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Hello everyone!
Kingmaker 2e is a massive tome and it took herculean effort to produce, most of it the work of one man, James Jacobs. So before anything else I want to give my heartfelt thanks to Paizo and James Jacobs for giving us this wonderful campaign!
The Kingmaker 2e Kingdom Building Rules, however, need some work. Paizo has admitted that there simply wasn’t the time or resources to playtest. The basic chassis of the system is sound but there are some issues that aren’t obvious without testing. Kerenshara and I have been testing these rules for months, doing simulations of kingdom building, including one sim to double digit levels.
We've created a Google DOC with all of the problems we've found, along with our solutions and reasoning.
You can find that doc here: Problem Analyis
We've also created a shorter doc with just our Rules Changes, you can find that here:Rules Changes
This post will server as a general thread to keep track of things, I'll also post threads for each major problem individually.
Major Problems:
Major Problem #1: The Math for non-invested skills breaks down at higher levels.
Major Problem #2: Insufficient Number of Useful Leadership Activities.
Major Problem #3: Most Kingdom Feats don’t work as written.
Major Problem #4: Kingdom XP is insufficient for proper progression.
Major Problem #5: Low Level Urban Grid Restrictions on the Capital.
In addition to the Major Problems we've found a few other areas where the rules needed clarification.
Please let me know your thoughts!
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On the subject of Farmland at levels 1 and 2...Because Influence is used for more than just deciding where one can build Farmland, I decided to amend farms instead of Influence. I was specifically going for a more historical, more realistic feel, by saying that farms must be *either* within a settlement's Influence radius, *or* else be adjacent to a settlement. This way, *every* village can be the hub for a new cluster of farms (just like in our own real world history).
That's a reasonable solution too.
On the subject of filling up one's capital too soon...I like the idea of allowing the capital to expand from a village into a town before level 3. I'm not too sure about allowing more than that. Your idea of letting the capital exceed (by one size) all growth restrictions -- i.e. by letting it become a city (and even worse a metropolis) early -- that seems a bit too much, too soon to me.
Instead of one Size early, how about a number of levels early? That is, allowing expansion into a Town at level 1 is "two levels early" (from 3rd level down to 1st level). Similarly, we could allow the capital to expand into a City at level 7 (instead of 9), and again into a Metropolis at level 13 (instead of 15).
Even with that change you'll wind up with a lot of turns where all the Capital's lots are full but you can't expand. The Capital can fill 16 lots long before Level 7.
With our changes a Kingdom will reach level 4 in roughly a year (12 turns) and then level every 6 months or so after that. So that'd be somewhere around 30 turns to level 7. Even if you fail a few structure builds that's easily a whole Year between when the Capital fills 16 lots and it reaches Level 7.
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On the issue of the math behind the skills and bonuses...
Can we not simply rename the bonus from Invested Leadership? If I call that bonus a "leadership bonus" it now has a unique category, one that will not overlap any other needed category of bonus.
Thanks,
Franklin
Assuming this is in regards to the Status Bonus from Kingdom Feats.
You could do that but the results are the same either way.
I'd rather borrow language that already exists in PF2e than invent a whole new type of Bonus.
I might use the skill up every level idea. The Control DC is set way too high. Or I might lower the Control DC or set it differently for different activities. I don't want everything easy, but the skill ups are way too slow.
I'm not terribly sure I care if I trivialize the kingdom building. I think the difficulty of some of this is absurd like having to be trained to a certain skill level to build buildings when you should be able to hire experts. The old system was enjoyable and not particularly difficult. I know James wanted to use the new PF2 math model for this system and he was working alone, but I don't believe it will harm my players' fun if the kingdom building is trivial. You can play this entire AP with the Kingdom in the background. I'm not sure players feel any more satisfied with kingdom building with difficulty levels so high.
And as you stated, Unrest makes a hard roll even more difficult. If you lower the DC, you can play with Unrest more without making the players feel desperate or disheartened from a series of bad rolls really hurting their kingdom.
I do want the Warfare between armies to be compelling and at least a little difficult. But the kingdom building itself, especially activities like Claim Hex I don't think should be too hard.
I'll see how it goes. I may set more of a DC list based on activity than a generic Control DC for the entire kingdom making easy activities like claiming an unoccupied Hex or creating a farmland after you've done it a dozen or more times.
I may have the Control DC primarily apply to events, so the kingdom can build unrest and not affect simple activities.
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What works for every table will be different.
Heck my own group wants to use Automatic leveling for the Kingdom!
There's going to be a lot of groups that will want to do Kingdom Building outside of Face to Face sessions and likely plenty that just use Kingdom in the background.
Our goal was simply to fix things enough so groups who do want to use the system as closely to written as possible can do so.
The Control DC is just using PF2e math though. The Size Bonus raises it but the Status bonuses a Kingdom gets makes it so you only need to roll 1 higher on the die compared to regular PF2e.
We think it's more fun to give the Kingdom more bonuses rather than change the Control DC.
If you do go with different DCs though let us know your DC chart!
I know James Jacobs checks out these forums. Would love to know what he thinks of these changes.
I'm going to do the following rule change:
Kingdom Maintenance Cost will replace Control DC Modifier for Size: As a kingdom increases in Size, it grows more difficult and costlier to maintain. Roll a number of resource dice equal to the Control DC modifier and subtract that from your resource point total to pay for maintenance of infrastructure, farmland, work sites, and the like. If you cannot afford to pay the resource point cost of maintenance, your Unrest increases by 1 and one of your Ruins randomly determined increases by 1.
This should reduce the Control DC by quite a bit and still provide a sense of a larger kingdom being more costly to maintain. With a reduced Control DC, you can play with Unrest more without making the players feel a sense of hopelessness on the Kingdom rolls.
My players were really feeling the high DC checks making them feel like even claiming a Hex was a frustratingly difficult task due to a high DC and RNG.
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Is the Control DC Modifier just equal to the Size Modifier?
If so that would be losing at most 4 Resource Dice. At higher levels that's barely even a downside, you won't notice it at all.
Still I recommend you post the above in the thread specifically about the Math/High DCs.
That way anyone else who encounters the issue will be sure to see your ideas alongside ours.
Is the Control DC Modifier just equal to the Size Modifier?
If so that would be losing at most 4 Resource Dice. At higher levels that's barely even a downside, you won't notice it at all.Still I recommend you post the above in the thread specifically about the Math/High DCs.
That way anyone else who encounters the issue will be sure to see your ideas alongside ours.
Yes. They will roll that number of resource dice, total them, subtract the points from their resource point roll.
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Reconnoiter Hex doesn't require you to pre-plan anything nor does it take away exploration.
The party is still free to explore hexes under the Hexploration system if they want to. Reconnoiter Hex just means there is a way to reconnoiter under the Kingdom building rules. Nothing forces the group to use it.
Personally I don't like the idea that at higher levels the Rulers of the Kingdom have to go out and explore hex # 127 themselves.
As for encounters, if the Hex doesn't already have one you can just roll for a Random Encounter when they choose to use reconnoiter Hex if you want to. When it comes to encounters it's no different than the party exploring a hex themselves.
Regarding your Research Building Action what do Blueprints do in this case?
One of the minor problems you mention in the document is that the system doesn't really provide any incentive to build additional settlements.
In the document you suggest that RP reasons might suffice to justify building further settlements. But for those who would like there to be a mechanical benefit as well, what options for introducing such an incentive have you considered?
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We didn't consider any for our basic rules as we wanted to add as little as possible.
For future expansion we're considering having more settlements reduce the effective size of the Kingdom for Size Penalty to DC.
(reducing the Kingdom size based on some formula related to Hexes that are in a settlement's Influence)
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Love to hear about your experiences!
I honestly suspect things would still be too easy even without our skill increases.
The difference is with the base rules People will always use Skill Increases on the Skills that matter the most, leaving no room for increases to something like Folklore, even if the Kingdom wants to go in that direction.
I completely agree that even with the RAW rules unrest and ruin doesn't happen enough.
The homebrew rules we're working on will help with the action issues.
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No worries on tangents lol.
Our goal was always to make the rules work as best we could.
I agree they're not all that fun to begin with.
We're working on a set of homebrew modifications that so far look like they'll make things better.
Anyone who wants to help out is welcome to DM me for Discord information.
Vance and Kerenshara - your work is great!
My PCs have just been handed their charter at the start of Chapter 4 and will be creating their kingdom next week.
I'll be using your suggested changes.
A few questions:
- 1. Have you created a consolidated document that includes your changes as well as the other rules that have not been changed? I.e. an all-in-one resource to run Kingdom Building as per your changes?
- 2. Do you have a document of your additional homebrew designs that you are willing to share?
Thanks again for your work. I'm actually looking forward to the kingdom building now!
New question regarding the new activity Reconnoiter Hex - is this meant to be a Leadership Activity? Or Region Activity?
Seems better served as a Leadership Activity as Region Activities are already packed with too many good options (or almost mandatory ones like Claim Hex). If's it's a Region Activity, I don't really seen it being used, which is unfortunate as I love the idea of it.
Cool. I'm looking at using these, too. We won't be starting till after we finish Season of Ghosts (painfully slow), but I intend to spend a ton of time on this up front.