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Major Problem #1: The Math for non-invested skills breaks down at higher levels:
Problem Analysis #1:
The Kingmaker 2e Kingdom Building Rules might be intended to be system agnostic but the math is just Pathfinder 2e Math. The Kingdom Control DC chart exactly matches the Pathfinder 2e DC by level chart from level 5 on. From 1-4 the Kingdom Control DC is just a tad easier to help out new Kingdoms. The math for a highly invested Kingdom Skill on a Kingdom’s highest ability score works fine at all levels and matches that of a similarly invested skill of a regular Pathfinder 2e character.
The problem here is that the math breaks down for non-invested skills compared to a regular Pathfinder 2e character. A regular Pathfinder 2e character has a significantly higher chance of success on something they’re only Trained or Expert in than a Kingdom does. In addition to that, a regular Pathfinder 2e character has the rest of the party to rely on. A Wizard doesn’t have to make Thievery roll at all if there’s a Rogue in the party. A Kingdom may be intended to feel like an extra PC in the party, but there’s only 1 Kingdom, it can’t rely on anyone else. Furthermore, while a regular Pathfinder 2e character has Attacks, AC, and Saves in addition to Skills, a Kingdom does EVERYTHING with skills. It will be rolling a lot more skill checks for skills it hasn’t invested in than a regular Pathfinder 2e character ever will. If your group is ok with failing and critically failing significantly more often on Kingdom Skill checks compared to regular PC checks, you can ignore this problem. The system is obviously designed to work like regular Pathfinder 2e though so we believe the math should match.
Before we get into our solutions let’s look at exactly where the math breaks down. In Pathfinder 2e the bonus to a roll is made of the following bonuses/penalties: Proficiency, Ability Modifier, Item Bonus, Circumstance Bonus, and Status Bonus. The Kingdom Building Rules also add a Size Penalty based on the number of hexes the Kingdom controls. To understand why a Kingdom lags behind a regular PF2e character we need to look at each section individually.
Proficiency:
A kingdom gains proficiency in its skills at the same levels as a regular Pathfinder 2e character. A Kingdom's proficiency bonus on a skill the Kingdom has invested in will be the same as a regular Pathfinder 2e character. The problem here is with skills that haven't been raised beyond Trained. Both a Kingdom and a regular Pathfinder 2e character will usually pick a few skills and raise those skills and leave the rest trained or even untrained. As mentioned above, for a regular Pathfinder 2e character this isn't much of a problem because they don't have to cover every skill, they're part of a party. The vast majority of skills checks only need one PC in the party to be able to handle it. A Kingdom doesn't have a party, it has to do everything itself. A Kingdom will be making far more trained only skills checks than a regular character would and thus fail checks a lot more often.
Ability Modifiers:
A regular character has 6 ability scores, gets 9 boosts (net) at creation, and 4 boosts every 5 levels. A kingdom by RAW has 4 ability scores, gets 7 boosts (net) at creation, and 2 boosts every 5 levels. While these look similar overall, a Kingdom has to care about all 4 of its ability scores while regular characters only really care about 4-5 of theirs. In practice, a regular character has far more boosts for the abilities they care about than a kingdom does. In addition, kingdoms can't get Apex items. All told this averages out to a Kingdom being roughly at a -2 to ability modifiers compared to a regular character
Item Bonus:
Item Bonuses can be gotten at roughly the same levels for a Kingdom and regular characters. Item bonuses for regular characters are controlled by their equipment so availability is up to the GM. Item Bonuses for Kingdoms are strange though. If you can build a structure that gives an Item Bonus to a particular roll then it's very easy to get a maxed Item Bonus. If you can't, then you can't get an Item Bonus at all. The majority of Kingdom skill activities do have Structures that give item bonuses so we'll call this one even. I’v added a section below regarding the Kingdom Skill Activities that don’t have existing Structures to grant them an grant Item Bonus.
Circumstance Bonus:
Circumstance bonuses are, well, circumstantial. Kingdoms actually have a lot of ways to get circumstance bonuses on various rolls but so do regular characters in a well built party. This one is a wash.
Status Bonus:
Status Bonuses are hard to come by for most rolls for regular PCs. Kingdoms get an automatic Status Bonus with Invested Leadership but in practice this just serves to help mitigate the Kingdom Size penalty to DC.
Kingdom Size Penalty:
In practice this is mostly mitigated by Status Bonuses from Invested Leadership. It averages out to a +1 higher needed on rolls for the Kingdom overall.
Let’s do an example with numbers:
(Math Comparison for Skills left at trained only, assuming a 12 ability to start)
Level 5:
Regular Skills: DC20
Skill Bonus +9 (+7 Proficiency (+5 Level, +2 Trained), +1 Ability, +1 Item)
Roll needed: 11
Kingdom Skills: DC 21 (assuming 1 Size penalty at this point)
Skill Bonus +10 (+7 Proficiency (+5 Level, +2 Trained), +1 Ability, +1 Item, +1 Status)
Roll needed: 11
Level 10:
Regular Skills: DC 27
Skill Bonus +16 (+12 Proficiency (+10 Level, +2 Trained), +3 Ability, +1 Item)
Roll needed: 11
Kingdom Skills: DC 30 (Yes, you'll likely have 50 hexes by now for a +3 Size Penalty)
Skill Bonus +17 (+12 Proficiency (+10 Level, +2 Trained), +2 Ability, +1 Item, +2 Status)
Roll needed: 13
Level 15:
Regular Skills: DC 34
Skill Bonus +23 (+17 Proficiency (+15 Level, +2 Trained), +4 Ability, +2 Item)
Roll needed: 11
Kingdom Skills: DC 38 (34 +4 Size Penalty)
Skill Bonus +24 (+17 Proficiency (+15 Level, +2 Trained), +3 Ability, +2 Item, +2 Status)
Roll needed: 14
At this point a kingdom skill that's only trained is 3 behind a similar trained only skill on a regular Pathfinder 2e character.
In Pathfinder 2e math, a -15% Success rate on rolls is quite significant. Also remember that a Kingdom will need to roll Trained only checks far more than a regular character.
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Solution 1: More Trained Skills and Skill Increases
The Kingdom Building rules are obviously meant to have the Kingdom feel like its own PC. Choosing a Charter, Heartland, and Government, feels like picking Ancestry and Background. When we thought about this though we realized there’s no equivalent to Class. That’s because a Kingdom uses Skills for everything. EVERY Kingdom is a skill monkey Class. To that end, that means it should feel like one as you level. Borrowing from Pathfinder 2e high skill classes (Rogue and Investigator), this means more trained skills to start and a skill increase every level.
More Trained Skills makes the Kingdom feel more like a Skill user. It also allows a Kingdom to utilize some Leadership Skill Activities they would be otherwise Untrained in. In addition it will allow Kingdoms to build more Structures that require Trained in a skill early on which helps with initial Kingdom Growth. We chose 4 as the number of extra trained skills to match your average Rogue/Investigator build. This gives the Kingdom 10 Trained skills to start. For the additional Trained Skills we wanted to tie it to Kingdom Creation Choices so we’ve added Skills to Charter and Heartland. We tried to make the granted skills from Charter thematic to the Ability Boosts the Charter grants. If you were already trained in a skill granted by your Charter or Homeland choice, you instead become trained in another skill of your choice.
Skill Increases every level allows a Kingdom to invest in more skills over all. This significantly reduces the amount of Trained only checks a Kingdom will have to make. It also allows a Kingdom to unlock more Structures that require Expert or Master in a skill. While it would be ok to not have some Structures be unlocked in a system that would be used multiple times, a group is likely to go through Kingmaker only once. We believe that all content (in this case Structures) should be available within a single playthrough of Kingmaker. Extra Skill increases allows this if a group wants to but doesn’t require the group to spend their Skill Increases this way. Finally, Extra Skill Increases makes gaining a Kingdom level more exciting. There’s some even levels where all you get when you level is a Kingdom Feat which is not really very exciting at all (more on Kingdom feats later).
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Solution 2: Untrained Improvisation
While more trained Skills will certainly reduce the number of Untrained checks a Kingdom will have to make, due to Kingdom Events it will never eliminate the need entirely. We believe a Kingdom should always have at least a small chance at an Untrained check. To that effect we once again borrowed from regular Pathfinder 2e and gave the Kingdom Untrained Improvisation, starting at 2nd Level:
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Solution 3: More Ability Score Increases:
We were surprised to find that it was actually Ability Scores where the Kingdom lags behind a regular PC the most. The simplest solution then is to give the Kingdom more Ability Boosts. A regular character gets 4 free boosts at creation and every 5 levels. Regular characters usually have at least 1 ability score they don't really care about such as a Wizard’s Strength. Thus 4 boosts allows them to boost the vast majority, but not quite all, of the ability scores they care about. A kingdom gets 2 free boosts at creation and every 5 levels. A kingdom must care about all 4 ability scores. Thus it only gets to boost 1/2 of the ability scores it cares about. Our simple solution is to increase the number of free Ability Boosts a Kingdom receives at creation and every 5 levels from 2 to 3.
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Solution 4: Missing Item Bonuses:
The majority of Kingdom Skill Activities have existing Structures that give them an item Bonus but not all of them do. In addition some have Item Bonuses that are only available at high levels. Since Pathfinder 2e Math assumes Item Bonuses we’ve created the below to fill in gaps. Please note that since we want to keep easy integration with Tomeric’s Kingdom Building Spreadsheet we did NOT create any new Structures. If you’re not using the Spreadsheet we’d recommend creating new Structures to fill in these gaps instead.
Add the following Item Bonuses to Structures:
Bank +1 Item Bonus to Capital Investment and Collect Taxes
Castle +2 Item Bonus to Manage Trade Agreements and Relocate Capital
Construction Yard +1 Item Bonus to Build Roads and Irrigation
Festival Hall +1 Item Bonus to Quell Unrest (Arts)
Garrison +1 Item Bonus to Fortify Hex
Granary +1 Item Bonus to Establish Farmland, Granary now requires Agriculture (Trained)
Inn +1 Item Bonus to Clear Hex (Exploration)
Library +1 Item Bonus to Creative Solution
Magic Shop +1 Item Bonus to Prognostication
Monument +1 Item Bonus to Create A Masterpiece
Occult Shop +2 Item Bonus to Supernatural Solution
Palace +3 Item Bonus to Manage Trade Agreements and Relocate Capital
Smithy +1 Item Bonus to Clear Hex (Engineering)
Tavern, Dive +1 Item Bonus to Clear Hex (Exploration)
Tavern, Luxury +2 Item Bonus to Reconnoiter Hex*
Tavern, Popular +1 Item Bonus to Reconnoiter Hex*
Tavern, World-Class +3 Item Bonus to Reconnoiter Hex*
Town Hall: +1 Item Bonus to Manage Trade Agreements
*New Kingdom Skill Activity we created.
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Solution 5: Allow Item Bonuses From Different Structures to Stack
Normally Item Bonuses to a specific Kingdom Skill Activity only stack for multiple of the same Structure. This seems arbitrary and unnecessary. Change “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.” to “Normally, item bonuses do not stack, but if you build multiple structures that grant an Item Bonus to a specific Kingdom Skill Activity, their item bonuses stack up to this limit.”
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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Losing a few resource dice worth of RP at high levels won't even really feel like much of a drawback.
Your change will make things feel MUCH easier.
As it is the Status Bonus already offsets all but 1 point (on average) of the Control DC increase.
If you use your idea I wouldn't give more ability/skill increases.
Losing a few resource dice worth of RP at high levels won't even really feel like much of a drawback.
Your change will make things feel MUCH easier.
As it is the Status Bonus already offsets all but 1 point (on average) of the Control DC increase.
If you use your idea I wouldn't give more ability/skill increases.
After I read your math post, I figured this would be easier than adjusting all the Control DCs by level to accomplish my goal of making kingdom building feel easier while still having some feel of a larger kingdom having some kind of cost.
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Oh it's definitely easier than adjusting all the Control DCs manually!
Removing the Kingdom Size DC penalty is a +1-4 depending on Kingdom size.
Since the rest of the math only resulted in roughly a -2 for the kingdom your group will actually wind up +1-2 ahead of regular PF2e math.
But you've indicated you don't mind if Kingdom rolls are easier so that should leave you in a good place.
I definitely wouldn't give more Ability Boosts then.
You could probably do a few more skill increases without things feeling too easy if you wanted.
If you like that solution then it'll probably work for your group!
I was thinking of giving skill boosts with the feats, but I like to do things slowly to see if my current fix handles everything I need.