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Just finished reading the Kingdom rules. Anyone else concerned that the kingdom level up is pretty slow. 30xp per event, 10 xp per hex, 1xp per unspent RP, and the one time milestone bonuses that are normally less than 100xp.
Considering players will be around 4th level when the kingdom is founded it seems like it would take a lot of kingdom turns to even get to third level. Considering there’s only one event per turn.
Or am I missing something? What do y’all think?
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It seems slow to me as well, and I really feel like I'm missing something.
A Kingdom just starting out rolls 5d4 for RP (average 10 RP) and can only claim one Hex per turn (assuming they don't get a Critical Success), so assuming the only thing they spend RP on is Claim a Hex they're looking at an average of 19 XP/turn. Once they've claimed 10 Hexes this goes to 5d6 for RP (average 17.5 RP), or 26.5 XP/turn. A Kingdom Event happening is a DC 16 flat check, reduced by 5 for each turn an event hasn't happened, so there should be an event every other to every third turn on average - we'll call it every other turn so that means 15 XP/turn on average. Relatively easily achieved Milestones (1st Landmark, 1st Refuge, 1st Village, Kingdom size 10, 1st Diplomatic Relations, 8 filled Leadership roles, 1st Trade Agreement) give 360 XP total.
All this together means it should take around 18 turns to go from level 1 to level 2, assuming basically zero actual Kingdom development and the benefits from good Kingdom Events wash with the penalties from bad Kingdom Events. Not going to math it out, but going from level 2 to level 3 should take a fair bit longer due to not having easy Milestones giving nearly a third of a level's worth of XP.
To be honest, and assuming I'm not missing something, easiest solutions I see here (off the top of my head without any balance testing) are either making events and Milestones worth more XP, or breaking PF2's constraint of "a level is always 1000 XP" and having the XP requirement be something like "new level x 100 XP" (so 1 to 2 is 200XP, 2 to 3 is 300XP, etc.) to expedite the first few levels and slow later levels where Kingdoms generate surplus RP faster.
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Yeah, considering each kingdom turn is a month that’s over a year between level 1 and level 2 and a lot of downtime for these characters.
I think my players might get bored just doing 18 straight kingdom turns before going back to adventuring but the book says the Kingdom level should be within a couple levels of the party.
Main thing you missed is that sidequests themselves give kingdom XP, adventuring itself gives kingdom XP.
Basically, looking at kingdom rules it seems to have assumption that you can't just passively grow it up fast?
Where do you see the side quests that give kingdom xp?
Most sidequests available to players at their Kingdom's founding seem to give 30 Kingdom XP, and there's only a half-dozen or so. I don't remember seeing where adventuring gives Kingdom XP, can you please direct me to that page?
The idea that you shouldn't be able to spend turns to (reasonably) quickly grow the Kingdom level also seems to be counter-indicated by the AP itself (pages 187-188):
The pace at which the PCs’ kingdom gains levels should roughly follow the PCs’ own level increases.
While the mechanics of kingdom building are self-contained, many events assume that the party’s level and the level of their kingdom are within 2 of each other, if not equal. If you find that the PCs are getting 3 or 4 levels ahead of the kingdom’s level, consider slowing down exploration and encounter play to focus on running several Kingdom turns in succession, allowing the kingdom to catch up.
Where do you see the side quests that give kingdom xp?Main thing you missed is that sidequests themselves give kingdom XP, adventuring itself gives kingdom XP.
Basically, looking at kingdom rules it seems to have assumption that you can't just passively grow it up fast?
As an example, the sidequest on page 79 awards 30 Kingdom XP. Many of the sidequests found in areas players are expected to explore at/after level 4 award Kingdom XP, but there's only a small number of them that are level appropriate for players that have just founded their Kingdom and the XP awards are insufficient to offset the fact that it will still likely take several years worth of Kingdom turns to acquire enough XP to bring the Kingdom's level equivalent to the player's (especially since these side quests also always give more XP in total to the players than the Kingdom).
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Ah I think I worded my question badly, I didn't mean it as statement of intent by rules, I was checking if that is basically what you two meant. But yeah, for example the troll slaying mainquest also gives kingdom xp, many of things in "main story" progression also give kingdom xp. When I said "adventuring itself" I meant said quests.
I have no clue if kingdom rules are intended to happen over course of years or if they are accidentally giving too slow xp, but it does sound like at very least its okay for gm to add player shenanigan quest and give kingdom xp as story award. (I just went with ctlr f kingdom xp and while I don't think there is enough of it to level up super fast, it does seem like they try to give it every so often)
(it honestly might be meant by intended to simulate how long it takes to build up kingdom, but I can't say that for sure without seeing how it actually works in practice, like would kingdom need to extend from where players have explored to actually keep up with pcs level?)
Creative Director
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The speed at which kingdoms level up is for sure something you'll want to adjust as you play. The easiest solution is to just have the kingdom level up automatically when the PCs level up. The kingdom rules are expected to happen over the course of years though—kingdoms that go from 1st level to 20th level in the span of a few months kind of breaks verisimilitude a lot more than characters doing the same. But still... as the GM you should absolutely feel free to adjust the amount of XP handed out.
EDIT: Full disclosure, I agonized quite a bit over how much kingdom XP to give out. I didn't want PCs to effectively skip kingdom levels or only play one kingdom event per level, but I also didn't want them to be stuck at 1st level to the very end. I hope that I found a happy medium, but it might still be too slow for a lot of folks' taste. Having unused RP turn into Kingdom XP at the end of every turn is something that'll fuel the most of the XP I expect, especially if players devote some of their Leadership activities every turn toward earning RP expressly for transferal to XP. You could even consider expanding that reward rate to 10 XP per 1 RP.
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The speed at which kingdoms level up is for sure something you'll want to adjust as you play. The easiest solution is to just have the kingdom level up automatically when the PCs level up. The kingdom rules are expected to happen over the course of years though—kingdoms that go from 1st level to 20th level in the span of a few months kind of breaks verisimilitude a lot more than characters doing the same. But still... as the GM you should absolutely feel free to adjust the amount of XP handed out.
Yeah even in 1e I remember it taking years, forgot how many years our kingmaker campaign took though but I do personally believe kingdom building kinda should take years instead of just suddenly having multiple metropolises and level 20 dominion in year :'D (I hesitated to speak for devs and rules because I didn't remember rules specifying timescale of years between books or such)
But yeah I was coming back to edit my previous post again to clarify thing I was wondering about, but I'd feel awkward editing it again after a post: I kinda expect that kingdom rules would take years for kingdom to level up, but I don't know if kingmaker adventure is written with assumption that it takes place over course of years when you closely examine it. To me it makes sense it does especially since campaign I was player in 1e took multiple years in character, but I haven't had yet time to read it that carefully to see if there are things that become weird in that timescale (like, if you take years to level up kingdom to catch pcs, would you already have hex right next to hexes of important dungeons adventure assumes you go out to find? That's something I would only know after running adventure)
Either way, I think kingdom building in itself is fun so I'm glad its retained the multiple year aspect of it, because the multi year epic is what I consider fun part of kingmaker :3 Though it definitely depends on party how many kingdom turns in row they will prefer and how gm runs them
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In my 1e running, there was typically a flurry of kingdom turns at the beginning/end of a chapter. Often a little too much for my tables interest, and not enough spread across/between happenings. Ie, my table typically liked 2-3 kingdom turns back to back, but not 6-12+ which sometimes feels more appropriate for letting the kingdom breath/grow naturally. Often between chapters it does feel like there's the space in the story for that, while within a chapter it can sometimes feel 'go-go-go'. In general that felt true of the computer game as well --
rush the Main Story, then do compnaion/side quests, then focus on the kingdom until the next curse trigger.
The addition of some extra chapters compared to the 1e version, might help by adding more checkpoints of that nature. And I'm planning to look very closely at where I can slightly re-arrange things within chapters to have more frequent 2-3 month gaps taht don't feel out of place.
The most simple approach is delayed handing out of side quests/companion quests to break up the 6-12 month between chapters into smaller chunks.
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The speed at which kingdoms level up is for sure something you'll want to adjust as you play. The easiest solution is to just have the kingdom level up automatically when the PCs level up. The kingdom rules are expected to happen over the course of years though—kingdoms that go from 1st level to 20th level in the span of a few months kind of breaks verisimilitude a lot more than characters doing the same. But still... as the GM you should absolutely feel free to adjust the amount of XP handed out.
EDIT: Full disclosure, I agonized quite a bit over how much kingdom XP to give out. I didn't want PCs to effectively skip kingdom levels or only play one kingdom event per level, but I also didn't want them to be stuck at 1st level to the very end. I hope that I found a happy medium, but it might still be too slow for a lot of folks' taste. Having unused RP turn into Kingdom XP at the end of every turn is something that'll fuel the most of the XP I expect, especially if players devote some of their Leadership activities every turn toward earning RP expressly for transferal to XP. You could even consider expanding that reward rate to 10 XP per 1 RP.
Awesome! Thanks for the design input. I agree, I want time to pass and the kingdom not to grow from a 1 hex village to a massive empire in a year. My main concern would be the level 4ish PCs having to do 3+ levels of kingdom management in a row to get their kingdom up to their level, before continuing on with the story. I may speed up the early levels until the Kingdom is at their level or maybe use the early parts of Rivers Run Red to really focus on companion quests and quests specific to the PCs and not necessarily specific to the AP storyline.
Perhaps do a Season 1 Smallville model where we do a few months of sessions where each session is a few kingdom turns and then a problem of the week that is focused entirely on one of the PCs backstories. So the PCs feel like their kingdom is growing while also dealing with their personal motivations and also getting some downtime.
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The speed at which kingdoms level up is for sure something you'll want to adjust as you play. The easiest solution is to just have the kingdom level up automatically when the PCs level up. The kingdom rules are expected to happen over the course of years though—kingdoms that go from 1st level to 20th level in the span of a few months kind of breaks verisimilitude a lot more than characters doing the same. But still... as the GM you should absolutely feel free to adjust the amount of XP handed out.
EDIT: Full disclosure, I agonized quite a bit over how much kingdom XP to give out. I didn't want PCs to effectively skip kingdom levels or only play one kingdom event per level, but I also didn't want them to be stuck at 1st level to the very end. I hope that I found a happy medium, but it might still be too slow for a lot of folks' taste. Having unused RP turn into Kingdom XP at the end of every turn is something that'll fuel the most of the XP I expect, especially if players devote some of their Leadership activities every turn toward earning RP expressly for transferal to XP. You could even consider expanding that reward rate to 10 XP per 1 RP.
I might adopt the Unspent RP become 10 xp while the kingdom is 2 below the PC's level just so the Kingdom can "catch up" if the PCs are well ahead of the Kingdom level.
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I didn't get there yet in this version, but I remember there being some guidance about having a year pass in-game when you first get your kingdom, so you're basically doing a full year of just kingdom events instead of adventuring to build the kingdom up and get it started. If that's still there, it might help bridge the gap a bit.
You're right that it seems a bit slow at first glance. 30 XP per event is not a lot.
However, the XP from events, hexes cleared, and unspent RP does add up over time. It just may take several in-game months.
The milestone bonuses are fairly small to start, but eventually level up to 500 XP which helps.
As the kingdom grows, more hexes are unlocked which means more XP per turn from them.
Additional buildings like Academy and Monument can boost XP gain as well.
Some GM rewards or special events may give big XP bumps to help advance the kingdom.
The intentionally slower pace makes each kingdom level feel more meaningful.
I'm using Vance's adjusted rules and it's still pretty slow. My players got lvl 3 on turn 7. And now that hex XP rewards are going down and most easy milestones have been claimed it's gonna take a while to reach lvl 4.
I imagine that Paizo thought Kingdom turns would take much less time than they do. I'm doing them over discord and a turn usually takes at least 30 minutes.
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That's in line with my simulations.
Usually the Kingdom got to level 4 within the first year which is fine for me.
Once you're past the first few levels and have most of the milestones our rules will wind up with the Kingdom leveling 1-2 per Kingdom year. That's a pace I like personally.
If you want it to level faster go for it. Though if you do want it to level faster I'd just auto level the Kingdom to match the party's level.
I think a year to level 3 or 4 is good. Time should pass and kingdoms don't pop up over night.