| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the most important thing is to remember to come up with alternate ways to resolve a kingdom event -- if things are getting bad, the characters should have options (possibly painful/tough ones) to resolve it via questing, negotiation, etc -- something active and involved rather than just a single roll or two that ends their kingdom.
It also depends a little on the experience you want. If you want a "typical" Adventure Path that stays more or less main-story focused, you can a) shift to the Kingdom in the Background style of play without any of the Kingdom Building rules, or b) maybe shift to some easier rules (like some of your ideas). The kingdom is less likely to "derail" the story in that case.
However, a lot of people are drawn to kingmaker since it is a sandbox, the main story is a "through-line" but its not a railroad. 'Emergent' stories are a bigger thing here, with a random kingdom event sparking what may become a multiple session side quest arc.
Under that style of play, things should be "hard", the party should be stretched too thin. There should be times you're choosing to focus on something and letting another problem fester. Sometimes this choice will pay off, sometimes it will hurt. Those choices and results are what often creates the memorable stories.
The struggle is finding the balance between "hard" and "impossible". Somewhere between those two is "unfair", at least from the player's perspective. Often the ideal balance point is very, very close to that "unfair" line -- but often because players don't have full information, they don't know how bad the outcome might be and often over-imagine it. And often there is no "right" choice, but they expect there to be and feel its unfair that they can't tell ahead of time. Navigating this comes down to being a proactive GM here -- adding quests, side stories, bargains with strings attached. Have a collection of modules/adventures/3p content that you think might exemplify some of the worse kingdom events that you can draw from to drop into the campaign when needed.
As to all of your more specific questions; I'm generally disinclined to tweak the rules too much before seeing them in actual play. Though I was also considering/starting to research (3) since I'll be running with a 6 player party.
Creative Director
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've been looking over the Kingdom Building Rules, and I've noticed that you start with 6 skills trained total (2 from Government, 4 additional). I assume the intent is that you're expected to take the Skill Training Kingdom feat several times to train additional skills, but since each Event has a specific skill that needs to be rolled in order to resolve it, at higher Control DCs that could result in events that always end badly for the PCs because they're Untrained in the skill. I had some questions about modifications to the Kingdom Skill rules:
1. Has anyone given thought to providing an alternative Kingdom skill for each Event, possibly with a DC adjustment? Do you think that would unbalance the ruleset?
2. What if the PC in the Leadership role making the check has the Untrained Improvisation feat? Would you allow them to apply its benefits to the Kingdom Skill checks using skills the Kingdom is Untrained in?
3. I think the Kingdom Building Rules are written with the expectation you have 4 PCs. If you had more than 4 PCs in leadership roles, would it be unbalancing to allow them to choose additional Trained Kingdom Skills, one for each PC? The same question applies to Investing additional Kingdom Skills beyond the base 4 so every player can choose one.
4. Since Humans have the Skill Training Ancestry feat that allows them to train two skills, would you consider it unbalancing to rework the Skill Training Kingdom feat to allow the party to choose to train two Kingdom Skills when they take it, instead of one?
5. What about allowing Retraining of Kingdom Skills gained through either level-based Skill Increases or through the Skill Training Kingdom feat? While the initial skills can't be retrained, would you allow the players to retrain those skills?
Basically, if the PCs don't invest in additional Kingdom Skills beyond their initial choices, I see a lot of potential for their Kingdom to completely collapse if they have a few bad Event rolls that target skills they haven't invested in being Trained. Given how central the Kingdom is to Kingmaker, if the PCs are actively engaged in running their Kingdom (not Kingdom in the Background), I don't want the Kingdom collapsing to cause the campaign to come to an end, and these are just some ideas I had that might prevent that.
Some great questions! I'll try to answer them as best I can.
1. Providing alternate skills to resolve events is an interesting idea, and I don't think that would unbalance the rules, as long as the alternate skills were selected in a way that they didn't make any one skill too important, or any one leadership role too represented. I tried to spread those out as best I could during development. But don't forget that the PCs themselves can often go personally solve events that are trouble, or can Hire Adventurers to help with continual events, or build specific structures to help shore up lower skills. Adventures that rise organically out of unexpected kingdom events are for sure tougher on the GM, who has to ad-hoc or improvise or build new adventures, but the satisfaction of the PCs in dealing with something like this (an adventure they choose to go on rather than have an NPC send them on) can be refreshing for player agency. There's also a fair amount of activities like Prognostication that gives players more control over Kingdom Events as well—the players will get a LOT of activities, and spending a few of them on things like Prognostication or Creative Solution or the like is not a bad plan.
2. I wouldn't allow this, since Untrained Improvisation affects a character, not a kingdom. But if your group is struggling and this would help, go for it! Be careful about setting on PC up as the always-savior of the kingdom though; you want all the players to be able to feel important, after all.
3. This solution would make your kingdom more powerful and agile in skills, so it would make the kingdom rules easier, yes. But it would also create an optic that the "right" way to play the game is to have as many PCs as possible, which isn't the best solution. Any RPG gets clunky and grinds if you have too many players at the table, or too many characters, becasue the more characters you have in a session, the shorter amount of time each gets in the spotlight to do things during the game (unless you expand your play session length in real time to build in more time for more players). If you want to give your kingdom more skills, I'd suggest instead allowing each player to pick 2 skills but still limit them to 4 characters total.
4. It would unbalance it in the same way as 3, by giving your kingdom more skills than expected, and since a kingdom is more than just humans, it kind of makes it feel like humans are the "Best" at running nations, which some groups will find gross.
5. Retraining kingdom skills is certainly something that could be done without disrupting much at all. I'd say that would be something akin to the New Leadership activity, except instead of a new leader, you're taking the time to refocus your kingdom's role in the world.
And don't forget the BIGGEST rule—as GM, you have ultimate power. If you have a player who's new to the game and builds a character and then at 5th level realizes they don't enjoy the character or that they built them wrong, it's not wrong to let that player replace or rebuild the character for free, especially since as you play the game, you often realize what you wanted to play wasn't what you thought. Same goes for kingdom rules, particularly the first time you build one. If your players realize that they made some bad choices, let them rebuild the kingdom (with the understanding that this is you as the GM making an exception) while using their expanded new knowledge of how the system works to build better.
I tried hard to make the events NOT be anything that will automatically end a Kingdom after one or two bad rolls, but if you find that this happens as a result of a combo of bad rolls (be they skill checks, or simply rolling bad events too many times), then you as the GM should feel free to nix a random event.
And that brings me to my final bit of advice: it sounds like what you're worried about is an unwinnable event working its way into your game. The best way to avoid this is to NOT roll those events randomly, but instead pick and choose them. This has a lot of advantages, and not just by letting you curate the events to things that you feel your players will enjoy being challenged by. If you pick events ahead of time, you can foreshadow them. If you know you've got a Crop Failure event coming up next month, then let the PCs know that they've heard rumors about blights in the fields, or a water shortage, or that they keep finding locusts in their shoes or something so when the event happens it feels like "oh we saw this coming" and not "Well that was out of the blue!"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Question 3 was largely because I expect to have more than 4 players. I noticed in the Companion Guide that certain Companions automatically Invest certain Leadership roles if they are placed in those roles. Since that would seem to imply that more than 4 roles being invested is not unbalancing, I was wondering if allowing each player to Invest their chosen role would be unbalancing to avoid one or two players feeling like their character(s) is(are) less important than the others. I don't anticipate using the Companion Guide due to the number of players I expect I'll have, so that wouldn't be a factor.
The only benefit Investing a Role gives is the bonus on checks related to the Role's key ability, and that bonus doesn't stack with itself, so there's very little value in having more than four Roles Invested as at least one Role will be providing no benefit. If the PCs' chosen Roles don't give a bonus to all four abilities starting out, they can use the New Leadership Kingdom Activity on their very first Kingdom Turn without needing to change any Roles and, as long as they don't get a Critical Failure on the check, reselect which Roles are Invested to give a bonus to all four abilities. As such, if you have more than four PCs it wouldn't be unbalanced to allow all of them to be Invested in their roles because it doesn't really do anything and it's already trivial to get the bonus to all attributes.
Kingdom Events are given a bonus based off if a PC is in the role, not if the role is Invested:
Leader PC leaders are particularly helpful in resolving events. If the leadership role listed here is occupied by a PC who is not incurring a vacancy penalty, the check made to determine the event’s outcome gains a +1 circumstance bonus; this bonus increases to +2 once a kingdom reaches 9th level, and to +3 at 15th level. (The General leadership role never appears in this context, as the General focuses their specific influence on Warfare related activities; see Appendix 3.)
So having more than 4 PCs in Leadership Roles absolutely does give a benefit without houseruling.
You can't build farms until your Kingdom reaches Level 3 and you can expand the capital into a town (exerting influence), so I actually don't think Agriculture is mandatory at the start. However, at level 1, you will want to train one of Agriculture, Boating, or Wilderness to improve your chances of gathering the necessary Food Commodities to pay for your first settlement's Consumption. You have to spend 1 Region activity each Kingdom turn doing that, or use Purchase Commodities as a Leadership Activity to buy Food via Trade. You'll need to do that activity for other commodities as well, like Lumber, since you don't have a way of generating your own yet.
There's nothing stopping you from building Farmland Hexes before Kingdom level 3, building them just doesn't give any benefits until then. And given the lower DCs at lower levels, if you have Settlements that you know you'll be investing in heavily (like the Capital) building sufficient Farmland for them well before it's needed might be smart to do rather than dealing with the investment needed at higher levels.
Of the three skills that offer actions that produce Food though, I'd probably rank them Agriculture > Wilderness > Boating. Boating looks to be pretty much the least useful Kingdom Skill overall since it's never used for a Kingdom Event (or story event), all of the Kingdom Activities it can be used for (generating Food, Establish Trade Agreement, and Rest & Relax) can also be done with other skills that are already needed for other things, and it's only needed for two Structures (Pier and Waterfront).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's nothing stopping you from building Farmland Hexes before Kingdom level 3, building them just doesn't give any benefits until then.I don't think this is true, since once of the prerequisites is "the hex is in the influence of one of your settlements" and your influence is still 0. Would love to be wrong about this!
I completely overlooked that bit.
Personally, I think that's kind of a dumb rule so I'm going to ignore it in my own games. Just like how I think it's kind of dumb that Villages have 0 Influence and thus there's no real way to offset their Consumption without a Kingdom needing to spend at least one of their three Region Activities nearly every turn to generate Food for them, so I'm going to let Villages Influence a single Hex (not all adjacent Hexes, just one) so they can actually be self-sufficient from a Food standpoint.
there's no real way to offset their Consumption without a Kingdom needing to spend at least one of their three Region Activities nearly every turn to generate Food for them,You can also use one of your Leadership Activities to purchase Food Commodities, and given that I’ve found it difficult to use all 12 available activities every turn, it’s not a terrible option. Given how useful the Trade skill is, it usually goes well.
So if you have 5 PCs in a leadership role, that's 15 leadership activities they can take in a turn?
Can someone help me understand the following regarding Max Item Bonuses:
"Normally, item bonuses do not stack, but if you build multiple structures of the same type in the same settlement, their item bonuses stack up to this limit." And then I reference the Settlement Types table and see that there is a column for Max Item Bonuses.
What does that mean? Does that mean that if I build three Breweries in a settlement, which a single Brewery grants a +1 item bonus to Establish Trade Agreements, that they all stack to make it a +3 item bonus to that activity since all the +1 items bonus' of the same type stack?
I also don't understand what 'stack up to this limit' means.
Also, what if you build the same building in different settlements - do their bonuses not stack?
If that's true, what is the benefit of building more than one settlement?
Can someone help me understand the following regarding Max Item Bonuses:
"Normally, item bonuses do not stack, but if you build multiple structures of the same type in the same settlement, their item bonuses stack up to this limit." And then I reference the Settlement Types table and see that there is a column for Max Item Bonuses.
What does that mean? Does that mean that if I build three Breweries in a settlement, which a single Brewery grants a +1 item bonus to Establish Trade Agreements, that they all stack to make it a +3 item bonus to that activity since all the +1 items bonus' of the same type stack?
I also don't understand what 'stack up to this limit' means.
Also, what if you build the same building in different settlements - do their bonuses not stack?
If that's true, what is the benefit of building more than one settlement?
It means what it says - item bonuses from multiples of the same structure in a Settlement stack up to that limit. The normal stacking rules otherwise apply, so multiple different Structures that give the same item bonuses don't stack.
As an example:
If your Kingdom is level 15 and you have a City (max item bonus +2) with a Festival Hall (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in it, that Settlement gives you a +1 to Celebrate Holiday checks.
If you build a second Festival Hall in that City the +1 bonus stacks, becoming a +2 bonus. If you then built a third Festival Hall in that City you don't get an item bonus from it, because the maximum item bonus you can get from identical structures in a City is +2 ("stacks up to this limit").
If instead of building an additional Festival Hall you instead built a Shrine (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, your Celebrate Holiday bonus remains a +1 because you have two different Structures giving a bonus to Celebrate Holiday and their bonuses don't stack.
If you built a Cathedral (+3 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, you get a +3 on Celebrate Holiday checks even though a City's "Max. Item Bonus" is a +2 because you're not stacking the bonus from identical Structures, you're taking the bonus from a single Structure.
If you have a City with two Festival Halls and you build a third in any other Settlement in your Kingdom the bonus doesn't stack.
However, per pg. 542, item bonuses from Structures in Settlements, other than your capital, only apply to hexes in that Settlement's area of Influence while Structures in your capital apply their item bonuses to all hexes in your Kingdom. While it's unclear how this works for checks that never apply to a specific Settlement or hex inside the Kingdom, an example of how it does apply is that if you had a non-capital Settlement with a Foundry (+1 to Establish Work Site (Mine)) in it you would only get that bonus on Establish Work Site (Mine) checks made on hexes within that Settlement's Influence, while if you tried to establish a mine outside of that Settlement's Influence you wouldn't get the bonus. If you have two non-capital Settlements with a Foundry each grants a +1 bonus on Establish Work Site (Mine) with their respective areas of Influence.
Since a Settlement's maximum size is determined based off Kingdom level, it's generally not possible to gain all the possible item bonuses you'll want on Kingdom Activities just from Structures in your capital and so you'll want/need to create additional Settlements to gain those bonuses. An example on this would be to build a Settlement bordering several forest hexes, building a Lumberyard in that Settlement, and then using the bonus the Lumberyard grants to (slightly) more easily Establish Work Site (lumber camp) in the adjoining forest hexes.
It means what it says - item bonuses from multiples of the same structure in a Settlement stack up to that limit. The normal stacking rules otherwise apply, so multiple different Structures that give the same item bonuses don't stack.
As an example:
If your Kingdom is level 15 and you have a City (max item bonus +2) with a Festival Hall (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in it, that Settlement gives you a +1 to Celebrate Holiday checks.
If you build a second Festival Hall in that City the +1 bonus stacks, becoming a +2 bonus. If you then built a third Festival Hall in that City you don't get an item bonus from it, because the maximum item bonus you can get from identical structures in a City is +2 ("stacks up to this limit").
If instead of building an additional Festival Hall you instead built a Shrine (+1 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, your Celebrate Holiday bonus remains a +1 because you have two different Structures giving a bonus to Celebrate Holiday and their bonuses don't stack.
If you built a Cathedral (+3 Celebrate Holiday) in that City, you get a +3 on Celebrate Holiday checks even though a City's "Max. Item Bonus" is a +2...
So basically a village and a town can never have two buildings that stack item bonuses because their max item bonus is only +1?
So basically a village and a town can never have two buildings that stack item bonuses because their max item bonus is only +1?
Correct. You can still put a single +2 or +3 Structure in a Village or Town and get the full bonus, but putting two identical Structures does nothing because the stacking caps at +1.
