ultimate campaign rules

[mehs]

tl;dr I joined a campaign that said it would be using ultimate campaign, I made a character predicating on there being a huge money sink, DM is banning ultimate campaign.

So like the tl;dr says, Initially the campaign was going to be ultimate campaign with huge player freedom, there being 3 parties of 4-6 each in the same world. Undead, leadership, even becoming a vampire or lich was allowed. I wanted to focus on the kingdom building and business running aspect, which is a huge money sink. Even a single basic building is 3-5k on up, and kingdom building you need 50-100k just to get started, with larger capital infusions often being necessary.

So my character took focused worker->focused overseer, and craft wonderous items. Focused overseer essentially gives me a 50% discount on buying/earning magic capital If I spend a day of downtime to do it. Magic capital is, it essentially counts as 100gp for magic related purposes, or you can spend it to get a +1 each on certain checks. You can earn capital by spending downtime to do work, usually take 10 on a skill check, and be able to essentially buy 2-4 each day at 50% the purchase cost. Recap, normal is 50/100 gp to buy, and it counts as 100gp, mine is 25/50 gp to buy, and it still counts as 100gp.

My plan was to use magic capital to pay the crafting cost of magic items (explicitly used as an example of how you can spend capital) for about 1/2 to 1/4 of normal crafting cost, use them a bit, then sell them for profit to start accruing the money to do the ultimate campaign rules. Was also planning on making some normally prohibitively expensive but 'fun' magic items, like a set of magic items market price 16,500 to have a fast horse and carriage that can go over water (we are based in a massive swamp) (horseshoes of the zephyr + similar on cart + horseshoes of speed) being the one I discussed with the gm.

So first session, all goes well, and then a few days later gm says he is banning ultimate campaign for being too much work.

Which, ultimate campaign isn't some fringe rulebook that I asked if I could use, It is included in the player rules channel on the discord with paragraphs of text. in regards to balance during combat, I am still keeping to wbl, even with crafting the market price of my character matches normal wbl.

in short, the f*k? Any advice or feedback?

[Eldonauran]

Redesign your character or leave the table for another. That's your only real set of options if talking to the GM doesn't help.

[Kurald Galain]

Perhaps the Ultimate Campaign Rules that your GM wanted to use are the dozens of feats and traits from that book, not the nation building subsystem?

[mehs]

He explicitly talked about starting your own settlement/town, and starting a colony/settlement is what the party voted on doing.

[JNAProductions]

Talk to the DM.
See if you can find a way to still make your PC work with the campaign-if not, see if there's another PC you'd like to play that would fit better. If neither can work, then politely leave the campaign.

[Faily]

I would ask the GM what he considers to be "too much work" about the rules, and if there is a way to lighten that load by distributing it among players. A lot of things in games can feel like a lot for the GM to handle alone, so players are a great resource to tap into to avoid getting overworked!

Having gone through the kingdom-building system from UC myself, it ended up being something I rolled and made notes for outside of the game-time (as the GM trusted me to not fudge dicerolls), so all the management and book-keeping did not take up game time nor was it something that my GM had to do. Since you mentioned Discord I assume the game is online or partially, so that could also make it easy to log those rolls (to prevent any dice-fudging or cheating).

[Alcore]

....


Running kingdoms is an insane amount of work. I use plural here on purpose. Kingmaker only had one stated kingdom; the player kingdom. It was never truly stated out but the rules were there to build. Every other village/kingdom that was plot dependent? You were, at best, given a small list of buildings it represented.

That kingdom you actually went to war with? Was given less than that in respects (some armies and a map). Pazio avoids ultimate campaign like the plague. The game master's Settlement rules appear often with each AP made after it. You can tell which supplement they favor...



If you were to run, as a group, one kingdom and have it interact with no kingdoms in any meaningful way it is my go to choice. It do not hold it against your GM to ban it; I hold it against him for banning without finding an alternative.


Talk to him. Is he letting you rebuild your character? Perhaps the none kingdom parts of ultimate campaign can be reinstated. Downtime needs house rules to function but is quite decent at broadening the scope without making it unmanageable.


Fields of Blood; The Book of War is a 3rd part 3e book. It is well written unless you go full 4x (where your scouts might have to fight an organized army of bears [army = 100] to claim a new hex) remains vague enough that building a kingdom is about as fast as making a character. It is even faster to run them unless there is a war. This is the book I recommend for running multiple kingdoms. It is also compatible with game master's guide Settlement rules and downtime (in that the kingdom is assumed to be too big to have those systems effect it on a mechanical level)

There are other books for organizations in the ultimate plugin lineup (a PF supportive company) but I don't have my collection on me.

[mehs]

ok discussed with dm. He had essentially made a post during work, didn't elaborate, and was unreachable for 8 hours. But discussed, and essentially the answer is, if the other players agree, then he is good with it, so crisis averted.

[Zaile]

Glad it worked out.

Was temped to suggest doing the math on transmute mud to rock and wall of stone. "I can build a town in a week for a fraction of the cost" will likely make the options you listed far more palatable.

[Eldonauran]

Was temped to suggest doing the math on transmute mud to rock and wall of stone. "I can build a town in a week for a fraction of the cost" will likely make the options you listed far more palatable.

I've had players try that before (in other games I have run) and it never works out to be that easy. Sure, you can get some nice 'artificial caves' out of the process, and a small village of them, perhaps, but not a town nor one that is going to look aesthetically pleasing, or anywhere near as structurally sound, as you'd think without some decent crafting/profession and knowledge skills to lean on. You'd be better off just using your time (and spells) generating all the materials and then hiring muscle, and skilled builders, to put them together.