Creative Director
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SO!
In the pursuit of publishing an Adventure Path that goes from 1st to about 18th level, we were going pretty well. In parts 1 through 4 of Kingmaker, your PCs are pretty likely to earn 3 levels each.
But that's dropping to 2 levels in part 5's "War of the River Kings." Why's that? Because the mass combat rules not only took up about 5 pages of content, but also because mass combat elements ended up not being as high XP rewards as standard play. This was a conscious decision, because while I wanted there to be an element of mass combat in Kingmaker, I didn't want it to be the focus, since the mass combat rules are super simple and fast but they're not really all that robust like the core game's rules for combat. And because mass combat kind of puts the PCs on the sidelines. It's better for adventure paths to focus on the PCs, after all... so XP gained from mass combat is a bit low.
What does this mean?
Not much, for fans of high level play, fortunately. While it does mean that the last adventure, "Sound of a Thousand Screams," will assume PCs start at 15th level, I still expect this last adventure to bring PCs up 3 levels. Your PCs will probably be 17th level by the end of the AP (I'll know for sure late this evening or sometime tomorrow, depending on when I finish developing the adventure), which is still pretty high-level.
Just keeping everyone up-to-date, since I know level ranges are important to lots of GMs.
That's an unexpected announcement. I'll be curious to see how it turns out. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the update James - Shooting for 18-20 seems pretty hard. Runelords is pretty jam-packed with XP and looks to only just barely gets to 17-18.
Make it great - we can add more if we want them to hit 20th!
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Creative Director
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Thanks for the update James - Shooting for 18-20 seems pretty hard. Runelords is pretty jam-packed with XP and looks to only just barely gets to 17-18.
Make it great - we can add more if we want them to hit 20th!
We were never shooting for 18–20 with Kingmaker. We were shooting for the last adventure to be 16–18. It looks like it's going to be 15–17. Which still means it's the highest level we've reached in an AP since Savage Tide (although you could PROBABLY hit 17th level in Rise of the Runelords, depending on what you do)... which is still a pretty impressive feat, I think, considering we're using the Medium advancement track...
Anyway... we'll give it a try again reaching 18th level with Serpent's Skull.
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Creative Director
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One of my players is a noble of Surtova, sick of the corruption in the politics of Brevoy. When they finish Kingmaker, I am expecting them to attempt to invade Brevoy itself and repeat history; shatter both Issians and Rostlanders and re-form the nation.
You will likely find much to enjoy in Pathfinder #36's "Beyond Kingmaker" article then! :-)
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I cannot wait to see the mass combat rules...that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title of this AP. Also are there plans for a new PrC in this AP?Nope. No new prestige classes in Kingmaker as far as I know.
:(, that makes sense though, you guys packed a lot of new rules into this AP...kingdom building and large scale battle is enough new stuff i s'pose.
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SO!
In the pursuit of publishing an Adventure Path that goes from 1st to about 18th level, we were going pretty well. In parts 1 through 4 of Kingmaker, your PCs are pretty likely to earn 3 levels each.
But that's dropping to 2 levels in part 5's "War of the River Kings." Why's that? Because the mass combat rules not only took up about 5 pages of content, but also because mass combat elements ended up not being as high XP rewards as standard play. This was a conscious decision, because while I wanted there to be an element of mass combat in Kingmaker, I didn't want it to be the focus, since the mass combat rules are super simple and fast but they're not really all that robust like the core game's rules for combat. And because mass combat kind of puts the PCs on the sidelines. It's better for adventure paths to focus on the PCs, after all... so XP gained from mass combat is a bit low.
What does this mean?
Not much, for fans of high level play, fortunately. While it does mean that the last adventure, "Sound of a Thousand Screams," will assume PCs start at 15th level, I still expect this last adventure to bring PCs up 3 levels. Your PCs will probably be 17th level by the end of the AP (I'll know for sure late this evening or sometime tomorrow, depending on when I finish developing the adventure), which is still pretty high-level.
Just keeping everyone up-to-date, since I know level ranges are important to lots of GMs.
Knowing my group they're gonna want to try to conquer as much as they can. -- I can't wait to run it!!
One of my players is a noble of Surtova, sick of the corruption in the politics of Brevoy. When they finish Kingmaker, I am expecting them to attempt to invade Brevoy itself and repeat history; shatter both Issians and Rostlanders and re-form the nation.
Oh yeah, you're going to be WELL equipped for that by the end of things. Or something worse. Just wait for #36.
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Creative Director
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OKAY!
Just ran the numbers on the fully-developed "Sound of a Thousand Screams" and there's EASILY enough XP in there to bring a 15th level party WELL up to about the middle of 17th level. So if you enter the adventure well into 15th, your PCs MIGHT even hit 18th level by the end... which would probably help a lot, sine the final battle's a doozy...
Very nice to see an AP hitting the 'really high' levels again.
While in the past I hoped they'd all go really high, it turns out that I think a good mix of end levels in the different APs is a good thing. (I first thought Council of Thieves ended at shockingly low levels, but now I'm happy the variety is there.)
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Creative Director
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Very nice to see an AP hitting the 'really high' levels again.
While in the past I hoped they'd all go really high, it turns out that I think a good mix of end levels in the different APs is a good thing. (I first thought Council of Thieves ended at shockingly low levels, but now I'm happy the variety is there.)
The intent all along was to have different-lenght APs, actually. And with each one we do, the worry that "there's no low or high level endings" grows less, since the variety grows. When we build an AP, oftentimes its the nature of the adventures and story themselves that determine how high the levels eventually get. Forcing an adventure to cover a pre-determined range of adventures is bad. It's nice when things work out the way one plans (for most of Kingmaker it worked out just like this), but when an adventure comes along that's short on XP, the best solution isn't to destroy the adventure's contents and flow to force more or fewer encounters and XP awards but to simply adjust the next adventure's start point.
I do hope eventually for an AP that is established for PCs to be 20th by the end. There are so few adventures set up for that, and part of Pathfinder's promise is getting something cool at 20th level. Never actually had a campaign run to that point.
I have high hopes for the post-Kingmaker story continuation ideas in #36. This AP hints at a lot of promises relating to both Brevoy & the River Kingdoms, yet from all I've seen so far, much of that has little to do with the Kingmaker AP as it is actually planned out.
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Creative Director
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I do hope eventually for an AP that is established for PCs to be 20th by the end. There are so few adventures set up for that, and part of Pathfinder's promise is getting something cool at 20th level. Never actually had a campaign run to that point.
I have high hopes for the post-Kingmaker story continuation ideas in #36. This AP hints at a lot of promises relating to both Brevoy & the River Kingdoms, yet from all I've seen so far, much of that has little to do with the Kingmaker AP as it is actually planned out.
We did three APs that did just that back in the dungeon days, so if you fancy a little bit of conversion work, "Shackled City, "Age of Worms," and "Savage Tide" all go from 1st level to 20th level.
Kingmaker actually takes place 100% entirely in the Stolen Lands; beyond an external influence on the PCs from Brevoy at the start and some interaction with Pitax in the penultimate adventure, that's more or less it for external stuff beyond the Stolen Lands.
That all said, our last volume will also have an 8 page or so article about how to expand your campaign for several levels after the end of Kingmaker.