So I have some questions about the kingmaker kingdom building rules, seeing as my first session using them went disastrously wrong. I was pressured into running the session unprepared and basicalyy rushed a readthrough of the rules to get things going. However, I still have some things I don't understand
1) are the Reductions to kingdom statistics permanent: In the Kingdom I'm rebuilding to fix my idiot mistake, I rolled a plauge event, which reduces my stability by 4, and adds 1d6 unrest (yay). When I finally roll the success required to break the plague, do these penalties go away. Otherwise I will have at least a drop of 6 stability, which would mean that that stability checks require a roll of at least 17 in order to pass. This will no doubt start off an unrest spiral that will kill the kingdom (though I'm aware i could flip the party spymaster from econ to stability to mitigate this). Am i missing some detail here still or is this meant to be able to happen?
Unless stated otherwise, as I understand it, the changes are permanent.
Yes, you need to watch the Unrest spiral, that can get nasty really quickly! My group's Counselor has been death on unrest, there are Houses galore in their towns.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
You should be aware that as you start the kingdom building process, the kingdom is extremely fragile. An event like this can cause the kingdom to fail very easily. Later on when the kingdom has multiple cities, the various rolls mostly become "only fail on a 1" - but in the beginning, that's not true at all.
So particularly in the early months, don't feel like you have to go by exactly what the event says. If this is your first session, the kingdom can't be that big yet. So a plague is probably a bunch of people sick in the capitol city, right?
Give the players a chance to role-play finding a cure. Maybe there's a temple in Restov that would be willing to send help, in exchange for having one of their priests placed on the ruling council. Maybe there is a fey creature they can learn about from one of their allies, who can provide them with a special plant that can be used to cure those who are sick? Maybe a Gyronna cultist is bringing infected blankets and distributing them to the poor to create unrest, but the cultist has a stockpile of the needed cure in her cellar (since she doesn't want to get sick herself).
In other words, create a quick mini-adventure, let the PCs solve this one like adventurers, and then give them a Loyalty boost (instead of penalty) for their quick action during this difficult time, and remove all the Unrest for the same reason. And let the players think this was just a sneak preview of how tough things might get someday if they don't take care of their kingdom well.
In the end I went home after the session and spent the entire night picking the kingdom building rules apart with a fine tooth comb to fix it. I'd made several mistakes because my reading of the rules was rushed, and hadn't realized that the spymaster and rulers can change the stats they effect on the upkeep/edict phase. In the session this meant that we had simply been adding those scores to economy instead of shifting one of them over to stability. In the end, I had to re run the 12 months of kingdom creation and min maxed for economy and Stability. The kingdom now makes a fair income (average of 7BP ((10.5+11)/3)+4) and has a stability of 19 with a control DC of 25. It should make expansion and avoiding certain unrest spirals much easier for the players going forwards, though they'll have to work to build loyalty quickly over the next few months.
In our Kingmaker campaign we've done most of the kingdom building outside regular sessions with the player who plays the King recently. The players did not want to do the kingdom in the background, but there are a couple who are obviously not all that interested in long sessions of kingdom building. We have found the offline kingdom building to be a nice in between solution.
The players h onestly seem pretty up for it. We have a kind of split in the party, with one player possibly wanting to found his own kingdom, so the game could turn out to be pretty interesting starting out. Will have to work out how to get the party together for adventuring, but I'm sure I'll figure something out.
If you are using the rules as presented in Kingmaker, you should have a look at the updated version in Ultimate Campaign.
And also check out Legendary Games' Ultimate Rulership expansion.
Kale-otter wrote: In the end I went home after the session and spent the entire night picking the kingdom building rules apart with a fine tooth comb to fix it. I'd made several mistakes because my reading of the rules was rushed, Our group's dedicated kingdom-game-player quickly took to keeping a record of all decisions and even die-rolls, in case we discover that things change.
For instance, some players seized on a random event as a casus belli against the boggards in the Slough, and so we just played through that in the last two sessions. Since a PC died, we need to back up and re-do the month without a Warden, and revisit the 4 months since then before pushing ahead. With meticulous records of each die roll, we can adjust modifiers to see what changes without having to re-roll.
Quote: Plague (Hex or Settlement, Continuous) Plague is a Continuous event, meaning the reduction is temporary, but will last as long as the event is in effect:
Quote:
Continuous Events: A continuous event's effects continue each turn during the Event Phase until you resolve the event (as explained in the event description, usually by succeeding at a kingdom check).
Those "reductions" on the plague event are the costs to fight off the plague and the damage it caused that month.
A plague, despite the name, isnt a big deal if it is only affecting one hex.
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