More than a year after its first publication, I'm finally starting my Kingmaker campaign next week. I thought I'd be able to use the fabulous "Kingmaker for 6 PCs" conversions from these forums, but some last-minute player reshuffling between my groups now leaves me with 5 players for Kingmaker, so I'm a bit between the original and the conversion.
However, there seems to be a lot of other good GM advice for this campaign around, but I have kind of lost track during the wait for my previous campaign to end. That's why I'm asking around which threads or posts in particular the community can recommend from this forum. What went over particularly well in your Kingmaker campaigns? I'd be happy to hear something.
Thank you all in advance!
I recommend reading Alex Kilcoyne's (author of the 6-player conversion) Kingmaker PbP. It has a slightly different twist on the first couple of encounters that I found to work very well. I used them myself in the RL kingmaker Campaign I have just started. This is the link for the 2nd chapter, which has a bunch of useful links in the very first post - Link
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Zaister- my PbP uses my conversion for 5 players and the difficulty level has been just right.
This is because I have them on a 20 point buy which is higher than the book or conversion assumes. You may need to make very small on the fly adjustments depending on the effectiveness of your group but i've had to do very little work using the AP's encounters (aside from the conversion of course).
I have been concerned that the point buy difference wasn't worth an extra player at higher levels, so I awarded each player character a custom trait based on their accomplishments within the campaign to help boost them; i'm not entirely sure it was necessary but I think they were awesome and the players seemed to like them.
TLDR- Run with the conversion but use a higher point buy to compensate (I recommend 20).
I would second that, Malthir is my Paladin in this group.
Thank you, I will check out the PbP thread. My group is built on 15 points and with five players Alexander's conversion might generate too many XPs, but I might be able to do a five PC conversion along the same guidelines.
Ah yes thats the bit I forgot- I just divide all obtained XP by 6 and give each of my 5 characters this amount so progression remains the same.
Interesting idea. :)
My group just ignores XP in Kingmaker. The DM just factors in level increases at certain stages through each module. That way we can wander around doing things without having to worry about hitting key events, such as attacking the Stag Lord's fort, at the "wrong" level. We can also go off on sidequests the DM has created without them making us too high a level for the stage of the campaign. As players come and go the DM adjusts encounters as we go so there is no issue of an encounter generating too little or too much xp. And at the start of each module we are all at the "correct" level.
The DM makes sure that the loot is balanced so we don't get more than we should have, even factoring in the sidequests.
We all find it works really well. No exp book keeping, no looking for that last bit of xp to level up. We just play the game and get levelled up by the DM at appropriate spots.
My group just ignores XP in Kingmaker.
That's funny, because Kingmaker is the only campaign I DO track XP for! Of course, the other two aren't Pathfinder. I find it brings back kind of the old school "Expert Edition" D&D feel, which honestly is the feeling the entire AP invokes in me.
My group just ignores XP in Kingmaker.That's funny, because Kingmaker is the only campaign I DO track XP for! Of course, the other two aren't Pathfinder. I find it brings back kind of the old school "Expert Edition" D&D feel, which honestly is the feeling the entire AP invokes in me.
We started ignoring XP in our last campaign which was Legacy of Fire. With each module having a recommended start and finish level we found it easier to set levelling up points (not that the players knew what or when they would be).
It also helped with the age old issue of what to do if a player is unable to make a game session and no none plays their character for the night. Do they get no xp, half xp, full xp?
And it helped with the "dang, I am 25 xp short of levelling up, are you sure you didn't miss xp for something in that last session?" kind of situations.
We found it all just balanced out in the end. Players stopped seeking out encounters for the sake of xp and focussed on the story line.
Recently we had a side quest where our rogue had to "retrieve" a stolen family heirloom from a rival noble family's estate in an elven "holiday resort". Part of our plan was to throw a huge party for the locals as a means of drawing attention from half the party sneaking into the estate. The party's Duke hosted the party and his bard cohort led the band at a the pumping "rock concert".
How do you award xp for the Duke's fumbled attempts to get the party rocking? Or the bard then rolling a natural 20 on his "Are you ready to rock" diplomacy check and then following it up with a natural 20 on his "get the crowd slam dancing" perform check? (It was a pretty magical roleplay moment) Or the bard successfully creating an illusion spell of the Duke supposedly retiring early with a couple of groupies when he was actually sneaking out of the party to provide some muscle for the break in.
We just had a heck of a lot of fun roleplaying the "encounter" and the DM didn't need to worry about what the xp was worth because he decided that if we were successful in our overall task then we would level up at the end.
My group just ignores XP in Kingmaker. The DM just factors in level increases at certain stages through each module. That way we can wander around doing things without having to worry about hitting key events, such as attacking the Stag Lord's fort, at the "wrong" level.
We took on the Stag Lord at 2nd level... I'm pretty sure that was a little earlier then perhaps intended. It was a tough fight and we barely scraped by.
It also helped with the age old issue of what to do if a player is unable to make a game session and no none plays their character for the night. Do they get no xp, half xp, full xp?And it helped with the "dang, I am 25 xp short of levelling up, are you sure you didn't miss xp for something in that last session?" kind of situations.
I pretty much just give full XP as I run the character if the player doesn't show up. I only have three players, so I won't run if more than one can't make it. And I think I'd just fudge a few points if they were that close to leveling.
I do get it, though. My D20 Modern PbP I basically level the PCs after every full adventure; I don't mess with XP at all. So for me, bothering to count individual XP actually makes this game novel.
The major things that I enjoy in my Kingmaker game ...
Whenever possible, if a creature appears in both Bestiary 2 and Kingmaker, I tend to use the Bestiary 2 version. Three so far have proven to be more powerful, and more capable of challenging my players.
A certain creature in Rivers Run Red really should have Improved Grapple, but doesn't have it.
The players and I have an agreement that they won't powergame the kingdom building and pump the system for gold. They get their money from adventuring.
My group finds the kingdom building to be a little video-gamey, so instead I pre-roll kingdom events and then flesh them out as full story encounters, frequently loaded with roleplaying XP to be earned. While a New Vassals event normally could have been handled efficiently (boringly) in thirty seconds with a benefit of 1d6 BP or somesuch, the substitute blossomed into a negotiation that went over an hour and garnered a far more political benefit for the players than just the money. It remains one of the more memorable moments in the game thus far.
I don't plan out my random encounters, but I do try to dress them up more than "Hmmm, turns out it's an X. Maximum encounter distance ... rolling for everyone's stealth ... okay, initiative." The players have run into an Owlbear that caught a Nixie as she swam upstream; they caught a hunter forcing a leashed kobold to search for moon radishes; and it appears that worgs are following them because they 'have a strange scent about them', namely, that the worgs hold a grudge against Jhod and they can detect his scent on them. The favorite encounter so far as a faerie dragon in the guise of a bandit ghost demanding coppers from passers-by.
I just had my campaign's first session last Wednesday. I've got 6 players who managed to roll up amazing stats with 4d6-keep-3 (everyone rolled one set, I compiled them all and picked three of the six that everyone could choose from), so they all have the equivalent of a 30-point buy. We're using the 6-player conversion (many kudos to AK!), and I've considered making it even harder, but I haven't yet. So far, they reached the fort, slaughtered Happs and 2 of his 4 bandits (they opened combat with a crit with a gursame (x3) from ambush - needless to say, the bandits were quite surprised), and then had one of the two survivors lead them back to the camp.
The camp encounter was very tough for them, even with all their advantages - they determined to attack in the middle of the night, which isn't a scenario envisioned by the AP itself. I determined that all the bandits were in the camp, but except for the ones on watch, they were all asleep. So most of the bandits lost their first action, some lost two, and some were killed before they woke up. However, by the end of it, only one player had stayed conscious the entire time (I think two are still unconscious), Kressle was down, and there were only four bandits still standing - the two in the platforms, and two more on the ground. Given time constraints, we ended as the one character put his gursame on Kressle's neck and called for the survivors to surrender. And that's where we ended.
The camp fight can be very difficult if all the bandits are home...
Unless of course the PCs come from the opposite direction, approach at night, and all have low light vision...
The camp fight can be very difficult if all the bandits are home...Unless of course the PCs come from the opposite direction, approach at night, and all have low light vision...
In this case, they approached at night, and had the light from the burning pile of loot to see by...
(They tried to open combat by throwing Happs' second flask of alchemist's fire on top of the lookout post. The thrower rolled a net 0, so it landed at the base of the tree...)