I'm a player in a campaign that's in the middle of the fourth book. Kingdom Building a slow process at first, and we made mistakes in the first couple of turns. They should be worried about DC, and getting within comfortable range on Stability and Loyalty checks is a good thing. It's a lot of franks and beans building, just making the numbers work. That said, expansion should be a priority. Are they aware of the xp bomuses they get for expansion and building? Do they have a lot of vacancies on the council? If so, they need to rp some stuff and correct that. I hope you allow Leadership in your game, because it can help Kingdom Building a lot.
A theoretical question: it seems to me that buildings in settlements are the way to build up the modifiers, while adding hexes and settlements jack up the DC. Therefore, would it be better to concentrate on a few settlements before adding hexes?
In theory, yes, but that means you're relying on magic item sales or donations from the PCs to keep the population alive. Every hex with a settlement is consuming 2BP and if you're not claiming farms or other resources then that has to come from somewhere.
Having valuable resources spread out can encourage a bit more separaton between settlements; my group has a settlement at the hot spring because I gave them bonuses to all three stats for commercialising it.
Also, have your players met Maegar Varn yet? While he was very polite and willing to negotiate on borders, my players definitely got the impression that they needed to start claiming hexes in the east in case he got there first.
I recommend using the UC Kingdom Building rules rather than the rules straight from the AP's (they're on the PFSRD). It makes things a LOT easier. For one, you can claim a hex and build a road + BP-producing terrain improvement on that every single turn up to Size 11 (when that capacity increases).
In my experience, if you want to have a solid kingdom, your players should be expanding the kingdom at the maximum hex amount per turn. If you build a farm/mine/quarry/sawmill/fishery every turn your kingdom should be fine BP/wise. Also, UC says you divide Economy check by 3 rather than 5 for BP so that helps a ton!
Here are their stats:
Economy 50
Loyalty 29
Stability 43
City districts/lots 3/39
Unrest 0
Consumption 0
Bonus BP/turn 9
Fame 6
Control DC 36
The kingdom started at the Stag Lord's Keep and extends North to Oleg's and West to the Temple of Erastil. They have 5 mines and 6 farms (the latter's bonuses to Consumption reduction are reduced by 50% because of a Stockyards at Olegton).
Here's a link to the ridiculous Google Spreadsheet I use to keep track of it all.
We are using UC.
Comparing yours to theirs, our Ec/Lo/St are about half of those, the city is 2/3 smaller, but the Control DC is almost as high.
They didn't expand a hex every turn, that's what puzzles me-- the Control DC is still higher than their modifiers.
I'm looking at when they add Tatzylford, that might bring them up more than it raises the Control DC, so it may happen sooner than later.
How many city districts do they have? Control is 20 + Size + Total Districts. How can their Control DC approach ours when they have half the size???
It may help that I introduced some NPC's with decent stats who are now kingdom leaders and I also gave a +1 bonus to each NPC doing their favored job (basically assuming they have 5 ranks in the appropriate leadership skill). Also we powergamed. Take a look at the Bartertown tab in my spreadsheet. They made a serious effort to build up as much Economy as possible at the expense of Loyalty and Stability and it works very well!
7 hexes, 2 districts, so their DC is only 7 behind yours.
Nearly all of their NPC leaders are 4th level or less, so they can't have 5 ranks in anything. I'm weighing how fast to progress them along, to help out.
Yeah, maybe I'm too kind, but I just boosted all the kingdom-relevant NPC's to level 5, where the PC's are. I'm thinking that's just a one-time boost which makes some sense considering "how far they've come." They've been through a lot (all have had serious backstory issues) and now they've grown to become leaders of an upstart kingdom on the frontier. I don't think it's terribly OP for Svetlana to be NG Female Human Expert 5 rather than Expert 2. Now she's CR3 rather than CR1/2. N'est-ce pas un big deal, IMHO.
I don't know how your experience with SL went, but I gave one of my players a homebrew sidequest involving a band of marauding orcs. They ended up attacking Oleg's and the party defeated them, without a single casualty, by blowing up half the damn fort with blackpowder kegs (one of the PC's is a gunslinger). She's faced attempted/threatened rape and murder for years, living in a glorified shack in a lawless wasteland. She even got her wedding ring stolen. She's been through hell and back. Now she's a titled kingdom official and so is her husband. She lives in a small city rather than a barely defensible hovel. She doesn't have to worry about being able to eat. She's been doing it for a year at this point! Hence 5th level!
Now later on when the PC's are 10th or 15th level, I'm not gonna be lifting them again. Why? Two reasons:
- Unless they're doing serious business work for the kingdom (say, Kesten leading an army against foes), why would I level them to legendary levels for just hanging around and doing their jobs? I don't know where I got this idea, but I've somehow come to the belief that level 5 is generally the cap for "average joes"
- There'll be other, high-level characters at that point which could easily take their jobs
Regardless, my biggest piece of advice for you is to urge your players, like I said, to grow their kingdom at the fastest possible pace and build a resource terrain improvement each and every turn.
Example: In a few turns, my players will be building a foundry and a watchtower every turn for 4 turns (the watchtowers will negate the Unrest brought by the foundries). Their foundries and mines will total 5 each. 2 of those mines are in resource hexes. The Mines give +5 Economy and +5 BP/turn. The resource hexes give +4 Economy and +2 BP/turn. The foundries give +5 Economy and +5 BP/turn. Factoring in that every 3 points of Economy equates to 1 BP, those buildings and improvements will grant a whopping total of 16BP/turn. COWABUNGA! The buildings and improvements pay for themselves in 7 months.
Oh yeah... I just realized one other thing might be giving them a little bit of a boost: I've been letting them build buildings on their own time using Downtime rules and allowing them to count as kingdom buildings (I actually tracked downtime for the entire "year off"). They've built a bank, a barracks, an alchemist's shop and an inn using their own money and time. Total bonuses are +6 Economy and +1 Loyalty for all the player-built buildings, so it's not a huge difference (though it does help). This, by the way, is a great way to get them really invested in the kingdom. Trust me, they care a lot more about the Productivity modifier when they know it affects their monthly income!
I am only a player in this but at the end of one and a half to two years of our kingdom it has five hexes, although we're about to join with Tatzlford.
In game rules there doesn't seem to be any benefit to a larger kingdom. the only thing size does (immediately) is raise the DCs for all of your roles.
It didn't help that we failed 75% of our stabilization and economy rolls to start with too. And our GM doesn't seem to like NPCs so all of the kingdom stuff is background fluff or distraction currently.
I am only a player in this but at the end of one and a half to two years of our kingdom it has five hexes, although we're about to join with Tatzlford.
In game rules there doesn't seem to be any benefit to a larger kingdom. the only thing size does (immediately) is raise the DCs for all of your roles.
It didn't help that we failed 75% of our stabilization and economy rolls to start with too. And our GM doesn't seem to like NPCs so all of the kingdom stuff is background fluff or distraction currently.
Basically, the importance of Size isn't the stat itself, but the ability to build terrain improvements and take advantage of what's in the hex. You shouldn't be claiming a hex unless it's got something cool in it or is on the way to something cool. Remember those two resource hexes I mentioned? I won't spoil where they are, but they double the bonuses from Mines. Read up on the Kingdom Building rules! There's some really good stuff in there.
By the way, when I say "something cool," I'm going to specifically call out plains hexes. If you build a farm in every plains hex around Oleg's and build a Stockyard in the middle, they combine to reduce your Consumption by 18. Also, in every hills hex you have, you can build a mine or quarry to increase automatic BP/turn by 1. Every Foundry you have increases Economy and BP/turn for 1 mine connected to it by roads by 1. In every Forest hex you have, you can build a sawmill for +1 BP/turn too. The more BP you have, the more score-boosting buildings you can build. The more size you have, the more buildings and terrain improvements you can build at once. The results are exponential!
The other thing about Size is the fact that higher sizes:
- Allow you to build and expand more
- Give bonuses to rolls to create Trade Routes and Diplomatic Edicts. The latter is HUGE since peace treaties boost your Economy and Alliances boost your Stability.
- Represent increased areas of "civilized" lands. Your party will no longer have to roll for wilderness random encounters in claimed hexes and will travel a lot faster in hexes with Roads or Highways. Also, you're automatically made aware of any crazy stuff happening in any of your claimed hexes (like, say, an invading army or a mysterious extraplanar incursion).
My players, for instance, were offered a peace treaty by Brevoy. By my estimates of Brevoy's Size, that's worth a +10 bonus to Economy right there. Kind of makes sense that they'd want their weird pseudo-colony to have normalized trade relations with them. Half the point of your being there is to open up trade routes with the River Kingdoms and (ideally) the nations on Lake Encarthan.
If you're doing things right, you should never fail your Economy/Stability rolls except on natural 1's.
I just copied and cleared that KM tacking sheet I linked earlier and posted it HERE. Enjoy!
Unfortunately, the Baroness player's been failing about 1 in 3 Stability rolls over the past year, and racking up lots of Unrest when she does. "At least my d4 works." Once they beat the trolls, the might be able to get Unrest zeroed out. That should be a good time for me to fold in Tatzylford, too-- I should make it push them over the 11-hex threshold, when they can build/annex more things per turn.
No one has ANY interest in the downtime rules, so that source of extra buildings hasn't come about. I did have one NPC build 2 or 3 buildings on his own money.
They are working their way towards making things work together, like the farms and stockyards.
I need to go back and look at the Diplomatic Edicts. I could stick in an Embassy from the Tsar, which should be worth something.
Honestly, the Downtime rules are pretty arcane. What I did with my players was I approached each of them and said "Hey, during this entire year of downtime, would you like your character to build and run a business? Here's a business that I think your character might like. This is how much it would cost and this is how much net profit you'd have by the beginning of the next year."
For instance, for the party's alchemist, I told him that, if his character bought and ran an alchemist shop for a year, he'd have a net profit of 488.4gp. He didn't have to roll anything or figure anything out. All he did was say "Yes!" and slapped an alchemist's shop and an apprentice on his sheet, then added the gold in profit. Bonus: the kingdom gets a free building! Then the fighter got a barracks and a mercenary company, the gunslinger got a tavern he calls "The Rusty Scattergun" and the cleric/ruler bought a bank, then hung back in the castle earning beaucoup Influence points.
Basically my philosophy is to ask the players what they want to do, then figure out how to make it happen rules-wise. Part of it is because I'm the only one who knows these crazy rules; part of it is that I'm eerily obsessed with this stuff; part of it is just that these are relatively new players who don't know the ropes. It's my way of making it more fun for them.
Also: embassies don't give the kingdom anything but extra lots to boost the settlement size. If your PC's start making them, though, it has some benefits (though you don't get to take advantage of building discounts from castles etc. on Mansions and Noble Villas in other countries). Peace treaties and such are the big deal. I've got a diplomacy tab and an npc relations tab in my googledocs spreadsheet if you want to see my estimates for the sizes and notes for nearby kingdoms.
PROTIP: I think some of the best investments in a starting kingdom is to build a castle, then a boatload of noble villas while you're claiming hexes and building roads and mines. Noble villas are your best bang for your buck because of the castle discount. That said, as GM, I'd only allow a certain amount of noble villas before I started calling BS. Later, when you're claiming forest/farm hexes instead of hill hexes, you can build foundries to boost bp/turn while building houses to reduce unrest.
PROTIP: I think some of the best investments in a starting kingdom is to build a castle, then a boatload of noble villas while you're claiming hexes and building roads and mines. Noble villas are your best bang for your buck because of the castle discount. That said, as GM, I'd only allow a certain amount of noble villas before I started calling BS. Later, when you're claiming forest/farm hexes instead of hill hexes, you can build foundries to boost bp/turn while building houses to reduce unrest.
If you're using the UC rules, you only get to use the half-price discount for you castle once, e.g. for the first noble villa you build.
See the section "Discount" here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/kingdom-building#TOC-Buil dings
PROTIP: I think some of the best investments in a starting kingdom is to build a castle, then a boatload of noble villas while you're claiming hexes and building roads and mines. Noble villas are your best bang for your buck because of the castle discount. That said, as GM, I'd only allow a certain amount of noble villas before I started calling BS. Later, when you're claiming forest/farm hexes instead of hill hexes, you can build foundries to boost bp/turn while building houses to reduce unrest.If you're using the UC rules, you only get to use the half-price discount for you castle once, e.g. for the first noble villa you build.
See the section "Discount" here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/kingdom-building#TOC-Buil dings
Oh for the love of... wow. I had no idea. Thankfully, my players haven't run into much of that yet. They've only built one extra discounted Noble Villa against RAW. Wow... that means a city wall discount for a Garrison is only for 1BP. That's... special. It won't really affect my city plan much (there'll be a lot more smithies and a lot less trade shops, though).
Personally, I gave my PCs loads of NPCs whom were suitable for leadership roles - and a nudge to start taking them on. Most of those NPCs had something like +2 bonus if they were used wisely. I also told my PCs that they weren't going to get big benefits from magic sales, but I tweaked the rules a bit to make a rural kingdom pay better.
Through the middle part of the game, I tweaked the system so we did six months worth of rolls at once, and I let the guys build with those points.
That said, we moved the detailed building to the background after book 2. We are now in book 5 and they tell me where they want to develop and one on the NPCs makes a few suggestions.
They still feel like the 'own' the place - but it isn't hard work. *shrug*
Personally, I gave my PCs loads of NPCs whom were suitable for leadership roles - and a nudge to start taking them on. Most of those NPCs had something like +2 bonus if they were used wisely. I also told my PCs that they weren't going to get big benefits from magic sales, but I tweaked the rules a bit to make a rural kingdom pay better.
Through the middle part of the game, I tweaked the system so we did six months worth of rolls at once, and I let the guys build with those points.
That said, we moved the detailed building to the background after book 2. We are now in book 5 and they tell me where they want to develop and one on the NPCs makes a few suggestions.
They still feel like the 'own' the place - but it isn't hard work. *shrug*
I like your style! I think that's generally what my players are headed towards. At this point, they've delegated most of the kingdom building decisions to the Grand Diplomat (a CN half-orc low-CHA high-INT alchemist LOL). At some point, I imagine I'll just run it "autopilot" for them.
My thought process has been something along the lines of: "I level up all the NPC's already half-statted (such as Kesten) to 5 and give them 5 skill ranks in a relevant skill. For everyone who hasn't even been partially statted (such as Crazy Old Bokken), I use a similar statted NPC from the PFSRD Bestiary and use that."
Kesten, for instance, uses his stats from RRR and has 5 ranks of Pro(Soldier) while Akiros has 5 ranks of Kno(Engineering). For the right role, they offer bonuses of 5 and 4, respectively (Kesten uses his level 4 ab increase for STR). I made COB using the Hedge Witch NPC stat; he only has an INT/CHA bonus of 1, but he has 5 ranks in Kno(Arcana) so he provides a bonus of 2 to his role of Magister. I imagine the PC's will want to replace him when they have a chance.
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Re: Council roles I let my players all create a second character of their choice and give them to me as people recruited to join the council AND backup PCs should they die. This had the double benefit of filling out the council for them and also giving the backups a history with the kingdom and letting the players feel they had a reason to care for the other council members, etc. I added a couple of NPCs to fill in the last few slots (Kesten & Oleg) but mostly it was players which let them feel in control but still gave me avenues for in character advice.
Re: Council roles I let my players all create a second character of their choice and give them to me as people recruited to join the council AND backup PCs should they die. This had the double benefit of filling out the council for them and also giving the backups a history with the kingdom and letting the players feel they had a reason to care for the other council members, etc. I added a couple of NPCs to fill in the last few slots (Kesten & Oleg) but mostly it was players which let them feel in control but still gave me avenues for in character advice.
I like your style!