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I had a thought that Kingmaker could run pretty well with minimal modification as an evil campaign where the PCs are Hobgoblins and Orcs and whatnot.
My idea is to change the original charter from the Swordlords of Rostov to originating from a bordering hobgoblin empire, specifically offering the PCs the Barony if they can prove themselves worthy by dominating the area of the original charter and solving the bandit problem there. Similar charters would have been offered to similar neighbouring groups per the original path.
The hangup as always is how to balance the PC races while allowing for a truly monstrous campaign and I think I have an idea using a couple of different methods. The first is to get rid of monster HD and figure out what the base racial abilities are, which I have done for a couple of races. The second balancing method allows for the different races to use different pathfinder advancement tracks.
The race list is:
- Bugbear (no monster HD, slow advancement)
- Worg (no monster HD, medium advancement, limitations in regards to body slots for magic items etc. due to being a quadruped with no hands)
- Hobgoblin (medium advancement)
- Orc (medium advancement) + Half-Orc if someone wanted
- Goblin (fast advancement)
- Kobold (with the kobold sub-race variant rule to beef them up a bit)
Bugbear (Slow advancement track – No humanoid HD to start, advance as class)
Str+4 Con+2 Wis+2
Size: Medium
Speed: 30
Armour: Bugbears have a +3 natural armour bonus
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., scent (*)
Skill Racial Modifiers: +4 Intimidate, +4 Stealth
SQ: Stalker(Ex) Perception and Stealth are always class skills for bugbears. Biggun(Ex) Average bugbears stand 7 feet tall and weigh 400 pounds. They can wield inappropriately sized weapons that are one step too large (Large two-handed weapons, Huge one-handed Weapons or Gargantuan Light weapons) applying the standard -4 penalty to hit for being 2 sizes too small.
Languages: Common, Goblin
Worg (Medium advancement track – No magical beast HD to start, advance as class)
Str+4 Dex+4 Con+2 Int-2 Wis+2
Size: Medium (quadrupedal - can act as a mount for a small creature)
Speed: 40
Armour: Worgs have a +2 natural armour bonus
Senses: Darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent (*)
Skill Racial Modifiers: +2 Perception, +2 Stealth, +2 Survival
SQ: Bite attack (d6+1) + Trip(Ex)
Languages: Common, Goblin
Limitations: Can only use items in Armour (as barding), Belt, Eyes, Neck, Ring (worn as earrings) and Wrist body slots; cannot use skills requiring fine motor control such as Craft, Disable Device or Sleight of Hand; can only take levels in Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger or Rogue.
Hobgoblin (Medium advancement track)
Dex+2, Con+2
Size: Medium
Speed: 30
Senses: darkvision 60 ft.
Skills: +4 stealth
Languages: Common, Goblin
Orc (Medium advancement track)
Str+4, Int-2, Wis-2, Cha-2
Size: Medium
Speed: 30
Senses: darkvision 60 ft.; Light Sensitivity
SQ: Ferocity(Ex) An orc remains conscious and can continue fighting even if its hit point total is below 0. It is still staggered and loses 1 hit point each round. A creature with ferocity still dies when its hit point total reaches a negative amount equal to its Constitution score. Weapon Familiarity (Ex): Always proficient with Greataxes and Falchions and treat weapons with the word “orc” in its name as a martial weapon.
Languages: Common, Goblin
Half-Orc (Medium advancement track) – Per PHB
Goblin (Fast advancement track)
Str-2 Dex+4 Cha-2
Size: Small
Speed: 30
Senses: darkvision 60 ft.
Skills: +4 Ride, +4 stealth
Languages: Goblin
Limitations: Cannot advance as a wizard because of ancient taboos against writing
Kobold (Fast advancement track)
Str-4, Dex+2, Con-2
Size: Small
Speed: 30
Armour: Kobolds have a +1 natural armour bonus
Senses: darkvision 60 ft.; Light Sensitivity
Skills: +2 Craft (trapmaking), +2 Perception, +2 Profession(miner).
SQ: Crafty - Craft (trapmaking) and Stealth are always class skills for Kobolds.
Languages: Draconic
Kobold Variants (pick one):
• Black: Widely dispersed in forests, swamps, and underground, the black-scaled kobolds are better swimmers than their brethren and gain a +4 racial bonus on Swim checks.
• Blue: The blue variant of kobolds appears most often within tribes dominated by other scale colors. They are said to be among the best diabolists and schemers, and gain a +1 inherent bonus to their Wisdom. Many are powerful clerics of Asmodeus.
• Green: These are the standard forest kobolds, well camouflaged in leafy undergrowth. They gain an additional +4 racial bonus on Stealth checks.
• Red: These kobolds are pyromaniacs and make extensive use of fire, especially the alchemical and magical kinds. These kobolds gain a +2 bonus to the DC of any spell they cast with the fire subtype and a +2 bonus on saves made against fear effects. Most are a bit more arrogant than average kobolds.
• White: Like the blues, white-scaled kobolds are a little less frequent than other types. They are often powerful sorcerers, gaining a +1 bonus to the DC of any spell they cast with the cold subtype and a +1 inherent bonus to their Charisma.
It would play out differently than most good groups in who they would ally with and who they might treat as enemies. By being bound by a charter with the goal of gaining control of a kingdom, an evil party would have some real built-in reasons to work together - heck, they could decide who is to be King in nonlethal single combat or something; if opinions changed about who is strongest, there's nothing to stop the group from fighting to be the next leader.
What do you think about using advancement tracks to balance out-of-balance evil races? What do you think the problems would be?
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Interesting. Rather than lose the monster hit dice altogether, would you consider offering players a choice between starting with monster HD and no class level or no HD and their first level? I'm assuming the no HD rule is more to balance the races against each other than balance them against CR.
I couldn't see how to balance a bugbear or Worg, (my admitted far-out idea) against the other races at first level without pulling back on HD. I guess a Bugbear at CR2 (assuming standard gear - not PC gear) isn't that bad compared to a CR1 Fighter with PC gear but problems accrue at higher levels:
Say you give a Bugbear and Orc Fighter both 35000 xp. Even if you put the Bugbear on the slow track and the Orc on medium, there would be trouble. Under that scenario, the Orc would be CR7 for being a 7th level PC class with PC treasure; the Bugbear would be CR9 (2 for race + 6 for PC class levels +1 for PC treasure). That +2 CR difference would always remain.
If you started the Bugbear at negative experience or something (forcing them to "gain" their first PC level, you could reduce the difference in the early-medium levels but the exponential xp scale would wipe that out pretty quick. This method works out closer for the Worg because they can't use most magic items and thus would never get the +1 CR for effective PC level wealth in my opinion (but I think that a Worg Rogue, Fighter or Ranger would be an effective and fun character to play).
I suppose another option would be to make an extra-slow (35000xp for 5th) or extra-extra slow (3500xp for 4th) XP table for the higher CR monsters to put them 2 or 3 levels back from the medium track PCs. I'm not sure this would fly though.
Thinking about the Worg, I noticed that the Worg's Magical Beast HD are about halfway between Fighter and Warrior in terms of power and the Bugbear's Humanoid HD are somewhere worse than Expert, so I thought about decoupling the HD component from the race component and came up with this. It might take some handwaving saying that most Bugbears spend their youth "getting tough" (i.e. gaining those HD with everything that goes along with them) and PC bugbears spent their youth training (getting that first PC level).
I'm not really convinced that goblins need to have an accelerated XP track, since they're mechanically superior to halflings in many ways (especially as stealthy characters, since they net themselves an effective +9 on stealth checks versus a human!). You'd be safe, IMHO, to leave them with the orc and half-orc unless you were also drastically overhauling their stats.
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I'm not really convinced that goblins need to have an accelerated XP track, since they're mechanically superior to halflings in many ways (especially as stealthy characters, since they net themselves an effective +9 on stealth checks versus a human!). You'd be safe, IMHO, to leave them with the orc and half-orc unless you were also drastically overhauling their stats.
That is a very good point. I recently reincarnated a villain as a goblin and while coming back as a goblin seems really lousy at first, for a rogue it's a huge power boost. Going from human to goblin you get: +4 Dex(assuming a misprint in the PRD which lowers it to +2 while all other races get their normal stats), a racial bonus to Stealth, a size bonus to Stealth, and a +1 size bonus to attacks. Sure, you're wielding your favorite sword two-handed now, but they'll never see you coming.
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If you started the Bugbear at negative experience or something (forcing them to "gain" their first PC level, you could reduce the difference in the early-medium levels but the exponential xp scale would wipe that out pretty quick. This method works out closer for the Worg because they can't use most magic items and thus would never get the +1 CR for effective PC level wealth in my opinion (but I think that a Worg Rogue, Fighter or Ranger would be an effective and fun character to play).
The math seems sound, but I think I read somewhere that monsters as PCs aren't meant to be treated as CR = Level for more than a few levels at a time, that their power scales poorly at higher levels, HD or no HD.
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I'm not really convinced that goblins need to have an accelerated XP track, since they're mechanically superior to halflings in many ways (especially as stealthy characters, since they net themselves an effective +9 on stealth checks versus a human!). You'd be safe, IMHO, to leave them with the orc and half-orc unless you were also drastically overhauling their stats.
I originally used CR as a guide but I'll run the numbers. If you were to build a Goblin Rogue and a Hobgoblin rogue with all 10's as base abilities, the ability arrays would be:
Hob: Str 10, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10, +4 Stealth
Gob: Str 8, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 8, +8 Stealth, +4 Ride
The Hobgoblin compared to the Goblin would do +2 damage/attack (1 for str, 1 for the change in weapon size), would have 1 more HP per level and +1 on CMB and CMD.
The Goblin compared to the hobgoblin would have +2 to AC (+1 Dex, +1 size), +2 to ranged attacks (+1 size, +1 dex) and an additional +4 to stealth because of size.
They would be even on melee attacks (Hob's str is balanced by Gob's size) and the difference in Charisma wouldn't be an issue for melee or ranged rogue builds. +1 to Fortitude saves vs. +1 to Reflex saves is a wash.
I guess given that, the Goblin would tend to be a better scout rogue while the hobgoblin would be more thuggish but they would be close to even so I guess I agree with you guys. The Kobold still compares worse than either of those so should keep the fast advancement track IMO.
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Balance issues aside, what do you guys think about the idea of running Kingmaker with evil humanoids?
Personally I think that this could be ran nearly out of the box with only a few modifications -
I think that a big hangup in making things run smooth would be in crafting some kind of agreement among the PCs so that they wouldn't end up fighting each other but I expect that the built-in promise of power in this AP would help that. I might encourage them to follow some kind of Klingonesque code of Hobgoblin honour where the strong lead and disputes among the PCs could be settled by honourable single combat, with the caveat that fighting an opponent to submission (i.e. unconsciousness) is considered just as honourable as fighting to the death.
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It's a great idea, and I wouldn't get hung up on the numbers. The EL feature matters the most at the early levels, I think.
The humanoids don't even have to be evil. Imagine a group of Erastil-worshiping Orcs who want to start a new life away from the bestial world of their old tribes.
I'm thinking of yoinking this, though probably not for the PCs. In my world, Hobbos are a race on the brink of becoming civilized, settling down from a nomadic life based on raiding and conquest. Making one of the other colonizing teams be from the Invincible Legion (the hobgoblin kingdom's army) would highlight their movement in this direction.
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It's a great idea, and I wouldn't get hung up on the numbers. The EL feature matters the most at the early levels, I think.
You're right for primary spell-casters but ability bonus differences matter quite a bit for the martial classes (Ftr, Bar, Ran, Rog, Mnk) when comparing character to character within the martial group.
I worry about fairness because with my race list, there are critters with a net +8 to their ability scores (plus scent and other cool abilities) mixed with some with a net -4 including light sensitivity. Not everyone in my gaming group understands the numbers like I do so if I don't strive to make things even over the long term then Player A with the min/maxed Bugbear Fighter is going to be far out of the league of Player B with a badly optimized Orc Barbarian, when they are characters with similar roles.
A couple more races with the HD removed:
Str +6 Con +4 Int -4 Wis -2 Cha -2
Size: Large (Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.; -1 to AC, -1 to hit, +1 to CMB/CMD)
Speed: 30 ft.
AC Adjustments +5 natural, –1 size
Senses: darkvision 60 ft.
Racial Skill Modifiers: +4 Perception, +4 Survival
SA: Powerful charge (gore, 2d6 damage)
SQ: Natural Cunning (Ex) - Although minotaurs are not especially intelligent, they possess innate cunning and logical ability. This gives them immunity to maze spells and prevents them from ever becoming lost. Further, they are never caught flat-footed.
Languages: Giant
Str +10, Dex -2, Con +4, Int -4, Cha -2
Size: Large (Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.; -1 to AC, -1 to hit, +1 to CMB/CMD)
Speed: 40 ft.
AC Adjustments +5 natural, –1 size
Senses: darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision
Languages: Giant
Balance just gets worse if you include these guys in the mix.
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The humanoids don't even have to be evil. Imagine a group of Erastil-worshiping Orcs who want to start a new life away from the bestial world of their old tribes.
I'm thinking of yoinking this, though probably not for the PCs. In my world, Hobbos are a race on the brink of becoming civilized, settling down from a nomadic life based on raiding and conquest. Making one of the other colonizing teams be from the Invincible Legion (the hobgoblin kingdom's army) would highlight their movement in this direction.
Like I said above, I always imagined hobgoblins as having a caste system in a society that is similar to a proto-Klingon Empire - just not as well developed. They just haven't had their Kahless yet (that unifying figure that takes the infighting tribes and unifies them under a code of honour).
I intentionally wanted to play to type in this scenario (Rovagug worshippers rather than Erastilites) because at our gaming table, we always talked about playing an "Evil Campaign". Our past experience with that kind of scenario was that they were usually shortened by infighting among the PCs - too much CE and not enough LE.
If I may be so bold, I did a Minotaur Homebrew for my setting that allows minotaurs to start out at level one and slowly grow into their racial role, via feats. I haven't gotten to see it in play yet, but it does overall look pretty balanced and I'd be more than happy to hear how it worked out for someone else. :D
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If I may be so bold, I did a Minotaur Homebrew for my setting that allows minotaurs to start out at level one and slowly grow into their racial role, via feats. I haven't gotten to see it in play yet, but it does overall look pretty balanced and I'd be more than happy to hear how it worked out for someone else. :D
That must have been built from the d20 minotaur, right? (your gore damage is higher and there are a bunch of extra abilities that are not from the PFSRD.)
I don't mind the idea of pulling some of the abilities back and making them into mandatory feats (like powerful charge at 3rd and maybe the can't get lost one at 1st) but I worry about the effect of adding size to all that strength:
Large is worth -1 to hit and AC for about +3 Damage plus 10' reach which works out to an extra attack whenever <Large opponents close to melee.
+6 strength is like getting 2 levels worth of BAB, plus weapon focus plus specialization. Even if those ability bumps were spread over several levels, it gets tough to balance pretty quickly.
It's hard to imagine making a half-orc or human fighter that could hold his own against a minotaur fighter of a similar level, even with those abilities held back. You might be able to introduce another balancing measure by having the minotaurs use say a 15 point buy while the other players use a 20 point or something but something feels odd about that to me.
To sum up, I would wager that at any level a Fighter to Fighter comparison between your minotaur (or mine) and a standard race would have the minotaurs be at a net +1 to hit (+2 Str, -1 Size) and +5 to damage (3 from weapon size, 2 from strength) with an extra HP, one less skill point and -1 to will saves and AC. The standard race fighter would have a couple more feats but they would be of the miscelaneous or critical enhancing variety, not the doing more damage every swing variety. I would expect that a power gamer would build every minotaur with Int and Cha as dump stats and something like 24 str once you got past the delayed ability bumps. You just can't make a halforc that works against that.
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Your ideas are good ones in my opinion and I hope they work out for you. My quick run through the game to get a feel for running a variant of it later was awesome. My gm wanted an evil cleric in the party to seehow it worked out since we were testing anyway.
I played a cleric of lamashtu who was rencarnated as a human as punishment. He convinced a worg they encountered to grab his pack and make an alliance with him and the party. Eventually the worgs became tax collectors. Good times.
If I may be so bold, I did a Minotaur Homebrew for my setting that allows minotaurs to start out at level one and slowly grow into their racial role, via feats. I haven't gotten to see it in play yet, but it does overall look pretty balanced and I'd be more than happy to hear how it worked out for someone else. :DThat must have been built from the d20 minotaur, right? (your gore damage is higher and there are a bunch of extra abilities that are not from the PFSRD.)
I don't mind the idea of pulling some of the abilities back and making them into mandatory feats (like powerful charge at 3rd and maybe the can't get lost one at 1st) but I worry about the effect of adding size to all that strength:
Large is worth -1 to hit and AC for about +3 Damage plus 10' reach which works out to an extra attack whenever <Large opponents close to melee.
+6 strength is like getting 2 levels worth of BAB, plus weapon focus plus specialization. Even if those ability bumps were spread over several levels, it gets tough to balance pretty quickly.
It's hard to imagine making a half-orc or human fighter that could hold his own against a minotaur fighter of a similar level, even with those abilities held back. You might be able to introduce another balancing measure by having the minotaurs use say a 15 point buy while the other players use a 20 point or something but something feels odd about that to me.
To sum up, I would wager that at any level a Fighter to Fighter comparison between your minotaur (or mine) and a standard race would have the minotaurs be at a net +1 to hit (+2 Str, -1 Size) and +5 to damage (3 from weapon size, 2 from strength) with an extra HP, one less skill point and -1 to will saves and AC. The standard race fighter would have a couple more feats but they would be of the miscelaneous or critical enhancing variety, not the doing...
Let's not forget that they're down at least one feat, maybe more, and they now have a harder time acquiring armor and weapons appropriately sized for them (though that's minor). Bottom line, though - minotaurs used to be ECL 8 in 3.5. Pathfinder characters are in general more along the lines of old LA +1 races, and the minotaur could stand to be reduced because of it. By the time you compare a 7th level fighter to a 7th level Monstrous Humanoid with MH hit dice... they're actually pretty even steven. The minotaur gets some extra strength, but he loses out on the flexibility that those feats allow for in other instances, and he's pretty obviously a bruiser. Still, your feedback will be taken into consideration - most people I've encountered feel that mandating a feat is actually a terrible idea, but I hate the idea medium sized minotaurs running around for their whole lives...
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Let's not forget that they're down at least one feat, maybe more, and they now have a harder time acquiring armor and weapons appropriately sized for them (though that's minor). Bottom line, though - minotaurs used to be ECL 8 in 3.5. Pathfinder characters are in general more along the lines of old LA +1 races, and the minotaur could stand to be reduced because of it. By the time you compare a 7th level fighter to a 7th level Monstrous Humanoid with MH hit dice... they're actually pretty even steven. The minotaur gets some extra strength, but he loses out on the flexibility that those feats allow for in other instances, and he's pretty obviously a bruiser. Still, your feedback will be taken into consideration - most people I've encountered feel that mandating a feat is actually a terrible idea, but I hate the idea medium sized minotaurs running around for their whole lives...
(This is kind of a threadjack but I'm cool with that)
I looked at monstrous humanoid hit dice "levels" and I figure they land about half way between fighter and warrior in usefulness - they're basically warriors with 2 good saves and 4 skill points versus a fighter with 2 skill points/level, bonus feats and the other fighter goodies.The pathfinder way would be to say the 6HD minotaur would be balanced with 5th level PCs (CR4 + 1 for PC-level wealth), which I can see as being in the ballpark at least (way fewer feats than a fighter etc. balance out the extra strength). If you wanted to make a way to make a balanced minotaur to be able to advance alongside a human fighter from 1st level I would look to something like this:
L1: STR+2, CON+2, INT-4, CHA-2; Darkvision; Natural armour +1;, Medium-sized; 2 monstrous humanoid HD (with associated skills, saves and a feat); start with just enough money to buy a greataxe plus about 5gp (i.e. start them off poor so they have to earn that first suit of armour and rely on their extra HP to stay alive); proficiency with greataxe, simple weapons and light armour; Racial Skill Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Survival; class skills are: Climb, Craft, Fly, Intimidate, Perception, Ride, Stealth, Survival, and Swim.
L2: Natural armour +2; gain gore attack 1d6; 3HD
L3: STR+4; Natural armour +3; Natural Cunning, 4HD; feat
L4: Natural armour +4; Large Size; 5HD; Powerful charge
L5: STR+6, CON +4; Natural armour +5; 6HD; feat
Large Monstrous humanoid, 6d10 HD -> 49HP average
Darkvision
Str 16, Dex 10, Con14, Int6, Wis 10, Cha6
+6/+1 BAB -> greataxe +9/+4 (+10 with focus) for 3d6+4 (average 14.5 damage)
For+4, Ref+5, Wil+5
Natural Armour +5 so an AC around 20 (+5 armour, +1 chain shirt)
3 Feats plus Greataxe, Simple weapon and Light armour proficiency
12 skill ranks after intelligence penalties (one of which would probably have to be spent on linguistics to speak common/whatever)
Natural cunning, Gore 1d6, Powerful Charge 2d6
PC level gear but it's awkward because of the size of gear needed and the change in minotaur size over time
Medium humanoid, 6d10HD -> 37HP average
Any ability +2, another +1 from 4th level (say they are both in strength)
Str 13, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
+6/+1 BAB -> greataxe +8/+3 (weapon focus, weapon training) for 1d12+4 (average 10.5 damage)
AC around 20 as well (say Amulet +1 Nat. Arm., +1 Full Plate)
For+5, Ref+2, Wil+2
6 discretionary feats (assuming weapon specialization and focus), Prof martial weapons, armour and shields
12 skill ranks
Bravery +2
Armour Training +1
Weapon Training +1
PC level gear, well optimized
I would say that because of those fighter feats it's close implying that the minotaur should be on the slow track compared to the human on the medium advancement track so he ends up at 6HD, 5CR when the fighter is at 6th level, 6CR. Being on the slow track, the minotaur would always be a level behind but I think that is needed to keep some semblance of balance.