Pathfinder Kingdom Building (interest check)

[Zaer Darkwail]

National Acrobat: Then your case you could be either Warden (guy who enforces laws in large settlement) or Marshal (who enforces also laws but works mostly outside the capital).

I voice interest on this; I would primarily want to be a Ruler, exact class will be determined later when others do picks but it would be charisma based (so sorcerer, warlord if Path of War is allowed, bard, paladin etc). If ruler is not available I am open for Councilor or General.

[Chaeronea]

I agree with Chulanowa that I'd like to have more information about the setting before creating a character. However I do have a couple of ideas. One is a character I played before, a rogue with some levels in the shadowdancer prestige class who has a real hatred for a certain evil cult. The other is a ranger who doesn't have ranger magic but instead has a couple of levels in the sorceror class, and who focuses on hunting monsters - basically a witcher from the games and novels of the same name. So a potential Spymaster and a potential Marshal.

[National Acrobat]

National Acrobat: Then your case you could be either Warden (guy who enforces laws in large settlement) or Marshal (who enforces also laws but works mostly outside the capital).

I voice interest on this; I would primarily want to be a Ruler, exact class will be determined later when others do picks but it would be charisma based (so sorcerer, warlord if Path of War is allowed, bard, paladin etc). If ruler is not available I am open for Councilor or General.

Right, thanks for the Clarification.

Warden or Marshal, that fits with what I'm going for.

Depending on the main religion in the area, I'd likely go with Order of the Star to align with whatever faith the High Priest/Priestess is of.

[Autocad]

Okay so since some people have requested it, here is the setting.

The game starts in Kingmaker book 2. PCs are level 4 after having defeated the bandit leader Stag Lord and his motley band of ne'er-do-wells in the Greenbelt as their backstory. The swordlords of Rostland issue a charter to the PCs granting them permission to establish a colony in the Greenbelt as well as enough supplies to get them started.

Now as for roles, if there is more than one player who wants to be a ruler, I can have multiple settlements to spread them out. I am compiling separate lists for rulers and non-rulers, you can express interest in both. Again, please try to stick to one non-ruler role, if there are multiple listed I will track only the first one (for my own sanity).

Ruler Interest Roster

Tamhansen
Zaer Darkwail

Non-Ruler Interest Roster

Jaded: Magister
Chulanowa: Grand Diplomat
Soveliss: Treasurer
Tamhansen: Diplomat
Zaer Darkwail: Councilor
Chaeronea: Spymaster
National Acrobat: Warden

[Zaer Darkwail]

Ok, Tamhansen, do you want share the ruler slot with my char? I have so far thoughts on sorcerer (using imperial human bloodline). Or want go for diplomat with your oracle? Or as mentioned I can cover counsilor role if you really want to be a ruler.

Or go simply roll d6 dice to help decide :). Whoever rolls highest wins and if same result, re-roll again.

[Tamhansen]

I'd love the ruler role, but I'll happily roll you for it.

[Zaer Darkwail]

Ok, let's roll then. I rolled 2 on rulership roll.

[Tamhansen]

my role.

[Zaer Darkwail]

You rolled 3 times :P. Albeit first roll is a 5 but it's 2 minutes before rolls of 1 and then 4. Would be less confusing what for rolls were if you would had named what for the rolls were.

[Tamhansen]

Yeah. Sorry. Sometimes i get confused by dicebot. It kept telling me 'this is a test roll' so i guess i linked the wrong one, sorry. Naming them is a good idea.

[Zaer Darkwail]

Ok, so first roll was 5 and thus your ruler :). I go as counsilor then.

[Tamhansen]

Thanks, yeah. To be fair I think all that means is I eventually get to add my stat to all three kingdom stats. Also, that you get to do the important rolls, which might be for the best, as evidenced before. Also, that means Chula can be our diplomancer.

What character creation rules do we get? And are we using the ruler skills optional rule?

[Zaer Darkwail]

I checked that which leadership roles need filled to avoid any penalties in kingdom (if spots get filled then you do not suffer penalties);

Ruler = Absolutely needed (without him we cannot claim hexes, create buildings, roads, farms and unrest goes by +4 every upkeep turn).
Councilor = -2 loyalty, cannot benefit from holiday edict action and unrest increases by 1 during upkeep phase.
General = -4 loyalty decrease.
Diplomat = -2 stability and cannot issue diplomatic nor exploration edicts.
High Priest = -2 stability&loyalty and during upkeep phase unrest increases by 1.
Magister = -4 economy.
Marshal = -4 economy.
Spymaster = -4 economy and during upkeep unrest increases by 1.
Treasurer = -4 economy and cannot do collect taxes edicts. During collection of taxes kingdom cannot gain taxes and it's considered 'none'.
Viceroy = If you have none at vassal state, the state counts to have same penalties as with no ruler in it.
Warden = -2 stability&loyalty.

Now, all rest roles do not have no penalties if their absent. Also every player can cover only single role and I think most critical roles are the ruler and treasurer (as without treasurer you cannot collect tax = gain no BP via taxes). Also any role which causes unrest = people are not happy and they will go rebel. We got 11 spots but we got no players cover them all I think so we need be mindful what we pick. Either case ruler adds his charisma modifier to either Economy, Loyalty or Stability (so if we lack some aspect we can boost it up with ruler focusing on that attribute first or boost secondary strong attribute and thus have two strong attributes).

Also using BP (resources, around 1,000gp = 1 BP in start) can be used improve attributes in the kingdom (example alchemy adds +1 to economy and needs just be adjacent to one house as requirement). So no stress if ecomony is low (it just means via taxes we do not gain nothing much for BP value) but if stability is low it results rapid growth in unrest and it can result loss of hexes (and at 20 = kingdom falls to anarchy). So stability or able deal with unrest (or negate it) is important as is loyalty (as if loyalty falls = people loose respect/trust on you).

Just bit math here on my own part to determine best leadership positions which to pick for good start :).

Thanks, yeah. To be fair I think all that means is I eventually get to add my stat to all three kingdom stats. Also, that you get to do the important rolls, which might be for the best, as evidenced before. Also, that means Chula can be our diplomancer.

What character creation rules do we get? And are we using the ruler skills optional rule?

Yeah, it depends on settlement size when you add charisma to all three stats. But other leaders also make important rolls (like warden rolls for stability roll during upkeep phase).

[Zaer Darkwail]

So far I am leaning to Bard (negotiator archtype) or Monk (Wanderer archtype). Both cases a human.

[Tamhansen]

snip

Yeah, it depends on settlement size when you add charisma to all three stats. But other leaders also make important rolls (like warden rolls for stability roll during upkeep phase).

yeah, but the councilor does the edicts iirc, and they are the ones that get us to a good start, or not.


Loyalty is a good stat, but luckily doesn't come up a lot. I've played several games where it was more than a year before one came up. Stab is the most important one, at first anyway.

If we're playing the kingmaker as written, we start with 50 BP, and we can get a castle at half price. Though this may sound like a lot of BP for one building, it does add a whole lot of stats, as well as defense to the capital.

[Zaer Darkwail]

Yeah, better get castle for half-price definately. We after all are still middle of wild dangerous wilderness.

[Tamhansen]

Also I think we can leave the viceroy, at least until we start colonising Rostov :P

So far I am leaning to Bard (negotiator archtype) or Monk (Wanderer archtype). Both cases a human.

Cool. I'm going Gnome oracle of Lore. Based mostly on leading stuff, but good at being a wall in combat.

Wonder if we're allowed to recruit Oleg and Svetlana to fill empty seats.

[Tamhansen]

If everyone joins in, we'd be short a high priest, general and marshall.

[Autocad]

You can have NPCs fill in missing roles, so it's not the end of the world if there aren't enough players to fill'em all.

Here are the character creation rules:

Level 4
25 point buy
Max HP at first level, half hit dice HP afterwards
2 traits, 1 extra trait can be taken with 1 drawback
6000 gp

Optional rules start off disabled to minimize complexity, but may be activated later on if things are rolling smoothly. So, it's a good idea to build up the relevant skills.

[National Acrobat]

I will draw up a half elf cavalier. If there isn't a high priest with an appropriate faith, I'll choose a different order than the star.

[Jaded]

I wouldn't mind switching to a Half-Elf Bonded Witch as Marshal (assuming people don't mind that it wouldn't be her primary ability score for the benefit) if material from splat books is allowed, and if no one else is taking Marshal.

[Tamhansen]

It's up to you, Jaded. I don't see any reason to say no, though the character could just as easily be magister, penalties are the same either way, but if you feel Marshal is a better fit, I for one have no issues.

The priest NPC is Erastil, my ruler is Irori, if that helps, National acrobat.

If we follow the adventure path, the NPC's we've encountered would be:

Jhod a good fit for high priest.
Akiros, good fit for warden
Kersten, good fit for general
Svetlana, good fit for councilor
Oleg, good fit for treasurer.

Of course there's no need to put them in those seats as they're basically just warm bodies, but just put them here for illustration.

Do you want us to put character sheets here or somewhere else Autocad?

[Soveliss]

Just throwing my two cents in, but building roads and farms if we have extra budget we can spare will help greatly. Road only cost BP and improve economy, meaning that over time they pay for themselves, and farms cost BP and have no drawback once they are build, yet reduce consumption so if we have a decently sized military they will pay for themselves pretty quick, and farms and roads can share hexes with other hex improvements, and the only drawback roads have is that they could allow armies to move faster (including enemy armies, which might be mitigated by judicious use of checkpoints). But then again it depends on having spare budget.

Also, I can easily picture my bookworm making sure that as little money as possible is wasted and the bureaucracy is as efficient as possible to avoid wasted taxes, though since she would be pretty shy and self-effaced and would occupy the boring and often overlooked job of optimizing the bureaucracy, almost no one would know what she would look like, perfect for traveling incognito.

I'll be working on my character sheet.

[Tamhansen]

roads are always a main point. Same goes for trying to capture hexes with rivers. Rivers may cause road prices to double, but also give extra economy.

Farms are useful, but only if BP are available, and on cheap land. Building farms on mountains or in dense forest is rather a waste.

[Soveliss]

Building farms on mountains or in dense forest is rather a waste.

Depends on how big our army is. Armies cost a lot to maintain. If we plan on getting a big military, farms pay for themselves after a while. But still, they probably aren't a high priority, but something to spend extra budget on a good month/year I guess, since they are also useful for trading if we have more than necessary to maintain all our armies. :P