About to Start Kingmaker AP [Spoilers...or I hope someone posts some]

[Lacan]

It's my first attempt at running a published campaign, not to mention AP. I've ran tens of campaign arcs levels 1-12 usually, in 2e, 3.5, 4e. I bought a bunch of Pathfinder books because of how fun they are to read and because of the high production quality.

I'd like to try and illicit some advice from veterans. Veterans of APs in general, but also veterans that have run Kingmaker specifically.

I plan to have 5 PCs. We are a busy group, so I actually only expect to have 4 PC attend on average.

How important is it to have 1 character of each power type represented. If so which ones can we not live without? By power type I mean, divine caster/healer, arcane, martial, rogues. (In order to play the modules as written, and not to create more work for myself).

What materials should I buy besides the KM vol 1-6 and Guide to the River Kingdoms?

Any advice on particular minis that are frequently useable through out the campaign?

Any dangers I should avoid, or seek out!

Any general advice would also be appreciated. Also, it's not to late to give a review of what you though of the AP if you manage to finish it, scale of 1-10 (10 being the shizzle).

[Talon Moonwalker]

I am currently running book 3 of 6, but would already give it a high mark. The only issue is that the BBEG comes a little out of nowhere, therefore you need to add in elements of foreshadowing there.

In the party on my run through I was once at about 6 or 7 people, although that has atrophied down to just 3, with myself running two NPC's that the party likes and asked to adventure with them.

To be fair, 15pb and 5 PCs means that you will like be ok almost regardless of the types that your PCs take. Some enemies might need tweaking or something, but run a couple of sessions first and find out what works for your group

[Jabberwonky]

Congratulations on jumping into what many would say is one of the best Adventure Paths available for Pathfinder! As well welcome to the online community here, something that can be an invaluable resource.

Advice – Here’s the big points I’d share with someone who’s beginning the AP: Use the Boards, keep notes, be creative, be willing to run with it, and make sure everyone is having fun.

1) Use the boards! These forums present an immeasurable amount of insight, ideas, and knowledge from amazing and creative people who have run, and are running currently, the AP. The resources here are incredible – from ideas and concepts, to DM tools like the kingdom management spreadsheets, to the fantastic stories and ideas presented, not visiting these forums on a regular basis is folly. The people here are friendly, smart, helpful, and very knowledgeable about what did or didn’t work for their games, insight that is often invaluable to a GM.

2) Keep Notes! Due to the more open ended nature of the AP, keeping notes for yourself is going to make the story richer and more engrossing for the players and you. Kingmaker deals with a very long timeline – often upwards of 10 years for the characters as you are building things up and seeing things progress in the kingdom. Keeping notes for yourself about interesting things, ideas, people to go back to will only enrich your experience. Bringing back the extra cast members (NPCs) over time will help make the world feel more alive, I’ve found that keeping notes for many of my NPCs is helpful. Oleg, Svetlana, Kressel all have notecards and info. Additional cast members from home brew additions do as well.

3) Be Creative! The AP is truly a wide open world in which you and your players get to tell your stories. My wife describes my campaign as “a vast campaign using Kingmaker as a backdrop, a starting point” – don’t be afraid to do this, should your inclination be to add content or story. One of the first things I did after reading the first book in the AP was go through the hex map and add additional content – extra lairs in the region, resources such as a powder mine (we have a holy gun in our group, he needed a source to utilize for black powder), sites attributed to the barbarians in the area such as standing stones and earthworks, Fey sights like a gigantic hedge maze in the middle of a forest. The key is to be flexible and remember that this AP rewards the GM for adding in content and really adding their own teeth to the story.

4) Be willing to run with it! This is definitely not an “On rails” AP that guides you here to there to there. The nature of the AP is very much driven by the player’s decisions and the world’s reactions to them. And the world can be a pretty harsh mistress at times. Characters will die, cities will be damaged, and wars will be fought. Letting the players live with the ramifications of their actions will also help the world feel more real, make the campaign more memorable. When a player wants to do something, let them and see what happens with it. For instance, in our campaign, it took some time for the party to sway Oleg into helping them out – he’d been being extorted by bandits after having left the city to get away from it all way out in the sticks. He just wanted to be left alone, and felt like he was being pushed around by the bandits and the party to some extent. However, through diplomacy and negotiations over time, the party has been able to sway him to their point of view – he’s appreciative of the help that people are giving him and Svetlana, the players are taking time to help him plant fields and raise crops, and as such he’s allowing people to put up houses near the trading post. In a matter of about 6 weeks, my players have already begun the process of building a town! Now it’s not giving them any resources as of yet, but it is a start, and something that the players are attached to, care about.

5) Have Fun! This is sometimes a tough point for GMs – after all we’re putting in a lot of work and sometimes it feels like we’re doing it thanklessly for the players. Find the space that works for you so that you are having fun, and the players are too, and run with it. For me, it’s about building the background of the world, creating the histories and the interesting little things in the background that the players can explore/discover. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they miss them completely, but that’s all right. It still comes across as an incredibly rich world for everyone involved. And I try and foster an engagement at the table for everyone - I get excited for the players when they do something heroic, I laugh with them when the dragon fumbles its fly check and crashes into a mountainside. But just make sure that the game is fun for you and not a chore – when it starts to feel like a chore, see if there is something you can change/alter to shake it up for you a bit.

6) Add in some foreshadowing of the BBEG at the end. One of the biggest concerns with the AP is that the BBEG seems to come out of left field to the players. Underscoring that something bigger is going on behind the scenes without revealing what it is will go a long way in making your game more cohesive and more interesting.

Additionally, I’d suggest the following modules as potentials to dovetail in should you want to: Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale, Realm of the Fellnight Queen. Folks here have mentioned the Old Margrave (I think that’s it?) as an additional one that is a lot of fun and fits nicely with the story. I’m going to be adding in a couple oldies but goodies from the Old-school AD&D days for my players to explore should they want to – The Keep on the Borderlands, and White Plume Mountain. The Keep on the Borderlands will donate some of the Caves of Chaos, appearing near the Stag Lord’s fort to help bolster his forces (In my game the stag lord has effectively established a bandit kingdom in the south around the lake, and the players will be rooting him out through the first and second books of the AP). White Plume Mountain will be located somewhere around Varnhold, maybe even attached to the Vordrekai Site.

I’ve heard that Pathfinder makes Paper minis designed for each book of the AP, and have heard good things about them. However if you are a painter, I know Reaper (reapermini.com) makes a line of pathfinder miniatures, and has done a number of minis of the BBEGs for each module in the AP (very cool IMO).

[Macharius]

Jabberwonky wrote:

I’ve heard that Pathfinder makes Paper minis designed for each book of the AP, and have heard good things about them. However if you are a painter, I know Reaper (reapermini.com) makes a line of pathfinder miniatures, and has done a number of minis of the BBEGs for each module in the AP (very cool IMO).

Only The Stolen Lands and Rivers Run Red are available as paper minis (I have them, they're only OK). But! The Bestiary Box of 256 different Beginner Box-style pawns of monster from Bestiary 1 (excluding multiple versions of the same monster types!) will be available in August, and the NPC Codex Box of another 250+ in November/December.

[thenovalord]

use obsidian portal or somesuch to keep track of everything

lots n lots troll minis and any naughty looking female mini you can find

read / ask on these boards

a bard
a druid
a frontliner who will love the oppurtunity to ride
a witch would fit well

everyone needs a bow

we have a rogue but really not needed trapwise, so a non-trap rogue
we have managed well without a cleric, but encourage the druid to like erastil and not like gyronna

[Lex Starwalker]

I've only started running the AP myself, but I've read through the first 5 books. Of the four standard roles, a rogue type would be the easiest to go without.

Spoiler:

In KM, I'd say it would be more important to have a druid or ranger than a rogue, as so much of the AP involves wilderness exploration as opposed to dungeon crawls.

It's also very important to have a good party "face" for this AP, someone with a high charisma and social skills, as this person will ultimately be the ruler of the kingdom. Bard, sorcerer or oracle would be good choices for this, although bard would probably be best.

If your players are looking for a solid party, with 5 people, I'd recommend a wizard, cleric or oracle, druid and/or ranger, and a bard. The rest could be filled out with things like fighters, barbarians, paladins. I think the least useful/fun to play classes would be rogue and monk.

There will be lots of chances for a wizard to shine, and I'd really recommend a wizard over a sorceror.

Having someone who can heal is always good (beyond just wands), especially someone able to deal with diseases, curses, petrification, etc, not to mention bringing back fallen heroes. I'd recommend cleric over oracle, though either could work.

Druids and rangers will have a lot of fun in the AP and will be very useful. A lot of times druids are marginalized in many modules, so if you have a player that always wants to play druid, but doesn't because they feel they won't be able to use their abilities, this is the AP for them. The ability to deal peacefully with animals will avoid many combats for the party.

The bard will have a lot of fun as there are many chances (especially in later books) for his social abilities to shine. He's also an ideal class to fulfill the ruler role in the kingdom. With a 5 person party, if you've got your bases covered, a bard is excellent for that fifth person.

Rogues may get bored as there's not many traps etc. to deal with. It depends on the rogue though. A rogue who's more focused on social aspects could have some fun.

[redcelt32]

If the GM emphasizes the wilderness in the AP - druid or barbarian is great choice
If the GM emphasizes politics - an inquisitor (for discovering lies) or a bard (for telling them) is good

Personally I think this is a great AP for someone to play a knight in shining armor, either a paladin or a cavalier. It is pretty much the ONLY AP I know of where a great deal of the game play happens outside in open spaces. If you aren't playing one here, you might as well never play one.

Perception is huge in this game, for social situations, wilderness travel, and dungeon delving.

Sustainability is less important than flexibility. You never know what you are going to encounter, so wizards, clerics, and druids are overall better choices IMO than sorcerers and oracles.

Anyone dead set on playing a rogue I would steer towards a spy type character or the scout. The rogue in my game went shadowdancer and is the spymaster in our game. His skills play well into the heavy intrigue IMC, but otherwise its true, rogues are sort of devalued in KM.

[Old Drake]

Party composition:
Since a lot of stuff is outdoors, there will often be the opportunity for long range combat, so I'd advice every player to consider a method of ranged combat.
There's also a lot of potential for mounted combat, if desired. Combat can however get more complicated, especially when you mix mounted and not mounted characters.
A heavy hitting martial character is extremely useful. If you don't have someone who can stand and fight, and deal damage even without flanking, there's a number of trouble spots. You can work around them, but it'd be better not to.
Rogues can be useful, but they aren't needed. While you need a high perception character to find secret doors, rangers or druids can cover that easily.

In general, the AP can be run out of the book without real preparation like any canned adventure, but to really get the most out of it, you'll need to use the basic plot and begin your own story based on it. A good example is the very beginning. The AP assumes your party is together with the charter arriving at Oleg's. How they met, why they are together, and who gave them the charter or why is never touched upon. Yet that holds so much role playing potential that you should deal with it.
Likewise, the AP never touches upon other nations, diplomacy, and so on. If your players are at all interested, there's a lot of potential filling out the blanks.
I'd also strongly recommend running the AP on Slow progression and vastly increasing the number (and variety) or random encounters. The Stolen Lands are called that for a reason - they are very hostile to civilization, and the party should not be able to run around for days on end without encountering anything threatening. Instead of possibly one encounter a day, I'd go with numerous encounters every day, with at least three per day either hearing some monster in the distance or finding some kinds of tracks or combat site. There should also be numerous ruins - lone houses almost collapsed, the remains of ancient foundations, a few stones that are too regular to be natural and might have served as field markers, and so on. The area was settled fifty times or so and it failed every time, so let the party stumble upon both remains and dangers often! I'd also recommend at least one combat a day, but if possibly more; and even without set piece encounter the party should never feel safe using all their resources in a single fight.
Get weather. Find a site on the internet with historic weather reports for Poland or a similar country and use some real weather; then add some supernatural elements.
Ensure that the players have good backstories that work together and then plan to include their desires into the game. Remind players several times that they are playing a sandbox AP; they can do everything they want or at least try. They won't be prompted for the right actions - there are no right actions! The more they try to do, the better the game is! Build a guild? A merchant business? A new knightly order? Personal goals are essential to make the AP memorable. It's perhaps best as looking at the stuff in the AP as problems that will crop up while the players are trying to tell their tale rather than the core story.
Notes, notes, notes. Take them when preparing for the game, during the game, and after the game. Make a player write a diary or something so that they have something to reference for the stuff that might have happened a year ago. If possible get a recorder and record your sessions and listen to it; you might hear things you forget to write down or be inspired by something a player said that you missed because you were busy doing running the game.
If the players really get into kingdom building remember that the rules as presented are comparable to a computer game on very easy. The party has a lot of advantages over the non-players. So you may want to make the rules harsher. You might also want to do this, if you simply want to slow down the game to last several decades. If you do so, remember to have NPCs age and die - and provide ample replacement NPCs.

[thenovalord]

the wide open spaces are also great for

wildshape to huge and
summoning in huge
lots of flying

we have 4 players who fly a lot, so give the rules for fly a good read as you need quite a high score

lots of invisibilty as well

be prepared for all those poor brutes/magical beasts to be lockdown with entangle and shot to pieces at range

I am mid mod5 and are allowing the monsters/baddies to adapt to kingdoms targets
with a land famed for its archers,
trolls should start to be equipped with slings or spears,
all those foul gyronna clerics should learn windwall which hammers archers

[Jal Dorak]

Lacan wrote:

How important is it to have 1 character of each power type represented. If so which ones can we not live without? By power type I mean, divine caster/healer, arcane, martial, rogues. (In order to play the modules as written, and not to create more work for myself).

Martial: Not a must, but if you have a fighter-type you need someone to soak up damage. There are quite a few encounters with singular difficult creatures, many of which are immune to compulsions and paralysis.

Divine: A healer can be optional. There are a few sections, specifically Varnhold, where a cleric can shine. Any divine caster will be useful.

Arcane: Very useful. There are a lot of research-based areas for a wizard or bard to help out. A sorcerer with teleport is a blessing.

Rogue: Great to have around for the sneak attack, but trapfinding is the one area of the adventure that is absolutely not required. I can recall only half a dozen traps in the entire AP, most of which can be overcome without a rogue.

General: You need someone with good saving throws. There are a few spots in the adventure where a TPK can result from one effect.

Lacan wrote:

What materials should I buy besides the KM vol 1-6 and Guide to the River Kingdoms?

Get the Kingmaker map pack, and find some blank hex paper for the characters to draw their own. Photocopy tons of blank kingdom building sheets (town grids and buildings will add up fast, and the kingdom sheet will see lots of use). Finally, make a calendar including weather and important dates.

Lacan wrote:

Any advice on particular minis that are frequently useable through out the campaign?

Animals.

Lacan wrote:

Any dangers I should avoid, or seek out!

Give the players some advice on the kingdom building rules - it is very easy to cripple a kingdom early on by not understanding how the rules work.

Play up the influence of the other expeditions, and of Pitax. Hold the Rushlight Tournament (#5) every year around the same time.

Keep track of everything!

Lacan wrote:

Any general advice would also be appreciated. Also, it's not to late to give a review of what you though of the AP if you manage to finish it, scale of 1-10 (10 being the shizzle).

I'm just about to finish with one group, and my other is about 3/4 done. Overall I would give it an 8/10. I would go higher but the disconnect between some adventures, and especially the final one, takes away the effect. I would much rather have seen a war with Brevoy.

[Lacan]

Wow. Lots of great advice. Thanks so much! I'm really looking forward to running a Pathfinder campaign, and it looks like the boards are a great resource.

It seems like with this is a good AP to run, after having read all 6 modules, and being able to foreshadow events/NPCs in the later modules earlier. So I still have a bit of reading to do.

[Mosaic]

I've been running 2 groups through Kingmaker for almost 2 years now, loving it. I recently did a "reflection" thread. it might have some helpful ideas.

link

Here another link to a "party-role system I used. It's not perfect and there are several versions of it floating around the boards (I got the original idea from someone else...), but my players seemed to like it.

link

Finally, if your players start having a really easy time of it, the "6-Player Conversions" found here on the boards are AMAZING. Use them.

[Gile]

So I will post some specifics that I saw...

book 2:

The trolls if played correctly and alerted can all get in one big room. If the PC's are like normal PCs they will not want to run. The trolls can then overwhelm the PCs with numbers and plain might. I saw one TPK with this.

book 3:

The ring of freedom of movement is pretty important. Without that right the paralyzing touch from Vordakai can really kill the party. Even with that ring the fight can be damn hard. I would suggest making the perception DC to find that ring easier, or just plain give it to the party.

book 4:

Nothing much really jumps out as special. Difficult things are the cleric towards the end. The iron golem can be difficult for inexperienced players. Otherwise things were pretty straight forward. My players failed most of the traps at the end dungeon, but just ate the damage and moved on.

book 5:

Again, I found nothing here to be difficult for my group. They got into the mass combat, and rolled through the armies of Pitax. The final battles in the House of a Hundred Doors were difficult, but nothing with any 'gotcha' moments.

Oh the ghost at the abbey was tough. But once the group got over the ghost hitting with 13D6 (or whatever high damage it is) then the pary just got down to killing it.

book 6:

The dragon Ithulak (spelling? im typing from memory) has a super tough AC. That battle made my players run 3 times. First time from fear, then a couple times they were just bested by the dragon and ran.

Nyrissa was super tough until the party started dispelling her. Starting off her AC is too high for the melee PCs to hit her well at all, so her buff spells have to be taken off imo. With my group the rogue had briar, Nyrissa made the rogue insane. As the rogue was moving past the cleric to engage Nyrissa, insanity kicked in and the rogue attacked the closest thing, got a nat 20 with Briar, and took off the clerics head. A prismatic spray sent the fighter to another plane. Another prismatic spray made the wizard turn to stone. In the end the wizard's cohort (another wizard) got close to Nyrissa with a anti magic field going, then the wizard's summoned Bralani Azatas filled Nyrissa with arrows. So the final battle had a cleric with no head, a fighter on the plane of not rolled up yet, a wizard turned to stone, and an insane rogue. All in all a pretty tough fight.

[Bobson]

Gile wrote:

So I will post some specifics that I saw...

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That's a pretty awesome final fight. I just hope mine is that epic, once we get there.