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Prepping for Pathfinder: Kingmaker (spoilers!)
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<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6055439" data-attributes="member: 3586"><p>Here's my thoughts on the last month or so of our Kingmaker game:</p><p></p><p>With Baron Drelev dealt with, the group now needed to do two things: get back to their kingdom and rule it for a bit, and also deal with the barbarians that had launched the attack on their kingdom.</p><p></p><p>I’m reaching a stage of general dissatisfaction with the Kingmaker series: the actual exploration of the wilderness is mostly boring at this stage (it doesn’t help that the author of Blood for Blood forgot all about it causing the Paizo editorial staff to whip up a few uninspired encounters), and the actual kingdom-building mechanics take up time, cause a lot of calculations, but don’t actually feel like running a kingdom. This might have been helped by the events being better and more interesting for the players, but (a) there aren’t enough of them and (b) they rarely cause the players any problems.</p><p></p><p>There is a tension in the kingdom-building rules which comes from the conflict between expansion (in terms of hexes and size) and economy-building (creating cities and their buildings). Basically, consumption goes up the more you expand, and is countered by economy-building. It was great in the early days, when everything was new, but the tension between them is easily circumvented. Get your kingdom to a size where you’re happy with the number of buildings you can build each month, then stop expanding and just build lots of buildings. Purchase ones that can make valuable magic items if you can, as they’ll double the BPs you make each turn. Once your economy can handle everything, expand a few more hexes and repeat. The penalties for just making buildings are minor: there’s no minimum kingdom (farm) size to support a metropolis.</p><p></p><p>I’ve also given up rolling the magic items the stores produce: Paizo’s method of splitting the relevant tables over several books just makes it take too long. Even Ultimate Equipment doesn’t manage to get all the tables in the same book - and even with most of the tables, is happy to spread them throughout the entire book rather than have them all together in an appendix.</p><p></p><p>So, with the exploration and kingdom-building being more of a drag than a boon, was there anything for the players to do this session? Thankfully, there was: explore the barbarian’s dungeon. The dungeon was meant to be under the effects of one of my favourite spells, Guards and Wards, but after the first few rooms I basically ignored the spell as it wasn’t really adding anything to the game that the PCs couldn’t overcome.</p><p></p><p>The group began the assault on the barbarian position by rescuing the hostages the barbarians had taken. This was done very well, with the group stealthily approaching the barbarian camp and using sniper tactics plus targetted spells to destroy the barbarians before they could respond. The group weren’t able to guide the rescued hostages home immediately, instead setting them up in a safe camp before the group penetrated the caves behind the encampment.</p><p></p><p>Two Black Sisters - followers of Gyronna - attempted to stop the party, and a hard-fought battle erupted, with the sisters summoning great demons to aid them. However, once Greg’s paladin, Wyvern, dealt with the demons the Black Sisters weren’t able to stand up to the combined group.</p><p></p><p>A test of strength (moving boulders) was easily accomplished by Tim’s Master Chymist, but the next room provided a much greater challenge as Wyvern was caught in an Icebox trap. Unfortunately for the barbarians, he was able to weather the storm and countermagic was employed to detect the hidden door from the room and then open it without triggering the trap again.</p><p></p><p>A great Iron Golem, aided directly by the barbarian god Gorum, then faced the group, and as it wasn’t evil, Greg wasn’t able to directly bypass its damage reduction. Eventually, Tim was able to wear it down, with his brother healing the group as they took a lot of damage.</p><p></p><p>Feeling rather badly hurt, the group began to leave the dungeon, only to be ambushed in the corridor they chose to use by a Derghodaemon, which summoned another of its kind. The combined might of these two creatures came very close to slaying the entire party, especially as Greg failed to use his smite evil power to give the DR-bypassing to the entire party. Eventually, the daemons were slain, and the group limped out of the dungeon.</p><p></p><p>The next day, fully refreshed, they discovered that the barbarians hadn’t reinforced the destroyed challenges; to be fair, there wasn’t all that many barbarians or supernatural creatures to do so. In fact, there were just three more challenges: a group of bloody skeletal champions, which fell to area effect spells (like fireball and holy smite), Zorek, the guardian of the temple, who managed to use anti-life shell and blade barrier to rather discomfit the party until Michael used dispel magic a few times and Tim and Greg tore him apart, and finally Armag, a barbarian who thought himself the reincarnation of a mighty barbarian warrior.</p><p></p><p>Armag had more of the bloody skeletal champions with him, but they were sealed away from the combat by a wall of ice from Dave’s wizard, and thus the fighters were able to happily attack Armag undisturbed. Armag had won initiative, so he’d charged in to make one attack. Happily making many hasted attacks, Greg and Tim tore him apart.</p><p></p><p>With that, the bulk of the adventure was done. We did more kingdom-building, and then the great Exploration of the Slough. I didn’t have the heart to run combats against CR2 boggarts, and even the 12-headed hydra, which greatly excited the group when they were attacked by it, fell in a single round. </p><p></p><p>In other news, a number of potential big threats have been turned into elk by Dave’s persistent Polymorph Other spell. I kept rolling elk on the random encounter tables, so Dave has decided to add his own. Sigh.</p><p></p><p>However, we now had the opportunity to do something new: fight a war! Well, at least get the prologue to it, in War of the River Kings as the group went to a tournament organised by their (new) neighbour, King Trovetti of Pitax. It’s not that he’s new, it’s that they’ve expanded to a point (and eliminated their competition) so he’s basically a new neighbour.</p><p></p><p>One of the real poor points of Kingmaker is that the PC’s kingdom has been - for the most part - background window-dressing, and, in particular, there’s been no mention of neighbouring kingdoms. Where are the ambassadors? Where are the merchants asking for trade routes and favourable terms? Not part of this series, it seems, and with the highly abstracted kingdom mechanics becoming more and more irrelevant as the game continues, it’s somewhat nice to have an opponent who will actually bring the conflict to the PCs. We’ll probably have to fudge an army for the PCs at some point, but I’ll have the beginning attack be on Fort Drelev, which isn’t actually part of the PC’s kingdom yet, so they won’t lose anything if it is laid waste.</p><p></p><p>The group arrived in Pitax and met King Trovetti - Hooray! They hadn’t insulted him yet. The conversation between Greg and King Trovetti was short and to the point: Thanks for coming to my tournament; I’m glad you could make it. No mention was made of his schemes in the last adventure, as Greg had completely forgotten that point. Not that surprising, as it wasn’t emphasised at all.</p><p></p><p>The tournament itself saw the players have a horrible time, mainly because they didn’t really fit into the tournament categories: only Lee did, and he misplayed it horribly: shooting once per turn, not using Deadly Aim, and thus bouncing off the targets and gaining no bonuses for shooting all his arrows quickly.</p><p></p><p>The second round, that of the test of the axe, saw Tim trying his best with the strength fight. His master chymist did ok with his strength and hasted attacks, but he wasn’t anywhere near the best competitors.</p><p></p><p>The third round, which required Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff and Perform skills to do well in, saw Michael try with only one of the skills. He didn’t come last, mainly because the group spotted another NPC cheating.</p><p></p><p>Finally came the jousting round, where Greg’s paladin demonstrated that he couldn’t ride a horse. In fact, this was a pathetically written encounter, where some contestants needed rolls of Natural 20 to eliminate them from the competition and led to great boredom on the part of the participants. </p><p></p><p>In the end, Pitax won the competition, and King Trovetti was happy. The group hung around a bit, until they got the news that Fort Drelev was under attack and we ended the session. I’m not particularly hopeful that the actual war will be exciting, but I might be surprised.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 6055439, member: 3586"] Here's my thoughts on the last month or so of our Kingmaker game: With Baron Drelev dealt with, the group now needed to do two things: get back to their kingdom and rule it for a bit, and also deal with the barbarians that had launched the attack on their kingdom. I’m reaching a stage of general dissatisfaction with the Kingmaker series: the actual exploration of the wilderness is mostly boring at this stage (it doesn’t help that the author of Blood for Blood forgot all about it causing the Paizo editorial staff to whip up a few uninspired encounters), and the actual kingdom-building mechanics take up time, cause a lot of calculations, but don’t actually feel like running a kingdom. This might have been helped by the events being better and more interesting for the players, but (a) there aren’t enough of them and (b) they rarely cause the players any problems. There is a tension in the kingdom-building rules which comes from the conflict between expansion (in terms of hexes and size) and economy-building (creating cities and their buildings). Basically, consumption goes up the more you expand, and is countered by economy-building. It was great in the early days, when everything was new, but the tension between them is easily circumvented. Get your kingdom to a size where you’re happy with the number of buildings you can build each month, then stop expanding and just build lots of buildings. Purchase ones that can make valuable magic items if you can, as they’ll double the BPs you make each turn. Once your economy can handle everything, expand a few more hexes and repeat. The penalties for just making buildings are minor: there’s no minimum kingdom (farm) size to support a metropolis. I’ve also given up rolling the magic items the stores produce: Paizo’s method of splitting the relevant tables over several books just makes it take too long. Even Ultimate Equipment doesn’t manage to get all the tables in the same book - and even with most of the tables, is happy to spread them throughout the entire book rather than have them all together in an appendix. So, with the exploration and kingdom-building being more of a drag than a boon, was there anything for the players to do this session? Thankfully, there was: explore the barbarian’s dungeon. The dungeon was meant to be under the effects of one of my favourite spells, Guards and Wards, but after the first few rooms I basically ignored the spell as it wasn’t really adding anything to the game that the PCs couldn’t overcome. The group began the assault on the barbarian position by rescuing the hostages the barbarians had taken. This was done very well, with the group stealthily approaching the barbarian camp and using sniper tactics plus targetted spells to destroy the barbarians before they could respond. The group weren’t able to guide the rescued hostages home immediately, instead setting them up in a safe camp before the group penetrated the caves behind the encampment. Two Black Sisters - followers of Gyronna - attempted to stop the party, and a hard-fought battle erupted, with the sisters summoning great demons to aid them. However, once Greg’s paladin, Wyvern, dealt with the demons the Black Sisters weren’t able to stand up to the combined group. A test of strength (moving boulders) was easily accomplished by Tim’s Master Chymist, but the next room provided a much greater challenge as Wyvern was caught in an Icebox trap. Unfortunately for the barbarians, he was able to weather the storm and countermagic was employed to detect the hidden door from the room and then open it without triggering the trap again. A great Iron Golem, aided directly by the barbarian god Gorum, then faced the group, and as it wasn’t evil, Greg wasn’t able to directly bypass its damage reduction. Eventually, Tim was able to wear it down, with his brother healing the group as they took a lot of damage. Feeling rather badly hurt, the group began to leave the dungeon, only to be ambushed in the corridor they chose to use by a Derghodaemon, which summoned another of its kind. The combined might of these two creatures came very close to slaying the entire party, especially as Greg failed to use his smite evil power to give the DR-bypassing to the entire party. Eventually, the daemons were slain, and the group limped out of the dungeon. The next day, fully refreshed, they discovered that the barbarians hadn’t reinforced the destroyed challenges; to be fair, there wasn’t all that many barbarians or supernatural creatures to do so. In fact, there were just three more challenges: a group of bloody skeletal champions, which fell to area effect spells (like fireball and holy smite), Zorek, the guardian of the temple, who managed to use anti-life shell and blade barrier to rather discomfit the party until Michael used dispel magic a few times and Tim and Greg tore him apart, and finally Armag, a barbarian who thought himself the reincarnation of a mighty barbarian warrior. Armag had more of the bloody skeletal champions with him, but they were sealed away from the combat by a wall of ice from Dave’s wizard, and thus the fighters were able to happily attack Armag undisturbed. Armag had won initiative, so he’d charged in to make one attack. Happily making many hasted attacks, Greg and Tim tore him apart. With that, the bulk of the adventure was done. We did more kingdom-building, and then the great Exploration of the Slough. I didn’t have the heart to run combats against CR2 boggarts, and even the 12-headed hydra, which greatly excited the group when they were attacked by it, fell in a single round. In other news, a number of potential big threats have been turned into elk by Dave’s persistent Polymorph Other spell. I kept rolling elk on the random encounter tables, so Dave has decided to add his own. Sigh. However, we now had the opportunity to do something new: fight a war! Well, at least get the prologue to it, in War of the River Kings as the group went to a tournament organised by their (new) neighbour, King Trovetti of Pitax. It’s not that he’s new, it’s that they’ve expanded to a point (and eliminated their competition) so he’s basically a new neighbour. One of the real poor points of Kingmaker is that the PC’s kingdom has been - for the most part - background window-dressing, and, in particular, there’s been no mention of neighbouring kingdoms. Where are the ambassadors? Where are the merchants asking for trade routes and favourable terms? Not part of this series, it seems, and with the highly abstracted kingdom mechanics becoming more and more irrelevant as the game continues, it’s somewhat nice to have an opponent who will actually bring the conflict to the PCs. We’ll probably have to fudge an army for the PCs at some point, but I’ll have the beginning attack be on Fort Drelev, which isn’t actually part of the PC’s kingdom yet, so they won’t lose anything if it is laid waste. The group arrived in Pitax and met King Trovetti - Hooray! They hadn’t insulted him yet. The conversation between Greg and King Trovetti was short and to the point: Thanks for coming to my tournament; I’m glad you could make it. No mention was made of his schemes in the last adventure, as Greg had completely forgotten that point. Not that surprising, as it wasn’t emphasised at all. The tournament itself saw the players have a horrible time, mainly because they didn’t really fit into the tournament categories: only Lee did, and he misplayed it horribly: shooting once per turn, not using Deadly Aim, and thus bouncing off the targets and gaining no bonuses for shooting all his arrows quickly. The second round, that of the test of the axe, saw Tim trying his best with the strength fight. His master chymist did ok with his strength and hasted attacks, but he wasn’t anywhere near the best competitors. The third round, which required Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff and Perform skills to do well in, saw Michael try with only one of the skills. He didn’t come last, mainly because the group spotted another NPC cheating. Finally came the jousting round, where Greg’s paladin demonstrated that he couldn’t ride a horse. In fact, this was a pathetically written encounter, where some contestants needed rolls of Natural 20 to eliminate them from the competition and led to great boredom on the part of the participants. In the end, Pitax won the competition, and King Trovetti was happy. The group hung around a bit, until they got the news that Fort Drelev was under attack and we ended the session. I’m not particularly hopeful that the actual war will be exciting, but I might be surprised. [/QUOTE]
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