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The additional BP costs are laid out already for developing forest hexes for use other than lumber camps.
If he wants to build a city in the trees, everything will be made out of wood pretty much, which is a cheaper material than stone. However, he'll need suspended bridges everywhere, since not every civilian is keen on rope swings and zip lines. need to account for all that rope/wood.
I would maybe apply a 3/4 cost to the BP of the buildings.
Maybe double or triple the consumption for city districts because you are using so much wood.
You can use spells to cut the cost of regular buildings (wall of stone, etc.) as laid out in the books. I'd imagine a helpful druid with Woodwarp and Woodshape could cut down on some of the BP as well with his magical assistance.
I like the flavor aspect of it, and it should mechanically function the same as a city on the ground. Balance the upkeep and build costs and you should be golden. Tree settlers aren't likely to be unloyal, since there isn't really anyplace they can move to and you really have to want to live in a tree to stay there, so maybe a big Loyalty buff to their rolls would work. However, its hard to ship things from the trees and get supplies deliver, so maybe a minus to economy or stability gets added.
See what their build tendencies are, where they want to go with the city, and adjust as needed. A forest of Darkwood trees would be a good place to start farming.
Personal note: Underwater cities and cloud cities would be fun i think, but heavy on the magic to sustain walls of force and levitate.
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I am looking for additional rules for player skills impacting the kingdom building process. So far it feels like my only contribution to the kingdom building process is my Int mod, and my skills lie wasting away. Do player skills truly play no part in building a kingdom in the core KM rules?
I'm playing a dwarven wizard (earth specialist), who has taken ranks in knowledge (engineering), profession (engineer) and profession (architect). He's a builder in his heart, but the need to learn more about the arcane drove him to the adventuring life (not to mention his family "insisting" he be the one to go on this venture, since having a dwarven wizard at court was a touch embarrassing to his family).
When building this character (knowing next to nothing about the mechanics used for KM), I thought it would be awesome to have a dwarven-crafted city or two with crazy-good defenses (I just got done playing with Dragon Age expansion that allowed for a dwarven-built castle). Talking to my GM, it looks like there aren't any inherent rules for building superior versions of improvements, like a "king's road" that would maybe improve the economy/stability (faster travel etc), or provide faster troop movement (like the Romans). How about superior walls that add additional defense to a city?
My DM has allowed me a Profession skill check to increase the effective city size on the Kingdom Improvements Per Month chart for a single category. Each category had a different base DC, and I essentially got an additional shift for every 5 the result was above the base DC. So far I was able to build a few extra roads or claim extra hexes in a single turn, but all it effectively did was have us burn through our resources that much faster (which is probably why he didn't mind it so much).
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My main design goal when I came up with the expanded version was to maintain compatibility with Paizo's rules. If I end up doing a 2nd edition, there will be significant changes. Things on the drawing board include: country-to-country interactions, the influence of smaller organizations within a country, empires (where person A rules the empire and person B rules a country within the empire), and models of governments where people have much more influence. I could see skills having a much greater impact on these.
Right now, Profession (soldier) is the only skill that is used and that is limited to mass combat.
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My main design goal when I came up with the expanded version was to maintain compatibility with Paizo's rules. If I end up doing a 2nd edition, there will be significant changes. Things on the drawing board include: country-to-country interactions, the influence of smaller organizations within a country, empires (where person A rules the empire and person B rules a country within the empire), and models of governments where people have much more influence. I could see skills having a much greater impact on these.
Right now, Profession (soldier) is the only skill that is used and that is limited to mass combat.
Sounds good Dale I'd buy it.
My main design goal when I came up with the expanded version was to maintain compatibility with Paizo's rules. If I end up doing a 2nd edition, there will be significant changes. Things on the drawing board include: country-to-country interactions, the influence of smaller organizations within a country, empires (where person A rules the empire and person B rules a country within the empire), and models of governments where people have much more influence. I could see skills having a much greater impact on these.
Right now, Profession (soldier) is the only skill that is used and that is limited to mass combat.
Yeah, would love to see skill choices have some impact on the kingdom. Maybe even use an average of certain skills instead of stat bonuses. Also, allowing for different ruling styles besides a monarchy would be awesome. Kinda like Civilization, but D&D style :)
My main design goal when I came up with the expanded version was to maintain compatibility with Paizo's rules. If I end up doing a 2nd edition, there will be significant changes. Things on the drawing board include: country-to-country interactions, the influence of smaller organizations within a country, empires (where person A rules the empire and person B rules a country within the empire), and models of governments where people have much more influence. I could see skills having a much greater impact on these.
Right now, Profession (soldier) is the only skill that is used and that is limited to mass combat.
You need to put this book out. Like, right now. So I can buy it.
.................
I'll buy several copies!
.................
I'll PREORDER several copies!
Does that help the motivational process?
You need to put this book out. Like, right now. So I can buy it.
.................
I'll buy several copies!
.................
I'll PREORDER several copies!Does that help the motivational process?
Only after the Shadowsfall players guide and gazetteer are finished! But yea, I'd buy a copy (again!)....
-- david
Papa.DRB
My main design goal when I came up with the expanded version was to maintain compatibility with Paizo's rules. If I end up doing a 2nd edition, there will be significant changes. Things on the drawing board include: country-to-country interactions, the influence of smaller organizations within a country, empires (where person A rules the empire and person B rules a country within the empire), and models of governments where people have much more influence. I could see skills having a much greater impact on these.
Right now, Profession (soldier) is the only skill that is used and that is limited to mass combat.
I'd love rules for country-to-country interactions. I'm currently doing "You earn 1d6-1d4 BP each month for your trade deal with Varnhold" (so -3 to 5 BP), to represent it very abstractly (some months the trade balance is positive, some it's negative). I have ideas for rules for expanding the die sizes, but I have yet to get them into a coherent form that works for countries both large and small. I'm not even sure what I'm modelling - I know little about the details of macroeconomics.
Count me in as a vote for a 2nd edition.
Toss that summon army stuff out the airlock and retool the army stuff to something that better reflects the general population as low-CR and you'll have my interest.
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I posted this in The Banes thread on magic item BP but I figured it might be worth posting here for those who don't get to check the front page before things fall off, apologies if it's not needed.
My thoughts on 'fixing' the magic item economy have tended along changing the items to set Economy bonuses, +2 per minor item, +4 per medium item and +6 per major item.For example a Black Market;
Spoiler:
Black Market (50 BP; must be adjacent to 2 houses): A number
of shops with secret and usually illegal or dangerous wares. City base
value +2,000; 2 minor items, 1 medium item, 1 major item; Economy +2,
stability +1; Unrest +1.
Becomes
Spoiler:
Black Market (50 BP; must be adjacent to 2 houses): A number
of shops with secret and usually illegal or dangerous wares. City base
value +2,000; (2 minor items = +2 Economy x 2, 1 medium item = + 4 Economy , 1 major item = +6 Economy, total of +14); Economy +2, stability +1; Unrest +1.For final stats of: Economy +16, stability +1; Unrest +1.
This is certainly significantly less BP for a single building, however, I am allowing multiple different magic item selling buildings to stack their bonus's in a given city. Whilst this will slow down the growth and BP production to start with, as they gain more and more buildings the fact that they each provide an Economy bonus vs. selling only one item should increase their BP production as the game goes on, hopefully at a more reasonable rate.
Personally I'm a fan of Economy bonus's rather than flat BP, it's not only fun for the players to see big numbers but it ties everything in together, avoiding a situation where the magic item production/sales rolls overshadow the economy roll and becomes the main method of gaining BP once multiple cities/districts become common. It also has the nice added side effect of making multiple different magic item buildings totally viable in one city/district without making all but one selling a major item mostly useless for the economy, this especially makes the vast amount of minor item producing buildings you can end up with more useful.
This also allows you to skip the whole 'magic item generation' if you prefer, although there's nothing stopping you generating items and letting the players know what is for sale. The sale (or not) of those items simply has no effect on the economy itself, the purchase of some of them every month is reflected in the Economy boost the buildings already get.
If a leader is wearing a Headband of Intellect, Belt of Giant Strength, etc., does that modify their bonus to Economy, Stability, and Loyalty rolls? Or do you only look at their base attribute?
Let first say I haven't sifted through the this whole thread, but is there posted set of expansed rules and better yet a complex overhaul?
Yes it is called the Book of the River Nations: Complete: Players' Reference for Kingdom Building. It collects all the exploration, kingdom building and mass combat rules in one, easy to use, spoiler free location and expands upon them by adding new options in every respect. Plus it has many new characters options (spells, feats, archetypes, PrCs) that can help optimize a character for kingdom building. And now it even includes the Hero Lab file for those character options. It has gotten numerous 5-star reviews and is one of the top selling 3PP books to date.
But there are not many print copies left and this is the last printing so grab it before it is gone.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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Is there a GM created rule that expands the events? I have a couple of players who think the process is boring and that their characters don't do much. In reality, their characters are probably doing a great deal but there isn't any way to show that.
Having an event happen each month would be better then the once every two or three months. In fact possibly having two or more events would be helpful in keeping the entire party involved. The events wouldn't have to impact the kingdom, but they should be issues that one or more of the roles needs to handle. If it is handled badly there would be a penalty to someting or an increase in unrest. Otherwise, unless there is a huge success I wouldn't have any real benefit/loss with these frequent mini-events. Only the major, everyone needs to deal with this, events would impact the kingdom.
Examples:
- There are rumors of poachers, the warden needs to arrange for an investigation.
- A new spellcaster is in town offering his services as a teacher. The Magister should look into him and decide if he could be hired by the kingdom.
- The spy network reports some known bandits have moved into the city. So far they haven't done anything illegal and claim they want to reform. The Spymaster should arrange to keep an eye on them.
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Is there a GM created rule that expands the events? I have a couple of players who think the process is boring and that their characters don't do much. In reality, their characters are probably doing a great deal but there isn't any way to show that.
Having an event happen each month would be better then the once every two or three months. In fact possibly having two or more events would be helpful in keeping the entire party involved. The events wouldn't have to impact the kingdom, but they should be issues that one or more of the roles needs to handle. If it is handled badly there would be a penalty to someting or an increase in unrest. Otherwise, unless there is a huge success I wouldn't have any real benefit/loss with these frequent mini-events. Only the major, everyone needs to deal with this, events would impact the kingdom.
Examples:
- There are rumors of poachers, the warden needs to arrange for an investigation.
- A new spellcaster is in town offering his services as a teacher. The Magister should look into him and decide if he could be hired by the kingdom.
- The spy network reports some known bandits have moved into the city. So far they haven't done anything illegal and claim they want to reform. The Spymaster should arrange to keep an eye on them.
There's many more events in Dale's BotRN linked above, but they still follow the same general outline of "Here's what's going on, deal with it as a miniadventure, or roll a kingdom stat to make it go away". Some of them do specifically mention various kindom roles, but there's little actual involvement.
Even if there was, the problem with an event table is repetition and scale. There's only so many times that dealing with bandits moving in is fun. Eventually, the players are just going to say "Again?" and wonder why the leaders of the kingdom are getting involved with every minor thing that's going on instead of hiring people to deal with it.
Of course, that also leads into the question of why the leaders of the kingdom are wandering around the rest of the Stolen Lands rather than sending explorers of their own.
Better than having events which specifically correspond to each position, you should look into having some specific subsystem for each position. For instance, I currently have a treaty system (partially stolen from this thread and modified by sirmattdusty referenced here) for the Grand Diplomat, expanded rules for a military council (like the US Joint Chiefs of Staff) for the General (also from matt), a wilderness patrol system for the Warden (which originally was from matt, but is being significiantly revised), and espionage for the Spymaster. That's only four positions covered so far, but you can theoretcially devise similar expansions for each one. Additionally, you could move all city building onto the Ruler, Councilor or Treasurer as their subsystem, or move all actual die rolling (and possibly modifer tracking) onto the Ruler.
The flip side to expanding roles like that is the increased amount of time required to adjudicate it. Ideally, everyone's role will either be a single choice ("I make this selection from my options and it happens") or reduced to a single die roll each month ("I want to do this, and so I roll, get a result, and move on.") This is the same idea as "character creation is complicated, combat resolution is simple" which underlies a lot of combat in Pathfinder (you can spend a lot of time picking the right feats and calculating your modifiers, but it all comes down to a d20+modifiers-penalties).
Hello everyone.
It took me some time to get through all of this.
Big thanks to "Whatwashisname" (sorry) for This Compilation!
It helped a lot!
One question I have though that wasn't asked yet:
Can a Baron or Duch CHANGE the Kingdom stats they alter with their Charisma? If so, in which phase or how often?
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Hi, I'm sorry if this has been answered before, but I skimmed the thread and didn't see it answered as clearly as I would like it to have been.
I'm using Jon Brazer Enterprises' excellent Book of the River Nations.
My question is about table 2-1 on page 7 of this book. It indicates that at kingdom sizes 1-10, only 1 new building per turn may be constructed.
Is this one building PER CITY, or one building in the entire nation?
My players have been holding off on building a second city until they reach a kingdom size of 11, reasoning that it would be a waste to build new cities without being able to build new buildings in each city every turn.
Are they correct, or is the limit one PER CITY?
Thanks!
Diego is correct. The limit is per kingdom.
To look at it from the long run, if you have a kingdom of 101 hexes, you can build 3 cities each month. If the building limit was per city, each city would start with 20 buildings. So that is 3 fully functional cities you would have in a single month, every month. That would just be madness as there would be no way to stop said kingdom. You would literally have a kingdom that would be able to march its armies all over the planet in no time.
Can a Baron or Duch CHANGE the Kingdom stats they alter with their Charisma? If so, in which phase or how often?
For my home game, I ruled this as no. The Spymaster specifically says it can so that would indicate that the Baron/Duke cannot. But it is the GM's ruling here that is best.
Diego, Dale, thanks for the responses. I am going to contest some of what you both said, but mostly this is for the sake of argument, so please don't take it personally.
Diego, I don't see how the limit being for the whole kingdom as opposed to per city would remove the incentive for a one-hex nation with one city in it. In fact, it encourages the players to limit their kingdom to one city until their kingdom grows to 11 hexes (for example). Maybe I am missing something.
Dale, your point about rampant growth is well taken, but notice that when a kingdom reaches 200 hexes there is no limit to the number of buildings it can build per month. So the problem you bring up inevitably happens anyway.
In both cases the obvious limitation is the number of BPs at the nation's disposal.
In any event, it would seem that you are saying my players are right, and that most kingdoms could be expected to only have one city until size 11, then two cities until size 26, five cities until size 51, etc. assuming the players want to build one building per kingdom turn in each city.
Am I right?
I have one other question -- officially, you cannot build farmland or an apiary in a hex that contains a city. How unbalancing would it be to allow players to do this? For a hex 12 miles wide, there is an awful lot of land that could be used to farm and only a relatively small amount needed to house a city.
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I have one other question -- officially, you cannot build farmland or an apiary in a hex that contains a city. How unbalancing would it be to allow players to do this? For a hex 12 miles wide, there is an awful lot of land that could be used to farm and only a relatively small amount needed to house a city.
It is a matter of level of abstraction. You are *not* building 1 farm, you are dedicating that land to be "primarily" used for farming. A hex can only be "primarily" used for one thing at a time, and while other elements may exist, they are effectively subsumed into other hexes.
In "reality" (pardon the expression), the city may extend a little bit over the border of one hex, and there may be a few farms in the same hex that the city is "officially" in. However, accounting-wise, one hex is the city and the other is farmland.
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I have one other question -- officially, you cannot build farmland or an apiary in a hex that contains a city. How unbalancing would it be to allow players to do this? For a hex 12 miles wide, there is an awful lot of land that could be used to farm and only a relatively small amount needed to house a city.
I replied yesterday just when the the server decided to go on strike, so, here it is again:
A city can have up to 9.000 people in each district but each district use only 1 consumption point in a month.
A hex without a city has approximately 250 inhabitants and use up 1 consumption point each month.
Looking that numbers I think that the city hex is farmed to its full extent by the city inhabitants but its products are completely used up to lessen the city consumption to 1.
Diego, I don't see how the limit being for the whole kingdom as opposed to per city would remove the incentive for a one-hex nation with one city in it. In fact, it encourages the players to limit their kingdom to one city until their kingdom grows to 11 hexes (for example). Maybe I am missing something.
What I mean is that the limit has 2 effects:
1) it encourage people to spread out as they need to get more than 10 hexes to construct more than 1 building each turn;
2) building a 1 hex kingdom allow you to grow more rapidly as you can reinvest you BP into buildings that give a better return than any other kingdom improvement, while keeping the control number low.
So a crafty player could think to go that way, building a 1 hex kingdom and don't caring about the land. But if he go that way he will be forever limited to building only 1 structure every turn.
Edit:
Get Wayfinder 4 and 5 [they can be downloaded for free from the Paizo store], there are some interesting rules for kingdom building and if you search in this section of the forum you will find suggested rules for villages.
They are all interesting addition to the game.
Thanks for the answers, everyone. Diego, I found your response about cities and farms to be particularly satisfying.
I can download Wayfinder 4 and 5, but can anyone point me to the page of this thread the village posts are on? I skimmed through and didn't see anything about that.
Thanks again!
I have one other question -- officially, you cannot build farmland or an apiary in a hex that contains a city. How unbalancing would it be to allow players to do this? For a hex 12 miles wide, there is an awful lot of land that could be used to farm and only a relatively small amount needed to house a city.
It is a matter of level of abstraction. You are *not* building 1 farm, you are dedicating that land to be "primarily" used for farming. A hex can only be "primarily" used for one thing at a time, and while other elements may exist, they are effectively subsumed into other hexes.
In "reality" (pardon the expression), the city may extend a little bit over the border of one hex, and there may be a few farms in the same hex that the city is "officially" in. However, accounting-wise, one hex is the city and the other is farmland.
What Urath DM says. Remember every farmland hex has 250 people in it. The majority of those people would live in small farming villages, hamlets and thorpes. If you assume a 10 people per thorp, 50 people per hamlet and 100 people per village (GMG's numbers), you get 1 village, 2 hamlets and 5 thorpes per farming hex. You're not building them as players because, as Urath DM said, Its a matter of level of abstraction.
Thanks Diego.
I read the thread and one thing mentioned in it (unrelated to villages) made me rethink your response about farms and cities.
If farms cannot be placed in the same hexes with cities, the players will have incentive to place all of their cities on unfarmable hexes (forests, swamps, etc).
This seems counterintuitive.
Any opinions?
Edit: The obvious solution to this problem would be to increase the Consumption cost of cities on non-farmable hexes like swamps. To my knowledge this is not a part of the rules (although it is part of the rules that preparing grassland hexes for city placement is much easier than preparing, say, mountain or swamp hexes for same).
I could see a set of modifiers for each different terrain type being in order, with (for example) mountain cities having higher defensive ratings but raising consumption more due to the lack of arable land nearby.
Has anyone done this already?
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Perfectly reasonable.
I don't recall anyone writing some extensive post about a similar idea.
Looking villages and towns in a mountain area here in Italy I see a few miles of farms and then a lot of woods. In medieval times those towns were self sufficient for food, without the need to import from distant farms, so I still think that my explanation is acceptable, but Italy had a lot of time to develop and the terrain has been cultivated for millennia so production is generally high.
Still, to adapt to their environment, mountain communities have developed special inheritance laws to avoid the fragmentation of the family property.
Our game maps don't show the height above the sea level of the land but the kind of terrain in the hex (Varnhold is a good example of that, the hex should have a good altitude above the sea level, but it is a plain) so a mountain hex with a town isn't a large, green valley in the middle of some mountain but it is an area of terrain with steep slopes and abrupt changes of elevation. With that in mind maybe we should limit the size of the town that we can build there and apply an higher consumption. Same thing for marshes.
For woods I think we can safely assume that a few miles around the city have been converted to farmland.
The thread about villages is here.
Thanks for that link, that's some great stuff there.
The thread about villages is here.Thanks for that link, that's some great stuff there.
Ditto. I've been browsing this forum for material for probably close to a year now, and I'm still finding great new rules to incorporate.
Quick question -- page 27 of the Book of the River Nations has stats for several units, including a "fur and fang gnome brigade". This is a small unit, but shouldn't it be a medium unit if it is raised as a vassal army?
Also, page 21 of BotRN mentions Mounts having a "special" BP cost -- what is it?
Thanks!
The fur and fang gnome bridage wasn't intended as a vassal army, but as a random one that could be produced by your kingdoms if you wanted to theme them more than just generic group of mounted combatants. I should have been clearer on that.
Mounted Cost:
If the combined soldier and mount CR is greater than the CR of the soldiers themselves, your army’s CR (and all derived scores, including Consumption) will increase.
An army’s consumption is equal to its CR divided by 2 (minimum of 1; consumption can be further modified by tactics and resources).
Thanks, Dale. Yeah, there was something in the prerequisites for the F&F GB that mentioned "or gnome vassals", which threw me.
As it turns out, the kingdom being built in my Age of Ice campaign has incorporated a band of halfling vassals due to the actions of the halfling ranger (who rides a wolf and comes from a tribe of wolf-dog riders). I'll be using the F&F GB as a guideline in building the vassal unit of halfling husky riders the kingdom now has access to.
Another question in my head -- if a city is built in a forest hex, can it use that forest hex to lower its consumption (as per the rules on forest hexes)? Or does the hex effectively become a "city hex"?
I have another question, too.
Let's say the PCs have a fledgeling kingdom with only one city. They have spent the last five turns building a barracks and four walls around their only city grid section. This adds +18 to that city's Defense.
Now let's say that a handful of goblin units march across the new kingdom's borders with blood on their minds. The PC Warden's scouts detect the goblins early enough that they are able to raise a couple of units of their own to defend the city with.
The goblins see a small walled town bristling with archers. Then they cast their eyes elsewhere and see -- farms, roads, apiaries full of honey.
They know that attacking the fortified town would be foolish. The humans inside know that leaving the town to assault the goblins would be foolish. What now?
I imagine the goblins might start pillaging all of the lands outside of the town, rather than attacking it outright, forcing the PCs to choose between holing up in the safe town (and losing developments and/or BPs to the rampaging goblin horde) or leaving the safety of the town in order to assault the goblins.
Are there mechanics for what happens when an enemy unit decides to pillage a hex instead of attacking the units in that hex? I imagine a unit might be able to destroy one improvement per kingdom turn, or subtract a certain amount of BP from income for that turn (maybe an amount tied to the unit's CR).
Has this already been discussed?
And another...
Adding Resources to a unit increases its Consumption (BotRN page 20). Ranged Weapons, for example, increase the Consumption of the unit they are given to by 2 BP.
This seems simple enough, but -- really? It costs 8 BP per kingdom turn to outfit one unit with bows and arrows?
I can't help but wonder if this is supposed to be a one-time only cost. RAW it would seem that it costs a whopping 200 BP per kingdom turn to outfit one unit with magic weapons. Who would ever bother?
Just wondering.
And another! I'm sorry, I'm just so full of questions...
BotRN page 23: "Vassals that occupy 3 or more adjoining hexes can produce a single army of 2 sizes larger than their normal. These armies require no training time."
Does that mean that ONLY those vassal armies from vassals that occupy 3 or more adjoining hexes require no training time, or do NO vassal armies require training time?
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My players had a hard time getting into their kingdom roles until I gave each of them minions. Each got three, except the ruler, who got more like 8.
The warden gets three scouts, the spymaster got three spies, etc.
I went so far as to grade them as different levels of experience and skill, but thats a little complex.
Anyway, if the spymaster wants to find out something about Mivon, he has to send one of his spies there for a month to find it out. If the grand diplomat wants to sign a treaty with Pitax or Restov, he has to send one of his three ambassadors there to negotiate it and handle the red tape. This leads to a sense of urgency if there are simple things like unrest in that kingdom, bandits along the road there, or a kidnapping of an agent.
The end result is that each player feels more engaged with their kingdom role, as they have some level of control over it, and they are more attached to "their guys" than they otherwise would be. If one dies, it takes a while to train a new one to replace him, and meanwhile they are shorthanded or get a less experienced minion.
@Dale - I would love to see some sort of breakdown of kingdom roles in this sort of direction, even as an optional ruleset.
OK, answering some of my own questions here, but I'm curious what people think.
I have a horde of goblins (gargantuan goblin army, as per the vassal rules) invading the PCs kingdom (I'm not playing Kingmaker but a campaign of my own using the BotRN rules).
They have one town, but they wisely fortified it early on. The town has a house, an inn, a mill, a barracks, and three city walls (the fourth district edge borders on the water of a large lake).
Town has a defense modifier of +14 by my reckoning.
The goblin horde has no real hope of defeating even a basic baron's militia unit in the town, as the town's defenses are too good. Rather than break like a wave on a rock, the goblins may decide to just run around pillaging instead in hopes of luring the armies of the town out to them.
I'm thinking that an army of that size should have no problem destroying one undeveloped hex improvement (farm, apiary, etc) per week if left unchecked. In addition, if left to run amuck in the kingdom for an entire month (one kingdom turn), the horde should cut into the kingdom's income as well. I'm thinking 1 BP per CR of the army unit sounds about right.
Does this sound unreasonable? I think it will force the PCs to choose between holing up in the safety of the town and building an extra unit or two to take the fight to the goblins.
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Probably not the ideal place for this, but this is what I ended up doing for my PCs:
Ruler- got a chamberlain(runs household), 2 ladies in waiting (female ruler), 2 personal guards, advisor, squire, 2 pages/runners.
General- aide de camp (strategist/logistics expert), training sergeant (used for recruiting and training), squire, 2 pages/runners.
Marchwarden - 3 hunters that were known NPCs to the party
Spymaster - 3 spies, one excellent w/hat of disguise, one good, one average. I told the PC that the excellent one can do all sorts of infiltration, the good one, a little, and the average one is basically only reliable if gathering info through observation, like watching caravans or arrivals, etc.
Treasurer - master of accounts(beancounter), factor(buying/selling goods), master of safes (security guard).
Magister - two apprentices, pixie who be befriended and lives in his backpack. As a side note, the pixie has recently converted the backpack to a Heward's Handy Haversack after much construction noise was heard so he would have more room. Of course none of this was done with the wizard's input :)
The rest are NPCs but here is what I would have done for them as PCs:
Marshall - captain of the guards (every town or city), intelligence officer, investigator, squire, 2 pages/runners.
High Priest - 2 underpriests, 1 inquisitor, 1 temple guard (bodyguard).
Diplomat - 3 ambassadors, one with high diplomacy, one with high intimidate, and one with high bluff. Who he sends where depends on what he wants to accomplish. They can also gather intelligence like a weak spy.
Councilor - a druid (farmers and hunters), a merchant, and a riverboat captain (currently without a boat). Basically, a minion for every major sector of the kingdom's commoners.
I also created a new position called Minister of Resources for a Green Faith druid in my game who didn't fit or like any of the existing kingdom roles. I gave him the ability to conserve any leftover consumption from farms as a bonus to the economy roll each turn. I gave him two druids, a mining expert and a ravenmaster as minions.
Another aspect of the minions is to let the players set kingdom initiatives into motion and go adventuring while the minions "make it so". Make sure as a GM you give them names, affectations, personalities, etc so they are "real" to the PCs. For instance, the baroness' chamberlain is extremely grouchy and quite insulting when irritated, and the PCs already avoid upsetting him or bothering the baroness too much :)
Thanks, Dale. Yeah, there was something in the prerequisites for the F&F GB that mentioned "or gnome vassals", which threw me.
... Crap. I screwed that one up.
Another question in my head -- if a city is built in a forest hex, can it use that forest hex to lower its consumption (as per the rules on forest hexes)? Or does the hex effectively become a "city hex"?
I'd rule that a city hex and the forest doesn't count for consumption reduction but ultimately that's the GM's call.
They know that attacking the fortified town would be foolish. The humans inside know that leaving the town to assault the goblins would be foolish. What now?
I imagine the goblins might start pillaging all of the lands outside of the town, rather than attacking it outright, forcing the PCs to choose between holing up in the safe town (and losing developments and/or BPs to the rampaging goblin horde) or leaving the safety of the town in order to assault the goblins.
Are there mechanics for what happens when an enemy unit decides to pillage a hex instead of attacking the units in that hex? I imagine a unit might be able to destroy one improvement per kingdom turn, or subtract a certain amount of BP from income for that turn (maybe an amount tied to the unit's CR).
Has this already been discussed?
Truth be told, I thought I had addresses this in the BotRN but I can't find it. The rule I intended to make was: As long as an army does not use its full movement in a day it can take a destruction action. Attack OM vs Defense DV (DV in this case being 10 + hex defensive resources). A successful attack means 1 improvement in the hex counts as a ruin. The army's consumption is reduced by 1 for that week (to a minimum of 0). The defending kingdom's Unrest increases by 1 (in addition to any unrest from an army occupying the hex).
I can't help but wonder if this is supposed to be a one-time only cost. RAW it would seem that it costs a whopping 200 BP per kingdom turn to outfit one unit with magic weapons. Who would ever bother?
That's half the point. Armies equipped with magic weapons should be rare. A high cost would make it that way.
Lets look at the GP math for a moment. One +1 weapon costs ~2300gp. At a 1000gp to 1 bp ratio for taking money out of the kingdom, equipment a medium army costs 200BP. Then there's the maintenance plan. With 100 soldiers, at least 1 sword is broken every battle. Then there's the basic maintenance of weapons cost (that the base goes doesn't really model, but it is a cost an army would have to deal with). Plus making new weapons because there is always someone that doesn't take care of his weapon properly. ... The costs keep piling up. And that's just for a medium army.
The rule is just suppose to be a quick and dirty done to make calculating consumption easy.
I didn't change this from the original Kingmaker rules. But if you want it to be an upfront cost and no maintenance plan, I'd say multiply all the consumption additions by 4.
Does that mean that ONLY those vassal armies from vassals that occupy 3 or more adjoining hexes require no training time, or do NO vassal armies require training time?
No vassal armies require training time. I phrased that poorly.
@Dale - I would love to see some sort of breakdown of kingdom roles in this sort of direction, even as an optional ruleset.
This is a good idea. I'm currently holding off on any kingdom building rules making until Ultimate Campaign comes out. But this is noted for an easy supplement. Thanks for the idea.
Probably not the ideal place for this, but this is what I ended up doing for my PCs:
Ruler- got a chamberlain(runs household), 2 ladies in waiting (female ruler), 2 personal guards, advisor, squire, 2 pages/runners.
General- aide de camp (strategist/logistics expert), training sergeant (used for recruiting and training), squire, 2 pages/runners.
Marchwarden - 3 hunters that were known NPCs to the party
Spymaster - 3 spies, one excellent w/hat of disguise, one good, one average. I told the PC that the excellent one can do all sorts of infiltration, the good one, a little, and the average one is basically only reliable if gathering info through observation, like watching caravans or arrivals, etc.
Treasurer - master of accounts(beancounter), factor(buying/selling goods), master of safes (security guard).
Magister - two apprentices, pixie who be befriended and lives in his backpack. As a side note, the pixie has recently converted the backpack to a Heward's Handy Haversack after much construction noise was heard so he would have more room. Of course none of this was done with the wizard's input :)
The rest are NPCs but here is what I would have done for them as PCs:
Marshall - captain of the guards (every town or city), intelligence officer, investigator, squire, 2 pages/runners.
High Priest - 2 underpriests, 1 inquisitor, 1 temple guard (bodyguard).
Diplomat - 3 ambassadors, one with high diplomacy, one with high intimidate, and one with high bluff. Who he sends where depends on what he wants to accomplish. They can also gather intelligence like a weak spy.
Councilor - a druid (farmers and hunters), a merchant, and a riverboat captain (currently without a boat). Basically, a minion for every major sector of the kingdom's commoners.
I also created a new position called Minister of Resources for a Green Faith druid in my game who didn't fit or like any of the existing kingdom roles. I gave him the ability to conserve any leftover consumption from farms as a bonus to the...
Let me just say that this is a truly awesome idea as you've handled it. VERY inspiring!
Dale, thanks so much for answering all of those questions! It's great to be able to get so much feedback from the author of such a great supplement.
I'll think about your ruling on pillaging (your rules allow armies within a kingdom's borders to do a LOT of damage in a short time). In any event I like your idea of the pillaged improvements becoming ruined rather than destroyed completely, as well as pillaging allowing armies to reduce their consumption for the week.
As far as army resource maintenance, maybe magic weapons was a poor example to bring up. I think your rules end up making units armed with magic weapons non-viable, in the sense that rulers will always have better uses to put the money required to maintain them to -- but if that's what you want to go for (and I can see the argument for it) I suppose it's OK.
But consider something more mundane like (for example) ranged weapons. 2 BP per week in order to put bows and arrows in the hands of 100 men. A longbow costs 75 gp, and we can add 25 gp to this for 500 arrows. 1 BP outfits everyone in the unit with bows and arrows. Does this really need to be done twice a week? What are the troops doing with those longbows?
It seems prohibitively expensive, especially for troops armed with things like shortbows and javelins, and that all it does is give you one extra attack at the start of a battle. For the 2 BP per week it costs to outfit a baron's militia unit with ranged weapons, I could maintain 2 extra baron's militia units!
I explained it to my players as the "ranged weapons" resource being something of an abstraction, meaning that most units have some sort of ranged attack but the ranged weapons resource represents superior ranged weapons, crack shots, etc. that can get an attack in at a range that most other units cannot. This still doesn't wash with units that clearly have NO ranged capabilities, like worgs, but eh.
Anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate the input.