Might be good to make threads for each "book" so the questions in each can be more focused? I'm not sure if the new version of the AP is broken out by the original book they were a part of, though.
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The chapters are different:
Chapter 1: The new Prologue
Chapter 2: Hexploration Rules and random/map encounters for all the later chapters
Chapter:3 Old book 1
Chapter 4: Old Book 2
Chapter 5: new content
Chapter 6: Old book 3
Chapter 7: Old book 4
Chapter 8: Old Book 5
Chapter 9: New Content
Chapter 10: Old Book 6
Chapter 11: New Content/Epilogue
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I'm really hoping to hear some stories about Kingmaker parties with Kobold PCs. The weirdo Ancestry spread in 2e means you've got a lot more potential for a "kingdom of monsters," even if the Backgrounds are pretty rigid.
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Might be good to make threads for each "book" so the questions in each can be more focused? I'm not sure if the new version of the AP is broken out by the original book they were a part of, though.
I think it would be cleaner to ask for a GM Reference sub-folder. In that folder have a sticky thread dedicated to each chapter, in order. That would keep the main Kingmaker 2nd Ed. folder cleaner and require less scrolling through all the sticky threads to get to the new ones.
Just My Thoughts.
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Question: Is the Vacancy penalty for the Magister correct? It is listed as a -4 Penalty to Warfare checks (same as missing a General).
Not sure if it's a copy/paste error or intentional?
It's correct. The idea being that without magic, you're going to be at a disadvantage in this world, where magic is used in warfare a lot by default, but ISN'T in day-to-day life, so not having a magister in a kingdom won't really cause much harm as long as you're not at war.
The Practical Magic Kingdom Feat reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to 1 RP (from 1 Resource die). Should this have reduced the cost by 1 RP?
Looking at the encounter locations RL4 Crooked Falls and RL5 Fort Serenko, there map locations have swapped vs 1e. Shouldn't Fort Serenko be on the South Rostland road and Crooked Falls be adjecent to GB10 Shrike Cascade?
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The Practical Magic Kingdom Feat reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to 1 RP (from 1 Resource die). Should this have reduced the cost by 1 RP?
This is correct. Practical Magic reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to just 1 RP.
Normally it costs a number of RP equal to the result of a Resource Die roll to Hire Adventurers. Since a Resource Die grows larger as your kingdom grows bigger, that means that the bigger the kingdom gets, the more potentially expensive it can get to Hire Adventurers, but you can always luck out and find a group that's willing to do the work for 1 RP if you roll a 1 on your Resource Die.
With the Practical Magic feat, that always happens. As your kingdom grows larger, the amount of magic being used day-to-day in the kingdom makes it more attractive and welcoming to adventuring groups, and so there's more of them to hire, and so there's less of a monopoly, so you can get away with paying the minimum.
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Looking at the encounter locations RL4 Crooked Falls and RL5 Fort Serenko, there map locations have swapped vs 1e. Shouldn't Fort Serenko be on the South Rostland road and Crooked Falls be adjecent to GB10 Shrike Cascade?
That looks to be a typo on the map, alas. Yes, locations RL4 and RL5 should swap places. And the "RL21" tag should just be RL2.
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The Kingdom Assurance Kingdom Feat lets players, instead of rolling, take a result of 10 + the chosen skill's proficiency bonus, applying no "other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers to this result" on a check with the chosen skill once per Kingdom Turn.
Does this mean that if I have a level 2 Kingdom and am Trained in the chosen skill, my result will be a 14?
Because if so, there seems to only be four levels (3, 4, 7, & 8) where using this ability gives a Success against the Kingdom's Control DC if we ignore the Control DC Modifier from Kingdom Size or the Kingdom has 1-9 Hexes, one level (3) where it gives a Success when the Kingdom has 10-24 Hexes, and at no point does it give a Success when the Kingdom has 25+ Hexes. Which doesn't really seem to fit the feat's flavor of consistency when other things are going poorly (unless things going poorly is considered consistent). So am I misunderstanding the feat, or it is really supposed to be extremely narrowly applicable?
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The Kingdom Assurance Kingdom Feat lets players, instead of rolling, take a result of 10 + the chosen skill's proficiency bonus, applying no "other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers to this result" on a check with the chosen skill once per Kingdom Turn.
Does this mean that if I have a level 2 Kingdom and am Trained in the chosen skill, my result will be a 14?
Because if so, there seems to only be four levels (3, 4, 7, & 8) where using this ability gives a Success against the Kingdom's Control DC if we ignore the Control DC Modifier from Kingdom Size or the Kingdom has 1-9 Hexes, one level (3) where it gives a Success when the Kingdom has 10-24 Hexes, and at no point does it give a Success when the Kingdom has 25+ Hexes. Which doesn't really seem to fit the feat's flavor of consistency when other things are going poorly (unless things going poorly is considered consistent). So am I misunderstanding the feat, or it is really supposed to be extremely narrowly applicable?
For a trained skill against a Control DC, yes, its narrowly applicable. But against other DCs (such as some of those that arise in kingdom events or warfare or encounters in the adventure itself) it might not be. Note also that your proficiency bonus increases as you become expert, master, or legendary, which will help you more.
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The Practical Magic Kingdom Feat reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to 1 RP (from 1 Resource die). Should this have reduced the cost by 1 RP?This is correct. Practical Magic reduces the cost of the Hire Adventurers activity to just 1 RP.
Normally it costs a number of RP equal to the result of a Resource Die roll to Hire Adventurers. Since a Resource Die grows larger as your kingdom grows bigger, that means that the bigger the kingdom gets, the more potentially expensive it can get to Hire Adventurers, but you can always luck out and find a group that's willing to do the work for 1 RP if you roll a 1 on your Resource Die.
With the Practical Magic feat, that always happens. As your kingdom grows larger, the amount of magic being used day-to-day in the kingdom makes it more attractive and welcoming to adventuring groups, and so there's more of them to hire, and so there's less of a monopoly, so you can get away with paying the minimum.
Thank you. With the feat already increasing Magic checks and allowing Magic checks to be used in place of Engineering checks (which looks to be a fairly powerful ability), having it remove the randomness from the cost for Hire Adventurers seemed like it might have been a bit much.
I think I read something about this a while back, but wanted to ask again now that people have their hands on the final product. How does this conversion address the issue of the AP’s final boss not being foreshadowed very much?
Its pretty much true to the 1e AP (ie not foreshadowed). None of the CRPG Guardian of the Bloom storyline, none of the Baldhill top series of events that tend to help tie her to all your woes, etc. There might be some minor wording changes in the pre-chapter intros that advise the GM how to hint/or not, but I haven't noticed anything too strong yet (but I've mainly been skimming the 1e stuff and reading the new stuff more closely). Definitely a place a GM who wants a more known 1e chapter 6 boss will still need to do some work.
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I was one of those people who thought that a clearer shape of antagonism would be better in 1e. At least a particular reason to believe that the events might be related to one entity trying to mess with you.
While I kind of feel the crpg went a little too far in the opposite direction with Nyrissa trying to seduce you in your dreams, it turns out for my current group the anniversary approach will probably be for the best as they are eager for a bit of self-directed sandbox experience without an obvious villain hanging over them.
I'd still prefer a happy middle ground but you know, different strokes. Besides, it'll be easier for GMs to insert more places for Nyrissa to show up than it would be to remove her in the opposite approach
There is the recurring Event with the Lantern King in the form of a Gnome, but that's about it.
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I think I read something about this a while back, but wanted to ask again now that people have their hands on the final product. How does this conversion address the issue of the AP’s final boss not being foreshadowed very much?
Main difference? There is more opportunity for GM to naturally foreshadow it.
Like Hargulka was just boss fight at end of dungeon you never got chance to talk to, kingmaker 2e added option to try to ask him for audience which gives chance to talk to him(he and all the trolls basically laugh you out but let you leave when you try to propose peaceful solution). This additional chance gives them another chance to learn that there is second bad guy inspired by dreams (first being stag lord). This with combination of season of bloom adaptation's big bad cultist writing down about his dream inspiration would make third bad guy inspired by dream giving larger chance for party to realize that a mysterious mastermind exists while not making it blatant who they are or impossible to miss. (so if they happened to get the unicorn clue and realize the nymph's hair ring, they might have put things together by then that a nymph is inspiring various bad guys.)
Big bad also throws magical storm at pcs during book 5 and one of new hex encounters is punch of evil pixies wanting to impress Nyrissa. In general, they added more fey shenanigan foreshadowing(such as the Weird Gnome event) which helps foreshadow fay presence in the campaign before it becomes obvious.
Like to clarify, its not more obvious and players still have to play detectives to figure it out, but they have more opportunity to do it considering the literal only hints in 1e were "dead unicorn, nymph's hair ring, if they happened to interrogate stag lord (unlikely), if they happened to interrogate troll king(even more unlikely due to regeneration) and that's it before the reveal, there weren't even much of fay shenanigan events outside of couple random few pcs run to as enemies or as allies which doesn't really strike as "there is mysterious fey shenanigans going on" and more of "oh of course there is fay in forest in fantasy world". The change is subtle, but it stood out for me a lot as someone who had played 1e ap since back then there really wasn't any real hint that fey shenanigans is the main big bad.
Like 1e Nyrissa problem wasn't "She was hidden bad guy", it was "She was so hidden bad guy she might as well not have existed". I think 2e did it much more easier to feel like that "Oh there IS secret bad guy we don't know about yet" due to additional fey shenanigans and opportunity to realize three different bad guys are inspired by dreams so even if you miss the clues, you might get "Oh oh now it makes sense!" realization upon reveal.
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Hopefully I'm missing something with the Army rules here, but it looks to me like they very easily allow the Kingdom to have a new Army virtually every turn for no increase in Consumption:
Recruit Army happens during the Leadership Activities step, allowing the Kingdom to recruit a new Army in a Settlement of their choice, and choose that Army's starting tactic.
Live Off The Land is a Tactic 1 that reduces an Army's Consumption by 1 if they're not in a hex with a Settlement or garrisoned during the Upkeep phase.
The Army Activities step, happening after the Leadership Activities step, lets an Army move up to 20 hexes with the Deploy Army action.
So (aside from poor dice rolls) is there anything stopping a Kingdom from recruiting an Army with a Consumption of 1 every turn, giving it Live Off The Land as it's starting tactic, Deploying it to a non-Settlement containing hex (reducing it's Consumption to 0), and just letting it sit there at no cost for the foreseeable future?
so the "4 spriggans" enc in dunsward, the description below the table says, "A group of four spriggan bullies led by a spriggan warlord make up this encounter. " - that sounds like 5 spriggans to me!
to the encounter building rules!
bully=lvl-4 - 4xbully=4x10xp, warlord=party lvl=40xp - so for a low enc (60) you need 1 warlord & 2 bullies! 4 total spriggans (assuming 3 bullies) is 70xp (half way between low & moderate), 4 bullies is 80xp, so moderate!
so the question is - are there supposed to be 2, 3 or 4 bullies?!
I would run it as described: 4 bullies & 1 warlord for 100 xp and moderate instead of low.
Quick question about the feast at the beginning, I am not very familiar with the influence system and I just want to be sure about this. The points the Pcs are earning, is it cumulative per npc per character or as a group?
If I impress amiri with a normal success I get 1 point, then if another character impress amiri also are we at 2 points as a group or we are both at 1 individually? As a group it is not too difficult to receive some gift from 1 or 2 NPC but alone it is quite a hard task to achieve.
Thanks!
An excited Dm to finally run Kingmaker!:)
Definitely cumulative to the group not per player. The whole point of the influence system is to have the whole party play in social encounters instead of just the character with max Cha and Diplomacy.
With 6 rounds and 4 players(average) that is 24 rolls vs 7 npcs. With average DC's being close to 15 so players have at best a 50% chance that a roll gets them a point of influence and that is ignoring discovery. If it were per player you could be tracking up to 28 seperate pools of points it would be very unlikely in that case to get more than 1 or 2 points on even 2 or 3 npcs.
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Been reading through the player's guide, and I'm curious about the thought process behind one particular rule. In Leadership Activities, it gives each PC in a leadership role 2 or 3 activities. Why is this based on PC or not as opposed to, say, invested roles? Maybe those actions aren't terribly influential, but it would seem to give larger parties (my group is likely to be 6, for instance) a distinct advantage over smaller parties.
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Been reading through the player's guide, and I'm curious about the thought process behind one particular rule. In Leadership Activities, it gives each PC in a leadership role 2 or 3 activities. Why is this based on PC or not as opposed to, say, invested roles? Maybe those actions aren't terribly influential, but it would seem to give larger parties (my group is likely to be 6, for instance) a distinct advantage over smaller parties.
It's based on PC because I felt like it was important to give every player character an equal amount of time "on screen" at doing leadership roles, but also to not overdo it so that each turn takes forever to play out, but also because I specifically wanted to avoid making it look like "the best way to win the Kingdom rules is to bring an army of PCs." The game works best with 4 or so player characters, and I wanted to retain that for the kingdom rules.
If your table's okay with it, there's no reason why you couldn't expand that to allow all invested roles to take leadership activities, though. Let us know how it works out if you do! :-)
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I've been looking at the companions in the First Edition Bestiary. I noticed they do not have any traits from the trait options. I was wondering if this was intentional or not. The companions in the 2E Companion Guide are built as full PCs, not NPCs. It seems like the companions in the 1E Bestiary should also be built that way. The 1E PFS Pregen sheets include traits.
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Definitely cumulative to the group not per player. The whole point of the influence system is to have the whole party play in social encounters instead of just the character with max Cha and Diplomacy.With 6 rounds and 4 players(average) that is 24 rolls vs 7 npcs. With average DC's being close to 15 so players have at best a 50% chance that a roll gets them a point of influence and that is ignoring discovery. If it were per player you could be tracking up to 28 seperate pools of points it would be very unlikely in that case to get more than 1 or 2 points on even 2 or 3 npcs.
They just would have to focus on a specific NPC and don't spread their influence. One player could use his first turn to discover the easiest way and then spend the last 5 rounds to influence him. With a bit of luck they could get the highest reward. With 4 players, probably 4 NPC would be helpful with maybe 1 or 2 gifts. That's why I thought that it might not be cumulative as a group.
But if the players want to use discovery, this reduce the total number of roll as it replace one of the influence roll, right?
Yes a discovery roll takes the place of a character's roll for the round, decreasing, but buying you information that should make future discovery rolls more likely to succeed. Its always a balancing factor.
So yes the number of #PCs x 6 rounds compared to 48 influence points needed to max everyone out, means you'd have to crit on every influence roll and use no discovery rolls. Obviously this isn't the expected solution to the problem.
Its more about having a system where the characters get introduced to each NPCs, learn about them. And then use what naturally evolved as who they talk to/who they avoid to drive future RP developments. Couching it as an Influence game makes sense, but also have the potential to make the party min-max fixate on it as a puzzle to solve. If you have a group that is likely to somewhat step out of character when dealing with influence encounters, I think this one will be potentially less well received encounter and you might want to pre-warn the party that the balance point is set to only allow getting about 1/2 the total number of possible successes and its more about the story telling and expressing character/party preferences within the NPCs than about "winning".
And for the companions, remember that the camping rules outline how you can continue to influence the companions throughout the campaign, after the first introduction. This also means that what's possibly more important than maxing out a companion, is getting a companion to either Friendly or Helpful (depending on the companion's "Adventuring with <name>" section in the companion guide, in order to unlock the chance of influencing them more later. (Of course I'd probably swap their gift to level-appropriate at the time they max them out then). I also think there's a little less interaction specified between the hooks in the AP and the Companion Guide. I.e. Amiri for instance, doesn't really matter for Friendly versus Helpful in the opening chapter, but requires Helpful to join the party in he companion book. And for most of the 'rescue them during chapter 0' companions, I'd probably bump their relationship one level/award some influence points for doing so. It might not be called out explicitly, (since the companion guide is optional), but it feels intended.
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I've been looking at the companions in the First Edition Bestiary. I noticed they do not have any traits from the trait options. I was wondering if this was intentional or not. The companions in the 2E Companion Guide are built as full PCs, not NPCs. It seems like the companions in the 1E Bestiary should also be built that way. The 1E PFS Pregen sheets include traits.
It's intentional. Traits are optional parts of 1st edition. If you want to give those companion traits, go for it, but I chose to keep them as "core" as possible for their builds to keep things as simple as possible, since they're going to be NPCs the GM runs, and the GM has enough on their plate already.
The guards in Jamandi's mansion in chapter 1 seem... inept, to say the least.
I'm sure my players will bug me about this - how are you all planning on making this make sense? The strong assassins went to fight the guards, and the weaker target the PCs and adventurers?Also, seems like the call for heroes would attract people stronger than level 1 :p
There's a group that seems to be stronger, but it seems like they're the exception - the rest were killed by the (kind of weak) assassins.
I think the two things partially go hand in hand. Jamandi brings in a slew of people, both experienced adventurers and promising up-and-comers, probably anticipating that some will fail but counting on having enough people to get a foothold in the Stolen Lands. She probably picks some fresh adventurers because she likely won't have to worry as much about them becoming a threat later on.
Given that, it also makes sense that the Black Tears would dedicate their weaker members to taking out the newbie adventurers (sleeping, no less) while the stronger ones eliminate the alert, awake, and numerous guards. Focus on how other groups of new adventurers in the manor were slain in their beds before they had a chance to fight, and the idea now becomes that the PCs narrowly avoided having their throats slit like the rest.
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The guards in Jamandi's mansion in chapter 1 seem... inept, to say the least.
I'm sure my players will bug me about this - how are you all planning on making this make sense? The strong assassins went to fight the guards, and the weaker target the PCs and adventurers?Also, seems like the call for heroes would attract people stronger than level 1 :p
There's a group that seems to be stronger, but it seems like they're the exception - the rest were killed by the (kind of weak) assassins.
If you feel like those elements might break verisimilitude for your players, I would strongly suggest just cutting the entire attack on the manor and limit the introduction to the feast and the handing out of charters the next day. There's plenty of content between that and the Stag Lord fight for PCs to level up to 3rd level—they'll just need to do more wilderness exploration is all.
The original Kingmaker started with the bandit attack on Oleg's trading post, after all, and you can certainly do the same with this one.
Picking up the intro from Owlcat's game does make for a fun setup, for sure, and gives the players a chance to do a classic dungeon crawl at the start, but it's not required for the plot, and what's good for a video game (putting PCs into a heavily scripted set of what are essentially tutorial encounters in the manor before moving on to the meat of the campaign once they head into the Stolen Lands) makes for a potentially awkward intro to the tabletop experience, especially when it comes to balancing those initial encounters for 1st level PCs but then figuring out how a much higher-level NPC and her bodyguards can't just handle that threat on their own.
(Had I started this project from scratch, I likely would have had an author make an entirely new intro that dodged this, but including the Owlcat introduction was something that folks seemed to really want and it was touted during the crowdfunding phase so it was kinda locked in.)
SO... If you fear that your players would have their suspension of disbelief broken by the reasons you cite, then absolutely I'd stick to just the intro feast and the day after "here are your orders" section. Maybe have them face more bandits on the road to drive home the point that the Stolen Lands are dangerous—could even have a mini-adventure in the first small town they enter on the road west where they help a much smaller settlement deal with kobolds or bandits or something.
And Jamandi doesn't just bring in low-level folks. The Iron Wraiths, Drelev, and Varn are all much higher level. They don't stay the night (because then the fight in the night would be solved by them, not the PCs), but they show up the next morning to get their higher-level assignments. The one she gives the PCs is by definition the simplest and safest and easiest job, so if your players are concerned that she's only calling brand new fresh adventurers, take time to point out that they're the exception there, not the norm, and that most of those sent into the Stolen Lands are more experienced. The fact that the PCs eventually end up becoming the "winners" and overtake Varn, Drelev, and the Iron Wraiths is all part of the story.
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If you're looking for alternative openings to Kingmaker here's nine.
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Can we please confirm the type of action that Establish Settlement is. The flavour text in the 'Founding a Village' section, Step 2, refers to Establish Settlement as a Leadership activity. As such there is a delay of one turn between clearing a hex and establishing a settlement which represents the time it takes to clear etc etc.
However the Establish Settlement activity is tagged as a Region activity, not Leadership. The 'Activities Listed by Step' chart also groups the Establish Settlement in with the Region activities.
Thank you.
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Can we please confirm the type of action that Establish Settlement is. The flavour text in the 'Founding a Village' section, Step 2, refers to Establish Settlement as a Leadership activity. As such there is a delay of one turn between clearing a hex and establishing a settlement which represents the time it takes to clear etc etc.
However the Establish Settlement activity is tagged as a Region activity, not Leadership. The 'Activities Listed by Step' chart also groups the Establish Settlement in with the Region activities.
Thank you.
It's a region activity.
Hi There,
Not sure if this is the right spot to post this but I am wondering about how compatible both the Kingdom Management AND Army Building/Fighting subsystems are with D&D 5E?
My understanding is that the 5E Bestiary includes monster and companion conversions but I haven't seen anything that details if these additional systems are, or need to be, converted.
Do any modifications need to me or can they be played as is?
Thanks
Overall the Kingdom Building and Army rules are system agnostic and don't require (much) conversion to work with different systems.
The notable exception is that Structures sometimes give bonuses to either the level of certain magic items that can be found in the Settlement, or to specific skill checks made in the Settlement, and these are 2e specific. There's no official conversion for these bonuses to other systems, but they're minor enough that a GM can either fairly easily convert them or simply ignore them.
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Anyone know why there are two trolls named Kargadd? One in the fort with Hargulka, and one in the Companion Guide. Neither one references the other at all.
