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Ultimate Rulership for PF2e from Legendary games is now available but it doesn’t look like it has an entry in Paizo’s store. As such I thought I’d create a thread for discussion. I was fortunate enough to be able to help with the editing and development of this book some and even got my name in it!
The book has a lot of ideas and systems for use with the 2e Kingdom Building Rules. It has so much that Legendary Games actually needed to split it into 2 books, with Ultimate Cities likely out sometime this fall. I thought I’d share my initial thoughts on the various sections. Please note that Ultimate Rulership is very Modular, it’s designed for you to be able to use whatever parts you want. That said, let’s dive in!
Kingdom Basics (Page3):
Most of the basics don’t change. I’m personally glad to see Alignment for Kingdoms back. I’ll talk about Focuses in their own section. I’m not sure having a treasury measured in GP instead of RP is really needed.
Attribute checks: (Page 5)
Just a note that PF2e normally doesn’t have attribute checks (which are just untrained checks really), so Ultimate Rulership defines it.
Resource Dice and Resource Points (Page 5):
Unlike the base rules, UR’s Resource System has 4 RP pools, one for each attribute. You assign Resource Dice to each Attribute then roll them. The RP in each of the 4 pools can only be used for Focuses based on that Attribute. You can also hold some Resource Dice in reserve, which can be used for any Focus. The advantage of assigning dice to Attributes is that every single resource dice assigned to an attribute adds the attribute’s modifier to the die roll. So if you have 3 Economy Resource Dice and a +3 Economy modifier, you’re rolling 3dx + 9.
This is quite different from the base system and I’m not sure that I like it. Having to divide Dice into 4 different pools seems like it could take up a lot of real-world time as players debate how to allocate the dice. It’s also a lot more RP than the base system, I’m very worried it will make RP costs trivial. I need to playtest it to be sure though. Also not being able to increase your RP over what you actually rolled for the turn seems unnecessary to me.
Kingdom Abilities (Page 6):
Most of the new Kingdom abilities are related to the new turn sequence and action economy. The abilities are neat. I also like that Kingdoms can now have General feats in addition to regular feats. It makes the Kingdom feel even more like its own PC.
Gaining Kingdom XP (Page 7): Slow leveling of the Kingdom is one of the biggest issues in the base rules, it’s nice to see UR address it. I don’t actually know if UR’s system here provides enough XP in practice, I still need to playtest this. I do know that Ultimate Cities will have more ways of gaining Kingdom XP.
The Kingdom Turn (Page 8):
UR offers a new turn sequence, replacing the Commerce and Activity Phases of the base rules with an Activity Phase with just one step. Leadership, Regional, and Civic are still traits but there’s no set number of actions of each type. Instead, the new system is based on the 3 Actions plus a reaction idea of the base rules. The group as a whole does get more than 3 actions though, don’t worry.
I’m very excited about the new turn sequence and action economy. Having only 1 activity phase instead of a whole bunch of different steps has the potential of removing a good amount of the tediousness of the base rules. It also flat out removes the big issue of there simply not being enough useful leadership actions that the base rules have. I’m not entirely sure how well the number of actions the system gives will work out but I’m eagerly looking forward to playtesting and finding out. Reactions as presented are barely worth using though.
Taxes (Page 9): The taxes system here is similar to how UR did it in PF1e, a welcome return.
Expanded fame and Infamy (Page 10):
The new Fame/Infamy system looks interesting but without playtesting it I can’t tell how well it works in practice.
Leadership Roles (Page 12):
UR offers a new system where a PC’s skills can give them a bonus on Kingdom Skill checks. This is a much-requested feature that was lacking in the base rules. I’m not entirely sold on the exact distribution of Relevant Skills between the 8 roles and will need to playtest it to see if it needs tweaking. Of note here is that the Leadership bonus is a new type of bonus, which has me a bit wary as adding new Bonus Types in Pathfinder 2e throws off the math. This Leadership bonus replaces the Status Bonus for Invested Leadership from the base Kingdom rules though so it might work out ok. It also has the added benefit of fixing the major issue from the base rules of Feats not working right due to Status Bonuses from feats not stacking with Status Bonuses from Invested Leadership. Also of note, each leader (outside of the Ruler) can only make checks in their 2 Key Focus areas. This will make it feel like a given leader is really in charge of their chosen area but does limit what PCs can do some.
Noble Titles and Forms of Address (Page 15):
There’s no mechanical options/rules here so not much to say. Pretty sure this section is a straight cut and paste from UR for PF1e. Still nice to have.
Focus Pool (Page 19): Focuses are the same as Kingdom Skills (but 3 are renamed). I like one of the renames, don’t like one of them, and am neutral on the third. The Focus Pool/Focus Bonus option is very different from the base rules. Essentially, you slowly raise a Skill by using that Skill to do things. You get a Focus Bonus which is another new type of bonus, and you need a certain threshold of Focus Bonus before you can use a Focus Increase (ie a Skill Increase) on that Focus. I like the basic idea but I’m very worried that introducing yet another new type of Bonus will make the math trivially easy. The math getting too hard at higher levels was one of the biggest issues with the base rules though. Ultimately, I need to playtest the UR system to see how it does.
Overspending (Page 22):
Overpsending lets you use RP (of which you’ll have way more than in the base rules) to get an untyped bonus to a Focus check. I think this will turn out to be flat out broken. 8 RP for an untyped +4 bonus to a Focus check is just going to be too much. I like the idea of being able to spend some RP for that check you really want to do, but it needs to be more limited in how often you can use it.
New Activities (Pages 23-25):
The new activities are fairly niche but welcome.
Kingdom Feats (Pages 27-37):
10 pages of new Kingdom Feats are worth buying UR on their own. Not every feat is a winner but there’s so many good new options every Kingmaker 2e campaign could benefit from them.
Advanced Rulership (Page 37):
The new systems for diplomatic relations and trade agreements seem neat. I’ll need to playtest to see if they’re worth the extra complexity over the base rules.
Kingdom Events (Page 44):
Having a different way to organize and generate random Kingdom events is quite useful.
Anyway that’s my thoughts, I’d love to hear yours!
And if anyone is interested in following along with my playtesting of UR shoot me a PM!
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UR still uses the same Kingdom DCs so the basic math is mostly the same. In the base rules at higher levels checks that you were only trained or expert it became way too difficult. With UR I'm concerned it over-corrected and will make checks too easy but I have yet to playtest.
Without playtesting I can't yet tell how all of the UR options work together yet.
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Hey folks!
I grabbed Ultimate Rulership and Ultimate Cities some time ago and managed to study them a bit, but haven't yet applied any of the changes to the current Kingmaker campaign.
And I'll greatly appreciate if someone who played or playtested those rules for some time could share their opinion: is it worth applying all of the changes at once, totally relying on the Ultimate books or should I exclude some changes?
I'm very eager to hear some advice and opinions on those rules, thanks in advance!
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Oh, I guess I never did report back here, sorry.
We did a sim using all the Ultimate Rulership rules except for Section 4's diplomatic systems (which just couldn't be used that well in a simulation).
The short of it is it has some great ideas but almost none of it actually works well in practice with most of it being close to outright broken.
Ultimate Cities is in slightly better shape but a lot of it is tied to Ultimate Rulership options that don't work.
I'll try and post more specifics later today if work allows.
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Oh, I guess I never did report back here, sorry.
We did a sim using all the Ultimate Rulership rules except for Section 4's diplomatic systems (which just couldn't be used that well in a simulation).
The short of it is it has some great ideas but almost none of it actually works well in practice with most of it being close to outright broken.
Ultimate Cities is in slightly better shape but a lot of it is tied to Ultimate Rulership options that don't work.
I'll try and post more specifics later today if work allows.
I would greatly appreciate if you share more details about your experience with UR/UC in terms of what is broken and is it possible (or worth it) to fix it!
My party has just started getting involved in running their Kingdom and I'd like them to gave the best experience. For now we are playing vanilla with your Kingdom Building Rule Changes.
Thank you for your contribution to the community!
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Ultimate Rulership Part 1: Kingdom Basics
Alignment: UR adds Alignment back in which I'm fine with but others might not like.
Focus: Ultimate Rulership uses the term Focus instead of Kingdom Skill and renames 3 of the Skills. I do like the UR names a little better but this is minor regardless.
RP & Attributes: In UR, instead of having a single pool for RP, you have 5.
4 of the pools correspond to one of the Kingdom's 4 Basic Attributes. Each Focus is tied to a specific Attribute and any Focus check that involves spending RP spends it from the appropriate Attribute Pool. In addition there's a 5th Reserve attribute Pool that can be spent freely on any Focus check.
When rolling resource die, each individual die is assigned to a specific pool. Resource Dice assigned to an attribute pool add that Attribute's modifier to the RP gained for each die assigned to that Pool. Dice assigned to the reserve pool do not add the attribute modifier.
In practice having 5 different RP pools to keep track of was annoying and adding unnecessary complexity. The Kingdom Rules are tedious enough as is, having to keep track of 5 different RP buckets just made it worse. Even worse though, the amount of extra RP generated this way by adding the Attribute Modifier to RP gained was simply astronomically too much RP. In our sim we had enough RP to do absolutely everything we want and it made development go way too fast. The base rules have room to add a little more RP but UR's system here was just way too much.
New Kingdom Abilities: I didn't have an issue with any of the new Kingdom abilities specifically but didn't really like the way UR implemented actions.
Gaining Kingdom XP: Ultimate Rulership replaces the Base Rules Kingdom Milestones with a smaller list with bigger XP rewards. Adding more milestones to the base rules is a good idea but UR's XP rewards being so large resulted in uneven leveling. In our sim when we got UR's milestone rewards the Kingdom sometimes leveled in only 2-3 turns whereas otherwise it could take 4 or 5 turns. It's not a bad change, just resulted in uneven leveling. Having more total Milestones, but with smaller XP rewards works out better.
Building Kingdom XP: UR also adds XP for building things. I think this is a great idea though UR only includes XP for Regional Improvements. Ultimate Cities has the XP rewards for building Structures. One minor nitpick though, I don't think Roads and Roads with Bridges need to be separate entries.
The Kingdom Turn: Ultimate Rulership removes the commerce phase and separate Leadership/Regional/Civic action phases and replaces it with a single action Phase. UR gives the Ruler 3 actions and each other Leader 1 action, adding more actions and improved action economy as the Kingdom levels.
I really love removing the different phases and having only a single activity phase. This is UR's single best idea. I don't really like the Ruler having more actions than the other Leaders in a game where party members are supposed to be equal.
UR's rules also give the Kingdom a Reaction but gives barely any reactions to use so is an after-thought at best.
Unrest and Anarchy: UR says that if your Unrest gets really high you can lose points of your Kingdom Attributes. In practice it's really hard to even get Unrest and functionally impossible to get Ruin.
Collecting Taxes: UR offers an alternate version of Collect taxes that generates GP instead of RP. This GP cannot be used directly by PCs so I'm really not sure what the point is.
Taxation Levels: UR tries to bring Taxation Levels from Kingmaker 1 back but doesn't really provide enough information on how to use them. For example there's nothing about what Tax level you start at. It's also tied to the new Collect taxes action which is pretty pointless already.
Changing Government: The Regime Change action is fine but will likely never be used.
Expanded Fame and Infamy: UR replaces the Fame/Infamy system. Fame is now a score that increases and can be spent with no limit of 3. Infamy only goes up. I like the idea of the Kingdom having Fame that can simply increase but in practice the bonuses it gives don't matter much. UR's system allows fame to be spent in a few ways but in practice only using it for rerolls is actually worthwhile.
Ultimate Rulership Part 1: Kingdom Basics
Alignment: UR adds Alignment back in which I'm fine with but others might not like.
Focus: Ultimate Rulership uses the term Focus instead of Kingdom Skill and renames 3 of the Skills. I do like the UR names a little better but this is minor regardless.
RP & Attributes: In UR, instead of having a single pool for RP, you have 5.
4 of the pools correspond to one of the Kingdom's 4 Basic Attributes. Each Focus is tied to a specific Attribute and any Focus check that involves spending RP spends it from the appropriate Attribute Pool. In addition there's a 5th Reserve attribute Pool that can be spent freely on any Focus check.When rolling resource die, each individual die is assigned to a specific pool. Resource Dice assigned to an attribute pool add that Attribute's modifier to the RP gained for each die assigned to that Pool. Dice assigned to the reserve pool do not add the attribute modifier.
In practice having 5 different RP pools to keep track of was annoying and adding unnecessary complexity. The Kingdom Rules are tedious enough as is, having to keep track of 5 different RP buckets just made it worse. Even worse though, the amount of extra RP generated this way by adding the Attribute Modifier to RP gained was simply astronomically too much RP. In our sim we had enough RP to do absolutely everything we want and it made development go way too fast. The base rules have room to add a little more RP but UR's system here was just way too much.
New Kingdom Abilities: I didn't have an issue with any of the new Kingdom abilities specifically but didn't really like the way UR implemented actions.
Gaining Kingdom XP: Ultimate Rulership replaces the Base Rules Kingdom Milestones with a smaller list with bigger XP rewards. Adding more milestones to the base rules is a good idea but UR's XP rewards being so large resulted in uneven leveling. In our sim when we got UR's milestone rewards the Kingdom sometimes leveled in only 2-3 turns whereas...
Thank you for the detailed analysis!
It's really helpful to get an opinion from someone who actually playtested those rules and I'll take it all into consideration while figuring out which changes to implement in my campaign.
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Part 2: Leadership Roles:
Leader Actions: The Ruler gets 3 actions and each other Leader gets one.
The overall number of actions did work out ok but I don't like one player getting more actions than the others.
It also says Resource Dice can be split up and assigned to specific Leaders but unless you plan out your whole Kingdom turn ahead of time this is silly.
Extra Leader Actions: Any leader that spends the entire month of downtime ruling gains an extra kingdom action.
I actually liked this even if we didn't use it too often.
Leader Statistics:
Key Attribute: As long as you have a PC leader in this role, rather than gaining a status bonus for investing their role as in the official rules, your kingdom increases this attribute by 1.
Increasing an Attribute by only 1 point is silly in a system where odd numbers in attributes don't matter. In practice it's way easier to just give a few extra Attribute Boosts.
Key Focus: Each Leadership Role has a few specific Focus Areas that are Key Focuses for them. They must spend one of their kingdom actions each turn within these Focus Areas.
This is a great idea thematically but in practice the Key Focus Areas are way too narrow. 6 of the 8 Roles only get 2 Focus Skills while the Ruler and the Warden get 3. While the Focuses as assigned were Thematic, in practice there was often no useful action at all for some Leaders. For example the General only gets Defense and Warfare. If the Kingdom doesn't have Unrest and isn't building a Military themed Structure, there's simply NOTHING for the General to do. In addition, every focus is covered by only a single Leader with 2 out of the 16 focuses also covered by the Ruler. The Skills/Focuses are not created evenly in terms of useful actions tied to them. The Treasurer is the only one with Industry and Trade as Focus Skills. The Treasurer only gets 1 action. This means that you can't collect Taxes and build a House on the same turn and get the Leadership Bonus for both. Great idea but unusable execution as written.
Relevant Skills: A Leader's Skills can give a new Bonus type, called Leadership Bonus, on any checks they make within their Key Focus Areas. This bonus replaces the status bonus for invested leadership from the base rules. The Bonus can get up to +4 total while the Base rules only went to +3. in practice, this bonus perfectly counteracts the DC Increase due to Kingdom size. Once again it's a great idea but too limited in practice. Each Leadership role only has 3 skills plus Lore and it's just a bit too limiting. As an example, look at the General. The General's relevant skills are Deception, Diplomacy, and Intimidation plus Lores. This means a Fighter who hasn't invested in Charisma doesn't make a good general. While not unusable as written, expanding the Relevant skills a bit would make it way better.
Noble Titles and Forms of Address: Nice to have but no mechanics here.