Kingmaker

[Asteron]

I'm about to start running a Kingmaker campaign and I was wondering if anyone on the forum has run it before. If so, what sort of issues did you encounter with it? Did your player like it? Were there any parts that needed to be reworked?

[Ssalarn]

The campaign is really favorable to classes that can nova, like the wizard or the magus, due to the fact that you generally only have one encouunter in a given adventuring day. That's probably the biggest issue. I'd recommend adding in more random encounters.

[Asteron]

The campaign is really favorable to classes that can nova, like the wizard or the magus, due to the fact that you generally only have one encouunter in a given adventuring day. That's probably the biggest issue. I'd recommend adding in more random encounters.

Good to know. I'll try that. Thanks.

[Rosivok]

Kingmaker is a great adventure path and I have had a great time running it and my players have enjoyed playing it. That said, there are some things to watch out for, Ssalarn is right about the one encounter a day bit not providing a challenge, my group was so used to blowing it all on their one fight a day that the dungeon crawl in chapter three forced a retreat to rest and heal. Another thing is downtime, years of it, so crafting and, if allowed, retraining can be very strong.

Depending on your players optimization level some of the scripted encounters will be so far below the party's power level it's not even funny.

The kingdom building is fun at first but seems to drag on in later books.

All in all no major complaints just read ahead and adjust as you see fit and every thing will be fine. And good luck.

[Incorrect]

As all adventure paths, the fights are usually not that hard. Combined with only one fight per day, and the fact that you can often see the fight coming a mile away, makes it pretty easy.
My group uses this conversion for 6 players, and I highly recommend it:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m26n?Community-Created-6-Player-Kingmaker

Another suggestion for combat, is to add minions to the boss fights. One monster vs 4-6 characters gives a large action advantage to the party.

In the first chapters the players spend a lot of time exploring.
I was not the biggest fan of this mechanic, because it almost felt like random encounters. Say, for example, that we heard rumors of a dragon terrorizing the lands, of cause we want to go kill it. Sadly, we have no idea where it is, so we just randomly explore hexes until we happen to run across it.
I would suggest to implement some way for the players to get an idea of where stuff is. Maybe a skill check to determine where their target is, with some degree of uncertainty? DC20 is 6 hexes, DC25 is 3, and DC30 is the exact hex?


Spend the time to make a good spreadsheet for the kingdom, it's worth it.

Carefully consider crafting, as said, it is very powerful and can double the entire groups WBL.

All in all, its a good adventure, but how good depends a lot on the players (as always) and on the GM (as always) :smallwink:

[KoboldsAreLittl]

Keep close track of the weather. Using the cold weather can almost rape low-level parties that don't plan well. But I have to agree with the guys above; the encounters need to be beefed up a little. Minions are a good way to go. Keeping a spreadsheet is a smart idea, and you may want to have your players do a great deal of bookkeeping themselves.
The kingdom building and downtime definitely leave a large amount of time for crafting and retraining, so make sure you are up-to-date on how it works.

[Elricaltovilla]

I actually just did my first session of Kingmaker with my group last night. Something I learned:

The first encounter makes no allowances for capturing any of the bandits. None. Its expected that they'll either run away or die. It mentions that if the leader is brought to low HP and all his men are down or fled he'll surrender, but doesn't say what sort of information the bandits know about the area or what they do if caught. So you might want to figure that out.

It also took some convincing on my part to get the party to not run off into the wilderness in the dead of night to set up an "ambush." All of them have darkvision and thought it would be totally easy to find bandits in the middle of the night in a 12 mi. hex...

[oxybe]

As someone playing in Kingmaker right now, I think we're actually starting the last module tonight, I'll give my experience playerside:

Fights are rather easy without much optimization: Paizo has a thing with putting enemies that aren't really setup for fighting PCs VS actual PCs, moreso if you have a larger then average party size. we have six players in ours and even if the GM adds more monsters or changes their spells/feats, we still don't have too hard a time, because focus fire is VERY strong in PF and dropping a few debuffs on an enemy before they can act can ruin their ability to fight back.

Going nova is very easy and without much drawbacks: Encounters are usually separated by days or small dungeons, like a ruin or small fort or something, so unless you're spamming fireballs at every opportunity, your nova classes shouldn't be afraid of running out of stuff. If you're the type of of GM that pads adventures out with random encounters you'll have to bring out the charts to grind through the party resources, otherwise you may have to redesign some encounters (change enemy lineups or spell selections) so the players can't just drop all their best stuff immediately then leave once the dust has settled.

The hexcrawling stuff, personally, was interesting the first time I saw it used. Then it became tedious, because not all hexes have something interesting in them and I hardly see random encounters as a point of interest. And there are a lot of hexes. I would recommend getting familiar with the various interest points and making an effort to "seed" their whereabouts among the NPCs. Have hunters, druids, immigrants, etc... talk about the general location of interesting things instead of having the PCs comb everywhere manually until they finally bump their noses into one. This way PCs have direction but may take the time to scout out the nearby areas.

The citybuilding rules are a concept I like, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. You can min-max your city designs and end up with cities that have no bearing on how people would live, but still grant great bonuses that indicate everyone is happy and productive, yet all you have in town is 6 junkyards, 3 brothels and a magic item shop (ok, not that layout specifically, but I think you understand the concept). You don't actually need to setup infrastructure in the town, just drop down whatever buildings you want.

Downtime and lots of it: Between last session and this one, the GM said we had 5 years to do as we wish. We often had 2-3 weeks between serious adventuring. Plan how you're going handle downtime accordingly because the party is going to have it in spades.

Overland travel and war: Kingmaker is about settling a wild land and building a kingdom for yourself, so you can easily guess that there will be skirmishes between your side and enemy forces (be it barbarians or nearby kingdoms or whatever). In the early levels being bound by foot/horse travel was a significant thing. In the later levels with spells like overland flight and teleport, hearing about an army marching towards your city doesn't really scare you too much, since you can teleport to the city, setup defenses and then quickly scout them out during the night and harry them with powerful magics and whatnot. The module doesn't really seem to have taken into consideration that a PC might take the proactive approach of "fly over enemy camp at night and summon a few fiendish triceratops next to guards" or "drop several cloudkills on enemy camp" then teleport home for a rest.

Just the view from my side of the screen.

[Asteron]

Hey all, thanks for the great advice! I have some stuff to work on here!

Do the adventures lend themselves to roleplaying?

I want more that a go there, kill the things, take their stuff adventure. I know that roleplaying really depends on the group, but if the adventure isn't set up to allow it, it gets kinda hard to do.

[oxybe]

Sortof?

I mean, when you're doing the key parts of the adventure, they definitely work for roleplaying as you'll often be interacting with some sort of intelligent NPC.

But when you're just hexcrawling? It's VERY hit and miss, and I found more misses then hits. You'll often find yourself bumping into some monster or thing that will attack on sight, or some ruin with a boggart that needs bashing, but other times you'll have the benefit of meeting up with a more intelligent creature or being so the swords don't have to come out.

Rather early on, and spoilered for people who don't want to know early Kingmaker events
There is a silver mine that's infested with kobolds, some of which were causing us problems. After seeing that the kobolds were in a sort of leadership dispute, we took a side, got rid of the opposition and offered aid and safety to the kobolds in return for them mining the silver, or they're free to leave and relocate. The kobolds are recognized citizens with the same rights and protection as everyone else, with pretty much autonomous leadership. They report to us on what they're doing, but we're not forcing them into any given act and they're free to leave if they wish. As long as they mine/sell silver to us, they'll be paid in money, food, protection, gear, etc...

[Coidzor]

The citybuilding rules are a concept I like, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. You can min-max your city designs and end up with cities that have no bearing on how people would live, but still grant great bonuses that indicate everyone is happy and productive, yet all you have in town is 6 junkyards, 3 brothels and a magic item shop (ok, not that layout specifically, but I think you understand the concept). You don't actually need to setup infrastructure in the town, just drop down whatever buildings you want.

Yeah, it struck me as kind of funny that founding a city didn't include a nucleus of basic infrastructure. Unless I misread the city-building rules.

I liked an expansion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18334050&postcount=19) I saw that someone had come up with/collected from various Paizo threads about adding in towns and villages, though at times it may make the micromanagement get a bit extreme, depending upon the zeal of the players.


Overland travel and war: Kingmaker is about settling a wild land and building a kingdom for yourself, so you can easily guess that there will be skirmishes between your side and enemy forces (be it barbarians or nearby kingdoms or whatever). In the early levels being bound by foot/horse travel was a significant thing. In the later levels with spells like overland flight and teleport, hearing about an army marching towards your city doesn't really scare you too much, since you can teleport to the city, setup defenses and then quickly scout them out during the night and harry them with powerful magics and whatnot. The module doesn't really seem to have taken into consideration that a PC might take the proactive approach of "fly over enemy camp at night and summon a few fiendish triceratops next to guards" or "drop several cloudkills on enemy camp" then teleport home for a rest.

OP might find the Red Hand of Doom Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?171284-The-3-5-Red-Hand-Of-Doom-Handbook-for-DMs-Major-spoilers!-WIP-PEACH!) for DMs has some useful thoughts for dealing with enemy armies and the responses of the people controlling those armies to various stratagems and the like. Not all of the suggestions are perfectly applicable, even with 3.P, but the general principles should still be sound.

[Ssalarn]

They polished and expanded the kingdom building rules a bit in Ultimate Campaign, so that might be worth looking into. Note that "brothels" became "dance halls" somewhere along the line though...

[Asteron]

Yeah, it struck me as kind of funny that founding a city didn't include a nucleus of basic infrastructure. Unless I misread the city-building rules.

I liked an expansion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18334050&postcount=19) I saw that someone had come up with/collected from various Paizo threads about adding in towns and villages, though at times it may make the micromanagement get a bit extreme, depending upon the zeal of the players.



OP might find the Red Hand of Doom Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?171284-The-3-5-Red-Hand-Of-Doom-Handbook-for-DMs-Major-spoilers!-WIP-PEACH!) for DMs has some useful thoughts for dealing with enemy armies and the responses of the people controlling those armies to various stratagems and the like. Not all of the suggestions are perfectly applicable, even with 3.P, but the general principles should still be sound.

I will definitely make use of those links. The first looks to be pretty useful and I hadn't connected how the RHoD handbook would apply here. Thanks!