Farmlands. My players want to know if you can build better farmlands. Can you build advenced farmlands that improve three consuptions
I think the kingdom rules are fluid and easy to modify. I've thrown in several things into the rules for my group that aren't in the Kingmaker volume (I have a fishing camp for lakeshore hexes that grants 3 BP per month).
If you want to limit the improved farms for your players, you could limit it to hexes with water access (i.e. easy irrigation). So, if a river or lake is in the hex with the farmland, for some extra BP, they can improve the farm.
It's all up to you as the GM of course.
I haven't gotten to kingdom building yet, but I would probably make this take the same action as normally building a farm. That way, they can't just spam them. I also agree that only major river hexes and the like should be able to upgrade.
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The rule I added in was that Granaries decrease Consumption by 1. Makes sense if you think of them enabling towns to store up supplies for the lean months. Also, there are other, cheaper options (Dump for 4 BP) for +1 Loyalty and +1 Stability if that's all a Granary benefits the town that builds it.
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The rule I added in was that Granaries decrease Consumption by 1. Makes sense if you think of them enabling towns to store up supplies for the lean months. Also, there are other, cheaper options (Dump for 4 BP) for +1 Loyalty and +1 Stability if that's all a Granary benefits the town that builds it.
Consider this stolen. Thanks
I think making farming better, may make the KB bit too easy
now the oddd bonus by throwing in extra near water, at an initial BP cost, may not be too bad
I have also been asked about using plant growth to enhance the farmlands. I'm not sure how much I should charge for that (if I decide to permit it at all).
Assuming the standard 1/3 increase, I could see enhancing 3 farm hexes to produce a total of 8 BP (6 + enhanced 2). But how much in BP would this cost? The rough (very rough) math I came up with came to about 12 BP/year (for 3 hexes), with an increase of 24 BP/year for a net gain of 12 BP.
The issue I am having is that players would want to do this for all farm hexes, possibly unbalancing the consumption costs.
Of course, my players have just defeated the Thorn River Camp, so they're weeks away from this happening.
You do not get BP off of farmlands, they just reduce consumption. Getting BP off of farms would be to too easy imho.
When it comes to players using plant growth spells to increase crop production, how about throwing in a "soil exhaustion" surprise for the next growing season? Figure the excelerated growth of the plants is bound to use up more nutrients from the soil than a normal growing season, so after 1 season of "plant growth" the fields have to lie fallow for at least one season to recover. The players can still benefit from the spell, but they'll need more farms so that some can lie fallow while the others produce like crazy. And if you want to really mess with them, make it two seasons for full recovery if the weather during the growing season was overly dry (unless they manage irrigation from nearby water sources, of course).
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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You do not get BP off of farmlands, they just reduce consumption. Getting BP off of farms would be to too easy imho.
Point taken (Shouldn't post when fresh from a conversation w/out checking rules closely). But my main thrust is: I'm pretty sure allowing this would allow the cities to become super-dense.
The player did point out that plant growth's second function has been around since 1e, but has never/rarely been used. I like to reward creative thinking (and he did a lot of calculation that I hand-waved for the moment), but I don't want a huge metropolis surrounded by only a few supporting farms.
It requires a lot of PG spells to cover one hex of farmland, so anyone devoting their time to that is going to be devoting a LOT of time to it. Each spell affects "plants within a half-mile," so each is a 1-mile circle, so since each hex covers something on the order of 140-150 square miles, it would take a 5th level druid with 16+ WIS 70-75 days to PG up a single hex.
Even a 10th level druid with 20+ WIS would take 13-14 days of doing basically NOTHING ELSE (using all 3rd to 5th level spells as PG) do a single hex. So, even if the kingdom is taking months of downtime to just do rulership stuff and not adventure, our 10th level druid is going to spend a week being the Warden or High Priest or whatever, and the rest of the month almost having enough time to PG two farm hexes.
In sum: I think it's a perfectly legit strategy to use; the problem is actually DOING it. It would be cost-prohibitive to hire someone to do all that spellcasting or to do it via scroll or wand, so it's something the PCs are going to have to do on their own. If they want to do it, by all means let em; just make sure they realize it's gonna take a lot to make it work.
As for what EFFECT doing all that PG will have, there is some truth to the argument above that "it's not just the plants, it's the workers," so it's reasonable to have PG-enhanced farms, say, reduce consumption by +1 every 2 months (a net 25% increase in productivity, with overworked farmers slightly decrementing the increased harvest yield).
However it makes the math work out best at your table, whether it be reducing consumption by alternating whole-number amounts every 2 or 3 months, or by cumulative fractions from every PG'ed hex (okay, we now have 9 PG hexes, so we reduce consumption by an extra 3 points).
In either case, I don't think it's fair or necessary to punish the players (i.e., ha ha, you used PG and now I'm going to screw you by depleting the soil so now your farms produce LESS than before!) for using their resources to enhance the kingdom.
Lastly, you could also restrict the usefulness of PG to the growing season. I don't think it's quite fair to make it all come due in the fall, unless you were planning to allow for either food storage via granaries) or BP surplus for getting all the produce at once. Go ahead and spread it out across the year. You could argue that PG shouldn't work during the winter... but by that argument farms shouldn't work to reduce consumption during the winter, so accept the abstraction and let it go.
P.S. If you happen to have a party full of druids, then guess what, they should be able to reap the rewards of their specialty. Go nuts, nature boys!
i think it good player thinking so yield goes up a third? which still doenst take the production to 3?
if you allowed it to be 3 per farm, then add 1 to unrest from all those farms, as the workers will have to work 33% faster/harder/longer to get it harvested!
Farmer Bob have you seen the size of those melons....oww my back
John
intentionally a bit rude!!
Sorry - didn't mean to come across as "deplete the soil just to screw the players". It just seemed to me that a full season or more of forced growth would, indeed, deplete the soil.
On the other hand, there are still lots of reasons to use the spell. It could be used to increase the yield of high value crops (cloud berries?), or to bring an orchard of fruit trees into bearing age in just one season or so, instead of having to wait for several years for them to mature. And doesn't one of the River Kingdoms have lots of orchards, and export fruit, cider, etc.? Maybe the characters can do some trading for young fruit trees...
And for that matter, this could be a good chance for a druid to do some spell research. A nice "replenish earth" spell would be a good thing. The sheriffs could jump start the crops with Plant Growth in the spring, and prepare the fields with thier wands or staves of Replenish Earth in the fall. Or they can fertilize the old fashioned way each spring if they have heards of cattle, or what have you (it's a lot more work, but less money spent on making the magic items...).
At any rate, I absolutely agree that the players should reap the benefit of their characters abilities (and the players ingenuity). The fact that there may be unexpected consequences to their first tries at manipulating the environment can still be fun - and overcoming the consequences (or making them work for you, in some cases) can also be fun!
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Each spell affects "plants within a half-mile," so each is a 1-mile circle, so since each hex covers something on the order of 140-150 square miles, it would take a 5th level druid with 16+ WIS 70-75 days to PG up a single hex.
The 2nd largest single farm on Earth is 109 square miles. The largest farm in the world in the 19th century was 100 square miles.
I sincerely doubt, with D&D tech levels, more than half of that 150 square miles COULD be under cultivation at any one time, and the odds are good that even WITH magical support, you're looking at a quarter or less.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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...very important considerations/summary...I have been looking at what you mentioned. Part of the issue comes from the duration of this function of plant growth being one year.
The player is talking about building a new wondrous item that would allow the spell to be cast by "sherriffs" (how many times/day has not been determined). Then these people would be employed to "buff the hexes" full-time.
I have not yet received the full proposal or attempted to price the item yet. That may be where the cost is revealed to be prohibitive.
Edit: Just re-read Jason's post again (was something edited? Maybe I'm tired) More good points were apparent. I'm going to figure out a way to let the math work for the PCs when they detail the scheme. Thanks for the guidelines.
Prolly the most efficient way to do it is like this:
Make a rod/wondrous item of PG, caster level 5, 1 use per day. 3rd level spell x 5th level caster x 1800 (use-activated item) x .2 (1 use per day) = 5400 gp. With this item, your sheriff can do 1 PG a day, so 360-ish PG's per year. We'll round down for vacation, illness, other duties, blah blah blah, and just say each rod is good for enriching 2 hexes per year.
Just make it part of the sheriff's duties is to go around a pair of hexes checking on things and doing PG once a day. As long as the rod doesn't get stolen, it's a good investment, 5400 gp (2700 if you make it yourself) for what amounts of up to 16 BP worth of reduced consumption from your enhanced farms.
On the other hand, such valuable items out in the hands of your low-level schleps might also be quite prone to getting stolen or lost, so you'll need to make more from time to time.
If you think that's too cheap, just arbitrarily raise the price, but clearly it's not a grossly overpowered item. It's just expensive enough that most kingdoms wouldn't want to invest the up-front cost and take the risks involved.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Each spell affects "plants within a half-mile," so each is a 1-mile circle, so since each hex covers something on the order of 140-150 square miles, it would take a 5th level druid with 16+ WIS 70-75 days to PG up a single hex.
The 2nd largest single farm on Earth is 109 square miles. The largest farm in the world in the 19th century was 100 square miles.
I sincerely doubt, with D&D tech levels, more than half of that 150 square miles COULD be under cultivation at any one time, and the odds are good that even WITH magical support, you're looking at a quarter or less.
Sure. All the more reason to carpet-bomb the entire hex, because the farms won't be stacked end-to-end like Nebraska. :)
More seriously, the "farm" hex incorporates all elements of food-production, so even areas that are not technically tilled fields are still going to be animal pasture, feed production, meadows and wetlands for game (which is growing more abundant with the more abundant food source from the PG), etc.
Game-mechanically, though, for good or ill the whole hex is producing "farm produce" so in order to increase its output I need to affect the whole hex, just like if I want to cure damage on you I cast CLW on your whole body, not just on the thumb you just hit with a hammer, or damage to armor affects the entire suit of armor, not just the individual plate or section where the blow actually landed.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Sorry - didn't mean to come across as "deplete the soil just to screw the players". It just seemed to me that a full season or more of forced growth would, indeed, deplete the soil.
On the other hand, there are still lots of reasons to use the spell. It could be used to increase the yield of high value crops (cloud berries?), or to bring an orchard of fruit trees into bearing age in just one season or so, instead of having to wait for several years for them to mature. And doesn't one of the River Kingdoms have lots of orchards, and export fruit, cider, etc.? Maybe the characters can do some trading for young fruit trees...
And for that matter, this could be a good chance for a druid to do some spell research. A nice "replenish earth" spell would be a good thing. The sheriffs could jump start the crops with Plant Growth in the spring, and prepare the fields with thier wands or staves of Replenish Earth in the fall. Or they can fertilize the old fashioned way each spring if they have heards of cattle, or what have you (it's a lot more work, but less money spent on making the magic items...).
At any rate, I absolutely agree that the players should reap the benefit of their characters abilities (and the players ingenuity). The fact that there may be unexpected consequences to their first tries at manipulating the environment can still be fun - and overcoming the consequences (or making them work for you, in some cases) can also be fun!
It can be fun to roll like that, so don't take this as a slam. I'll just give you my two bits on the subject.
Personally, I'd say the extra nutrients are provided by the magic of the spell, just like the meat for that arm you just got regrown by regenerate comes from magic - it's not getting "borrowed" from the natural tissue of the rest of your body, and I'd use the same principle here.
In the Wheel of Time series, magical healing DOES steal from your vitality and energy, and it's an interesting quirk of how it works in that setting. It's kind of cool, "yes, that sucking chest wound is healed, but now you are exhausted and feel like you haven't eaten in a week." D&D magic, though, generally doesn't work like that; the magic does the work.
Also, bear in mind that PG is a spell that is ONLY usable by druids and rangers (and maybe on the Plant cleric domain list - don't remember). This isn't a terraforming spell some bastard wizard came up with. This is nature magic DESIGNED BY TREE-HUGGERS and used EXCLUSIVELY by them. One would expect that druids wouldn't research a spell back in Ye Olden Tymes that would boost the plants but thrash the earth beneath.
Take that for what it's worth.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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How much is a wand of plant growth worth? How many of them would the kingdom need? Sounds like hiring thieves to steal a bunch of them from all those wand-wielding Farmer Bobs would be a good strategy for Pitax, or anyone else unhappy with the idea of a new kingdom in the Stolen Lands!
Ken
The wand would be a standard 3rd level spell wand, or 11,250 gp.
And only good for doing about 1/3 of a hex ONCE. Definitely not the way you'd wanna go.
An X/day magic item that you can use every day would be light years cheaper if you're going the item route. But still plenty appealing to thieves from outside the kingdom (or inside it).