I'm also still kinda lost on what characters actually do during these months of "Kingdom Time"(the months spent/lost working on the city/kingdom), even a job is only 8-10 hours a day (excluding farmers, maybe others) and we're not even getting paid to do said job other than the privilege of squatting in a castle and being fed.
BPs from my understanding and from what I've read on the boards here, is really generated "by the kingdom, for the kingdom", it has no relation at all to your character's own monitary needs. Not trying to be greedy, but trying to understand why anyone would work for a job that doesn't provide a paycheck? "3 hots and a cot" is prison. Even the Army pays you, despite being very similar to prison... different uniform and all.
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I'm also still kinda lost on what characters actually do during these months of "Kingdom Time"(the months spent/lost working on the city/kingdom), even a job is only 8-10 hours a day (excluding farmers, maybe others) and we're not even getting paid to do said job other than the privilege of squatting in a castle and being fed.
They spend time traveling around the kingdom, inspecting border forts, training militia, consulting with merchants and town councils, hearing complaints and petitions from their citizens, adjudicating disputes, surveying new road, bridge, and city sites, blessing babies, meeting with emissaries from other countries or various cities and towns within their land, hosting balls and parties, picking out curtains for their castles and mansions, go on royal hunts and excursions, plan military strategy and future expansion of their lands. You're out playing golf (or its Pathfinder equivalent) with your political allies or rivals, schmoozing with people you want to invest their in-world resources in the projects you want to pursue (i.e., spend the BP that your kingdom generates in the ways that you choose).
Or perhaps you're just spending a lot of time inspecting the new brothel in town...
BPs from my understanding and from what I've read on the boards here, is really generated "by the kingdom, for the kingdom", it has no relation at all to your character's own monitary needs. Not trying to be greedy, but trying to understand why anyone would work for a job that doesn't provide a paycheck? "3 hots and a cot" is prison. Even the Army pays you, despite being very similar to prison... different uniform and all.
Your "pay" is, first of all, living the high life of a royal, famous, and important person. You earn and possess a prestige and position that simple money cannot buy. That isn't going to do a thing for your character's personal killpower (i.e., their personal wealth and possessions).
Secondly, your "pay" is getting to dictate the actions and capital investment activities of thousands of people who do what you say do and go where you say go, who build what you say build and invest in what you tell them to invest in.
You do not "own" the BP of your kingdom, but you direct and control the BP of your kingdom. If you want a temple built in Southtown, it's built. If you want a road built through the mountains or across the river, it's built. If you want your cities to build more brothels than houses, you can. Thousands upon thousands of gp worth of construction and transactions are happening at your direction. You are essentially getting to tell everyone ELSE in the kingdom how to spend THEIR resources.
That's what BP is. Your reward is getting to be the boss of them, living the lives of the rich and famous (in a way which cannot be easily be hijacked as if you were pawning the Crown Jewels to buy yourself an F-18 to go around strafing your enemies in your underwear before breakfast).
BTW, there is a mechanism where you can squeeze your kingdom for money for your personal use; it just makes people unhappy because it is essentially embezzling money that is supposed to go to building up things for the good of the whole kingdom.
According to the rules, kingdom time is actually 1 week per month. So what happens to your character during the remaining 3 weeks is pretty much up to you.
In my campaign, we've had different things happening outside kingdom time, for example :
- Trying to convert the kobolds to the religion of Abadar.
- Explore the realm.
- Participate in the various festivals (Night of the Feys + Fangberry Pie Day are quite popular).
- Develop romance and have a family.
There's nothing stopping your character from pursuing whatever he wants.
About this being a payless job, it's pretty much a balance issue. If you could withdraw unlimited amount of BPs, you would pretty much be higher than the recommanded wealth per level.
I'm also still kinda lost on what characters actually do during these months of "Kingdom Time"(the months spent/lost working on the city/kingdom), even a job is only 8-10 hours a day (excluding farmers, maybe others) and we're not even getting paid to do said job other than the privilege of squatting in a castle and being fed.
BPs from my understanding and from what I've read on the boards here, is really generated "by the kingdom, for the kingdom", it has no relation at all to your character's own monitary needs. Not trying to be greedy, but trying to understand why anyone would work for a job that doesn't provide a paycheck? "3 hots and a cot" is prison. Even the Army pays you, despite being very similar to prison... different uniform and all.
The rules as written, don't require entire months of kingdom time to be spent; the assumption is that out of a single month, one week of it is spent on governmental functions, to allow three weeks of adventuring, personal business, etc.
As for a salary, one of the house rule suggestions is that the kingdom pays a cost of living as per the Gamemastering chapter of the core rulebook, to negate the costs of food, lodging, and so forth.
Kingdom Leadership Salaries Thread
Salaries @ Kingdom Building main thread
Frankly, I'd recommend some combination of cost of living and stipend, such that small purchases can be saved for, but not so much that it negates the value from adventuring spoils.
As for what the PCs do during entire months of downtime, it's the perfect time to research new spells, enchant that +eleventy sword of awesome, craft that suit of masterwork mithral plate mail you've been craving, or if you're short on cash, simply use the Craft or Profession skills to have your PC's hobby get a smidge more spending cash.
Thanks to everyone for the input!
Or perhaps you're just spending a lot of time inspecting the new brothel in town...
The ruler won't let us build a brothel... yet, damn Paladin has eyes like a hawk I tell you! You can't sneak hookers anywhere and farmers have issues with me pimping out their daughters. People and their morals, pffft!
I'm playing a Rogue/Cavalier (thug/scout/cockatrice) who is currently filling the Spymaster slot. My thoughts are that a spymaster is essentially a rumor monger. For example, I may or may not have started some nasty propaganda about a certain group of individuals in hopes to create a form of attrition. *grins*
- Participate in the various festivals
So far we have one annual holiday, Founder's Day also known as Coronation Day, should our ruler die and need to be replaced... He really likes when I phrase it that way, lol.
I have had a few ideas of what my character would be doing in his "down time", but I've been really unsure as to how to implement them. Partially the reason for this thread, that and a need for some general insight (that has now been provided).
simply use the Craft or Profession skills to have your PC's hobby get a smidge more spending cash.
Always the obvious stuff that gets missed, I'll have to pimp my Profession(Fisherman) a bit more frequently I guess. Also thanks a bunch for the links. I have linked this thread to my group via email, I'm just one of the players, so it's not my call.
I gave the players the Extravagant cost of living as their pay. Basically 1000 GP per month per player. Seeing as they live in Castle and that's what Extravagant is it just made sense.
I was thinking more along the lines of 50-100gp a month, which is still tons of cash compared to a commoner.
I'm aware that you can sump BPs, it's really not efficient or acceptable as our kingdom isn't even a year old yet. Neither is sumping money into BPs IMO (not efficient), but with our kingdom generating magic items we cannot afford to purchase ourselves, why not?
I'm playing a Rogue/Cavalier (thug/scout/cockatrice) who is currently filling the Spymaster slot.
My recommendation is that you spend your time developing a kick ass spy network, both for internal security and to keep tabs on your neighbors. Recruit spies, set up their procedures, task them with different areas/places/people to keep an eye on, engage in a bit of subtle sabotage like the rumors you mention. Embrace your kingdom role and have fun with it. If your GM is willing to play along with you, this kind of roleplaying stuff can even provide major benefits to you and your party down the road. Information is power, and you can control it.
As for your paladin ruler, given your character's apparent nature, you might want to adopt an attitude of "what he doesn't know won't hurt him". You're the Spymaster, after all. Secrets, both protecting them and acquiring them, are your stock in trade. You can even rationalize it to yourself and others by saying that you are protecting your ruler by taking the reponsibility onto yourself for those, hard, unsavory, but arguably necessary decisions a government sometimes has to make. You're giving him "plausible deniability" if something goes wrong or looks bad. If he weren't a paladin, he might even thank you for it.
My recommendation is that you spend your time developing a kick ass spy network, both for internal security and to keep tabs on your neighbors. Recruit spies, set up their procedures, task them with different areas/places/people to keep an eye on, engage in a bit of subtle sabotage like the rumors you mention. Embrace your kingdom role and have fun with it. If your GM is willing to play along with you, this kind of roleplaying stuff can even provide major benefits to you and your party down the road. Information is power, and you can control it.
First, thank you for the reply, glad I checked back before it shuffled out of the top dozen or so. Something along the lines of spy network or thieves' guild was my long term intention, despite reading a few negative threads on the topic. However a kingdom is still young and as a group we are still kind of adjusting to the new ruleset, hence asking random (possibly newb-like) questions like above.
As for your paladin ruler, given your character's apparent nature, you might want to adopt an attitude of "what he doesn't know won't hurt him". You're the Spymaster, after all. Secrets, both protecting them and acquiring them, are your stock in trade. ..."plausible deniability"... If he weren't a paladin, he might even thank you for it.
As players we have discussed the situation in length. The paladin's player(also my DM for a different game) is enjoying and encouraging my devious behavoir, stating something along the lines of what you said "what he doesn't KNOW, won't hurt him". I feel bad for the paladin as a character, because his older brother (myself) and his younger brother (LN Hexblade) are both constantly treading the fence of "plausible deniability".
It's incredibly difficult to keep stuff I email the DM bottled up, almost like I'm playing my own personal game and I don't want to irritate the GM with 'side events', but it's really how I see things working with this character in this situation. I'm not typically a rogue player, so that in itself is a bit new for me, but I've always wanted to run a crimelord style character... the guy that does bad things, but never ACTUALLY does any of said bad things. The concept may be beyond my skill level, I typically play themed-based fighters of some sort (Barbarian, Gladiator(Fighter), Eldritch knight, etc.) and just smash things for fun with minor bits of RP. The rumors are a start in the right direction I think, we'll see. :)
As players we have discussed the situation in length. The paladin's player(also my DM for a different game) is enjoying and encouraging my devious behavoir, stating something along the lines of what you said "what he doesn't KNOW, won't hurt him". I feel bad for the paladin as a character, because his older brother (myself) and his younger brother (LN Hexblade) are both constantly treading the fence of "plausible deniability".
It's incredibly difficult to keep stuff I email the DM bottled up, almost like I'm playing my own personal game and I don't want to irritate the GM with 'side events', but it's really how I see things working with this character in this...
Glad you guys are having fun with it. You recognize that it is delicate line you are treading. If you can tread it successfully, you can accomplish a lot for your kingdom. However, if you cross that line and the brown substance hits the fan, know that the paladin's first move will be to disavow you and leave you to twist in the wind, brother or not. That's what plausible deniability is all about. He can deny truthfully that he knows anything about your nefarious schemes. Of course, it is tricky on his part as well, since if his character does find out or even strongly suspects, being a paladin, he has to do something.
As for your private communications with the GM, as long as he doesn't object and you aren't stealing game time from others, rock on. Personally, when I GM, I encourage this up to and until it starts to dominate time at the table. I also let it be know that while I will arrange some special events to react to all the juicy input you're giving me, I'm not going to overdo it and have it become a two person side game with the other players getting bored. Everything in moderation.
You recognize that it is delicate line you are treading. If you can tread it successfully, you can accomplish a lot for your kingdom. However, if you cross that line and the brown substance hits the fan, know that the paladin's first move will be to disavow you and leave you to twist in the wind, brother or not. That's what plausible deniability is all about.
Yup, I hadn't really planned on doing anything terribly evil, but sometimes "good" intentions are interpreted differently by different people. ;)
As for your private communications with the GM, as long as he doesn't object and you aren't stealing game time from others, rock on. ... Everything in moderation.
Nah, it was more of an email thing. I don't much care for lengthy individual interaction, it's a team sport, lol.