How would you do it?
My players decided last night to leave kingdom building behind and move it to the background. We are starting Book 5 and they concluded that building a kingdom is no longer challenging; everything is too easy, and they only fail on a 1 on any of the rolls... not much drama.
So if we leave Kingdom Building behind, how do we handle the armies for Mass Combat? consumption is not that relevant. I will not feel comfortable telling them: "you have such and such BP in you treasury now for armies", because it'll just be number i throw out of my ahhh... mouth.
I think they might also not mind ditching Mass Combat; I haven't asked yet because I don't want to give them hints at what's coming, so i want to be ready with the Mass Combat option should they want it.
I'd appreciate any ideas and comments..
Thanks,
-arnon
No, that's not gonna happen... with a full-time job and baby twins at home i barely have time to prepare properly to the sessions as it is.
So if we leave Kingdom Building behind, how do we handle the armies for Mass Combat? consumption is not that relevant. I will not feel comfortable telling them: "you have such and such BP in you treasury now for armies", because it'll just be number i throw out of my ahhh... mouth.
I dont get what you mean. To build an army they need to spent BP (or money, as explained in ultimate kingdom, using the gp to BP conversion), and to upgrade said army they also need BP, to give them better weapons, better armors, horses, potions, spellcasting support. Depending on the size of said army, that BP cost will rise up significantly, consuming a lot of a kingdom's treasury each month.
Everything is easy? Well, when things become easy, they need to start investing in a strong army and invade other kingdoms.
I dont see why you want to ditch the kingdom rules when they tie together so well.
Switching to the Ultimate Campaign version really fixes many of the issues of easiness from the Kingmaker version. Though it also sounds like time is of an issue, which is very understandable. While fun, kingdom building is time consuming.
Thanks for the responses.
Yes, we are using Ultimate Campaign rules (switched to it when it came out); and also yes, time is of an issue as we play about 3 - 3.5 hours a week (if we play that week at all). But the main reason is lack of interest in continuing to build up the kingdom hex by hex, building by building. It the same reason they no longer want to hexplore: it was fun and exciting at the start, but not so now... let's get on with the story.
I have no problem narrating how the kingdom evolves and grows. So far i've fast-forwarded about 1 year
By the way, right after VV they went to visit their patron in Restov and learned of the increased animosity between Restov and Brevoy and got real paranoid that Brevoy might cast their eyes on their fledgling kingdom; so they started building armies and now each town has a least a couple of armies (fighters & archers) as well as some "special" smaller armies (a 25 person Paladin unit, and another 25 person Ranger unit).
So i know what kind of armies they'll have when the attack comes. I guess i'll just go with the flow and ask them when the moment comes: "Do you want to recruit armies and go to war using Mass Combat rules (and i'll decide on the spot what they can recruit), or do you want Mass Combat in the background and respond to immediate threats?"
I'm game wither way. i suspect they'll go "mass combat in the background"
If you are short on time then arm wave away the kingdom building. Armies are all about having people. Get a sense of the population currently and then add/subtract a percentage each year (say 1-5%) based on the births and deaths. Remember to subtract wartime casualties!
Tell your players That they can use a certain percent (20%) of the population as soldiers. They can conscript more but then they start running into home front problems.
As for character levels, make each level a percentage of the previous one. (100% of all NPCs one at least 1st, 50% are at least 2nd, 25% are at least 3rd.... etc.) That should answer their officer questions. You can do something similar for classes.
Hope that helps. My numbers are very much "off the cuff" and you may find different percentages work better for you.
To be fair, hexploration does get old after a while, so it's a good idea to let the players pay parties to explore for them.
So I decided to ask my players and they voted for the Mass Combat in the Background option. This means for me that i have to create some challenges for the party to deal with during the different battles.
I'll look over the module again to understand what threats are in each place and find suitable challenges (bestiary, npc codex, etc..). I also want to create some Troops (as in the subtype) to simulate them cutting through lots mooks while still being challenged.
I'll see about posting it up in a thread later.
Anybody done anything similar? I couldn't find any threads talking about it.
Cheers,
-arnon
That's pretty much what my group has settled on. Every time mass combat has loomed as a possibility, they party has decided to tackle it in some alternate method - the first time they just went against the army just the five of them, Superman style; every time since they've allowed the armies to fight off-screen while the PCs went for the leaders. And this most recent time they used trickery, magic, and intimidation to cow the armies without their own forces raising a weapon until the enemy was completely surrounded.