Experience/advice w/Kingmaker or similar ruleset?

[Cirrylius]

The story so far...

So I brought along the Stronghold Builder's Guide to my 3.5 session because the wizard was looking for ideas on how to build... um... basically a hyperbolic time chamber to fast-train troops for a looming war. The other players kind of latched onto it, astonished at the possibility of owning businesses and buildings and things in a D&D game 8-0

...and from there it spiraled upwards into the idea of building whole towns, and from there to whole kingdoms, so I've kind of been appointed Finder of Rules since I started the whole thing.

So. Some brief Google-Fu revealed the Kingmaker ruleset from Pathfinder as a good start. A brief examination doesn't seem to reveal any multiple-edition incompatabilities, so I thought as a second step I'd throw the idea to the GitP hivemind. Has anyone had any experience with these rules? Weak points, strong points, abusability problems, or unforseen consequences? Verisimilitude? Hacks to improve? Since I'm starting blank, any kind input would be appreciated, really.

Oh, and a secondary question along the same lines, brought up last because they're less well known; Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe and the d20 Birthright conversion are supposed to have similar rulesets available. Has anyone had any experience with them? I heard that MMS:WE has MUCH greater resolution rules-wise, but obviously that carries its own set of problems.

[Skysaber]

Magical Medieval Society: City, Silk Road and Western Europe are all great resources, particularly as eye-openers on how things really worked back then. It's amazing how many assumptions we tend to make based on how we live life now that just weren't true back then. Different sets of societal rules and expectations were in place.

So definitely read them. However, the rules are a little DM-ish for a group of players who want to build things.

Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, the only thing it really has going for it is that it is official. However, if you really want good quality material you'll have to go third party.

I really loved Birthright, back in the day, but all of the conversions I've seen want to make it feat-based, and that just kills it. Alas, their unique rule set was also hinged rather closely to bloodlines. Strip those out, and what you're left with looks awfully similar to what Kingmaker grants you.

Strongholds & Dynasties by Mongoose is probably what you're looking for. It has a good section on rules for construction, the mechanics of government, trade and taxation, and so on.

AEG Empire has a ton of good ideas, including what is possibly their best section - making each base class have different advantages as leaders. It's the one sourcebook where I'd actually be afraid to go up against a fighter's army (not leader vs leader, because he's still just a fighter. But without our personal involvement, his army could crush mine).

[Cirrylius]

It's the one sourcebook where I'd actually be afraid to go up against a fighter's army (not leader vs leader, because he's still just a fighter.
That's cold. That's cold, bro.

Anyway, I found the name of the other recomended book; Reign, by Greg Stolze. Anybody have anything on that one?

Also, how do the combat/command mechanics in Empire stack up to Heroes of Battle (I'm tempted not to ask, 'cause with a character who'll have a sneak modifier of around +50 and a Full Attack of 5 hits, that Assassination Battlefield Action in the Empire mechanics is looking pretty tasty:smalltongue:)

[Skysaber]

Anyway, I found the name of the other recomended book; Reign, by Greg Stolze. Anybody have anything on that one?

Reign is built on the One Roll Engine, not the D20 system. There is very little in common between them. That said, it does have some decent commentary on motivations and why characters do what they do.


Also, how do the combat/command mechanics in Empire stack up to Heroes of Battle (I'm tempted not to ask, 'cause with a character who'll have a sneak modifier of around +50 and a Full Attack of 5 hits, that Assassination Battlefield Action in the Empire mechanics is looking pretty tasty:smalltongue:)

Heroes of Battle uses war as a backdrop to player actions, using a victory point framework to enable party actions to win large wars. Essentially, it's D&D as you've always played it, but with a war going on in the background.

AEG Empire takes a different tack. It focuses on the war itself, using rules to convert masses of creatures to a single 'unit statistic', so if you want to actually resolve the fight between two units of a 100 mummies raised by a necromancer king and the 14 hill giants, 2 juvenile gold dragons, and 100 loyal dwarves in the army of the mountain king he is opposing, you can do so, and it's as simple and easy as running party-level encounters.

[Cirrylius]

Since I've got you on the horn, and you clearly have a good idea about these kinds of resources, can I ask a follow-up? After thoroughly crunching numbers from the business rules in DMG2, it's become clear that unless a character is like 12th level, heavily, heavily optimized for running one particular kind of business, and doesn't mind taking decades to get his initial investment back, they're totally useless. Are there any good fixes for 'em that you've seen, or, if not, do any of the 3rd party books you've mentioned cover this ground in a way that DOESN'T suck always, forever?

[Skysaber]

Since I've got you on the horn, and you clearly have a good idea about these kinds of resources, can I ask a follow-up? After thoroughly crunching numbers from the business rules in DMG2, it's become clear that unless a character is like 12th level, heavily, heavily optimized for running one particular kind of business, and doesn't mind taking decades to get his initial investment back, they're totally useless. Are there any good fixes for 'em that you've seen, or, if not, do any of the 3rd party books you've mentioned cover this ground in a way that DOESN'T suck always, forever?

Airships & e-ships has a small section on trade, buying goods here and selling them over there, but still those are the best D20 rules I've ever seen on the subject.

I'm told the best way to abuse the DMG2 business rules is to start in a small shack, as far away from civilization as possible, so your startup costs are close to nothing, then reinvest until you have positively ridiculous profit modifiers. I've seen people boasting of pulling down 1,000-2,000gp per month that way.

A custom item of +30 to your relevant skill goes for about 18k and, I'm told, is essential. Also, in Power of Faerun, they have a Merchant Prince prestige class, 5 levels, built specifically to modify the DMG2 business rules, who gets a 10% reduction in capital costs per class level (among other, minor, things). Take that as your cohort and you can start businesses for practically nothing.

But it's all very unsatisfying.

The problem with those DMG2 rules is they are too much of an abstraction. They assume you are doing what everyone else is doing. Say for a mine, you grab a bunch of peasants, hand them picks and point them at a hill.

Well, guys swinging picks go painfully slow through any kind of solid rock. So you have to break the stone up some to make the job easier. Today we use explosives. Historically they built huge bonfires next to the surface they wanted to crack, heating it up so it would fracture. Explosives do it better, but both resulted in lots of cracked and broken up rocks.

Unfortunately, neither method works just on the surface you wanted to dig. They also broke up the rocks of your walls and ceilings, too. And that meant you had a big danger of cave-ins crushing your miners. So you had to employ more men just to haul in timbers to shore up those roofs. And blacksmiths to sharpen those picks and other tools, because pounding iron on solid rock blunts the iron pretty fast. Tools like drills and picks had to be sharpened a couple of times per day. And all of this is for nothing if you don't haul that broken up rock out, and that means mine carts and people whose job it is to just haul broken up stone out. Then it all has to be crushed into even smaller bits so it can be smelted (assuming you are after metals). Guys with sledgehammers often had that job, and it was backbreaking work (so bad they often had prisoners in jails doing it).

All of that is an awful lot of support for some guys swinging picks, but every bit of it is essential. Your skill checks just account for better accounting, skillful managing so there are fewer wasteful accidents, and insightful decision making, but still you're using the same essential engine for running a mine that everyone does: guys swinging picks.

Or is it really all so essential?

Say you've got yourself a level one warlock, follower or employee doesn't really matter. He's got himself the Least Invocation Baleful Utterance, which produces a Shatter spell at will, which does in a single round about as much breaking up of stone as a strong man can do on a good day, plus as a Warlock he can keep this up every round always and forever.

He only hits the rock he intends to break up, so there's less concern over a fractured rock ceiling falling in on his head as it never got fractured in the first place. So you employ less men shoring that up.

No fires or explosives are needed. No blacksmiths to sharpen tools that aren't being used. Spend 500gp on a Talisman of the Disk and you've got Tenser's Floating Disk all day, every day, which is surely the most pain-free mine cart that ever existed. You don't need to lay track for it, and it never breaks down, moves at a full walking pace without mules having to haul the weight. If your warlock had a familiar it could wear the necklace and haul stone out while he shatters more. And what's more it's all broken up nice and fine into very small gravel, already perfect for smelting.

Suddenly an entire mine operation that once took hundreds of people is doing the same work with only one person.

Are there rules to reflect this? No. But as a DM you really should allow this to have an obscene profit margin. You could even work it out mathematically. Say one warlock replaces a hundred mine workers, and each of those mine workers, skilled blacksmiths and all, only earned one silver piece a day by D&D rules. That's 100 silver, or 10gp per day for mine operation just on payroll alone. Give it all to your warlock as salary so he'll be happy.

Then, to account for those timbers you don't have to buy for roof shoring that is no longer necessary, the fuel for the blacksmiths' forges, track for the mine carts, mules and fodder for them, and all of those other supplies you don't have to pay for, give yourself the same back again: 10gp profit per day sounds perfectly reasonable, don't you think?

In fifty days you'll have paid off your Talisman of the Disk. After that every cent is profit.

EDIT: And actually, it ought to do better than that, as each Shatter spell he casts represents one miner's work for one day, to say nothing of all of that support staff. So in two hours your warlock will have replaced 120 miners, and who knows how many people overall. A standard eight hour work day for your warlock replaces over a thousand miners with picks and shovels.

[Cirrylius]

GODDAMN that's some words.

Not to dismiss your excellent and well thought-out example, but I'm trying purposefully to stay away from...

...uh...

the creative approach to fantasy industry, for a number of reasons that I won't get into here.

Does Power of Faerun have anything that somebody else doesn't do better?

[Carth]

FYI, Kingmaker has the potential to allow your party to kick WBL to the curb. Once they get their economy going, it's just a matter of raising their kingdom's loyalty score, at which point they can withdraw 100k GP or more each month with no repercussions, barring DM intervention. Further, as they increase their city's base value, there's a 75% chance that any magic item they want to buy is available, as long as it's equal to or lower than their city's base value. If it's not available that month, they get another 75% chance the following month. So in addition to infinite WBL, your party won't even need to take crafting feats or seek out magic items, they'll just fall right into their lap.

[Cirrylius]

FYI, Kingmaker has the potential to allow your party to kick WBL to the curb. Once they get their economy going, it's just a matter of raising their kingdom's loyalty score, at which point they can withdraw 100k GP or more each month with no repercussions, barring DM intervention. Further, as they increase their city's base value, there's a 75% chance that any magic item they want to buy is available, as long as it's equal to or lower than their city's base value. If it's not available that month, they get another 75% chance the following month. So in addition to infinite WBL, your party won't even need to take crafting feats or seek out magic items, they'll just fall right into their lap.

Heh. One of those reasons I was talking about was our party is already pretty borked re. WBL; we're 13th level and WELL over a half-million GP each.