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This is aimed more at Paizo developpers than anything else, but if I'm missing something, please tell me !
Settlement attributes are vital to play, settlement levels determine the level of items and formula you can purchase, access to spells, access to selling and what level of downtime activity you can do during downtime.
Almost the entirety of the downtime system, roughly a third of the game, is based on the settlement stats!
And we have so little of them!! I can find maybe 4 ?!?! Why does an adventure path not contain the full stat block for every city where players are going?
I am a player in strenght of thousands right now and my girlfriend is the GM and I asked her what the level of the settlement and she could not find it, I double checked and its just not there. We're gonna be on a 6 chapter adventure spanning multiple years in this city, could we have some damn stats?
I'm gonna start a thread in houserules to compile those I did make and add those of others but please! Give us some damn settlement stats!
Edit: here is the thread where I compile them
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Don't we have guidelines and rules for creating settlements. Just like we do for creating monsters, npc's, and even magical items?
Oh, right. The published adventures.
It would probably be easier to have the settlements showing up in centralized lore and settings books (like Grand Bazaar) rather than scattered across individual adventure books.
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Rather than stats for every settlement, which would take a fairly large amount of page space or significant length of time (whether settlements be published in every AP or in their own lore books) I feel like the first thing would be a set of guidelines how to set a settlement's level. Is every city at least a 5th level settlement or does it have to be a trade hub for that? Is a metropolis over 100,000 worthy of being 20th level or do you have to go to the planes before you even qualify for level 16+? What are the most significant factors? Is population the biggest determiner or might a small city in a wealthy influential and magical nation have a higher level than a much larger city from a poorer and less magical land?
If we knew enough of the guidelines, we could set them ourselves right away and then find out if we were right or wrong when the official stats for the cities make their way into publication one by one.
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Don't we have guidelines and rules for creating settlements. Just like we do for creating monsters, npc's, and even magical items?
Oh, right. The published adventures.
It would probably be easier to have the settlements showing up in centralized lore and settings books (like Grand Bazaar) rather than scattered across individual adventure books.
Look I'll take anything at this point !
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Rather than stats for every settlement, which would take a fairly large amount of page space or significant length of time (whether settlements be published in every AP or in their own lore books) I feel like the first thing would be a set of guidelines how to set a settlement's level. Is every city at least a 5th level settlement or does it have to be a trade hub for that? Is a metropolis over 100,000 worthy of being 20th level or do you have to go to the planes before you even qualify for level 16+? What are the most significant factors? Is population the biggest determiner or might a small city in a wealthy influential and magical nation have a higher level than a much larger city from a poorer and less magical land?
If we knew enough of the guidelines, we could set them ourselves right away and then find out if we were right or wrong when the official stats for the cities make their way into publication one by one.
I would also like that, one of the reasons I'd like those settlement attributes is to be able to infer the guidelines.
The stats for Nantambu (settlement 10), Mzali (settlement 8) and others are in the Mwangi Expanse book ;-)
Good to know! Maybe we could get them on Nethys?
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The stats for Nantambu (settlement 10), Mzali (settlement 8) and others are in the Mwangi Expanse book ;-)Good to know! Maybe we could get them on Nethys?
I think they are Paizo IP, so likely not on Nethys IIRC.
That said, Mwangi Expanse is a great read and has good synergy with the AP IIRC.
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Honestly, and I may get Boo'd for making this statement, but I think part of it has to do with flexibility of play, they have probably intentionally been vague on not hard-stating many of the settlements. The level of the settlement has an impact on the things the GM is going to make available at any particular time in an adventure. If you stat'd out 75% of the nearest settlements to Absalom as much as it gave you information on several settlements, it might also invalidate the use of some settlement for your GMs adventure, or invalidate it for a future adventure path where the writer wants to set it in or outside that settlement, but the level given for it makes it no longer fit.
If every settlement you traveled through and had an encounter in got statted. Then you might have issues where you start having people complaining there are contradictory stating (in AoA town is is 3rd level ish, while in BiB it says it is 7th level, and in CuC it says it is 5th, which is right?)
Certainly, on the other hand, one way we get used to making our own settlement stat blocks is by seeing examples. Without those examples, many will find it hard to feel comfortable feeling like they are doing an adequate job. However, with that being said, we'd like to see more stat block, we need to be prepared to allow the setting to be somewhat in flux to make the many stories that will be published in the future, such that we don't unduly burden the authors of future adventures to be chained to specific stat blocks that might have been provided in different contexts.
As an example, I've seen little town names in one adventure sounding like a one cleric town, where most shops would be homes. To another where, while still small would definitely have people who take care of business while someone is away, and have some specialists.
One thing that actually might even help would be to point out that settlements are sort of 'living' entities and so that any published STAT block is an example of its behavior at a particular point in time. And GMS should be wary of falling into the trap that these values can't effectively go up (or even down) over time based on numerous factors, not limited to the catastrophe's the characters are normally occupied foiling.
That means when the players start out, this village may be level 1-3 and after leaving and coming back, (and then they are hometown heroes and 10th level or higher, the village may be behaving as a 5th level village at that point. Subsequent adventures back at that town, may have it back down to 2nd level with a different party.
Anyway, I'm all for more stat blocks, but wanted to point out that there may be a hesitancy, because every piece of information they put down as hard cannon, may be seen as reducing the flexibility of future adventures. On the other hand, vague names and descriptions are instead seeds for future adventures. So that might explain the tendency to lean into the vague inspiration writing, vs. the detailed concrete information that might become future limitations.
@Loreguard: Definitely no boo's on my part, very sound reasoning and probably accurate on Paizo intentions.
That being said I feel like having stats that change as years pass and towns develop would be fun! I'd relish seeing what absalom becomes after AoE based on the canon.
Also most GM's have full free reign over their world and thus can just modify their towns as they see fit. As an exemple, as my players in AoA expended their portal based trade network, I upgraded the level of Breachill in order to represent the added potential of the town.
But that's a thing I homebrewed, I would definitely like to have at least guidelines on how to do this.
A more robust system would be a start, but having some of the major towns that you don't want to guesstimate because they're so big (Absalom, Magnimar, Brevoy to name a few) would definitely help us understand the whole better and would probably be less in flux for writers.
If Magnimar goes from 13 to 11, let's say, well something went DOWN!! Maybe a whole continent off its coast rose up and created a tidal wave that shattered most of the city!
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As an exemple of what just having a framework can do:
In my iron gods remake campaign, I had made the town of torch a level 6 large town with the special ability of being able to purchase items made out of skymetals up to level 12.
When a poster in the compilation thread posted the stats for Kovlar from AoA I could see that at equal population and with similar themes (city of artisans) my torch equivalent was both too high (level 6 vs level 5 for Kovlar for equal populations) , that my level 12 scaling was on point (Kovlar has a similar power for arms and armors) but also that I should have some leeway for another power of thematic value (Kovlar has city of artisans allowing purchase of items up to 8, I could add that or maybe allow for purchase of rare and uncommon technologic items up to the city's level? Perhaps give the availability to the torch giving a +4 item bonus to crafting skymetals weapons? ).
I just wish we could do more of that. This ain't 5e damnit ! :-P
Hey, I can explain the whole Magnimar thing... the universal setting identity suddenly realized that the city wasn't taking care of the little shrine to Sarenrae that is struggling to be... and so the powers that be, decided that there must be repercussions. (yes this eventually leads to a big legal battle that ends up all records of it being shredded and worlds... ohhh... wait... I'm not supposed to talk about that, forgot) [line goes dead]
While population changing super significantly probably need more specific explanations, changing of level I can imagine to a degree with political shifts and economic upturns or downturns.
As you mentioned, Breechill becoming a new trade center offers it the possibility of having a new baseline level that is higher, even without necessarily taking into an immediate population increase, etc.
I'm even willing to say that after a successful AP when adventurers stay in a particular settlement the settlement may have a sort of temporary rise in level potentially as news travel and influence spread's with the information. Then whether that increase stays and becomes a new baseline, or fades away would be more of a question of the needs of the story, and how the party and/or settlement deal with the occurrences.
Events could even provide temporary boosts or modifications of settlement stats. Sandpoint during the festival may be considered a level or two higher due to the increased trade and traffic due to the Swallowtail festival. Absalom may be even bigger than it normally is during the Radiant Festival.
I think events should easily be able to boost a city's normal level up by one or two, or depress it by one or two levels easily. I don't think that should need to be a 'continental tidle wave' level even to move a level up one or two levels.
A militarized city, preparing to be laid siege may well have a higher level as resources get poured into making sure there is adequate defenses. On the other hand, after a City that has been blockaded for a time may net a lower effective level as resources have become depleted.
And separately, after a city has been over-run and laid to waste, there might be a huge population left over, but very little infrastructure and available resources, so it could drop from a really high level to a level more like 1-3 to represent nothing being left but ruins and people struggling to make ends meet with what little is left.
Again, this does sound almost like a Pathfinder the Settlements subgame sort of material that could be its own book. it could list settlements in a general area as an example, and talk about baseline settlement blocks and how you can justify tweaking them various ways to have them fit the heroic story you want to tell in the area around them. I'm also, however, curious how the kingmaker city building rules will end up working in second edition. That may end up being an important factor to understand before they do a lot more with the settlement block recommendations. Granted, that will be for building PC cities, and your average city is analogous to an NPC (so different rules). But we like them to be able to seem to have some of the same flavor allowable when balance can allow it.
The stats for Nantambu (settlement 10), Mzali (settlement 8) and others are in the Mwangi Expanse book ;-)Good to know! Maybe we could get them on Nethys?
I think they are Paizo IP, so likely not on Nethys IIRC.
That said, Mwangi Expanse is a great read and has good synergy with the AP IIRC.
Nethys does indeed have the Mwangi Expanse on their website. I also seem to recall that AoN, prior to PF2 being released, was slated to be direct partners with Paizo, and as such was an official source of their rules online. It wouldn't make much sense for that to be the case and not include official IP information relevant to their publications.
That being said, I don't think they have an overall entry for Settlements on the website outside of GM guidelines and two examples, so it's more of a technical issue than an IP issue, if anything.
Age of Ashes was pretty good about providing settlement levels: I mean, they tended to be pathetically low, but they were provided at least...EC also has settlements, and they could be even worse than AoA.
I am starting to think this might be intended.
Crafting is King, no doubt about this.
But even crafting requires formula and those are contingent on settlement level.
Age of Ashes was pretty good about providing settlement levels: I mean, they tended to be pathetically low, but they were provided at least...EC also has settlements, and they could be even worse than AoA.
I am starting to think this might be intended.
Crafting is King, no doubt about this.
To a point. Crafting is solid when you are in areas far lower level than your current level, and if you have both the materials and the formulas for items not normally sold in your area.
Unfortunately, if you don't have the formulas, you can't craft it (unless you have Craft Anything feat, which isn't until 16th, or 15th at the absolute earliest via Rogue/Investigator), which usually need to be bought or found, which isn't done in an area that is of lower level or simply never had access to the formula to begin with.
And of course, you need the raw materials to make the item in the first place (which is simplified by a flat gold payment plus a Crafting check). A GM in certain settlements can rule that you simply can't make the item due to a lack of required materials; for example, even in a Level 12 Settlement, they might not have Adamantine for you to purchase/use to craft an Adamantine Bastard Sword, even if you have the formula to make one that you found/bought from a previous settlement.
Crafting requires a lot of "ifs" to go in your favor for it to be a skill useful for actually crafting items, and also will require high levels and skill feats to handwave a lot of the tedium that's involved with it currently. Even with that, the fact that you need the raw materials (which may not even be available via gold) can stump you if the GM rules (or the settlement itself rules) that you can't acquire said materials.
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I agree! I want the full details on anything that is decided between participants in a civil suit outside of court.
... Whoops, wrong settlements.
One should always state one's settlements... it is known!
The homebrew forum thread (link in OP) is running, I have around 10 settlements in there from my own sources and mostly from official sources.
Anyone that wants to give me stats to any settlements they made can do it over there.
Right now i'd love to have the stats for the ones in Mwangi Expanse and perhaps absalom city of wonders if someone feels like sharing them.
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I think the importance of city level varies wildly by player group. Some GMs like a tight handle on access to every option in the book, while others could care less.
I also think the actual answer to what level a specific city is, is “whatever the GM wants it to be”. Guidelines can be helpful (the old D&D thorp/hamlet/village/city/metropolis thing), but a sparsely populated town in Golarion with access to high level NPCs or trade with big cities could effectively have a higher level than a populous town in a remote region.
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I think the importance of city level varies wildly by player group. Some GMs like a tight handle on access to every option in the book, while others could care less.
I also think the actual answer to what level a specific city is, is “whatever the GM wants it to be”. Guidelines can be helpful (the old D&D thorp/hamlet/village/city/metropolis thing), but a sparsely populated town in Golarion with access to high level NPCs or trade with big cities could effectively have a higher level than a populous town in a remote region.
Yes, and in most homebrews this can be handwaived easily, but settlement rules tie in tightly to downtime rules so it'D be nice to have better guidelines for those who wish to abide by them.
I feel they add flavor to a city because it influences what you can do in it like ''oh we want some skymetal weapons, we gotta go back to torch!''
If not a robust base, stats for the major cities would help establish which city a high level group of PC'S use teleport to go to.
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Age of Ashes was pretty good about providing settlement levels: I mean, they tended to be pathetically low, but they were provided at least...
They weren't pathetically low, they were set to where the guidelines said for them to be set.
Which is why crafting has a purpose. There is a reason that cities are level 7 and inventor comes online at level 7.
You want free access to things, ask your GM, but the system is working with an intent regardless of if you like it or not. (My players enjoyed it)
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Yes, and having only low level settlements nearby encourages players to go into crafting, because if you look at crafting in a vacuum where you assume settlement level matches player level throughout a 1-20 campaign, then crafting makes no sense.
If you assume you live in a world where most of the cities around you are lower level, Crafting becomes a must for an adventuring party, and the inventor feat too! So do feats like legendary performer.
If your party is level 18 and stuck in a settlement that is at best level 11 (let's say port peril cause we have the freaking stats for it), well then killing someone who has a +3 major striking weapon, using inventor to retro engineer the formula and then using your massive gold reserves you had because you couldn't spend it and having your crafter take a month of downtime to increase everyone's equipment at full cost is an optimal strategy!
With the system as it is, if properly enforced, the strength of crafting is the ability to create items you need, despite a small markup, wherever you are. If you're in Absalom (or any level 20 settlement) crafting is just another downtime earn an income activity.
You can definitely travel to a given city to have access to the higher settlement, and honestly part of the effort for this thread and its sister thread compiling all settlements is to then ENABLE the traveling you are mentioning.
As of this moment, we all assume that absalom is level 20, but do not know.
According to guidelines, a metropolis caps out at 11, maybe 13. Port peril, granted a much smaller metropolis than Absalom but still a titanic entity at 45 000 population (By comparison Katapesh, a level 13 settlement according to age of ashes, is 212 300 inhabitants, much closer to Absalom official size) is not really allowing level 15+ purchases. Having actual stats for Magnimar, Absalom, Restov and such would help to differentiate them and make those high level skill feats shine more.
Even if we assume teleport and shadow walk, knowing which metropolis to go to would be its own ''mini game'' that could be fun. If you're in Hillcross in the mammoth lands and want to go to Absalom, riding horses through a shadow walk takes you 800 miles, so you need 3 days to go to Absalom which is 1718 miles away from you in a straight land. By teleport its 18 castings of teleport as a level 6 spell, 2 castings of it as a level 7 spell, 1 casting of it as a level 8 spell.
If you're a level 9 party, knowing that Starfall, a level 10 city with a focus on technological items with probably uncommon or rare formula for crafting, is only 600 miles away and thus just 1 casting of shadow walk makes it a much more sensible location.
Right now you can't really plan your travels for downtime via shadow walk or teleport because there's really nowhere to go...
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I was under no impression that we weren't both saying pretty much the same thing, just wanted to elaborate a bit more :-)
I would think one of the more difficult portions in plotting out an AP is making both downtime & suitable markets available, despite how that contrasts with being self-sufficient adventurers who must race to save the X! Many of Golarion's high-level cities (and similar) have come from such a need, and still remain should later PCs gain wind of them (i.e. Hermea).
With PF2's expectations for more content to 20th, I have to wonder what impact that might have on future revealed settlements.
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I always thought for absalom to be a lvl 14 metropolis or similar ( Can't help this, but I have the feeling we will not see that many lvl 15+ settlements), but if it's going to be a lvl 20 settlement, good.
Yeah, I'm under the impression that Absalom isn't actually a particularly high level settlement officially: Level 14 sounds about right...
I agree that Absalom should be a 14th-15th settlement as per progression based on population shows us.
The main issue we have now is that we do not know.
If we theorise the possibility of a level 20 settlement, then our inner sea centric assumption is to say that Absalom, the city at the center of the world, the biggest city we can think of, is a level 20 settlement for it is the top of the ladder.
If I take a crack at stating it in my compilation thread, I will however probly make it a level 15 settlement with the ability to purchase any formula up to level 19 (since it has such vast repository of knowledge through many sources)
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Well, per the Absalom City of Lost Omens book, it IS a 20th-level settlement, so jot that down.
ABSALOM SETTLEMENT 20
N METROPOLIS
Government: grand council
Population: 306,900 (62% human, 11% halfling, 8% half-elf, 7% gnome, 5% dwarf, 2% elf, 1% goblin, 1% half-orc, 3% other ancestries)
Languages: Any
Religions: All
Primary Imports: books, coffee, cultural artifacts, pack animals, spices, tea
Primary Exports: alcohol, armor, art, fashion, literature, lumber, magic items, metal, pearls, precious gems, seafood, ships, skymetal, textiles, weapons, woodcrafts
Threats: political unrest over the missing primarch, external sieges, thieves’ guilds, gang uprisings, cult plots, noble machinations, clashes between houses of rival nations, Firebrand provocations, monstrous activity in the Undercity
City at the Center of the World: Absalom is the largest city in the Inner Sea region and is strategically placed to be an ideal staging point for trade. Imports from all over the world, and even from the bottom of the oceans, can be found in Absalom’s many markets and bazaars. Items that would normally be considered uncommon are instead considered common while within the city walls. Some uncommon items, such as those created by specific organizations or hailing from remote regions, might still remain uncommon at the GM’s discretion.
There is still room for other niche settlements though.
The uncommon and rare tags are powerful blockers, perhaps nantambu has the specialty of making uncommon and rare spells accessible to people who come there to study?
Almost all skymetals are uncommon or rare so perhaps going to torch or starfall is better for these.
But yeah Absalom being Level 20 kinda makes it the go to city.
Nice that we know at least !
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Skymetal's an export of Absalom, so it should be readily available.
I'd been thinking that Absalom didn't seem "legendary" enough, yet then realized yeah, it does have connections to undersea kingdoms and a local DIY Deity site for apotheosis. It still might be 20 only due to PC needs, yet that's reason enough in an RPG world. Trouble is I'm not sure I see that 20th level reflected in the NPC cast (which also might be due to PC needs, so that PCs shine brighter, unlike in some bloated campaign settings.)
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I never thought I'd see a level 20 settlement anywhere on the Material Plane. Seems like such high levels were reserved for extra-large destinations past editons and D&D.
There is still room for other niche settlements though.
The uncommon and rare tags are powerful blockers, perhaps Nantambu has the specialty of making uncommon and rare spells accessible to people who come there to study?
Almost all skymetals are uncommon or rare so perhaps going to torch or starfall is better for these.
But yeah Absalom being Level 20 kinda makes it the go to city.
Nice that we know at least !
The fact that nearly all Uncommon items are available at Absalom makes it even more the "go to" destination.
Trouble is I'm not sure I see that 20th level reflected in the NPC cast (which also might be due to PC needs, so that PCs shine brighter, unlike in some bloated campaign settings.)Why do you think that? Yes, there is only a couple lvl 20 NPCs, but there are a lot of 17-19 lvls.
Well we know for sure that the primarch is only level 18.
As for traveling to Absalom, it might be problematic to go there the first time.
As mentionned above the best candidates for this are teleport and shadow walk. (Meaning GM's who don't want their players to go through those means can put a stop to it or make those spells a very valuable reward because of the uncommon tag)
Shadow walk is... Tricky to interpret, if I put on my GM hat I would probably make this first trip very chancy, requiring some geography lore or survival checks to not get lost. There is also no clear mention of this making you fly, so it's very possible that it takes you a while to get to Absalom as you have to take the "land route " mirrored in the shadow realm rather than flying through (unless you have flying mounts of course, but that's a 6th level spell for phantom steed). I assume mounts in here because otherwise you go much slower with a 25 ft travel speed, potentially making this a 2-3 weeks trip and an adventure in its own right.
The better candidate at level 11 is teleport, but at that level a wizard, enigma bard or witch ( I assume prepared because it's not the best spell for a spontaneous caster) can only go a paltry 100 miles per casting and can then be off target by up to 10 miles.
Not to mention that the spell specifically mentions " as long as you can identify the location precisely both by its position relative to your starting position and by its appearance (or other identifying features). Incorrect knowledge of the location's appearance usually causes the spell to fail, but it could instead lead to teleporting to an unwanted location or some other unusual mishap determined by the GM.". Those terms are broad enough that they can be very tricky if you haven't been there before.
This then means that the safest way to go there for a first trip might be by boat/standard travel. A potentially months long endeavor.
All this to say that while Absalom is definitely the go to destination for high level parties, I would say that the cutoff for going to Absalom for downtime is around at level 15. This is where other metropolises will fade off in usefulness and where you can make the best use of downtime skills through your legendary proficiency, thus making the trip worth it.
You also probably need a prepared occult or arcane caster (or enigma bard or cleric of barzark or pulura), which not every group has.
So overall, a lucrative endeavor for sure, but one that each party definitely needs to consider and balance, not just a handwave.
Added Absalom to the settlement compendium, thanks @rivermesa.
ADded a notable NPC section drawn from AoE (Made sure to cite City Planner Olansa Terimor's correct alignment of Lawful Good ;) )
Just got the stat block from Shraen in Extinction Curse and it kinda throws a wrench in the mechanisms of how we've been evaluating settlements so far!
Level 15 settlement with 1600 inhabitants!
I kinda wish they had made a settlement for Hermea for comparison, just so we could have stats, rather than just say: PC's can buy everything here !