Pathfinder 1E Compatibility Question - Ultimate Campaign vs Stronghold Builder's Guidebook

[Ezequielramone]

I'm planning to buy the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (it's now available on dndclassics.com) in order to "micromanage" my players' castle/stronghold and use the rules on the Ultimate Campaign book to "macromanage" the castle/kingdom etc.


Are both products compatible? Can I use both at the same time? If they overlaps, can I just use one without breaking the other one?
Had anyone of you tried this?

Thanks for your time.

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

I see this question a lot. I'm going to quote myself from one of my previous answers:

Two books you might want try and track down are 3.0's "Stronghold Builder's Guidebook" and Pathfinder's "Ultimate Campaign". The Stronghold's building formula is a huge mess and everything is feel fairly expensive though the Landlord feat presented on page 10-11, really helps with the costs. On the flip side, the shear amount of customization the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook allow is nearly overwhelming. The Ultimate Campaign on the other hand, is significantly less varied, however, the rules for construction are simplistic and cheaper (and it provides the listed benefit for each piece). In addition, Pathfinder presents two ways to pay for a building pieces, either with gold or the [goods, influence, labor, magic] system introduced in the same book. You can check out a chunk of relevant parts of Ultimate Campaign here.

I've use both books in various campaigns as both a DM and a player. From my experience, I would use the Ultimate Campaign's building method as the baseline, while utilizing the Stronghold Builder's for ideas, the various magic items listed as well as a guideline for "fancier", unlisted, and/or impossible (floating mage's tower anyone?) building pieces. If you do this and allow someone to take the Landlord feat, you will need to either scale back the amount of gold provided or restrict it only being used for things within the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook.

Slightly off topic, but I've also found that Leadership is a must for making large scaled bases.

 

[Ezequielramone]

Thanks for your response.
Does the SGB has more specific customization options? Can I emule most of the stuffs on the SBG with UC? I read something about magic walls and teleportation rooms. I don't remember if the UC has that.
Also, I will use an optional rule from Unchained in order to reduce the money players have. So, really expensive buildings will be a thing. I'll have to check the prices, I believe that a castle or a keep must be expensive. But I don't know how much. So I'll check.
again, thank you.

 

[Dog Moon]

Thanks for your response.
Does the SGB has more specific customization options? Can I emule most of the stuffs on the SBG with UC? I read something about magic walls and teleportation rooms. I don't remember if the UC has that.
Also, I will use an optional rule from Unchained in order to reduce the money players have. So, really expensive buildings will be a thing. I'll have to check the prices, I believe that a castle or a keep must be expensive. But I don't know how much. So I'll check.
again, thank you.

The UC has some generic rooms. It goes into detail of what would be inside some typical buildings. It feels more like Paizo just wanted to have some basic guidelines and stuff down. They didn't really go into a lot of extra detail, which could have been really neat.

SBG DID do into a great lot of detail and the variety in that book is impressive, which makes sense since it is an entire book focused on building your stronghold, rather than a small section. It lists a greater variety of rooms, it also has options for different types of materials for walls doors and windows [for example], more rules on spells and how they would change making buildings, rules on using the Permancy spell to enhance your stronghold as well as other traps, rules on miscellaneous magical items appropriate for strongholds [both magical items to go into rooms and rooms that ARE magical items].

The main thing I didn't like about the SBG is that the costs of things were VERY high. Like ridiculously high. The Landlord Feat is basically a MUST if you're using the SBG.

However, I know what I've begun doing is working on my own system that is using the Paizo system and using that as a baseline where I can then augment it using the SBG for additional ideas. Which is probably what you would have to do.

 

[Ezequielramone]

Thanks so much. I believe I'm going to get the SBG and figure out how to ad it to the UC system.
Again, thanks both of you.

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

As Dog Moon said, UC provides generic basic rooms which are combined to make up a building. The location of the rooms does not effect the pricing of a building (ie having a 12 room building that is all on ground floor does not cost more/less than a two story house or a 12 story tower). Each of the room will contain the generic things you would expect within that room and generally should be constructed with whatever local materials would be used. This is great if basic building are all that you need. Need a generic barrack for a few guards, the prefab one goes for 3,700 gold. Get more non-officer guards; pay 400g (bunks) for each set of 10 and you'll have plenty of room.

While SBG works the same way, it takes into consideration a ton of factors to get to the final price. The climate, terrain type, largest near by settlement and how close it is, as well as other nearby features (exp: monster lair nearby) will change how much the final cost of your stronghold is. Then there is the cost for what type of walls, both interior and exterior you want to have. Some prices vary based upon the sites climate and/or terrain. Next comes windows, doors, locks and staff. Then there are the magically enchanting rooms. Want a single room that can shift between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane once a day, that will cost you 7,500 gp. Hell, all of that is only about half of the book.

Doing a quick search on my HD, I found this old thing. Unfortunately the drawn map is nowhere to be found and I can't be 100% certain we didn't house-rule some of the pricing. Stronghold of the Black Hand. I do remember there was a large moot and wooded palisade surrounding the stronghold, both of which were free (so not listed) due having the Move Earth spell and being in a forest.