Withdrawing the Kingdoms Gold

[Winston Colt]

The players in the Kingmaker Im running are pretty good at the kingdom making aspect of the game. They had a few close calls early on but without expanding much they have managed to build 2 cities and can now only fail a Economy/Stability/Loyalty roll on a natural 1.

I have no problems with this as they have worked hard, planned well and over come several problems.

My concern now is that they are turning towards withdrawing the kingdoms gold to spend on themselves. They will have enough Loyalty to pass the check so they only get +1 Unrest and will loose that through the Royal Assassin the following round.

Has anyone had any problems with PCs making all the right checks, playing inside of the rules, yet withdrawing gold for themselves and unbalancing the game?
How have you dealt with this?

[Paul Watson]

I asked them not to. They still raid the treasury, but only once/adventure and then only for the big bad encounter. The path is a bit reasure poor if they don't occasionally raid the treasury.

[Matthew Downie]

My group withdrew loads of money. We still all wound up dead.

If it goes too far, you could have an independence movement in the kingdom's second city, a democratic party that pledges not to enrich themselves from the treasury, unlike those greedy arrogant PCs. Once the movement is established, instead of giving 1 unrest each turn the PCs withdraw money and pass the check, give them random unrest points, between 1 and the number of BP withdrawn.

[Winston Colt]

Thanks for the quick answers guys.

I had a look further back and saw that there were a LOT of posts on this, most just saying to ditch the withdrawing all together.

I think I might step out side of the game to put in a solution and add cap per level that they can withdraw. That way if they have too much gold for their level I'll say that PC cant withdraw and if they have too little it will be an easy way for them to catch up.

[redcelt32]

My group discussed the changes I proposed making to Kingmaker, namely the magic item based economy and the withdrawing of gold, before we started the AP.

The players were okay with banning withdrawals, but their only concern was if they needed a specific magic item to defeat a monster or the like. We decided that in general the players would equip themselves, and I give them 400-500 gp per kingdom turn per player as salary and benefits for running their kingdom. So far it has worked out well. I will probably increase their salary or have a merchant work with them to run investments when their kingdom gets larger, in which case their monthly money will be more variable.

I recommend something along these lines since IMO the combination of large amounts of money and extensive amounts of downtime can unbalance your game equipment wise. That is, unless you don't mind re-vamping many of the later encounters.

[Touc]

My players agreed to ban withdrawals. With the downtime of Kingmaker, there's too much time to withdraw an obscene amount of gold. Being the rulers, they don't have to pay for most basic equipment (think cost of living) such as spare arrows, so they are getting "paid."

On the flipside, no one in their right mind is donating to the treasury either.

[Victor Zajic]

We house ruled it to be 1 unrest for each BP withdrawn, and then a second unrest point for each BP withdrawn if you fail the loyalty check. And as King, I've only authorized a withdrawl twice. the first time was to craft a magic crown, the second time was to help even the odds against a vastly more powerful opponent in book 3.

[GM_Solspiral]

No problems with my PCs dipping into the treasury, the real challenge for them is finding a magic item store that carries the kind of crazy equipment they'd want. Generally they behave and keep it reasonable, Gregori isn't the only outspoken type running around trying to create unrest if they abused it.

[roccojr]

My players don't worry about the numbers so much as the plots I weave around them. In the thread-author's example, that 1 point of unrest eliminated by the Royal Assassin has implications that someone's being threatened, at the very least, and that would be a plot they'd ultimately have to deal with that could bite them far more than the numbers might indicate.