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I'm planning to start a Kingmaker campaign this summer... I'm wondering about a few things...
1) Battlecry! is coming out and says it will come with mass combat rules. I wonder if the Battlecry! rules will make a good replacement for the Kingmaker AP mass combat rules.
2) Is there possibly also going to be an update for Kingdom Management say in the upcoming releases around the events of the "Hellbreakers" AP / LO:Shining Kingdoms or another near future release?
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I could be wrong, but you're asking about Kingmaker for Second Edition, right?
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I'm planning to start a Kingmaker campaign this summer... I'm wondering about a few things...
1) Battlecry! is coming out and says it will come with mass combat rules. I wonder if the Battlecry! rules will make a good replacement for the Kingmaker AP mass combat rules.
2) Is there possibly also going to be an update for Kingdom Management say in the upcoming releases around the events of the "Hellbreakers" AP / LO:Shining Kingdoms or another near future release?
I can give an answer here:
1) Chat with your GM about this, but the Battlecry! rules are more about the PCs directing troops and less about large armies clashing together; I don't feel like this is a good replacement for the Kingmaker AP narrative mass combat rules as a result.
2) We have no plans to update or revisit or remaster the Kingdom rules from Kingmaker at this time. Those rules do not play a role in any upcoming Adventure Paths or products. That might change someday further out, I suppose, but no plans at this point to do so.
1) Battlecry! is coming out and says it will come with mass combat rules. I wonder if the Battlecry! rules will make a good replacement for the Kingmaker AP mass combat rules.
Gonna disagree with James on this one, because IMO the answer is yes. You'll need to change stuff to do it, but mass combat is another system the PCs will have to learn that is functionally a different game (and a fairly large one at that since the warfare rules are 16 pages long). They'll use it for one section of one AP and then never touch it again. As their characters can't actually do anything and even their own skills don't get used in the mass combat rules, it's really impersonal. And if your kingdom didn't invest a ton into the couple of specific skills that mass combat uses, you're going to fail a lot. If your PCs are up for this and will plan their Kingdom build appropriately? Sure, have fun.
My experience is... not that. A lot of folks who sign up to play Pathfinder want to play Pathfinder, and Battlecry's squad combat rules feel a lot more like Pathfinder than the Kingmaker mass combat rules do. They get to use their character and things they know already, but with a wrinkle.
If I was running Kingmaker, that's what I'd do for key battles where the PCs involvement matters. For other battles, I'd just treat them like skill challenges with modifiers based on the situation and current status of the army to keep the narrative moving.
As a bonus, it significantly reduces the barrier to entry of the AP because your player can now just not bother with the mass combat rules at all. Kingmaker is bloated with extra subsystems already, so IMO eliminating one is a win.
The other option is to just ditch "warfare" entirely as a mechanic and run the whole war narratively, where the PCs do key missions as normal gameplay and how they do shapes how the whole war goes. That requires no extra rules whatsoever and keeps the focus squarely on the PCs. That's how I ran war back in 3.5: lots of narration, a few die rolls, and then the cases where the PCs can have an impact were played out as mission encounters (like sabotaging catapults, taking out a commander, stealing plans, holding a city wall gate until reinforcements arrive, etc).