I’m a very experienced DM who has questions about the kingdom building system. We are fine with the high level of accounting needed. The players interested in kingdom building will show up earlier and we will do the kingdom building phases and then later in the session play the role playing section. My players like all the rules laid out in front of them up front, any changes mid stream really pisses them off, so I’m trying to set the house rules up front.
From what I read on these forums there are a few issues revolving around the kingdom building system. There are mentions the magic item/economy system being broken. but I’m not sure exactly what is broken. I have heard also that after a certain point all the kingdom rolls are pretty much automatic.
For issue one I’m not sure I completely understand the issue but from what I gather it involves players pulling out BP converting them to GP and having huge magic item buying power. Is that correct? Would just banning this conversion fix this problem, or maybe upping the penalty from 1 to 5 per BP conversion work?
In regards that automatic rolls with larger kingdoms; would increasing the DC roll based on kingdom size to make the rolls progressively harder as the kingdom grows mediate the problem. Maybe saying the DC increase on all rolls +1 per 5 kingdom size, representing that larger kingdoms are harder to manage.
Would these works?
Are there any other kingdom glitches that need to be addressed?
Thanks,
I've not played a Kingmaker game but from what I understand of my reading of the rules the availability of higher level (and by extension more expensive) magical items is severely restricted by the makeup of the Kingdom itself. The number of items in each shop available for purchase are rolled randomly with the more expensive items being exceedingly rare.
I could be wrong but that would limit the usefulness of the conversion of BP to GP. Sure you can convert your kingdom to cash but you cant become super powerful unless your kingdom makeup is geared toward producing high power items (thereby reducing the available BP for use in conversion in the first place).
FYI from the kingdom building thread:
James Jacobs wrote:
We've specifically NOT assigned direct gp values to how much a mine or any resource can bring in, since the game's economy has some disconnects between things like society economy and PC magic item economy.
Mines do nothing more than add to a kingdom's economy score, and when you make economy checks that helps you earn more Build Points. Mines aren't intended to fill PC pockets with gold, and they won't "play out" unless you want to houserule even more realism into the system.
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TRY to resist allowing the PCs to mix gp and BP. Things will get messy if you do.
If the PCs want to buy an item that shows up for sale in one of their cities, they just buy the item with their own gp and that's that. Doesn't impact the kingdom at all, beyond opening up an empty item slot.
But you really REALLY should try to convey to the PCs that "BP" and "gp" are two different systems. We included methods to translate the two back and forth out of necessity, but if you can get away without crossing these streams, your campaign, I suspect, will be the healthier for it.
Bear in mind - I've only just started running my Kingmaker campaign, so my answers are based on pre-planning, not experience with running the adventure. With that said...
I think that banning conversion of BPs to GP ("raiding the treasury") is best. If any PC has item creation feats, letting them pull extra BPs from their kingdom is just a recipe for character wealth to spiral out of control.
On the other hand, I don't think that near-automatic success on most kingdom rolls is a problem. They'll still fail on a natural 1, but succeed 95% of the time on the basic kingdom management rolls - in other words, for the most part, their well-managed kingdom runs smoothly.
The PCs shouldn't know what Kingdom Events are possible, and certainly shouldn't know the DCs for those events ahead of time. Where appropriate for specific Events, playing out the events and using appropriate PC skill rolls instead of using set DCs vs. kingdom stats can add in some uncertainty if its needed.
"raiding the treasury" for personal gain could be seen as a decidedly evil act. If the PC group wishes to run an evil kingdom and become powerful warlord dictators then that could certainly be a possibility but the ramifications of turning the entire civilized world against you would have to be a factor.
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Removing the allowance to "withdraw" BP is probably the easiest way to assure some semblance of ballooning the campaign out of control.
This helps keep the PCs in line in regards to the "wealth by level" concept.
Raising the DCs +1 for every five hexes I don't think is really going to make an affect one way or the other. The number of hexes in a kingdom is not what increases the ability for kingdom checks to succeed; it's the building that are constructed in cities that make up most of the applied bonuses to kingdom rolls. A kingdom of just 4 hexes could easily have super high capabilities in making their rolls if they have several of the right buildings - thus that little arbitrary rule never really makes a difference.
Eventually auto success is fairly expected; well-run kingdoms should have some invulnerability to every little issue that comes up. Most of the complaints come from DMs who allow their players to withdraw a bunch of money, because they know their kingdom modifiers are so high the Unrest caused by this still only results in a failure by rolling a 1 (only).
One thing you can do to make events still have some effect despite auto-success:
I have made several of the worst events cause 1 unrest even if/when they succeed in their kingdom roll. Essentially instead of "Save: negates" its more of a "Save: Partial"
I've also implemented a +5 to the DC for each subsequent magic item sold in a turn. so if the kingdom has 5 districts and can theoretically sell 5 items in a turn during that phase, the DCs increase +5 for each subsequent - meaning the fifth item to sell that turn is a +20 to the normal DC. (you could reduce the increase to multiples of +3 or +2 if that DC balloons too quickly for an individual's taste).
This has impacted how fast the kingdom balloons w/ earning/spending power. This is more to our pace - but I recognize this isn't for everyone's pace who prefer the faster growing and faster paced campaign. (In my campaign they're on year 8 of the kingdom and only have 12 hexes. and we're just finishing book 2; but we focus more on the story and character personality and kingdom political relationships - so it's more about stopping to smell the roses than charging through the books and adventures.)
Robert
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"raiding the treasury" for personal gain could be seen as a decidedly evil act. If the PC group wishes to run an evil kingdom and become powerful warlord dictators then that could certainly be a possibility but the ramifications of turning the entire civilized world against you would have to be a factor.
While Im not a fan of this action in my campaign - I would not classify it as evil.
I don't find it evil that our government use our taxes to develop our defenses militarily. The PCs withdrawing funds to outfit themselves with better gear - only leads towards them becoming more advanced and capable heroes - which in turn their successes equate to being better able to providing, expanding their kingdom and destroying their people's enemies.
The ends justify the means completely. Not evil at all.
(obviously if they're withdrawing from the kingdom for other reasons, this would not apply - but I think what I describe is the rule - not the exception for most campaigns).
Robert
Basically, add negative feedback of various sorts. Some problems only show up AFTER the kingdom gets to a certain size, and BECAUSE it gets to a certain size. E.g., a small well run kingdom might be a rich prize for someone to conquer. Or if they have lots of towns, how loyal are the town mayors? Have an idea who the major NPCs are and what they might be doing.
The larger th e kingdom, the more PC time is involved running it. Eventually this may cut into their adventuring time. Or they go out adventuring too much and something happens because they haven't had time to look after it, or didn't do something despite your hints.
Or just lay down the law. "You don't try to break the system,and I won't bring in a swarm of dragons looking for all the magic lying around undefended.". Worked pretty well with my players.
Thanks for the feedback.
I'm going to ban the BP to GP conversion option, and I still need to scale up the rolls to handle events.
I'm not sure I like the idea of more magic items sold = higher roll it doesn't make sense in a way I can explain it to my players. I love the idea of save for partial. So I'm deciding between +3 to the DC for each district the party has, in that way the rolls scale up and I can use the logic bigger kingdoms are harder to manage. Or I’m thinking about just making the regular roll a partial result and the DC+10 if rolled negates the impact entirely. We’re just starting KM this weekend so it will take a few weeks before I have to decide which to use.
I started out allowing BPs to be converted. The roll required was trivial because my players carefully constructed their city to be efficient, with a few roleplay decisions here and there (at least, that's my perception). This brought on discussion of doing this with regularity. I came up with different rules that required increasingly more difficult rolls for withdrawals in a rolling 12 month period. Their reaction, though somewhat in jest, was that they'd save it up and just take out a large amount once a year. I was hoping that my rule change would simply discourage them instead of encouraging them to find a work around. I then banned it outright.
While Im not a fan of this action in my campaign - I would not classify it as evil.
I don't find it evil that our government use our taxes to develop our defenses militarily. The PCs withdrawing funds to outfit themselves with better gear - only leads towards them becoming more advanced and capable heroes - which in turn their successes equate to being better able to providing, expanding their kingdom and destroying their people's enemies.
The ends justify the means completely. Not evil at all.
(obviously if they're withdrawing from the kingdom for other reasons, this would not apply - but I think what I describe is the rule - not the exception for most campaigns).
The government using our taxes to develop the defenses isn't benefiting a small group of individuals. It's benefiting the nation. In kingdom building terms, withdrawing BP isn't helping the kingdom by outfitting the heroes, it's benefiting the heroes. Yes, they will be more powerful on a player character scale, but if the kingdom is invaded by an outside force, the PCs would be overwhelmed, as it doesn't increase their power on the kingdom scale. I get the comparison, but I don't think it fits quite the way you are presenting it.
As for it not being evil, it's definitely not a good action, at least how good is presented in the books, IMHO. It's decidedly neutral, as is the attitude of the ends justify the means. Greed for the sake of greed isn't inherently evil, but it could easily go that way. But, that's a whole other discussion.
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I started out allowing BPs to be converted. The roll required was trivial because my players carefully constructed their city to be efficient, with a few roleplay decisions here and there (at least, that's my perception). This brought on discussion of doing this with regularity. I came up with different rules that required increasingly more difficult rolls for withdrawals in a rolling 12 month period. Their reaction, though somewhat in jest, was that they'd save it up and just take out a large amount once a year. I was hoping that my rule change would simply discourage them instead of encouraging them to find a work around. I then banned it outright.
While Im not a fan of this action in my campaign - I would not classify it as evil.
I don't find it evil that our government use our taxes to develop our defenses militarily. The PCs withdrawing funds to outfit themselves with better gear - only leads towards them becoming more advanced and capable heroes - which in turn their successes equate to being better able to providing, expanding their kingdom and destroying their people's enemies.
The ends justify the means completely. Not evil at all.
(obviously if they're withdrawing from the kingdom for other reasons, this would not apply - but I think what I describe is the rule - not the exception for most campaigns).
The government using our taxes to develop the defenses isn't benefiting a small group of individuals. It's benefiting the nation. In kingdom building terms, withdrawing BP isn't helping the kingdom by outfitting the heroes, it's benefiting the heroes. Yes, they will be more powerful on a player character scale, but if the kingdom is invaded by an outside force, the PCs would be overwhelmed, as it doesn't increase their power on the kingdom scale. I get the comparison, but I don't think it fits quite the way you are presenting it.
As for it not being evil, it's definitely not a good action, at least how good is presented in the books, IMHO. It's...
I've been enjoying these discussions. I guess there really isn't a right or wrong answer. As long as everyone is having fun let it roll, but if they are abusing it-- then put the smack down--. I'm letting them use the BP to gold option, but I've ruled that whatever they buy belongs to the kingdom not them and the kingdom is letting them use it.
As long as everyone is having fun let it roll, but if they are abusing it-- then put the smack down--.
If played right, Gregori makes a great IC way to smack down the players and point out all the things they're doing that their citizens might not like. When my PCs met him, he was ranting about the fact they built a pier, a tavern, an alchemist, a brothel, and a brewery, then stopped building, while everyone was still living in tenements.