I'm running 2E's Kingmaker for a party of evil characters using the full hexploration rules as well.
One player character, a witch with a raven familiar, wants to use the raven to reconnoiter a hex to obtain knowledge of the standard features that a party would uncover if they spent the time to reconnoiter themselves. This also leads to the possibility of him making the raven skilled and able to use that skill to uncover a hidden or secret landmark that would require use of that skill to detect it.
I'm inclined toward allowing *something* like this, though not necessarily via the familiar. Maybe some spells could manufacture an appropriate capability. In all, the concept is very much like Sarumon using crebain to seek out Frodo and scout an area for him while he tended to other affairs. Given the Kingdom element to this, maybe a PC should be able to simulate something like it as they do their kingly duties.
This leads to another question of, if not the familiar, what? Can some scrying spells be capable of hexploration and info-gathering? It feels like magical hexploration could be an appropriate downtime activity that presents an opportunity cost, but also provides for hexploration at greatly reduced risk. Quite wizardly or witchery, if you will.
There is the possibility that important features are overlooked and missed through this method, however, since it's just one individual scouting through the use of magic or surrogates like a familiar.
Have any of you handled things like this before? What suggestions or ideas might you have?
I can't think of any spells that would logically work better than a familiar for scouting 12-ish mile hexes. Clairvoyance and scrying are both fixed points. Fly spells won't last long enough. The closest thing I can think of is Scouting Eye, but that only lasts for 10 minutes. And that's a 5th rank spell. Maybe there's a higher rank spell which will work better, but at that point you're so high level you might as well just say no.
That's basically what this comes down to. If anything is going to be able to improve efficiency for reconnoitering, it will be a familiar. You can tell your players no if you think it screws up game balance* or something, but I would go and try to find a consolation prize because nothing else makes as much sense.
*Note: it won't. Kingmaker has little to no time pressure and is in fact supposed to take place over years. That will almost certainly be the case if you run the janky, untested Kingdom Building rules by RAW, as Kingdoms level far, far too slow. All this raven scouting will do is reduce the number of campijg rolls you need to make. Which is good because the camping random encounter chance is also jacked up. If you run that RAW your players will be attacks 9/10 nights and will be massively over leveled.
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If the thing they'd discover includes an encounter, have those enemies attack the Raven. It won't exactly last long against anything with ranged attacks.
If you're going to let them do this at all, it shouldn't be a free pass to just get the info without any risk.
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If the thing they'd discover includes an encounter, have those enemies attack the Raven. It won't exactly last long against anything with ranged attacks.
If you're going to let them do this at all, it shouldn't be a free pass to just get the info without any risk.
Even if it there isn't an encounter, it might not come back: it's an animal that might have to deal with other animals, hunters, weather and other hazards that wouldn't be a hostile encounter for a party. Myself, a single familiar/animal would have its own check for mishap on top of anything else.
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Thinking about this more, I don't think the familiar can independently scout entire hexes on its own. The problem is distance from their master. The empathic connection only extends one mile. Share senses has no apparent range limit, which helps. But Recall Familiar also has a one mile range. Without Recall, I'm not sure the familiar could find its way back to you, especially if you're also moving. And if you aren't moving, are you actually saving time with the familiar? Maybe if you took Skilled in Survival, but you already need flight, fast movement, share senses, recall familiar, and speech to do this well. A witch can get that all those rolling but has nothing left for independent/life link/tough. That limits your ability to use the familiar effectively in combat.
I think what makes more sense is that if the familiar has some combination of the above abilities, you give the master a circumstance bonus to a relevant a check to represent the Birdseye View. Or apply an easy or very easy adjustment to the relevant DCs, which might be preferred. You could even give the party a bonus to initiative on random encounters, or an advanced warning if the opponent isn't hiding so the party can prepare for battle or take a detour. Keeping the familiar within one mile just works better.
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Here's what I'm contemplating so far:
The raven familiar would need the Independent ability to function as a solo hexploration explorer. It would get 1 Hexploration Activity per day, or more if the Master can increase its speed appropriately.
It can explore for a maximum number of days equal to the Master's Intelligence modifier. If it is delayed in returning, it forgets what it uncovered earliest, on a day-for-day basis. (i.e., if delayed for one day, it forgets what it explored on the first day.)
For each day of exploration, two things happen:
* A DC 17 flat check determines the presence of harsh weather. I don't care what the event is, only that it's harsh.
* The raven makes a survival check against the hex's Zone DC. If harsh weather is present, the DC increases by 4.
If the raven fails, it loses 1 Hexploration Action for the following day. If it critically fails, it dies due to mishap.
It can reconnoiter at the same rate as normal based on the terrain. It can automatically find any special feature that doesn't require a check. It can find any special feature that requires a check if it is trained in the skill. It also has to meet any other criteria for discovery that might be expected.
I'm not planning to include random encounters and just consider that part of the survival check mechanism, and it's own survival.
The familiar only pays attention to hex features and won't report that it saw 4 bears, a dozen boar and a party of orcs. However, I'm inclined to allow the Hexploration Activity cost be doubled for it to spend time searching for creatures instead of hex features. I'd require that it be skilled (or better) in Survival, and have to make trained track checks for each day, for that.
This would require some play time to see if it's too onerous or not, but I think it's about right thematically.
Thoughts?
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Regarding other comments, unless ravens aren't known to be in the area, I do not see why they would be attacked, unless there is an order to attack *every single ravens* in the area... Perhapse if another witch/druid/ranger senses that this particular raven is a familiar (not behaving normally), but otherwise "it's only a bird".
Other animals, like hawks, will attack and eat ravens not to mention other non-animals in a setting like pathfinder. Oh course not everything is going to attack one, but it should be a possibility every time it's flying out alone for long periods of time. I'd find it stranger if the familiar was expected to encounter 0% difficulties and was assumed 100% safe on lone recons.
Being killed is also much more favorable than getting lost, as it lets the raven respawn next with the master the next day.
Here's what I'm contemplating so far:
The raven familiar would need the Independent ability to function as a solo hexploration explorer. It would get 1 Hexploration Activity per day, or more if the Master can increase its speed appropriately.
It can explore for a maximum number of days equal to the Master's Intelligence modifier. If it is delayed in returning, it forgets what it uncovered earliest, on a day-for-day basis. (i.e., if delayed for one day, it forgets what it explored on the first day.)
For each day of exploration, two things happen:
* A DC 17 flat check determines the presence of harsh weather. I don't care what the event is, only that it's harsh.
* The raven makes a survival check against the hex's Zone DC. If harsh weather is present, the DC increases by 4.If the raven fails, it loses 1 Hexploration Action for the following day. If it critically fails, it dies due to mishap.
It can reconnoiter at the same rate as normal based on the terrain. It can automatically find any special feature that doesn't require a check. It can find any special feature that requires a check if it is trained in the skill. It also has to meet any other criteria for discovery that might be expected.
I'm not planning to include random encounters and just consider that part of the survival check mechanism, and it's own survival.
The familiar only pays attention to hex features and won't report that it saw 4 bears, a dozen boar and a party of orcs. However, I'm inclined to allow the Hexploration Activity cost be doubled for it to spend time searching for creatures instead of hex features. I'd require that it be skilled (or better) in Survival, and have to make trained track checks for each day, for that.
This would require some play time to see if it's too onerous or not, but I think it's about right thematically.
Thoughts?
This feels mighty complicated to me when some bonuses to checks would be easier. Also, sending the familiar ranging this far feels like it would go really badly should the PCs find themselves in unexpected combat. A lot of the witch power budget is wrapped up in their familiars.
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...
It's a vastly simplified form of the Kingmaker Hexploration and weather rules. I don't want the players to be able to forgo all of that, more or less risk free, by just using familiars to scout.
I fully expect my ratfolk ranger player to get a rat familiar to scout with next, if this is too beneficial. He wouldn't be as impacted by losing it for a bit as the witch, but the witch's familiar also has additional abilities and can therefore be a more useful Hexploration scout.
Using those as examples, I anticipate that the witch player will defer to using this during downtime, minimizing the cost and risk of personal combat encounters. As you say, that could be damaging to the witch player. To the ranger with a familiar, the risk is pretty small. He could use the familiar for that on a daily basis and wouldn't be terribly harmed by its temporary loss.
I did consider the idea of the familiar's death being more beneficial than it's straight return, but this isn't entirely true. For the ranger, the familiar would take a week to replace, during which time it would forget all of its exploration. To the witch, who could use this most potently, it would still incur a day's loss at minimum.
It then begs the question of whether the familiar would have a mind to suicide itself for that purpose. The rules say that they (mostly) were real animals mystically bonded, so we must presume they wouldn't inherently have suicidal behavior outside of their master's control. Even then, it's doubtful. The Independent ability states that the GM can decide to have the familiar act different than the Master would expect or demand, and I'd rule that this is definitely a case of that.
As for spells: I'd probably let the use of a non-trivial spell or resource expenditure to abstractly grant a circumstance bonus to a Reconnoiter or Map the Area check or count as an automatic success in some cases. It's not strictly necessary to say the spell is doing all the work and most spells are written with encounter mode or exploration mode (not hexploration) in mind. It could be that as your player is Reconnoitering, they see something in the distance and use the spell to help get a better look...
I'm pondering the idea of allowing some scrying spells to have utility in hexploration when heightened to some degree or another.
There is the spell Scouting Eye, for example, which describes something akin to what we're considering. It is a sustained spell, which doesn't quite reach the "repeat a spell" exploration activity, and might hypothetically be easier to maintain for longer periods of time. Enough to hexplore? Hmm, I'm not sure how to rule on that.
Consider next the powerful Proliferating Eyes and its use within a Kingdom context. Maybe this powerful witch, using such a spell, sends nearly 3 dozen normal ravens to sprout these eyes, releasing them as unexpected explorers into a hex. This really seems to reach the "flock of crobains" by Saruman type of casting that concepts this whole discussion.
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...It's a vastly simplified form of the Kingmaker Hexploration and weather rules. I don't want the players to be able to forgo all of that, more or less risk free, by just using familiars to scout.
I fully expect my ratfolk ranger player to get a rat familiar to scout with next, if this is too beneficial. He wouldn't be as impacted by losing it for a bit as the witch, but the witch's familiar also has additional abilities and can therefore be a more useful Hexploration scout.
Using those as examples, I anticipate that the witch player will defer to using this during downtime, minimizing the cost and risk of personal combat encounters. As you say, that could be damaging to the witch player. To the ranger with a familiar, the risk is pretty small. He could use the familiar for that on a daily basis and wouldn't be terribly harmed by its temporary loss.
I did consider the idea of the familiar's death being more beneficial than it's straight return, but this isn't entirely true. For the ranger, the familiar would take a week to replace, during which time it would forget all of its exploration. To the witch, who could use this most potently, it would still incur a day's loss at minimum.
It then begs the question of whether the familiar would have a mind to suicide itself for that purpose. The rules say that they (mostly) were real animals mystically bonded, so we must presume they wouldn't inherently have suicidal behavior outside of their master's control. Even then, it's doubtful. The Independent ability states that the GM can decide to have the familiar act different than the Master would expect or demand, and I'd rule that this is definitely a case of that.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting the players get to forgo the hexploration rules. Quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that familiars shouldn't be able to do this independently, and instead merely provide circumstance bonuses to PCs performing the relevant activities. The circumastance bonus is more mechanically and narratively consistent, is significantly simpler, and doesn't wade into murky rules territory like "how smart are familiars, the only creatures in the game without ability modifiers."
All of the considerations you lay out make me question if this is a worthwhile pursuit. It is adding a lot of additional tracking and rolling for questionable returns. I'm not even sure if this strategy would benefit the players, at least the non-witches.
Let's assume the the familiar is only being used for the one week per month the players need to be managing their kingdom. The familiar can only actually travel within a 3 or 4 day radius of the players before needing to turn around and hoof it back. If the PCs are in the capital then that area was probably already explored, or will be very soon. And if the non-witch familiar is killed, it can't bring any information back. Worse, a non-witch has to spend a week of downtime getting a new familiar. So you're maybe saving a few days of hexploration (maybe because your familiar will have much worse odds of succeeding at checks the entire party could have been rolling for) and risking losing a week.
Now, if the players are chaining kingdom turns without hexploration in between, then the familiar could range further. But the longer the familiar is away, the higher the odds it crit fails and gets killed and returns with essentially no information, resulting in no gain for PCs, and the loss of the week for the ranger.
Are all these considerations going to actually improve your game? I doubt it. Then again, maybe you are playing Kingmaker because you enjoy finicky minutia and questionable bespoke subsystems. If your group will enjoy this level of micromanagement, have at it.
All that said, the Familiar's Eyes feat would change the equation considerable. Constant telepathic contact and information transfer potential would eliminate many of these proximity concerns. And by 12th level, your players already have magic that can trviliaze hexploration, like heightened marvelous mount, shadow walk, or teleport. Seems perfectly fitting for the familiar to discover more at that point.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting the players get to forgo the hexploration rules. Quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that familiars shouldn't be able to do this independently, and instead merely provide circumstance bonuses to PCs performing the relevant activities. The...
I misunderstood the direction you were taking. I have been anticipating that the PCs would use familiar like this from various settlements in the kingdom, or perhaps at outposts/towers/forts that they have for themselves or the kingdom alike. This would provide various centers for them to use familiar from, with respect to scouting. My goal was to create a tether that limits just how far and how often this could be useful, or risk having a party of four familiars that fling themselves into the furthest reaches of the Stolen Lands before their masters reach level 6.
That said, I'm on board with the idea that this strategy is impractical at lower levels, if for no other reason than that low level characters might simply lack the power or skill to use a familiar like this. You hit onto a great note with the latter part of your comment, though.
All that said, the Familiar's Eyes feat would change the equation considerable. Constant telepathic contact and information transfer potential would eliminate many of these proximity concerns. And by 12th level, your players already have magic that can trviliaze hexploration, like heightened marvelous mount, shadow walk, or teleport. Seems perfectly fitting for the familiar to discover more at that point.
This is fantastic, and I agree with you that by 12th level, hexploration starts to become somewhat trivialized by players anyhow. I'm thinking that the solution here may be to create a higher level feat that is specifically hexploration related, one that enables a "remote hexploration" with a familiar.
Then it might be a matter of making a simple check to ensure the familiar survives each day, and allow the Master to make hexploration checks using the familiar as a surrogate, otherwise. The opportunity cost here is the loss of time that could be spent crafting or whatever else, and the chance of briefly losing the familiar to some calamity in the outlands.
Nice. I feel like Familiar's Eye would suffice for this purpose on a witch, but you could create some kind of variant for other classes. (Or add Familiar's Eye to the familiar master archetype.)