My players and I have decided to put our current campaign on hiatus for a while as a change of pace, and are going to be turning our collective attention to Kingmaker.
For a party of 5 PCs, is it recommended to run the game as is from the books with a little bit of a boost to NPC/enemy numbers or levels, or run the AP with the conversion intended for 6 PCs and give the PCs a little bit of a boost (such as an additional trait or a 20-point ability buy)? I can prettu much guarantee the whole group will be there for the majority of the games, unless a separate commitment comes up.
We're getting together in a week or two's time to go through character creation as a group (using Ultimate Campaign to help people generate some backstory that I will try and weave through the campaign as well). So far people are thinking of classes such as a Bard or Sorcerer, Cavalier, Barbarian, Magus, and Cleric.
I'm GMing for a group of 5 and they're having no trouble stomping the combat encounters. We've been using the 6-player conversions and I've been giving the enemies full hit points and (depending on the specific encounter) reinforcements.
The end of part 3 gave them a bit of trouble, but that's been it so far. (We're just past the start of part 5.)
Honestly, part of the problem with Kingmaker is the, "one encounter a day" set up to most locations. It allows the PCs to blow resources, and particularly favors casters. Do what you can to surprise them with a few extra encounters. My 5 player Kingmaker group is pretty powerful, so I tend to run max HP, advanced template, and often use the 6 player additions. There are also A LOT of solo fights in Kingmaker. I would change these up to add a few "helpers" for the bad guy. Also read ahead (I hope you have) and get a handle on the Kingdom Building rules that kick in at the start of book 2. They are NOT an awesome minigame. They (imo) are a great asset to the DM to assist in the narrative of the story. If you treat the Kingdom rules as a "game to be won", they will break easily and then be less useful to you. Also make sure you know "the whole story" of the AP so that you can start foreshadowing the big bad, as much as possible. My group just started book 6 and they pretty much know the whole deal as of last game. I made sure to weave in as much as possible and it worked pretty good. There was lots of talk of "oh, man! remember that thing we found in book 1!". Good luck. With lots of work on the DM's part this is a fun AP to run.
Yeah, 6-player conversion should be fine. Test it with the first couple of encounters; if the players are having trouble, drop maybe one or two enemies from each encounter. If they're not, keep running as is, and adjust as necessary as you go.
Hey all - thanks very much for the replies :) I've been looking over the 6-player conversions and I think I'll go with them with some tweaking, depending on what classes they all end up going with. Will definitely be playing some of the encounters by ear, as my players (like all players) have a tendency of throwing curveballs my direction every so often to try and even the odds stacked against them.
The group I run for isn't heavily into the optimization side of the game, though they do like to try and be as effective as they can, so I'll take Orthos' suggestion of testing their mettle against the first couple of stage-piece fights and random encounters and adjust things accordingly.
Still tossing up whether to go with a 15- or 20-point buy, or somewhere in between (last campaign we rolled up was 18-point, which gave them a bit more staying power in the encounters but not so huge a boost as to steamroll everything in sight). I know by the time they hit the middle of the second book, their stats will matter less and less, but I also don't want to make things too easy/difficult for them to start with.
All in all though, looking forward to running the AP - currently reading through the 3rd book, and loving it all so far :) definitely one of the better AP's I've read before!
Definitely +1 to that.
I would also advise you to use the UC kingdom-building rules rather than the Kingmaker rules. The UC rules refine a lot of what was in Kingmaker AND they fix the magic-item economy "feature" that led to players steamrolling kingdom challenges. The UC rules also add such lovely things as exploration edicts (pay adventurers to do the hexploration!), vassalage edicts, and rules for relationships with neighboring kingdoms.
If you really get into kingdom-ruling, Ultimate Rulership (a third-party product) really delves into the nuts and bolts of running a kingdom. If you'd like to make things interesting, Atlas Games' Dynasties & Demagogues offers some great rules (3.5 compatible, for the most part) for running votes and debates. If you want to get really, really interesting, implement use the Dynasties Bureaucracy Generator.
Yeah, I'm going to be using the Ultimate Campaign kingdom/warfare rules for the Kingmaker campaign (as well as a couple of other systems that I quite like the look of). Do you find that the exploration edicts take away any of the fun from the PCs as they do their own hexploration? Or does it just make their jobs as the now-rulers of their nation easier as they can get the hexes uncovered easier and they can go to the landmarks/special areas that are uncovered through the edicts at their leisure??
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Due to the one-easy-encounter-a-day environment in KM, I use a different system for large groups. We are in Blood For Blood and have 6 PCs (including stone giant warrior and owlbear barbarian), 2 Cohorts, a shadow companion and an animal companion (bear). For APL, I add up all character levels for the PCs (not including cohorts and companions), then divide by four and subtract 1 to get CR for the encounter. We have level 13, 12, 11, 9, 13 & 11. Standard rules gives a APL of 12, too easy. My method gives APL 17-1 = 16.
If its a single creature encounter, I up CR with either class levels or additional HD; then multiple weaker creatures to fill out the XP budget. Any group can quickly annihilate a single creature of appropriate CR, so multiple creatures is critical to making an interesting encounter.
I've been doing this since late in The Varnhold Vanishing. Its not appropriate for low-level groups, but works out fairly well for mid-level.
I will be shortly running KM for a party of 6. I decided upon six because that would almost guarantee that 5 show up on any given game night.
Out of these 6 players, 3 of them are relatively new, most of the players are going for flavor and roleplay as opposed to roll-play, and the group lacks a proper meat shield, having the swashbuckling cad and the druids treant sapling to share front line duties.
Due to these circumstances, I don't plan on changing anything. At the most, I may add a lower level monster or two to larger encounters, and/or add 20% hit points to major baddies. We will see. Perhaps I won't have to change anything.
Current party makeup:
Gnome Fey Sorceress (11 year old daughter)
Elven Treesinger Druid w/ sapling plant companion (40 yr old female)
Dhampir Acrobat Rogue (28 year old wife)
Human Cad Fighter (40 yr old male and usual GM for our group)
Human Cleric of Milani (40 yr old male)
Unknown raced Alchemist(40 yr old male)
and myself as GM (40 yr old male)
We have three players with three main characters and three secondaries. The main characters are unoptimised PC classes built for Flavour while the secondariness are all primarily NPC classes with slightly lower stats.
I haven't needed to tweak the encounters too much to keep them interesting.
There are some one-a-day encounters, if you choose to leave it like that - personally I screw them up with a 'random' encounter if they blow all of their resources :) But those are generally in the 'Clear the area' section.
There are also longer scenarios that you can time constrain and make them run their resources right down. Those are the ones I try to make memorable. Not so much in the first book - because characters are low level and vulnerable - but in the second, third and fourth books there are some bits you can make really epic :)
Cheers everyone for the tips and ideas for the game - I'm pretty sure I have a game plan to start from, and we'll see how my PCs fare from there :)
The threads and discussions in this forum have been immeasurably useful with generating ideas on how to tie the events from the later books into the early and mid portions of the first book or two so that everything ties in as smoothly and naturally as possible. I'm not above admitting that I will shamelessly borrow a few key ideas I've seen floating about :)
My player's and I are getting together this Saturday to go through the character generation and start the AP. Looking forward to getting the game underway and telling their Kingmaker tale :D
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5 players on 20 point buy works well for the 6 player conversions. When I felt like the going was beginning to get tough for them I gave them all a custom feat based on their accomplishments as well. We're into chapter 3 in my Play-By-Post working along these guidelines and the balancing has felt about right throughout.