Need Input on Kingmaker

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Rawbeard
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Need Input on Kingmaker

Post by Rawbeard »

As the title suggests. It's been forever since I touched the druid and I made the mistake of trying to read guides online (Trentmonk-senpai is the best! :P ) so now I am somewhat confused as what to pick (Animal Companion or Animal Companion via Feather Domain).
Also I found awesome Archetypes like Nature Fang (trade wild shape for slayer talents, sounds legit), so if there are suggestions what to pick, I would appreciate it. So far I looking at the Menhir Savant. Trading shit for some caster level boosts sounds ok.
As for context, I intend to go more towards caster, but it is probably a good idea if I can contribute to the parties raw damage output. So far it seems to be made up of two tanks (paladin and cleric), a sorcerer (or wizard? hell if I know) going for control rather then "pewpew 3d6 dmg, suffer!" and a "combat mage" (I assume magus, but again hell if I know, assume squishy melee).

Game has progressed to book two, I start at level 5. Anyone got usufull stuff to add? Things to keep inmind while being a druid and stuff like that.

P.S: Kingmaker campaign traits are literal shit.
Last edited by Rawbeard on Mon May 04, 2015 9:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RelentlessImp
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Post by RelentlessImp »

Pathfinder Druids are almost all Caster Druids, and Conjuring specialists at that. The control caster will outshine the rest of the party by leaps and bounds during the sections that involve actual combat.
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Rawbeard
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Post by Rawbeard »

I am not sure the group at the moment can make use of the control provided.
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Orca
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Post by Orca »

Very few druid archetypes are compatible with each other. So you need to choose whether you're a melee weapons guy (Nature Fang), a summoner (one of the animal shaman archetypes), or either control or buff & fight as a tiger (Menhir Savant). Some of the others have specialised uses but those are the main ones. Pick one as your first step.

Druids by the way are terrible blasters. If you're thinking of contributing that way stop now.

As to AC or AC via Feather ... It depends whether you have a spare feat for Boon Companion. If you're planning to indulge in melee yourself then no you don't, and a feather domain animal companion is no use to you.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Shit, you bearly need any feats to eat face in Wild Shape. Take the domain (and Boon Companion) whether you want to be a control caster or a beatstick. But really, you can be both.
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Rawbeard
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Post by Rawbeard »

I am already getting a headache. "game over is looming around the corner, but you can't heve the rules, because your character doesn't know what the stats and costs and stuff is of building a kingdom." Any hints what to look out for?

I got the impression you get shit all loot, but on the other hand you fight wolves and bears till you reach level 20, or something. When do i need to start to worry about equipment?
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Rawbeard wrote:I am already getting a headache. "game over is looming around the corner, but you can't heve the rules, because your character doesn't know what the stats and costs and stuff is of building a kingdom." Any hints what to look out for?

I got the impression you get shit all loot, but on the other hand you fight wolves and bears till you reach level 20, or something. When do i need to start to worry about equipment?
Book 1 and book 6. As for the kingdom rules, fuck'em. Bring a decent Wisdom score and have them plug you into an office.
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Smeelbo
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KingMaker Hints

Post by Smeelbo »

I have been running KingMaker for a few years now. You can build a kingdom that cranks out magic items like a vending machine. Either your Wealth By Level is tied up in the Kingdom, or the Kingdom breaks Wealth By Level. As a Druid, you do not really need to worry about gear much, but hiding the Kingdom Building sub-game rules from the party is a bad idea. If you run the kingdom poorly (which you will, if you can't see the rules), it will never get off the ground, and you will be screwed. The Kingdom rules are easily broken, so really, the group needs to have a discussion about what the expectations and limits are.

My short advice for Kingdom Building is to never let Consumption be greater than 0 or 1, so build farms and apiaries. Max out your road network. Do not let your Kingdom grow beyond your Command and Economy checks can support (e.g., do not grow too fast).

Your Command bonus allows you to manage your Kingdom with minimal unrest.
Your Economy bonus generates cash to maintain and expand your Kingdom, and to get access to Magic Items.
Your Stability bonus is to avoid or minimize the consequence of Random Kingdom Events. It is actually the least useful of the bonuses, because the Random Kingdom Events can usually be addressed by direct intervention by the party. So Stability is mostly only tested when the Party fails to solve the problem of the month.

The various NPC's you befriend can hold those offices the PCs cannot hold. Having a vacant office will screw the Kingdom into the ground. Strongly consider Leadership for just about every PC, so you can have reliable surrogates, and loyal minions.

The gear the Adventure Path hands out is pitiful, so you really do want access to magic items via your Kingdom. The question is, how much do you want to allow.

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Post by Seerow »

Rawbeard wrote:I am already getting a headache. "game over is looming around the corner, but you can't heve the rules, because your character doesn't know what the stats and costs and stuff is of building a kingdom." Any hints what to look out for?
This is a DM thing, not a system thing. Fuck them, go read the kingdom rules and start making your Kingdom not suck. Because seriously the DM pushing you into game over territory because they refuse to let you even look at the rules you are supposed to be interacting with is 9 sorts of stupid.
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Smeelbo
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3 rule sets to rule them all....

Post by Smeelbo »

Keep in mind that there are THREE versions of the Kingdom Building Rules:

1) The original rules published in volume 2 of the Adventure Path
2) Modestly revised, expanded, and clarified rules from the Book of River Nations. This is what I am using, with a few variants.
3) The very revised, very different, and not necessarily any better rules from Ultimate Campaign.

You may want to check http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/o ... m-building


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Post by Rawbeard »

Amazing, I haven't checked the rules yet (I fully intend to, but since I am not sure which rules are used... lets see how that goes) and my ideas so far where "infrasturcture, motherfuckers, build roads, farms and get those mines pumping out shit". So I don't seem too far off. The session I was with building farms was dismissed with "lets not expand. at all. build our first town first" which sounded stupid, but I wasn't in game yet and had no idea what is up anyway". This kingdom is not going to last. Kinda sucks this seems to be run as a rogue like, although I am not sure the GM understands that problem. he also doesn't like "power gaming" (german term for a play style you don't approve of, smearing you with the stink of cheese munchkin min/maxing), so I want to have good reasons to take optimal choices.
I already tried figuring out what that trading post is good for (nothing), if it can be used (no), if it can be aquired (no), if those owning it want to use it (no), so I have issues seeing how to connect this god damn circus to the rest of the world. I might go to Taldor through Galt if that road up there is "Brevoy only and no one never, ever will use it ever". Because if that is the case I will insta-side with the northern agressors to get stupid moron Brevoy toppled. That is not how trade works, you idiots!
At least GM seems like he would go along with that, although I have the impression this is an issue with him, not the book written. altough it's the german books, so all bets are off (the Warden office is translated to Marschall and Marshal to Landvogt. I don't even)
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Post by Seerow »

I already tried figuring out what that trading post is good for (nothing), if it can be used (no), if it can be aquired (no), if those owning it want to use it (no)
If you're talking about Oleg's Trading Post (the place where you start), this is also a DM thing, since Oleg's per the adventure is actually one of the three locations called out as particularly likely sites for the Kingdom's capital. So yeah if your GM is saying no you can't interact with them ever, and nobody ever comes through, it's more dickery.
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Post by Shady314 »

Your character graduated from Druidic grad school and his dissertation was on sustainable economic development. As a responsible druid you either have to kill all the humans or help guide civilization. You chose the heroic option that fits your alignment. That's just good roleplaying.

Couch all of your kingdom building ideas with druidic reasoning.
Last edited by Shady314 on Sun May 03, 2015 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Rawbeard »

I went with Menhir Savant and his studies of Ley Lines make him realize the importance of logistics of any kind. Roads are good. Goods are good. Getting goods to where ever they are needed is good. I got that part covered at least.

Amusing observation after going over the offices, the councilor is not supposed to be the rulers bootlick. huh. I see potential corruption from the start of the campaign. And since I doubt they got anything past the player's guide information he probably literally doesn't know better.
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Post by Orca »

IIRC you really, really want to expand because of the consumption issue mentioned, and because the number of kingdom actions you can take is directly linked to how much you've expanded.

If it's being run as a roguelike corruption etc may never turn up.

As far as party wealth goes - when we played it the magic items buildings produced were available to be bought by the players, but I've read that in the original they could instead be sold by the players for the benefit of the kingdom. Which could lead to weird stuff like mass building witches huts and did in at least one campaign.

If nothing else there should be quite a bit of downtime, which makes crafting feats work well.
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Re: KingMaker Hints

Post by Stinktopus »

Smeelbo wrote:
Your Stability bonus is to avoid or minimize the consequence of Random Kingdom Events. It is actually the least useful of the bonuses, because the Random Kingdom Events can usually be addressed by direct intervention by the party. So Stability is mostly only tested when the Party fails to solve the problem of the month.

Smeelbo
I'm not sure if this is a different rules issue, but in my Kingmaker book, and on the Paizo website, the kingdom has to make a Stability check every round. On a success, the kingdom loses one Unrest and gains one BP.

On a near miss, the kingdom gains 1 Unrest. Miss by 5 or more, and the kingdom gets 1d4 Unrest. Unrest is BAD.

You need to keep your stability in the auto-success range, or shit starts to go south really badly.

When I ran Kingmaker (it fell apart for reasons not involving the system/module), I sorta hid the kingdom building rules, but had things explained to the party in world-appropriate terms.

"Well, you need to establish a sense of stability if you want to keep the commoners quiet. Make sure they have an inn or pub in walking distance. Keep them entertained. Put a big house on the hill that makes them feel like they're working towards the good life. Get a nice, official looking town hall where they can gripe about their neighbors.

"Once you've got them fat and happy, you get some productive arcanists in here to make nice, expensive magic items. Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects."
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Post by RelentlessImp »

Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects.
So the PCs are encouraged to be corrupt governmental officials?
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Command vs Stability

Post by Smeelbo »

Stinktopus wrote:I'm not sure if this is a different rules issue, but in my Kingmaker book, and on the Paizo website, the kingdom has to make a Stability check every round. On a success, the kingdom loses one Unrest and gains one BP.
Yeah, I was writing from memory, and got Command and Stability reversed. Command allows the party to solve problems arising from the Random Kingdom Event table without having to role-play a solution.

My players are pretty sophisticated, so I never hid the rules from them. Right now, they are towards the end of Book 3, and they might not make it. If not, their broken Kingdom becomes the setting of the next campaign.

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Post by Seerow »

RelentlessImp wrote:
Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects.
So the PCs are encouraged to be corrupt governmental officials?
The rules do pretty much encourage it since after a certain point you can mitigate enough unrest per turn to cover the unrest penalty from converting a small number of BP to cash. Since each BP translates into 2k gold, if you grab 4-5 per turn and have a year or two between adventures, it adds up to a pretty significant amount.

Which is why the developers spend a bunch of time both in each iteration of the rules plus on the forum telling people that players taking money from the treasury is badwrongfun and BP and GP should never interact despite them writing clear rules for their interaction.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

Ladies and Gentlemen, Paizo. Write rules that fuck over your game? Tell people it's wrong. Fuck those assholes.
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Post by Stinktopus »

RelentlessImp wrote:
Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects.
So the PCs are encouraged to be corrupt governmental officials?
The module gives you crap for treasure, and seems to demand withdrawal + item creation to stay relevant.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Stinktopus wrote:
RelentlessImp wrote:
Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects.
So the PCs are encouraged to be corrupt governmental officials?
The module gives you crap for treasure, and seems to demand withdrawal + item creation to stay relevant.
Don't sweat it, the opposition is crap too. After you beat the undead guy in his big lair, everyone else is a sensitive wrinkled ballsack.
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Post by Seerow »

Stinktopus wrote:
RelentlessImp wrote:
Arrange sales to foreign nobles with too much money, and skim a little off the top of those sales to start working on your own little projects.
So the PCs are encouraged to be corrupt governmental officials?
The module gives you crap for treasure, and seems to demand withdrawal + item creation to stay relevant.
I've actually heard that they expect you to actually explore every hex and follow the random encounter tables to hit appropriate exp/wealth benchmarks. Which seems pretty possible, since the first section alone has something like 30 hexes, with 5% on entering and 15% every day thereafter, with a minimum of 3 days spent per hex exploring... that adds up to an average of somewhere around 10-15 random encounters. Basically an entire levels worth of experience and random loot sitting there that most people are going to ignore because seriously one-and-done random encounters are boring and tedious for everybody involved.
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Post by Rawbeard »

There seems to be random xp, but very little random loot. like "this is backwater shit, no one has shit"
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Post by Stinktopus »

Rawbeard wrote:There seems to be random xp, but very little random loot. like "this is backwater shit, no one has shit"
Yeah, part of the problem with Kingmaker Random Encounter is that many of them have no actual treasure, while others are "run away or die." It's entirely possible that, in the course of 10-15 wilderness encounters, you will only get loot from 2.

The most hilarious random encounter is the Will O' Wisps that can be encountered at level 1. You can't fight them, or reasonably be expected to run from them. So, your DM either uses the encounter to troll the players, or he massacres the party.
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