Kingdom Building


Kingmaker

801 to 850 of 1,104 << first < prev | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | next > last >>
Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Some houserules I'm applying to building, and may revisit if they screw things up, but if a building halves the cost of another building (such as a Cathedral and Temple), you can demolish the smaller building to get half its BP back against the larger building. This lets the players get something for the smaller buildings they'll likely be building at the start without feeling gypped that they only get the half price thing with the biggest building.

I'm also restricting Dumps and Tannerys from being adjacent to Houses, Mansions or Noble Villas. Tenements can be next to them, but that's why tenements aren't great places to live.

Haven't really got building yet, only one turn, so we'll see how they break things.

Liberty's Edge

Paul Watson wrote:
Some houserules I'm applying to building, and may revisit if they screw things up, but if a building halves the cost of another building (such as a Cathedral and Temple), you can demolish the smaller building to get half its BP back against the larger building. This lets the players get something for the smaller buildings they'll likely be building at the start without feeling gypped that they only get the half price thing with the biggest building.

I expect you'll find that there's no shortage of BPs to go around.

-Kle.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Okay! Let's use this thread to ask questions and get rulings for building kingdoms and cities using the rules in Pathfinder Adventure Path #32. These rules could impact more than just "Rivers Run Red," so it deserves its own sticky thread.

The rules under selling magic items during the income phase of kingdom building state that, "You can make one Economy check per city district during each Income phase."

My players currently have 3 cities with 3 districts in their main city and 1 district in each of the other. The main city though has been built up and can have 6 medium items.

I've been insisting that they sell items from the city that the item exists in so I've limited them to selling 3 medium items in their main city. Meanwhile they only have minor items in the other two towns and they often aren't worth more than 4000 GP.

What was the rule's intent? How are other DMs handling this?

I'd like to be fair but they could easily break ground to build three more small towns so that they could sell 6 medium items (or in the not too far future 1 major and 5 medium) all from the main city. This seems like taking advantage of a loophole. The players are English majors and rules lawyers so its always a battle.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

Glimras wrote:

I've been insisting that they sell items from the city that the item exists in so I've limited them to selling 3 medium items in their main city. Meanwhile they only have minor items in the other two towns and they often aren't worth more than 4000 GP.

What was the rule's intent? How are other DMs handling this?

The way its been rules from others (as I hear it) is that items worth less than 4k gp can be sold as normal for a partial BP. They can't use it until they've sold 4K worth. If they sell a total of 4001 gp worth of items they lose the 1 gp. They don't get to keep it for their next round. BP aren't suppose to have an exact conversion to gp.

As for items must be sold in the city they're in, I haven't seen that one yet so this is how I'd do it if I were using that houserule. I'd let them move the item from city A to city B, requiring a 1 month transit time. That still allows them to sell an item elsewhere, but I'd cut the BP they gain from it by half since you have to arrange the secure transit. If they complain about half the funds, I'd let them have it for full, but I'd make them roll a die with 50% chance of losing the item completely to raiders/thieves/etc. This is just my thought, not official rules.

Liberty's Edge

We don't sell "partial BPs"; if the item isn't worth 4000gp, it has no BP value.

We also don't limit to selling in the city of origin, either.
-Kle.


Dale McCoy Jr wrote:
Glimras wrote:

I've been insisting that they sell items from the city that the item exists in so I've limited them to selling 3 medium items in their main city. Meanwhile they only have minor items in the other two towns and they often aren't worth more than 4000 GP.

What was the rule's intent? How are other DMs handling this?

The way its been rules from others (as I hear it) is that items worth less than 4k gp can be sold as normal for a partial BP. They can't use it until they've sold 4K worth. If they sell a total of 4001 gp worth of items they lose the 1 gp. They don't get to keep it for their next round. BP aren't suppose to have an exact conversion to gp.

This is the house rule we use, except we let the conversion happen at 2000gp (since a minor item is worth 2 BP).

Quote:
As for items must be sold in the city they're in, I haven't seen that one yet so this is how I'd do it if I were using that houserule. I'd let them move the item from city A to city B, requiring a 1 month transit time. That still allows them to sell an item elsewhere, but I'd cut the BP they gain from it by half since you have to arrange the secure transit. If they complain about half the funds, I'd let them have it for full, but I'd make them roll a die with 50% chance of losing the item completely to raiders/thieves/etc. This is just my thought, not official rules.

There's a great post earlier in this thread which explains what the magic item economy actually represents, which includes items moving from point A to point B as part of the sale. Based on that, we just use the "one sale per district" rule as written.

Paizo Employee CEO

5 people marked this as a favorite.

In my campaign, I actually wanted to make the magic item economy to be less of a factor, so I am using the following rules and it seems to work very well for my needs.

1. We keep track of the actual gp value of items sold and when it reaches 4,000 gp, we turn that into 1 bp.
2. We sell items by the city and the players can sell 1 item per district they have in that city. They have to sell items in that particular city.
3. They can't sell items that are worth more than the maximum city value of the city that the item resides in.
4. Any item that is worth 1/10th the maximum city value or less is called an "auto sell" and that money is put directly into the gp totals I mention in #1 above.

This has led to a steady supply of bp from magic item sales, but the biggest way to get bp is still the Economy roll, which is what I wanted.

It has also encouraged the players to build up the city values in order to have a big enough economy to sell more expensive items.

-Lisa


Lisa Stevens wrote:

In my campaign, I actually wanted to make the magic item economy to be less of a factor, so I am using the following rules and it seems to work very well for my needs.

1. We keep track of the actual gp value of items sold and when it reaches 4,000 gp, we turn that into 1 bp.
2. We sell items by the city and the players can sell 1 item per district they have in that city. They have to sell items in that particular city.
3. They can't sell items that are worth more than the maximum city value of the city that the item resides in.
4. Any item that is worth 1/10th the maximum city value or less is called an "auto sell" and that money is put directly into the gp totals I mention in #1 above.

This has led to a steady supply of bp from magic item sales, but the biggest way to get bp is still the Economy roll, which is what I wanted.

It has also encouraged the players to build up the city values in order to have a big enough economy to sell more expensive items.

-Lisa

Ooh, I like this idea. I'm not sure I can convert to it at this point, but if the economy ever gets out of hand to the point that I need to force a rules-reset on them, I'll definitely give this a try.

Liberty's Edge

Lisa Stevens wrote:


3. They can't sell items that are worth more than the maximum city value of the city that the item resides in.

What do you then do about the phenomenally expensive Major items that permanently clog the slots in your cities? Max city base value in Kingmaker defaults to 16,000gp, and even if it didn't it's trivial to randomly generate items so expensive that increasing BV high enough to sell them for BPs seems... unlikely.

-Kle.

Paizo Employee CEO

Klebert L. Hall wrote:
Lisa Stevens wrote:


3. They can't sell items that are worth more than the maximum city value of the city that the item resides in.

What do you then do about the phenomenally expensive Major items that permanently clog the slots in your cities? Max city base value in Kingmaker defaults to 16,000gp, and even if it didn't it's trivial to randomly generate items so expensive that increasing BV high enough to sell them for BPs seems... unlikely.

-Kle.

First off, I removed the 16,000 gp limit. It just seemed unnecessary since I changed the system. Yes, more expensive items do clog slots every so often. It just gives the characters an impetus to build up the city value. Also, there can occasionally be a random event where a big spender comes in from out of town and buys one of the expensive items, putting the build points into the coffers. My players view it as a challenge and not a hinderance. It seems to work for us.

-Lisa


Lisa Stevens wrote:

First off, I removed the 16,000 gp limit. It just seemed unnecessary since I changed the system. Yes, more expensive items do clog slots every so often. It just gives the characters an impetus to build up the city value. Also, there can occasionally be a random event where a big spender comes in from out of town and buys one of the expensive items, putting the build points into the coffers. My players view it as a challenge and not a hinderance. It seems to work for us.

-Lisa

Great system Lisa, I'm still debating which of the myriad of suggested

changes, I'll use in my game - but I do like this...

Kle - one would also assume that - just like in our own world - you can
actually transport stuff to another market. e.g. Restov?

Liberty's Edge

Philip Knowsley wrote:


Kle - one would also assume that - just like in our own world - you can
actually transport stuff to another market. e.g. Restov?

Which is why I don't think requiring items to be sold in the city of "origin" is particularly plausible.

Seems to me that if some super-valuable item showed up in a podunk frontier town, it wouldn't take all that long for a Katapeshi magic merchant to teleport in with a boatload of gp to take it off the locals' hands. My read of Golarion/Pathfinder is that high magic is unavoidable to the point of ubiquity. YMMV. Probably does.
-Kle.

Liberty's Edge

The Katapesh merchant will come an say: "Merchant of the frontier rural town, you will never sell that item, I will buy it from your hands at 55% of the price. Why aren't you happy? You get a 10% profit on what it costed you."
No merchant will buy something at full price to later resale it at the same price.


I have a rules question about the vacancy penalty. The way I read it, it doesn't make sense to me unless the Party is intentionally away all month and misses there kingdom building week, but if someone dies during the month it seems the vacancy penalty only partially applies.

This has now happened twice in our game where one of the NPC councilors died while the part was off adventuring so the vacancy penalty immediately applied but it only seems to apply up until the select leadership phase which is the first step in the improvement phase. At that point the party can rearrange the leaders so the vacancy penalty would not apply to the rest of the improvement phase, the entire income and event phases. That doesn't make sense and the vacancy penalty would be inconsequential in many cases.

Am I missing something? If not maybe the select leaders should be moved to the very end of the kingdom building turn in that way if someone dies mid-month the vacany penalty wouul apply for an entire kingdom phase.


Just a couple quick questions. Lumber gives a hex a +1 as a resource. Does that mean every forested hex claimed gives a +1 bonus or do you need it to be a road hex as well. Can a hex have multiple resourses, like a mine and forest.


Another quick question. Can you have a resource and city in the same hex?


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Steelthorn wrote:
Just a couple quick questions. Lumber gives a hex a +1 as a resource. Does that mean every forested hex claimed gives a +1 bonus or do you need it to be a road hex as well. Can a hex have multiple resourses, like a mine and forest.

Only "particularly valuable sources" of lumber count as resource hexes, not just any old forest hex. On the DM's hex map in each adventure, specific hexes have the coin symbol denoting resource hexes - those are the ones where it applies, and the adventure text explains exactly what the resource is. (So for the published adventures, there's never more than one such special resource in the same hex.)

You just have to claim the hex to gain the benefit of the resource - you can still develop the hex in any way that is appropriate to the terrain etc.


Late to the party here (just getting into the Kingdom Building rules). I didn't see anything on this question in a search, so if I missed something, I apologize:

The Kingdom Building rules from Kingmaker are based on a system of 12 mile hexes. I'm considering using it for Mystara, as an alternative to the Dominion rules from the Cyclopedia (to update things and keep them Pathfinder friendly). That system is based around a 24 mile hex scale, and the maps for the Gazetteers use an 8 mile hex scale.

For those of you with more experience, would changing the hex scale "break" the system at all (it doesn't seem so at a casual glance). And would you think it would work better using the 8 mile hexes as the "base" for the system- which is what I'm leaning towards- or should I scale it around 24 mile hexes, instead?


Cthulhudrew wrote:

Late to the party here (just getting into the Kingdom Building rules). I didn't see anything on this question in a search, so if I missed something, I apologize:

The Kingdom Building rules from Kingmaker are based on a system of 12 mile hexes. I'm considering using it for Mystara, as an alternative to the Dominion rules from the Cyclopedia (to update things and keep them Pathfinder friendly). That system is based around a 24 mile hex scale, and the maps for the Gazetteers use an 8 mile hex scale.

For those of you with more experience, would changing the hex scale "break" the system at all (it doesn't seem so at a casual glance). And would you think it would work better using the 8 mile hexes as the "base" for the system- which is what I'm leaning towards- or should I scale it around 24 mile hexes, instead?

In and of itself, no it wouldn't break anything. You might need to manually recalculate the travel/exploration times to account for the larger or smaller areas, but even that could just be handwaved away by saying the PCs do it faster or slower. It will also alter the feel of the place if you don't change the default 250 population per claimed hex (those people are either extremely spread out or closer together than before), but there's nothing that depends on population.


Thanks, Bobson. Yeah, it didn't look like it would adversely affect things, but just wanted to see if there might be something I was missing from people who've used the rules more extensively.

I think I'm going to go with an 8 mile/hex scale, to fit with the Gazetteermaps. I'll probably use the population calculation figures that Bruce Heard came up with in a couple of Dragon Magazine Princess Ark/Known World Grimoire articles. As you say, it doesn't really affect the mechanics in any other way.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

Changing the hex scale won't break the system. Short of the long, I changed the hex sizes (unintentionally) and kept the travel times the same. It doesn't break anything.


I'm trying to get my group to consider breaking each pathfinder hex into seven smaller hexes or adjust the one development only. 124 square mile farms just don't make much sense for a fantasy environment, at 18 square mile hexes it starts getting closer to historical precedents.

What I'd like to consider is adding a set of rules to loosely govern what happens when you have a district full of monuments, or your city of four districts only has one tavern. My group has been talking about setting up some role play guidelines for consequences of not having certain types of buildings in a district or city.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Manx Serimus wrote:

I'm trying to get my group to consider breaking each pathfinder hex into seven smaller hexes or adjust the one development only. 124 square mile farms just don't make much sense for a fantasy environment, at 18 square mile hexes it starts getting closer to historical precedents.

"Building a farm" in a hex doesn't mean literally 1 farm, I think, any more than building a tenement or house in the city means literally 1 house or tenement. At the level of abstraction employed here, "Building a farm" in a hex means essentially giving over that hex for farming use instead of other development (zoning it as farms, if you want to use a modern description). The actual number of individual farms there is up to you, and can number in the tens or hundreds as you wish.


I generally figure that a single hex (~100 square miles) has several villages and a ranch or four in it. Heavily settled areas like Brevoy would have a higher population density, but the Stolen Lands are only very lightly settled. Some of this is people coming out of the hills and thickets where they were hiding from bandits or running a little hillbilly cabin hidden from the wandering trolls; others are colonists coming in from Brevoy or other places (Mivon or Galt once the PCs reach their southern border, or even a few from Iobaria).

The system is _very_ abstract and needs to be treated that way.

Liberty's Edge

@ Manx Serimus

That is why I have strongly suggested a NPC Councilor to my group ans she is the one requiring what the people want and not what is mechanically the best combination of resources.

Then I will apply modifiers to the kingdom stats if the construction stat to bee too unbalanced in an attempt to milk the modifiers.

@ tonyz

Some time ago a few of us had a discussion in one thread about the inner Sea area population. If I recall exactly the population density of the playable races is about 1/2 of the post Black Death Europe in a territory that is about x2 that of Europe.

That mean that even in areas with a high population (for the Inner Sea area) the actual population density is very low.
Reasonable as we have a lot of non human or demi human races and very vicious predators.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Urath DM wrote:
"Building a farm" in a hex doesn't mean literally 1 farm, I think, any more than building a tenement or house in the city means literally 1 house or tenement. At the level of abstraction employed here, "Building a farm" in a hex means essentially giving over that hex for farming use instead of other development (zoning it as farms, if you want to use a modern description). The actual number of individual farms there is up to you, and can number in the tens or hundreds as you wish.

Exactly. Remember each hex adds 250 people to your population. The GMG estimates that to be 12-15 thorps or 4-12 villages. Each of these would have several farms. (When I lived in Germany for a year, I lived in a farming village. The village had 5-6 families all living there. Come harvest and planting seasons, everyone helped everyone. But they were still separate farms.) And its not like there are not farms in the same hexes as cities. Its just that enough of the land is taken up by the city that it the amount of BP it offsets is insignificant compared to a hex dedicated to farming.


Manx Serimus wrote:

I'm trying to get my group to consider breaking each pathfinder hex into seven smaller hexes or adjust the one development only. 124 square mile farms just don't make much sense for a fantasy environment, at 18 square mile hexes it starts getting closer to historical precedents.

What I'd like to consider is adding a set of rules to loosely govern what happens when you have a district full of monuments, or your city of four districts only has one tavern. My group has been talking about setting up some role play guidelines for consequences of not having certain types of buildings in a district or city.

I guess the major misconception is that PCs actually build farms when it is done in the Kingdom Building metagame.

Effevtively they grant the people actually living in that area (250 inhabitants when claimed) the right to do intensive farming on the land.
They also give some lower "nobles" or "guilds" the right to build roads and collect taxes for them in those hexes.
The rules of Kingdom Building make roads a prerequisite to farms.

If you only claim hexes you grant the people there the right to build their huts there and have a tiny farm to support their own living.

Since the Stolen Lands are harsh lands with severe winters and short and hot winters i guess "Farms" especially in hill areas are mostly sheep led to from one meager hill meadow to the other by hardy shepherds. Only the some lush areas to the south protected by the woods of the Narlmarshes provide grain producing.

So, an upcomeing kingdom in the Stolen Lands will make it's wealth by magic trade and conquering unclaimed lands from monsters and bandits instead of agriculture.

Liberty's Edge

@ Hargor
I think you are placing the Stolen Lands in a far northern climate than intended.
I see them as akin to Ukraine, so they will have a good agricultural production.
Remember that Pitax, the state bordering the southern border of the stole lands, is renowned for its vineyards.

@Dale
As I see it a lot of land is farmed around the cities (and even within the city walls), enough that a full district will only add 1 to consumption, instead of 1 for every 250 people in the city.
As a claimed hex add 1 to consumption I think that 1 consumption point is the equivalent the resources used by 250 people in one month (not only food, but fuel for eating and cooking, metals, wood, cloth and so on).

My interpretation of the cost of building farms is that it is akin to "giving a mule and forty acres" to each settler, i.e. giving people some kind of grant to help them start a farm.

Liberty's Edge

Does a hex need to be prepared (or merely claimed) before you build a road or establish a farm in the hex?
I know it must be prepared for cities/buildings, but it is not clear for farms/roads. Thanks.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
thorian wrote:

Does a hex need to be prepared before you build a farm or road in the hex?

I know it must be for cities/buildings, but it is not clear for farms/roads. Thanks.

No. Preparing is only for city hexes.

You have to claim a hex before you can build roads/farms there, or prepare it for city building, but you only have to prepare it if you want to build a city there.


Is there anywhere/how to boil this thread down into some kind of document? I read this thread several months back but I can't face having to reread the entire thing to remember things I have forgotten.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I have simplified my process for the kingdom to sell items.

During each sell items phase, the players roll percentile a bunch of times.

Minor items: 15%
Medium Items: 7%
Major items: 3%
The highest value item in each city is "pushed" to get it sold, tripling its chance to be sold that month.

Anything under 4000gp value is a wash, and just frees the slot up.
Minor items net 2 BP.
Medium items net 8 BP.
Major items net 15 BP.

It certainly swings up and down. Some months net no BP gain, some net 50 BP.


CaspianM wrote:
Is there anywhere/how to boil this thread down into some kind of document? I read this thread several months back but I can't face having to reread the entire thing to remember things I have forgotten.

A lot of it shows up in the River Nations book, although the later stuff (obviously) didn't make it in. It also doesn't address the magic item economy at all. But it's a good starting point.

Silver Crusade

Bobson wrote:
A lot of it shows up in the River Nations book, although the later stuff (obviously) didn't make it in. It also doesn't address the magic item economy at all. But it's a good starting point.

Do you have any examples of what this 'later stuff' is? I'd be interested in reading up on it and adding to my kingdom rules. Where is magic item economy discussed? Too many forums.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

HERE is a decent document on Kingdom Building that mentions magic item economy.

-- david
Papa.DRB


A couple house rules/tweaks that I've put in place in my campaign:

1. The players began with an Alchemist shop as their first minor item producer. In hindsight it was not their best decision but its been great roleplaying those economy rolls. Since there are limited alchemy items and potions/poisons don't cost 4000 GP, I permitted them to brew large quantities of potions, such as: cure disease and cure serious wounds to meet the BP requirements.

2. I reduced the city population to 100 per square or 40% of 250. Since this is a northern location with some harsh winters, I thought that fit the game better. When looking in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Settng book lists Restov's population as 18,670, so I thought my tweak keeps the population a bit more realistic. I did keep the 250 in other hexes.

Oh, they have hired a city planner now Tomas Strutman, a halfling, who is a master builder for some guidance.


Urath DM wrote:
Manx Serimus wrote:

I'm trying to get my group to consider breaking each pathfinder hex into seven smaller hexes or adjust the one development only. 124 square mile farms just don't make much sense for a fantasy environment, at 18 square mile hexes it starts getting closer to historical precedents.

"Building a farm" in a hex doesn't mean literally 1 farm, I think, any more than building a tenement or house in the city means literally 1 house or tenement. At the level of abstraction employed here, "Building a farm" in a hex means essentially giving over that hex for farming use instead of other development (zoning it as farms, if you want to use a modern description). The actual number of individual farms there is up to you, and can number in the tens or hundreds as you wish.

I, also, think the land is rotated so only part of the farmland is being used at any given time or season.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bobson wrote:
CaspianM wrote:
Is there anywhere/how to boil this thread down into some kind of document? I read this thread several months back but I can't face having to reread the entire thing to remember things I have forgotten.
A lot of it shows up in the River Nations book, although the later stuff (obviously) didn't make it in. It also doesn't address the magic item economy at all. But it's a good starting point.

I let my group use the River Nations Book. I like the bonus material.


Is it safe to assume that even nations with a Good Alignment can have Royal Assassins?

I ran a few years of trail kingdom development, managed to get 4 Noble Feuds, which threw in all kinds of unrest issues and nearly wrecked the kingdom (and DID bring the economy to a crawl for about a year). The only thing that put it down was the slow, steady decrease in unrest from a Royal Assassin.


Elizabeth Blackson wrote:
Is it safe to assume that even nations with a Good Alignment can have Royal Assassins?

Hi Elizabeth,

I think it safe to safe that it's still fine. :)
Given the (necessary) brevity of the rules - the names given to ruling
positions are not going to fit each group all of the time. They'll just
be generic 'place holder' names. I'm sure that a Royal Assassin could
quite as easily be described as a Spy Master, for example...or even
Royal Jester...if that's what took your fancy...


Well, there's already a role named SpyMaster.

Whatever you call the Royal Assassin, he still uses fear to keep unrest in check. While threats and intimidation are by no means evil acts, Good aligned rulers may feel uncomfortable using them as a means of governance.

There's nothing in the rules preventing a Good aligned from employing a Royal Assassin. Although, I could imagine a certain rabble rouser using such uncharacteristic acts as ammunition against the so called "Good" Kingdom Leaders.


Rules-wise, the assassin is the guy who goes around reducing unrest. In fluff, they do it by killing dangerous people. (I could see a CG kingdom with one of these, maybe -- the old Texas "he needed killing" defence -- but not a LG one.) So refluff it so they go around reducing unrest in other ways.

The 'assassin' could be the Royal Executioner.

Or the Royal Intendant.

Or the Special Judge.

(Not the spymaster: that's another post who gathers intelligence. The RA is the guy who acts on it.)


tonyz wrote:

Rules-wise, the assassin is the guy who goes around reducing unrest. In fluff, they do it by killing dangerous people. (I could see a CG kingdom with one of these, maybe -- the old Texas "he needed killing" defence -- but not a LG one.) So refluff it so they go around reducing unrest in other ways.

The 'assassin' could be the Royal Executioner.

Or the Royal Intendant.

Or the Special Judge.

(Not the spymaster: that's another post who gathers intelligence. The RA is the guy who acts on it.)

Rules-wise, the King is the guy who goes around adding his Charisma bonus to the Kingdom Scores.

You could call him the CandyMan, who helps the kingdom by giving candy to the children and leaves the actual ruling to someone else.

Or maybe that would just be silly

Maybe, rules-wise, the assassin, or whatever you call him, reduces unrest by "inspiring fear" 'cause, ya know, that's what it says in the rules.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Actually the text for Royal Assassin specifically says: "The Royal Assassin can serve as a public executioner, a headsman, or a shadowy assassin."

So he doesn't actually have to be an assassin, but he does have to be feared.

On the other hand, there's no penalty for leaving the slot vacant (aside from not getting bonuses), probably because some kingdoms specifically wouldn't want to fill it.


This thread has some great ideas and tweaks for the rules, but my group seems to be having an issue with the way the rules work at the base. They founded a capital city at the Stag Lord fort, claimed about 10 hexes worth of farmland around it and then stopped claiming hexes.

The reasoning is that the system discourages claiming hexes other than those that can be used for farms (you spend BP, your control DC goes up, but you gain every little benefit from actually having those hexes claimed - 1/4 of an economy point if you develop a road). So we are getting towards the end of book 3 and the book tells me that I should aim to have the PC's kingom at 80ish hexes by the end of the book, but they're barely at 10 with more than 3 years of kingdom building time passed! They have a huge capital city with multiple districts, waterfronts, arenas, and castles, but they aren't interested in expanding since the rules seem to tax expansion and encourage building up of cities. Their control DC is somewhere near 35 and their modifiers are over 40, so we've stopped rolling (other than economy). It doesn't really seem like there's much to the kingdom building other than picking what building to build every month. It's frankly getting boring fast.

How do I handle this? In theory city blocks grant population just like hexes do (in fact it's much faster and cheaper to build houses than claim and develop squares), so it's not like are going to be in trouble for raising an army, but the fun of kingdom building seems to be totally drained since there's never any chance of failure on rolls and there's no actual kingdom being built - just a city. Is there an easy way to fix the system so that expanding is actually beneficial?


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

There are several reasons for claiming hexes:
1) Benefits of "resource" hexes
2) Reduction of monsters near settled lands
3) Preventing others from claiming that land

1) If your PCs aren't claiming the special resource hexes, they're missing out on those benefits for their kingdom. (and see point 3)

2) The chance of a random encounter drops significantly when a hex is claimed, because part of claiming the hex is patrolling it and providing for the safety of your populace. If the PCs aren't claiming the hexes around them, then nasty monsters should occasionally move in. Start generating monsters to populate the hexes that are needed for trade with Brevoy, and let your players learn that trade caravans and the like are being attacked in these unclaimed lands. Make sure you mention that if the hexes were claimed by their kingdom, this wouldn't happen unless generated as a much-more-rate Kingdom Event.

3) Since the PCs haven't claimed these hexes, someone else might do so. Perhaps a more powerful bandit-lord moves south from Brevoy (or north from the River Kingdoms) and claims a trio of hexes outside the PCs' current borders. This is particularly useful if they claim one or more Resource hexes and you can drive home the value of what this rival barony has claimed.

Of course, this might require you to dust off the war rules before you're ready for them. As a milder warning that this might happen, you could have an expeditionary force (perhaps sponsored by the Surtova family) pass through the PCs nation as they explore the Greenbelt themselves, and let the PCs learn that they are intending to create a barony of their own in these wide-open, unclaimed lands.


I figure if the PCs aren't claiming very many hexes, then someone else is. Someone posted rules for "Hargulka's Troll Kingdom"; then there's the chance that Drelev gets its affairs in order, or a centaur warlord establishes a kingdom in the east, or Mivon invades from the south, or just some random bandits set up a kingdom and start working at it. Or some noble scion of Brevoy moves south and sets up a new duchy...

After all, if the PCs aren't doing their job of establishing civilization in the Stolen Lands and providing Restov with a buffer, the Sword Lords are going to sponsor someone else who CAN.


Thanks for your suggestions!

I've tried a couple of these and I haven't gotten far with them.

The resource hexes don't seem to be much of a draw, since they would need to claim several hexes to get to most of them and +1 economy at the cost of +3 Control DC is not a good trade.

We are a storyline-oriented group and combat just tends to slow everything down and get redundant if you add random encounters (there's plenty of combat in the storyline), so we rarely ever do random encounters. I've tried adding monster attacks caravan style of event, but those tend to just get ironed out with just a few claimed hexes... since they have no other real trade partners around other than Brevoy, once they have secured a route to connect to Brevoy, they're pretty much done (which is exactly what they did).

I guess I am going to have to start a rival kingdom and create war far ahead of its time, but that turns the entire campaign into a war game instead of exploration. It just seems like the rules themselves make expanding the kingdom hard and unrewarding and I was looking for a fix to that issue.

Jon Brazer Enterprises

vip00 wrote:
The reasoning is that the system discourages claiming hexes other than those that can be used for farms

Frankly, that is one of the reasons why I included minimum kingdom size with army sizes in the Book of the River Nations. This way, If you stick with a 10 hex kingdom and you goto war, you do not have the military size capacity of a larger kingdom that can field a larger army.

One suggestion would be to the spymaster some intelligence reports of army sizes of neighboring kingdoms, including pitax and brevoy. give them an early idea of what they will be facing in the future and let them prepare for it.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Another suggestion - have some random settlers move into a hex adjacent to your PCs' claimed hexes, build farms or some sort of settlement, and petition to join your kingdom. This way, it doesn't have to lead to war.

Roy Lezbin (is that the right name?) is supposed to ask the PCs for help founding Tatzlford somewhere along the way - maybe add a few hexes around it to make it a mini-barony in its own right, but struggling because of the dearth of good farmland, and they can ask to join up.

Since you mentioned that kingdom building is getting boring, yet another option is just to switch to kingdom-in-the-background. If your group agrees, you can just mention every once in a while that these sorts of things are happening to increase the kingdom size, and maybe update a map every in-game month (or two, or three) with added hexes, but otherwise you can stop worrying about the details.

801 to 850 of 1,104 << first < prev | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Kingmaker / Kingdom Building All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.