Kingdom Rules

[emky]

Is it me, or are the Kingdom rules just... useless? Even basically playing with it on a scratch pad makes it obvious how off they are. And then I see threads about the feats all being broken, and others agreeing with how math gets out of whack.

I'm playing this AP, the Kingmaker 2e revision, but with PF1e for all the characters/combat/normal Pathfinder play. I decided to go with the Kingmaker 2e rules since it was one less thing for me to convert and I thought, "well, they'll have improved it, right?" -- having heard about some or problems the 1e version had and liking the expanded events list.

But my players are already boring of it. The kingdom is still level 1 after 2 sessions. They're maybe half-way to 2nd level, and most of that is only because I moved Grigori to a 1st level encounter (and considerably dropped his DCs -- not that even a 4th level kingdom has a reasonable chance of winning the DC 22 trial [minimum it can be dropped to by the rules, itself a huge endeavor] when you're going to have about a +8 to the check if you're lucky and have one of the relevant skills for that trial. (Extraordinary unlikely to have boosted one of those to Expert by 4th level).

The town can't grow beyond the first 4-squares until kingdom level 3. Which is forever away.

Adventuring doesn't really give kingdom XP enough to make up for it. But even if it did, it's just making it so in the future they'd have to sit back and wait for the kingdom to catch up.

Kingdom XP sources are basically non-existent (1000 XP to level up; 10 XP per turn claiming a hex -- they'll sooner have claimed every hex on the map than having leveled up much) and 30 XP per event (50% chance a turn). They're basically out of things they can spend RP on for any benefit at this point, so let's assume that all goes into XP too so about 10+15+16 (that's +1 hex, 50% event -- sometimes it goes longer, but then there are a couple hexploration ones that give it, and 4d6 RP, plus 4 from sold commodities every turn, minus a couple from incidental expense)... so about 41 XP a turn.

That's TWENTY FIVE turns to level up. There are a couple trickles of XP from "firsts", but they're effectively inconsequential, especially in the grand scale of things. EDIT: We get about 5 turns in per session, in between actually playing Pathfinder, RPing the events ever so little, and how much overhead there is for this.

The math of DCs going up while your ability to do things don't really go up much. Other threads fix this by throwing away kingdom checks and having PCs and NPCs count as having the skill. You *need* most of the skills too, since untrained checks are total wastes. Even at 1st level.

What should I do? Doing the "Kingdom Building" was part of why we wanted to play Kingmaker. But it's extraordinarily badly done, from the XP/leveling, the skill limitations, to the DCs, and the town development too. And it's a bore since it's not involving the characters (let alone the players except the one who's managing the constant erase-rewrite).

Do I read, learn, and convert to the 1e rules (and convert the 2e AP stuff to appropriate... so much conversion already! Any fixes to the 1e rules somewhere?) Is there enough of a fix to stick with these somewhere? Anyone else annoyed that no only were they not playtested, but they weren't even "napkin math" tested?

[Goblin Slayer in Brevoy]

"The town can't grow beyond the first 4-squares until kingdom level 3. Which is forever away."

Break free of all limits, is what a chaotic would say.

[demlin]

Here you go https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43r3b?Vance-and-Kerensharas-Comprehensive

The things you are complaining about have been talked to death already.

We're at the cult of the bloom right now and our kingdom is level 6. Skills becoming useless because they aren't trained so far has not been an issue because of Creative/Supernatural Solution.

The homebrew document above fixes the XP issues

[emky]

Thank you for the replies. The Vance list, somehow I had missed before, seems to cover most of it and seems to be well-baked. The only thing it doesn't cover is player role/stat importance (but that wasn't a goal of it).

[gmflash]

I've found the Vance and Kerensharas errata a necessity but doesn't go far enough for my group. We got burned out trying to run it after kingdom level 3. Way too many rolls and too many things for players to keep track of.

So I went ahead an rolled my own rules using the 1E kingdom rules as a starting point. The result is something that plays a lot like Terraforming Mars, each turn the players bid on Tasks to take on and spend kingdom resources to complete them. So far my group is fully on board for the switch. Takes way less time than the original rules and they find it less boring. I've been balancing my system to make sure the math adds up for a 100 turn game (works fine for 30 turns but I'm still tweaking the numbers).

I'm doing internal playtesting and getting them ready for a release later this summer. I'd definitely appreciate some additional play testers to make sure I'm not building something that is overly specific to my gaming group. Based upon your earlier post this might be more up your groups alley than the existing ruleset. Send me a private message if you are interested in playtesting.

I can also respond in thread if people have questions about my ruleset.

[Deriven Firelion]

Yeah. Kingdom Building rules are not good this time around. I'd say play around with some rule modifications until you figure out something that makes your players want to do it.

No personal benefit worth having. Too much rolling for things that should be a no brainer like claiming a hex.

I heard the rules were written just by James and he didn't get a chance to playtest them much. I've modified them accordingly and run the kingdom in the background.

I cannot recall what was different last time. I remember there was more of a benefit for kingdom building in the game than this time around. Players are driven by personal benefit. If it's not there, they'd rather have kingdom in the background.

[Chris_Fougere]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Yeah. Kingdom Building rules are not good this time around. I'd say play around with some rule modifications until you figure out something that makes your players want to do it.

No personal benefit worth having. Too much rolling for things that should be a no brainer like claiming a hex.

I heard the rules were written just by James and he didn't get a chance to playtest them much. I've modified them accordingly and run the kingdom in the background.

I cannot recall what was different last time. I remember there was more of a benefit for kingdom building in the game than this time around. Players are driven by personal benefit. If it's not there, they'd rather have kingdom in the background.

Depends on the playgroup. My players are driven by the fact that the kingdom is theirs. They take it personal when something bad happens because they are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of the citizens.

We found in play that the changes that really mattered for our game were
1. Increased XP for RP (on a sliding scale)
2. Increase XP for claiming a hex.
3. Event XP based on event level like it's an encounter.
4. Rogue like skill progression (every level)
5. Add Kingdom level to untrained skills.

This gives us an average kingdom progression of a level each season if the players really push and don't suffer any setbacks, which is a good pace for us.

[VanceMadrox]

Glad to hear you've found a pace that works for you. I think all 5 of your changes were in our suggestions :-)

[Chris_Fougere]

VanceMadrox wrote:

Glad to hear you've found a pace that works for you. I think all 5 of your changes were in our suggestions :-)

Absolutely were :) The work you folks did was amazing in bringing the Kingdom rules up to a far more workable format.

[emky]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I cannot recall what was different last time. I remember there was more of a benefit for kingdom building in the game than this time around. Players are driven by personal benefit. If it's not there, they'd rather have kingdom in the background.

Indeed. I really don't understand why the 2e Kingdom rules are so completely non-interactive with the player characters. If it needed to another "character", they should have gone all in on it: The kingdom is exactly a full normal character sheet and subject to only the rules necessary to change it (its own set class and feats... but the same normal attributes and skills list, "aid another" rules, etc). Or something, even a reason for appropriate characters when filling leadership roles rather than just "put anyone anywhere so they're filled up".

[emky]

gmflash wrote:

I can also respond in thread if people have questions about my ruleset.

I'd gladly look at it and let you know if we use it, but this currently group sadly is only meeting once a month so it'll be a LONG TIME.

[Deriven Firelion]

emky wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I cannot recall what was different last time. I remember there was more of a benefit for kingdom building in the game than this time around. Players are driven by personal benefit. If it's not there, they'd rather have kingdom in the background.

Indeed. I really don't understand why the 2e Kingdom rules are so completely non-interactive with the player characters. If it needed to another "character", they should have gone all in on it: The kingdom is exactly a full normal character sheet and subject to only the rules necessary to change it (its own set class and feats... but the same normal attributes and skills list, "aid another" rules, etc). Or something, even a reason for appropriate characters when filling leadership roles rather than just "put anyone anywhere so they're filled up".

Do you remember what they did in the first one to make it more fun?

Off the top of my head, I remember a lot less rolling. That really made the player who likes doing this stuff unhappy was all the dang rolling. Each kingdom round was dozens of rolls for nearly every action from claiming a hex to building a structure to resolving an event to rolling for resource points. It was very frustrating to fail something ridiculous like claiming a hex.

I recall individual stats being more important to the role the PC played.

I recall magic shops doing something to increase kingdom money or something.

So far it has all felt like pretty pointless rolling for things that should be nearly automatic if you have the necessary material. It created needless tracking of resources or failed check results or making the player super irritated by failing a roll to claim an empty cleared hex with no resistance. A very frustrating, overly complex system for something that should be a simple, fun add on to make you feel like the rulers of a kingdom and not frustrated bureaucrats dealing with too much paperwork.

I hope the system gets refined at some point if put into the rules.

[Snake0202]

VanceMadrox wrote:

Glad to hear you've found a pace that works for you. I think all 5 of your changes were in our suggestions :-)

Vance, our group built our kingdom and I just wanted to personally thank you for doing the leg work to balance out the rules! We're really looking forward to it.

[VanceMadrox]

Glad to hear it, and you're very welcome. I'm glad others find our work useful.

Let us know how it goes. Also let us know what other changes you make.