[OSSR] Pathfinder Kingmaker

[Anon_issue]

I've never played the videogame or read the adventure path, so I'm just wondering how the hell are the pcs given their own kingdom? I know in DnD-land there's a tradition of hiring random travelers to do extremely important tasks for you, but this seems ridiculous even by those standards.

[Chamomile]

The adventurers are pointed at a bunch of bandit-infested wilderness and told to turn it into a vassal state. I'd have been a lot more willing to quietly ignore the colonialist overtones for the sake of the premise if Paizo hadn't made the baffling decision to name the territory "the Stolen Lands," thus drawing attention straight to the historical parallels.

The way I ran it, the government handing out the land was using it as a means of directing adventurers out of their territory before they started making trouble, hopefully to die in the wilderness. The PCs and the Varnhold people both had claims on each other's territory, as did a half-dozen other adventuring parties who had all died or given up before getting as far as establishing a town, because Brevoy was giving the exact same land grant to every adventuring party they wanted to get rid of.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Is the joke that everybody keeps stealing the lands from one another?

[Koumei]

Pretty much: no kingdom has managed to last long there, very close to a thousand have collapsed for some strange reason or another (the reason is the BBEG of this AP). Now, assuming the NPCs are unaware of the reasons behind it (they are in fact unaware), it would make more sense for them to call it "The Untamable Lands" or "The Wild Lands" or "The Former USSR" or something. They don't know about the deliberate ruin going on, as part of "stealing kingdoms". But still, plenty of nations here have fallen because someone next door said "actually I want to take over the whole thing" (the BBEG can help push people in the right direction here, but some don't need much pushing).

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Well wait, if this is supposed to be a graveyard of empires or something, why the hell do people keep trying to conquer it? Is it at the crossroads of a bunch of other territories that people want to travel to/trade with? Do they have Afghani poppy fantasy drugs and/or medicine? I read a bunch of backstory about characters, but not much about the land. What makes this place more special than any other stretch of fantasy wilderness?

[Grek]

Brevoy (the guys who sent you here) wants a buffer state against the River Kingdoms (a collection of feuding bandit warlords whose fights keep spilling over into southern Brevoy) where the bandits will raid your unfortunate asses instead of them. There's also some decent mineral wealth and valuable rare herbs (not quite fantasy opium, but basically) which would in theory be valuable as an export from the new colony, but basically they just want to avoid having to deal with the River Kingdoms themselves.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

You complain a lot about the kingdom possibly falling apart, and I'm not saying you are wrong to criticize the very bad mechanics, but our experience was very different. It was after the first couple turns, piss easy to win every check. Why? Because the primary limit on buildings was Improvement Edicts (basically one building at the beginning, then 2 eventually, ect), so you wanted to build smaller numbers of super good buildings, and one specific building added to all three stats. To that end, we just built a checkerboard pattern of houses and Mints getting bonuses to Stability, Loyalty, and Economy each turn. In the long run we also build aquifers and roads and mines once we got to the point where we made more BP each turn than we could spend building more Mints. Eventually we expanded to more settlements along with our expanding hexes and mines and roads.

Fair. I hardly tried to optimize these mechanics.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Part 3: The Varnhold Vanishing
This chapter is based off of the urban legend surrounding Roanoake Colony, specifically the mysterious vanishing of the colonists living there. When I told my brother about this, it severely annoyed him, since this “mystery” has long since been solved. It was never really much of a mystery to begin with.

To my amazement, crazy hawt Fey Queen is no where to be seen! This chapter revolves entirely around a cyclops Lich who was part of an ancient empire of cyclops that collapsed long ago. Some stupid dumbass breached the Lich’s tomb and stole something, rousing it from his century long slumber. The Lich tracked said dumbass down and abducted the entire populace of Varnhold. The module discusses a few ideas to get the party involved. Baiting them with a magic item that’s there, an NPC asks for their help… Standard stuff. The setup here is pretty simple; evil Lich is doing evil, smite his undead ass.

We, of course, get some wildness encounters. A trio of manticores, four Ettercaps who planned an ambush on a web bridge, half a dozen trapdoor spiders, an advanced Bullete, a Roc, mudmen, a Linnorm, a bull mastodon, a Phase Spider who wants the party to kill some Xills (no joke, the fucking spider will pay them), a giant flytrap… There are a lot of encounters here with no plot significance. A run in with a Dread Zombie Cyclops is an exception, being foreshadowing for the Lich encounter. As opposed to all the spiders, which are just… there.

The titular Varnhold’s population was abducted via an artifact the Lich has. Because Paizo are too lazy to come up with a way to do that without an artifact (this is prove to be a reoccurring theme)… Speaking of, the Lich is using his Familiar and said artifact to spy on the players. If the players somehow capture it, the Lich has his familiar self-destruct. Because fuck you for trying to spoil the plot early. Stay on those goddamn rails!

The colony itself has been overrun by Spriggans. Other than a couple animals and a Chuul, that’s mostly what the encounters here consist of. This includes several swarms, so fuck you Fighter! Other than that, most of the WILL saves here are pretty low.

A sidebar informs us that if the PCs keep the loot they find in Varnhold and that, “becomes known”, their kingdom’s unrest goes up by 1d4+2. How the fuck would anyone find out the party looted the colony while everyone was gone?! This is just dicking over the players for trying to do what D&D adventurers are supposed to do! Another bit of stupid is apparently it’s a DC 20 Knowledge Nature check to realize, “red sun time”, means sunset. That should be pretty obvious, why the need for such a high DC?

The big clue the party gets is the word, “Nomen”, carved into the front door of the inn. This is the name of a Centaur tribe the party is supposed to parlay with. To drive home you need a party face, the Diplomacy check required here is a whopping DC 34. And if you enter their village uninvited, you take a -5 penalty. Failing that, the party has to go on a fetch quest to get the intel they need, which consist of getting a magic bow from more Spriggans. The party is level 7 by this point, they could just cast Divination and skip this entire encounter. I doubt the chucklefucks at Paizo considered that, because they probably would have pulled something suitable stupid out of their asses to fuck with the players if they had.

The whole the Lich spying on the party via an artifact thing now becomes relevant, as he sicks a monster on them. This is yet another ability that his artifact possesses, even though he’s high enough level to bind shit on his own. I guess the critter he wanted to summon has too many hitdice for that… This monster is called a Soul Eater.

This thing is legit nasty, being immune to critical hits, sleep, stun, paralysis and poison. It has a 100-foot fly speed (perfect) and can use a Locate Creature at will (with no range limit and isn’t blocked by water) to find its quarry. It does WIS damage (albeit with a DC 17 FORT save to prevent it) and it can trigger a save or die on anyone who has 0 WIS. I could see it killing the Rogue, easily, maybe the Wizard/Sorcerer.

Now we get to the Lich’s lair, the first encounter here is a pair of Wyverns near the entrance. In the crypt proper, are a pair of Dread Cyclops Zombies. These zombies are actually sentient, and they can actually move and attack in the same turn. So, they’re not actually zombies, so why call them that? These are mostly just beatsticks that can command other zombies.

There’s an encounter with a Elasmosaurus in which the party is forced to enter the water to proceed and there’s also a flooding trap deeper in the tomb. Get ready to look up all those underwater combat rules. ????

The first major encounter in the dungeon is a Piscodaemon, which is summoned when the party enters a certain room. It has Fly, Dispel Magic, and Stinking Cloud as SLAs, as well as having a host of immunities, so it might actually prove to be a challenge. The party can get the demon to stand down, but if they try to rescue the centaur prisoner found later in the tomb, it attacks regardless.

The next encounter is a pair of Soul Eaters and there’s also a fight with a Dread Zombie Wizard with 4th level spells. Said Wizard is located in chamber with damaging tar and foul air that forces FORT saves VS nausea for a single round. The spells the Wizard took are largely garbage; Fireball, Burning Hands, Magic Missile… But the room itself could prove problematic. Other than a Greater Water Elemental, the only noteworthy encounter left to talk about is the Lich himself.

This is also where we see that Paizo invented an atrophied Lich template so that this guy could be only level 10 and still be a Lich.

Though he was a 20th-level wizard at the time of his imprisonment, his power has since degraded to that of a 9th-level wizard.

Why did he have to be level 20 before? It’s not like he’s important in the grand scheme of things, it feels pointless to make it so that he was ever this powerful. This is also how they handwave his Phylactery, claiming it doesn’t work because he’s too low level now. This seems like a copout, since dealing with the whole respawn thing is pretty integral to a Lich’s identity as a monster.

More troubling to the lich is the fact that until he achieves at least 11th level as a lich, his phylactery is unusable—if he is destroyed, he crumbles to dust, forever dead.

Much like the previous Wizard, the Lich’s spell selection sucks, he banned Transmutation for fuck’s sake! This probably for the best, as he has 5th level spells, but Paizo seemed to realize he might be too much for the typical groups they expected to play Kingmaker.

Although atrophied, Vordakai remains a very dangerous opponent who, on his own, can devastate a poorly prepared party. Don’t be afraid to play Vordakai as an arrogant creature—he has existed for longer than most creatures on Golarion, after all, and if he makes arrogant mistakes (such as neglecting to cast spells defensively and provoking attacks of opportunity), that not only gives the PCs a chance to survive but also helps to establish the ancient lich as both overconfident and a bit unhinged from his long period of quiescence.

The party is expected to be level 9 by this point and Vordakai’s spell selection is pretty bad. I could easily see the party stomping him flat. There’s also no real indication that the designers realized that the party are well into Scry and Die territory. There’s nothing stopping them from bypassing the entire dungeon via teleport. With the Lich fight over, the party can save the remaining citizens of Varnhold, all of whom have been stuffed into soul jars.

While the soul jars are all in use (and thus worthless as magic items), evil PCs could use the trapped souls as treasure if they wished. The prices they could get for a trapped soul varies, depending on the needs and desires of the purchaser, but the souls trapped in these jars are relatively low level—and as a result not as desirable. A price of 5,000 gp per soul isn’t unreasonable—but if the PCs decide to get into the soul-selling business and word spreads, their kingdom gains 1d6 points of Unrest per soul they’ve sold.

Well, it’s nice that they give suggestions for prices if the party wants to sell them, but do the module writers seriously expect the party to publicly announce they’re selling souls?

Next, is the artifact the Lich had and gives a pretty lengthy list of perks. You do have to tear out one of your eyes to use it, but the benefits are nice. True Seeing once a day as a free action, Greater Scrying 3/day, Planar Binding once per week (Abaddon natives only, like the Soul Eaters the party was fighting), mass charm person once per year (1-mile range), and Familiar Farsight at will. Of course, Paizo can’t just let the party have such a nice magic item.

The oculus of Abaddon is powerfully neutral evil and possesses a limited and hateful intellect of its own. While not capable of communicating directly with its owner, it refuses to activate its powers for any user who is not neutral evil.

If you have a neutral evil PC in the group, it’s yours to abuse. Have fun spamming Planar Binding every week during the years of downtime Kingmaker gives you!

The random encounters aren’t quite as interesting this time around. The party is swiftly approaching the point where melee bruisers will entirely cease to be threatening to them. But I did note a CR 10, flightless dragon, with a 50-foot line that deals 6d6 fire damage.


The Varnhold Vanishing isn’t as bad as the previous two chapters, but it’s definitely not good, either. Next time, we’re covering Blood For Blood. We’ll soon see that Paizo really doesn’t know how to design high level adventures.

[Koumei]

The PC game ties that chapter in a little bit with everything else going on. One of your party members will betray you and steal the oculus away because the nymph lady wants it for its divination powers to find her plot device. Or you can convince him instead to destroy the oculus.

Also one of the expansions gives some more backstory about all this - you learn more about the leader (who basically does want to be a bro - "We're adventurers more than rulers, and I want to form an alliance with someone like you rather than very obviously be a pawn for a bigger force". The various magic items he sends the PC in the main campaign are completely without strings attached). It also tells you more about the centaurs, as well as the events that led up to the dead being disturbed and everything. It has a bit of a "fuck you" ending but given how it has to fit into the main story and kind of can't involve this extra player character joining your main party (now as a helper NPC or something), I'll forgive the devs for that. They're far less dickish than the module writers. And that part ties in not with the nymph lady but with the optional final final boss who is ultimately to blame.

That said, the expansion has some really stupid difficulty spikes. I don't really recommend that one.

[Kaelik]

Part 3: The Varnhold Vanishing
This chapter is based off of the urban legend surrounding Roanoake Colony, specifically the mysterious vanishing of the colonists living there. When I told my brother about this, it severely annoyed him, since this “mystery” has long since been solved. It was never really much of a mystery to begin with.

Yeah, to be extremely political for a moment, the story of Roanoake is that a bunch of people asked Natives what happened to the colony and they said "Oh, yeah they all left the colony and joined us because we accepted them and we knew how to feed ourselves and we've been living with them for decades and some are our parents and shit." and then a bunch of white British people were like "Well obviously it can't be that, no British Person would ever choose to live as a SAVAGE for the mere prospect of not starving to death so they must have mysteriously disappeared and we may never know what happened."

And in the end every school child learns the "big mystery" without ever learning that it was definitely easily solved before the US existed as a nation except that Racism meant we couldn't accept the answer.

To my amazement, crazy hawt Fey Queen is no where to be seen! This chapter revolves entirely around a cyclops Lich who was part of an ancient empire of cyclops that collapsed long ago. Some stupid dumbass breached the Lich’s tomb and stole something, rousing it from his century long slumber. The Lich tracked said dumbass down and abducted the entire populace of Varnhold. The module discusses a few ideas to get the party involved. Baiting them with a magic item that’s there, an NPC asks for their help… Standard stuff. The setup here is pretty simple; evil Lich is doing evil, smite his undead ass.

I barely vaguely remember an empty city. I don't even remember the lich? We might have literally just teamed up with the Lich and made an alliance between our living and his undead kingdom and left the people of Varnhold to get fucked. That sounds like what our very alignment conflicted party might have done. I'm always down to do evil, and Hicks is always down to recruit enemies who are spellcasters, so that's probably what happened.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

Part 4: Blood for Blood

The stupid makes its appearance early this time, in the foreword.

Managing the Marketplace: The method the kingdombuilding rules use to present marketplaces gives the PCs a greater level of control over their ability to shop for magic items than normal. This is by design—players LOVE to shop for toys, after all. But it can get out of hand. If you find that your players are abusing the system and are turning it into a huge magic item vending machine (and if this concept bothers you—if it doesn’t, by all means run with it!), don’t be afraid to adjust the rules. Just do so in a way that doesn’t surprise the PCs, and keep them informed as to the changes you’re making. You can even justify changes you’re making with flavor. For example, if the PCs keep buying and selling items through their city’s marketplace in an attempt to build up a huge treasury, perhaps word of the vast amount of magic items being produced by their kingdom spreads and attracts the attention of a group of thieves from a neighboring River Kingdom.

This chapter start the players off at level 10 and expects them to be level 13 by the end of it. Level 10 pretty much guarantees the party has access to 5th level spells. Will this be factored into the design of the module?

This chapter of Kingmaker revolves around a Barbarian king uniting a bunch of smaller tribes under his rule. He plans to invade the party’s kingdom and has allied himself with a baron from a different country. This premise isn’t a bad one, the scale is big enough to actually threaten the party’s nation. But the focus here is entirely on the Barbarian king and the noble, not stopping the barbarian hordes directly. The adventure expects the party to head the city the baron rules over and confront him and then do a dungeon crawl to stop the Barbarian king. This premise would work with a level 1 party, which seems to be a running theme with high level 3.P adventures…

We open with a new village that was recently added to the PC’s kingdom. The railroad starts immediately as this is handwaved if the party hadn’t annexed the territory in question.

An NPC from the city the aforementioned baron controls arrives at the village to warn the party about the Barbarian hordes. Again, a very low level approach, since the party could easily have predicted this occurrence with divination magic. God forbid they brought an army of planar bound outsiders with them, or this encounter is over before it starts. The invading force only consist of 25 human mercenaries and 6 trolls. Forget planar binding, I could see the party just Scry N’ Dying these assholes before they get to town. The NPC lady tells the PCs the name of their leader, that’s more than enough information for Scry.

We get a sneak peak at the mass combat rules Kingmaker uses… before we’re told how they work. The idea is you roll three d20s and add modifiers based on the preparations the party took. The actual mechanic is just like an attack roll. Whoever makes a successful attack roll, gains a point and whichever side has the most points wins. It’s not clear how much time the PCs have to before the invasion starts, the module just tells us it’s, “Only a short time.” Thanks, not like knowing how much time we have is important...
Also, 25 humans and 6 trolls seems a bit too small of a group to warrant mass combat rules.

The invading barbarians have an offense of 8 and a defense of 15. The party can only erect three defenses due to the time crunch, unless they had, “advanced warning from their own lands”, in which case they can have 6. Even if they could use all the defense options available, their max offense would only be 9 (14 if they use 5th level AoEs spells in each phase) and a max defense of 17 (22 if they use 5th level AoE spells). In other words, it’s more than possible for the d20 to decide this fight and not the player’s actions. Or it would, except for the fact that during this section, the party fights some trolls will give the players enough points to win, unless it takes them more than 11 rounds to kill them all.

There are 6 Trolls, complete with bad WILL saves and the inability to fly. I don’t see them posing much of a threat to a level 10 party. The module is surprisingly generous about capturing the leader of the invasion, but once again, the PCs will need a party face to get anything useful out of him. The NPC who warned the party about the invasion begs the PCs to save her father (from the baron) and her sister (who the Barbarians kidnapped). She’ll happily sketch them a map of the baron’s city, but aside from that, she’s not providing too much aid.

She does, however, have one more thing to offer the PCs—the name of a possibly ally in the town: Satinder Morne, the proprietor of Fort Drelev’s gaming hall and brothel. Kisandra gives the PCs a jade ring worth 200 gp that can prove to Satinder they’re friends. While Kisandra is hesitant to admit how she knows Satinder (they are, in fact, secretly lovers, an arrangement that would not sit all that well with her tradition-bound father)

+2 points for including an LGBT couple, -50 for this bullshit.


At this point, the module moves on to wilderness encounters and at this point, I have to wonder why these are still a thing. The party has the name of their next destination. They have the names of both of their new enemies. What’s stopping them from just teleporting and skipping all the hex crawling? Absolutely nothing. It just didn’t occur to Paizo that they might do this. Some of these encounters are barely worth running, like 14 CR 2 Boggards. Others, like the trio of Hill Giants, are just beatsticks with low WILL saves. We’ve also got a pair of Aurumvoraxes (more beatsticks), three Chimeras, an advanced Dire Tiger, a Ahuizotl (aquatic beatstick), and an entire city of low CR Boggards.

Note that many of the boggards lurking in M’botuu are hardly challenges for the PCs—this is intentional, so you can give the PCs a chance to feel “high level” by fighting lots of foes at once without much danger, and to make the PCs feel tough when swarms of boggards run for cover. Extended fights against lots of CR 2 boggards can quickly get old for a group of 10th-level PCs—as soon as you feel that this is the case, feel free to have all other boggards cower and f lee from the PCs so that you need only play out battles against the boggard wardens and their priest-king.

The Boggard Wardens are only CR 7 (being level 5 Rangers) and their Priest-King is a level 10 (CR 11) Cleric. This guy has a several paragraph backstory about how he’s had a crisis of faith every since he had a Charm spell cast on him by a Spirit Naga. Said Spirit Naga is a 3rd level Sorcerer and a CR 12 encounter. The other random encounters are all low CR chafe except for a 12-Head Hydra that can’t fly. There’s also a sidequest involving escorting a bunch of low-level NPCs to safety.

The refugees are all humans, and all first-level experts or commoners. Escorting them through the dangerous lands safely should be a difficult task, but if the PCs can get them to their nation, the act of kindness will be well repaid over time.

Or they can just spend a few days using Teleport and do this with zero risk.

Let’s move on to the baron’s fort. This is where it becomes painfully obvious that this adventure was not designed with level 10 characters in mind. They seriously expect you to enter the fort via a secret tunnel or disguise yourselves and scout out the town like you’re fucking level 1. Never is it acknowledged that they could enter the city via magic, even though literally nothing’s stopping them from doing so. The module claims a direct assault would cause too much collateral damage and cause them, “complications”, if they wish to liberate the city. The details for this are handled via liberation points, of which they need to have 20. The lose 3 points for citizen who gets killed by the guards and -10 for any they kill themselves. -5 for partially destroying buildings and -10 for totally destroying them, -1 per round a public fight occurs, and -2 for each day, “without liberation.” Fuck this stupid shit, I wouldn’t blame the players if they flipped off the GM for trying to implement these rules. They’re fucking horrible, and way too much bookkeeping.

The aforementioned guards are merely 4th level Fighters and there are also some Hill Giants. The ceilings are low enough in the fort itself (15’) the Hill Giants can probably reach flying PCs. We also get some stats for the baron himself. Fighter 6/Rogue 6. With a +5 WILL save.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, his only ranged offense consists of three masterwork throwing axes. If this asshole is ran as written, the party scrys and dies him effortlessly and that’s the end of it. There are, of course, more NPCs with several paragraphs of backstory. One of them is the Baron’s wife (a level 8 Aristocrat) who is noncombatant and wouldn’t be dangerous even if she wasn’t. There’s also the lady the baron is cheating with, a level 10 Bard, who’s a spy from a nation that’s not important to the entire adventure path. Bard lady will basically flee if she’s alone and use Inspire Courage if she’s in a group, along with a couple spells. She does know Confusion, Blindness/Deafness and Grease, so she’s more dangerous than the baron is. But by far the most dangerous NPC here is a level 12 Wizard, but he’s also an Evoker with extremely shitty spells. His best spells are Greater Dispel Magic, Disintegrate, Wall of Force, Enervation and Slow. If he drops below 20 HP, he’ll cast Teleport and won’t come back.


The last part of this chapter is a dungeon crawl (which feels really out of place), ending with a showdown with the Barbarian king. There’s a Guards and Wards spell in place in the dungeon.

The tomb is still watched over by Zorek (see area D11). As soon as the PCs move beyond area D1 of the tomb, Zorek uses guards and wards to create additional barriers and complications for the PCs exploring the complex. Thick fog fills every corridor (but not the rooms), obscuring all sight (including darkvision) beyond 5 feet. Webs fill all stairs from top to bottom as per a web spell, and every intersection creates a minor confusion effect that causes explorers to constantly question their sense of direction.

Lastly, a silent image hides all of the doors, making them appear as part of tomb walls (DC 20 Will save to disbelieve if interacted with). The iron doors (hardness 10, hp 45, Break DC 28) are all sealed with arcane locks (DC 30 Disable Device to pick) that reactivate within 10 minutes of being bypassed—but several rooms include tests and tricks that can cause the doors to open.

Which honestly just sounds more annoying than anything, the party can just use Dispel Magic and Knock as needed. There’s also this:

Except where otherwise noted, the rooms and corridors are 12 feet high, and the walls themselves are infused with ancient magic and the tiniest fraction of Gorum’s wrath—as a result, the walls resist any attempt at manipulation via magic (such as passwall, stone shape, or transmute rock to mud). In order to affect the stone of the tomb with such a spell, the caster must make a DC 30 caster level check as if attempting to overcome spell resistance—if this check fails, the spell is wasted and the magical backlash of energy causes the caster to bleed painfully from the eyes, mouth, and fingertips, suffering 2 points of damage per level of the spell she attempted to cast.

Goddammit Paizo…

Nothing guarding against Teleport spells, so the party can just Scry ‘N Die the Barbarian king, just like the baron. By this point, the party should be level 12 and yet there are still pitfall traps in this dungeon. A lot of the encounters and traps in this place are useless against flying characters. The lamest of which being an Iron Golem in a chamber with a 40-foot-high ceiling. There’s also a demon that’s only ranged offense consists of Insect Plague (once a day) and Fear (3/day). Barbarian Bro also has two 10th level Clerics, with largely bad spells (they prepared Shout FFS!) We also get stats for the Barbarian King’s artifact sword, because the villain of every chapter has to have an artifact.

Ovinrbaane (literally translated as “enemy of all enemies”) is a cursed, intelligent +3 wounding greatsword. When Ovinrbaane succeeds at a contest of will, it uses modify memory to mislead its wielder into believing he’s the real Armag and that anyone around him who isn’t obviously a member of his tribe is a mortal enemy.

Except Modify Memory can only alter up to 5 minutes worth of memories. Goddamnit Paizo!

The most dangerous NPC in this dungeon is a level 12 Cleric with a template that makes him immune to disease, poison, and mind-affecting, and grants him fast healing 5. I think Paizo realized this issue and you can make a DC 35 Intimidate check to bypass the encounter. Hope someone in your party took that skill, otherwise, you’re fighting this guy. His spells aren’t awful, he explicitly opens with Anti-Life Shell (fuck you Fighter!) and he’ll cast the Heal spell on himself when his HP drops below 60. This guy could actually be a challenging fight, depending on the party’s composition and tactics.

The Barbarian King, on the other hand, is a joke. His WILL save is better than the Barons (+8) but he has no ranged offense. His artifact sword has a weird trait in which it dispels any, “any offensive effect once only as it first takes effect on the sword’s wielder.” Note that the caster level on this is 20, but since it’s just Dispel Magic and not its greater cousin, the cap on the check is still +10. In other words, this isn’t helping him against flying enemies all that much (though it does also grant Freedom of Movement). Barbarian bro is also accompanied by 8 CR 5 Bloody Skeletons. They have fast healing 4, composite longbows, and 72 HP each. No joke, they’re far more dangerous than the level 14 Barbarian that leads them.

Treasure: If you aren’t comfortable with giving the PCs a powerful weapon like Ovinrbaane, simply play up its disadvantages—if you wish, you can even treat the weapon as a cursed berserking sword (see page 543 of Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook). You should certainly play up the artifact’s personality if the PCs keep it—its power will certainly come in handy as the Kingmaker Adventure Path enters the final two adventures, but you should never let the PCs feel fully comfortable in the chaotic artifact’s presence.

FUCK YOU, YOU ANTI-PLAYER ASSHOLES!!!

The random encounter chart is also pretty stupid. 1d4 adult black dragons! That fight could end up being harder than any of the planned encounters! What the hell?! Still not as bad as chapter 1’s.


If you thought Blood For Blood was dumb and clearly not designed for higher level PCs, just wait. War of the River Kings is even worse. Because the party is 13th level at that point, and we get to see the mass combat rules in all their putrid glory. Goddamn.

[Kaelik]

Tome rules substantially improve this shit by making teleport and scry not in fact work that way!

But also we stomped our way through the dungeon and I think the DM was just too nice to do the stupid no wall interaction thing.

We did fly over the Barbarian and laugh at him though.

Except Modify Memory can only alter up to 5 minutes worth of memories. Goddamnit Paizo!

You can get pretty creative with Modify Memory. For example, in this case what if the sword makes them remember that in the last five minutes, all the party members left, and then a team of orcs walked in and said "I will murder you dumb sword wielder" and then all cast disguise self to look like the other PCs.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

The next chapter might be later than usual. Apologies in advance.

[Zaranthan]

Except Modify Memory can only alter up to 5 minutes worth of memories. Goddamnit Paizo!

My first thought was whoever wrote that bit just misread the spell so hard, they thought it had a five minute duration instead of limit.

[Koumei]

The PC game handled it a bit better: it wasn't a cursed sword (you can just jolly well have his sword if you defeat him), instead he was raised by the hollow witches (servants of the nymph) since birth to believe he was Armag. He was manipulated into the whole thing so more war would happen, meaning at least one kingdom will fall, adding to the tally.

That ties it into the overall story a bit better, has a reason for this sudden invasion happening, and provides you with evidence that she's involved before your final encounter so it isn't just "Oh it turns out Moriarty was behind all of the cases we solved".

[ColorBlindNinja61]

The PC game handled it a bit better:

This seems to be a reoccurring theme.




I'll try to upload the next part of the review soon. Just been busy as of late.

[Harshax]

re: Varnhold Vanishing: I don't recall ever having a choice of what to do with the soul jars containing the citizens of Varnhold in the video game.

But also, in regards to your criticism of unrest gained for doing awful things ...

Even if the party has the means to perform the sale of soul jars personally and in complete privacy, there's certainly a chance that a timeless fey queen with planar relations could uncover your secrets though her counter-intelligence methods (which seem extensive) and use that information to undermine your kingdom's stability. That's literally her super power and she's been doing it for over a thousand years if I remember the lore correctly.

I think where the lazy writing comes into play, is that the campaign seems to lack long term strategies for your "Minister" to perform counter-counter-intelligence and nip the unrest early, alpha-strike would-be usurpers that have been enticed by the fey queen, or gather intelligence about the BBEG of the campaign if it hasn't become apparent already.

[PoliteNewb]

Will'o'wisps weren't much of a problem the first time we met them because I was playing a sorcerer with glitterdust. Blind=lose dex bonus=shattered wisps. By the next time we'd picked up communal resist energy and they were a joke. The trolls and some dragony thing called a peluda met as a random encounter were much more of a problem.

I find it odd that Glitterdust didn't prove to be just as effective against the trolls. But that said, I don't think Kingmaker was designed with the assumption that the players would be using good spells like Glitterdust.

Also, an annotate; my 3.5 group nearly got their asses kicked by a Will-O-Wisp the other day. It passed the save for Glitterdust and was trolling them with its 29 AC.

Does Pathfinder use the same monsters as 3.5? Because:

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible.

Feats: Alertness, Blind-Fight, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Weapon FinesseB

Just sayin'.

[amethal]

Part 4: Blood for Blood

The Barbarian King, on the other hand, is a joke. His WILL save is better than the Barons (+8) but he has no ranged offense. His artifact sword has a weird trait in which it dispels any, “any offensive effect once only as it first takes effect on the sword’s wielder.” Note that the caster level on this is 20, but since it’s just Dispel Magic and not its greater cousin, the cap on the check is still +10.

There's no +10 cap on Dispel Magic in Pathfinder.

I've been playing the game pretty much since it came out and I'm still finding spells that don't quite work like they did in D&D 3.5.

[ColorBlindNinja61]

But also, in regards to your criticism of unrest gained for doing awful things ...

Even if the party has the means to perform the sale of soul jars personally and in complete privacy, there's certainly a chance that a timeless fey queen with planar relations could uncover your secrets though her counter-intelligence methods (which seem extensive) and use that information to undermine your kingdom's stability. That's literally her super power and she's been doing it for over a thousand years if I remember the lore correctly.

The module never so much as hints at this possibility. I think it's safe to classify that as Gygaxian fuckery.

Will'o'wisps weren't much of a problem the first time we met them because I was playing a sorcerer with glitterdust. Blind=lose dex bonus=shattered wisps. By the next time we'd picked up communal resist energy and they were a joke. The trolls and some dragony thing called a peluda met as a random encounter were much more of a problem.

I find it odd that Glitterdust didn't prove to be just as effective against the trolls. But that said, I don't think Kingmaker was designed with the assumption that the players would be using good spells like Glitterdust.

Also, an annotate; my 3.5 group nearly got their asses kicked by a Will-O-Wisp the other day. It passed the save for Glitterdust and was trolling them with its 29 AC.

Does Pathfinder use the same monsters as 3.5? Because:

An invisible attacker gets no advantages related to hitting you in melee. That is, you don’t lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class, and the attacker doesn’t get the usual +2 bonus for being invisible.

Feats: Alertness, Blind-Fight, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Weapon FinesseB

Just sayin'.

I never realized Blind-Fight let you keep DEX to AC, but being blind still is utterly crippling, even with Blind-Fight.

Part 4: Blood for Blood

The Barbarian King, on the other hand, is a joke. His WILL save is better than the Barons (+8) but he has no ranged offense. His artifact sword has a weird trait in which it dispels any, “any offensive effect once only as it first takes effect on the sword’s wielder.” Note that the caster level on this is 20, but since it’s just Dispel Magic and not its greater cousin, the cap on the check is still +10.

There's no +10 cap on Dispel Magic in Pathfinder.

I've been playing the game pretty much since it came out and I'm still finding spells that don't quite work like they did in D&D 3.5.

But... why?

[Foxwarrior]

There's no +10 cap on Dispel Magic in Pathfinder.

I've been playing the game pretty much since it came out and I'm still finding spells that don't quite work like they did in D&D 3.5.

But... why?

If you've been playing Tome for a while you'll have noticed that like half of custom spell lists give out Greater Dispel Magic as a level 3 to avoid the cap.

[...You Lost Me]

Related to what fox said, it's not that PF copied Tome, but that PF & Tome both mucked with dispel magic for the same reason. The cap is just an arbitrary limit that makes the spell bad in mid-level games. Mid- and high-level gameplay isn't meaningfully improved by forcing characters to spend a 6th-level slot counterspelling.

The same is true for spells like fireball. But PF didn't remove the level cap on that for whatever reason.

[Krusk]

There's no +10 cap on Dispel Magic in Pathfinder.

I've been playing the game pretty much since it came out and I'm still finding spells that don't quite work like they did in D&D 3.5.

But... why?

Pathfinder isn't a 3.x fix, and wasn't even really supposed to be one. They changed enough things to force people to buy their books and not use the ones they already had. Some of the changes (like this one) are net positive. Some are net negative. Some are just to settle personal grudges random devs had with how rules worked, but don't actually change the game all that much.

Since the mandate wasn't actually to go fix every spell, they ended up just mucking about with enough to mean you have to buy their book.

[Harshax]

That quote did not originate from me.

[Foxwarrior]

Yeah, this forum software can be funny sometimes, I had to be pretty careful to not make Krusk's mistake too.