town Hall and a bunch of supporting buildings. Or a Castle, exterior supporting buildings, bulwarks, terrain features, tournament/fairgrounds, pasturage, etc...
As it has been mentioned in many other places, they are similar systems, but they are wholly different scales.
I have a question about the Royal Enforcer/Assassin. Everyone here refers to how easy it is to use the Royal Enforcer to reduce unrest during the Upkeep phase. Aren't the penalties fairly severe if you fail the Loyalty check?
Benefit(s): Add your Dexterity modifier or Strength modifier to Loyalty. During the Upkeep Phase, you may decrease Unrest by 1 (this is not affected by having the Leadership feat); if you do so, you must succeed at a Loyalty check or Loyalty decreases by 1.
It looks like the Loyalty decrease is permanent, and I can't figure out how you would reverse that. With a climbing Kingdom DC, it seems pretty risky to chance a permanent penalty to any of the three Kingdom stats.
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As with almost everything, there's a balancing act. You're weighing free unrest reduction (remember that unrest reduces all Kingdom checks, so even if you fail the Loyalty check, you're increasing Economy and Stability by 1 each) against 3BP for a house.
Also, beyond a certain point, Kingdom checks become trivial (you would have to be aggressively expansionist without constructing buildings for this to not happen), and you reach a point where you only fear a natural 1 on a Kingdom check.
In the early months of a Kingdom, use it only in emergencies, but once your Loyalty reaches Control DC -10, you can typically use it when you need to, and once Loyalty equals DC-2, just use it.
Something somewaht realted to Kingdom Building. When looking at various stat blocks, it's somewhat easy to find statplocks for cities, less common are statblocks for countries. Most importantly, population. Now I devised a method I use for my PCs kingdom, but manybe others can share their ideas? What is the popualtion of Pitax, for example, 9k in the city and with all that territory it must have hamlets and small villages.
Rough approximation: 250 people per 100 square miles, plus the population of settlements.
Rivers/water...?
The main thing to remember there is that the rivers shown on the AP maps are
absolutely HUGE. i.e. a mile or two across...
This is incorrect, each book has a small section that covers some of the geographic features.
Appendix II on pg. 55 gives the following information;
Gudrin River - 450' across, 150' deep
Little Sellen River - 90' across, 20' deep
Murque River - 100' across, 10' deep
Shrike River - 300' across, 60' deep
Skunk River - 100' across, 30' deep
Thorn River - 60' across, 30' deep
These are of course average ranges, additional information for each river is given.
You will also find more information on pages 57-58 concerning movement in general.
The Slough is marsh/swamp, I believe the hex where the Murque River's mouth is could also be marshy if you want.
I also remember something about how all the rivers flow. If you look carefully at the map, it appears that several rivers seem to cross crestlines in the mountains. This is supposed to just be goofy art, so just ignore the ridgelines in those areas.
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I've always considered the rivers on here to be the main, navigable rivers - at least up until the mountains. While each GM is free to decide on the geomorphology and geology of his own terrain, there are a few things to remember -
One, a large part of the Stolen Lands is underlain by limestone - thanks to the numerous caves in the area. There aren't many surface streams on top of limestone - the water sinks into the ground when it crosses over from another rock to limestone - sometimes straight into a cave. Frequently, the water doesn't reappear until it reaches the main river - and then it shows up as a spring or boil.
An exception to this are the warm sulfur springs in the forest. This water is clearly rising from somewhere deeper, indicating a fault.
Two - the bedrock is covered by a lot of soil derived from mountain sediment. The soil contains the patterns of old, filled in river systems. These old systems carry minerals from the mountains and are the source of the gold and silver mines in the center of the map. This also means that there's gold and silver in the mountains, along with other valuable minerals. Essentially, the placer deposits give the GM a free hand to place minor deposits anywhere he/she wants and can cause the mines to peter out at any given time.
Three - the land generally dips towards the west and the Slough - though by the time you get into the bottomlands, that dipping is very gradual and imperceptible to all but the most astute (Knowledge geography or nature 30). Also the land east of the Tors is higher than the land west of the Tors. That is to say the Nomen lands have a higher elevation than the Kamelands. This is evident by the cascades on the Shrike.
Four - Geologically, deep down there's probably a series of north-south faults that are pushing up the Tors. Look at the Grand Tetons south of Yellowstone for inspiration. There's probably a parallel series of faults on the western edge of the Narlmarches that bring up the unusual minerals for the hot springs. In between, you have the block that the PCs are living on. Feel free to throw in an earthquake!
Five - There's likely a dramatic change in flow between rivers on the mountain hexes and rivers on the bottom lands. Bottom lands rivers are likely slow moving and sediment-rich, with few tributaries while mountianside rivers are swift flowing, not deep (less than a couple feet) and riddled with rocks and rapids. Think mountain streams. The easternmost branch of the Little Sellen is likely in a steep canyon, and has nearly cut through into the Dunsward. (Remember, the Dunsward is still higher than the Kamelands). Geologically, the Dunsward is probably also underlain by limestone - thus the complete absence of surface streams. Water from the Dunsward may already be feeding the Little Sellen!
That's my 2 copper. I really ought to formalize all this into a proper paper at some point.
I believe the hex where the Murque River's mouth is could also be marshy if you want.
In fact, the description of the Murque on p. 55 of the Stolen Lands says "This slow-moving river is bordered on both banks by strips of swampy land that effectively double the river's 100-foot width", so there's swamp all the way along it.
Which was useful IMC, since the Lizardfolk have had to abandon their village due to Monster Kingdom problems.
A easy reminder on the Greenbelt map is the isthmus between the Tuskwater and Candlemere, it is approx one mile wide.
Perfect spot for a town on our map.
Continuous means apply ALL modifiers, good & bad, each month until the event is resolved.
My DM has ruled that building modifiers will not stack in the kingdom. Example: if you build a stable in 2 different towns, you do not gain the Economy and Loyalty bonuses for the second stable. How do I convince him that after you build 1 building of each type your kingdom modifiers will stop increasing, but each new hex will increase the Control DC to an eventual point where only a natural 20 will be able to make any kingdom checks and crash the kingdom? We started this campaign with the original kingmaker rules and the magic item rules got out of hand and killed the game. We restarted with the Ultimate Campaign rules and the building rules of taking multiple months to build a building from the Ultimate Rulership rules from Legendary Games. He says we have to claim hexes to be able to advance to the third book.
If this doesn't do it:
Step 5—Create and Improve Settlements: You may create a settlement in a claimed hex (see Founding a Settlement). The Improvement Edicts table tells you the maximum number of settlements you can establish per turn.
You may construct a building in any settlement in your kingdom. When a building is completed, apply its modifiers to your kingdom sheet. The Improvement Edicts table tells you the maximum number of buildings you can construct in your kingdom per turn. The first House, Mansion, Noble Villa, or Tenement your kingdom builds each turn does not count against that limit.
... not a lot else will change his mind.
I can guarantee that they're meant to stack. And if he's not willing to take my word for it, I'm sure we can get Jason Nelson to say the same thing.
Thank You. I will have him read that section again.
Just to expand on this point a little:
You could probably make a good case that multiple buildings of the same type in the same settlement don't apply their benefits more than once: this will have the effect of slowing down Kingdom Statistic growth, and make Control checks harder (since it's utterly trivial to get your Economy, Loyalty and Stability vastly higher than your Control DC), but you end up with some very odd things happening. Not least that there would be absolutely no reason to build more than one of a particular type of building in the same settlement more than once except to increase your settlement's size.
This gets even worse if it's applied to the kingdom as whole: with no mechanical benefit to building more than one temple in the entire kingdom, why would any group choose to do so? Roleplaying reasons, sure, and that's a valid reason, but since the citizens of the kingdom are seeing no benefit (if they don't stack, they don't decrease unrest, either), they don't have any tangible effect.
Further, the maximum purchase limit 20,500 gp for the entire kingdom. So, you could have one metropolis with 16,000 gp, one small city with 4,000 gp, and one village with 500 gp, and every other settlement in the kingdom has a purchase limit of 0 gp.
Personally, if I were to set a limit like this, I'd do it per settlement, and probably say that the modifiers are halved for each building of the same type after the first, except unrest reductions which are always in full.
We have already slowed building down by using the rules from Ultimate Rulership where it takes multiple months to build a building, which I think is a good thing, as it should take more than 1 month to build a castle.
He ruled that settlement bonuses from buildings can stack in the same city, like base value, Law, Productivity, magic item slots and the such. So you could build 6 stables to give you a base value of 3,000 gp in a city, but can only get the Loyalty and Economy bonus once.
I went through the UC and totaled the values from each building once and you get a total of 51 to your Loyalty, yet there are 77 hexes in the first map. So your Control DC would be a 97 without counting the districts required to build just the Loyalty bonus buildings. That means you have to get 50+ points from Leadership and landmarks.
I can see no possible way to sustain a kingdom with the first map fully settled, let alone adding hexes from any other map.
You wrote: Personally, if I were to set a limit like this, I'd do it per settlement, and probably say that the modifiers are halved for each building of the same type after the first, except unrest reductions which are always in full.
I will try to use that logic with him as I can see that as more realistic than limiting only 1 bonus per building to the entire kingdom.
I can expound on the Kingdom rules until the cows come home.
It might be worth mentioning that since the rules assume that the benefits stack in full, such a drastic reduction (and this is a huge reduction) might have consequences he's not thought of. Sounds to me like you've figured out the most obvious: it sets a solid cap on the Kingdom statistics, which will make growth very hard past a certain point.
The biggest argument in favour of allowing them to stack as intended is actually armies. Active armies cost so much that you absolutely must be able to have an unrestrained Economy score (to earn BP through taxes) to have more than a couple of very basic armies in play at once: this matters a lot later in the AP.
Ask him to look at those costs, and remember that army consumption is per week, so it's effectively four times that per Kingdom turn.
Scroll down to the bit about settlement modifiers. The settlement "economy" modifier was renamed "productivity" for the UCam rules, so that it doesn't clash with the kingdom's Economy score.
P.S. Hope you like the spreadsheet.
P.P.S. I should add tooltips to those modifiers on all the city sheets so that people know what they do. Good call!
The Productivity, Lore, Crime, Society, Corruption, Economy and Law modifiers all apply to the settlements rules presented in the GameMastery Guide.
It basically applies modifiers on some skill checks (Diplomacy, Bluff, Knowledge, etc.) and other things while in that settlement. I think the UCam rules suggest to apply these modifiers while in the kingdom as a whole.
You can read those rules here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/settlements
Ah, armies, the bane of my existence, and the one place that seems to never end up working the way it should when I change it.
Absolutely, please shoot me a PM and I'll answer as best I can, and if I need to I'll investigate/fix/rejig whatever, and if I can't do that I'll explain why.
Alternately, make it public in the Ultimate Campaign Kingdom Spreadsheet thread (it's in the community use projects subforum), and we can chat there and get others involved if they want.