So I've mentioned around the forums a few times I'm planning to run Kingmaker, and the more I dig into it the more likely it becomes. So today I've been digging through the Kingdom Building rules. Not worried so much about the core kingdom building mechanics, but instead focusing on little versimilitude things that bother me. First and foremost population numbers, but also covering magic items and securing hexes.
Kingdom Population
Okay, so this was the area that bugged me most in the Kingdom building, primarily because you get slapped in the face with it every time the developers statted up a town it was about 1/20th the size that its buildings indicated. Now this won't fix that entirely, but these adjustments will make for more reasonable population numbers in general, and give the ability to have villages and hamlets with a couple of buildings without suddenly already being a small town. It makes it so that providing stats that actually match with an existing settlement is feasible, though some may need to be adjusted some, there's a lot more granularity available in the system.
Base Population
All claimed hexes have a base population of 250, as normal. This 250 population includes any villages, hamlets, or thorps in the area. So generally a newly claimed hex will have a scattered number of Thorps, a few villages, or a couple of hamlets. These settlements independently have little impact on the Kingdom overall, and thus any buildings existing within these settlements generally have no impact on your Kingdom's scores, and are abstracted into the base hex population.
Any settlement that is at least a Small Town or larger adds its population to the base population of the hex, if you wish to determine overall population totals. In addition, as settlements grow, the surrounding area tends to become more dense as well. Settlements that are larger than a Small Town increase the base population of their own hexes and in surrounding hexes. The base population of larger towns can be seen as follows:
Large Town: In hex: 500
Small City: In hex: 1000. 1 hex away: 500
Large City: In hex: 2000. 1 hex away: 1000. 2 hexes away: 500
Metropolis: In hex: 4000. 1 hex away: 2000. 2 hexes away: 1000. 3 hexes away: 500
Note: If you do not control all hexes in the increased area, the population does not expand automatically into an unclaimed hex. Once the hex is claimed the base population is automatically the value noted.
Spoiler: Sidebar: Mega Cities
It is extremely unlikely, but it is actually possible to have a city that is big encough to encompase an entire hex. Given the maximum building size of 750ft to a side, and 36 buildings per district, a single district takes up approximately 3/4ths of a square mile. Since a hex is approximately 125 square miles, this means a single hex has room for approximately 165 districts.
A city maxed out to this size has up to 5,940 buildings and a total population of 2,376,000, making it an absolutely massive city by any standards, but especially by D&D standards where 25,000+ is a metropolis. But a city this size does have additional effects on the surrounding hexes.
Base Population Numbers:
Super-Metropolis(hex maxed out): In hex: 0. 1 hex away: 8000. 2 hexes away: 4000. 3 hexes away: 2000. 4 hexes away: 1000. 5 hexes away: 500
Spoiler: Sidebar: Settlements and High base Populations
A high base population is generally a result of a large city nearby encouraging more villages to pop up in the nearby area. Larger settlements however can cause a high enough base population to create an extra town.
The players may opt to have up to half their base population be in a single settlement. If this value amounts to at least the value of a small town, you can build out that settlement like a normal small town, except with the 20% discount you normally have for the first 6 buildings (see below) applying until the settlement's population is equal to or greater than 1/2 the base population.
The hex's base population is then considered half normal, and is not boosted by this second settlement. Additionally, due to having two cities in such close proximity to each other, consumption is increased by 2.
Base Population Modifiers
Various upgrades to a hex can increase the population values in a hex.
Rivers and Roads increase the base population of an area by 100%, as numerous small settlements pop up along trade ways.
Farms, Mines, Lumbermills, and other similar resource based upgrades increase population by 200% as more workers are needed to do the work required in the area.
Watchtowers, Forts, and similar Military based upgrades increase base population by 50% in addition to those required to man the fort. This represents more small settlements and families springing up around the military compounds.
Settlement Building Population
Buildings were probably the biggest offender in weird population numbers from the Kingdom rules, so require the biggest change. The problem was that a settlement no matter how big or small had its building size described as 750ft to a side, and population described as 250 per building. So you build a settlement with a house and an inn, and you've already got a town that is a quarter mile across and houses 500 people. This is fine when you are looking at larger settlements and consider it an abstraction (that inn is a block of housing with a prominent inn, or a traveler's district with a bunch of inns)... but when statting up a village or a hamlet it just doesn't make sense. And of course the first think Paizo tried to do was stat up villages and hamlets, which miraculously grew from sub 200 population up to 5000 population cities as soon as you anex them.
The fix here is to make the size and population granted by a building scale with the size of the town. So you start off as a Thorp with 1-2 buildings, and work your way up through that. Each time you cross a threshold by building one more building than you normally would get, you get a boost to population and size of the settlement. Fluff it away as needing to plan things in a certain way when getting above a settlement size.
Settlement Building Size Building Population Max Population Max Buildings Thorp 100ft 10 20 2 Hamlet 150ft 20 60 3 Village 200ft 30 200 6 Small Town 500ft 80 2,000 25 Large Town 750ft 150 5,000 33 Small City 750ft 250 10,000 40 Large City 750ft 300 25,000 80 Metropolis 750ft 400 n/a n/a
So under these rules, you need 7 buildings to create a small town, the minimum number for a notable settlement. For each category above Small Town, add a +1 per category increase to consumption and +10% to the initial cost of the building. However you gain a +10% increase to the overall economy bonus granted by buildings in the settlement. So a metropolis has +10 consumption per district, but gains a +50% bonus to all economy generated by buildings within the metropolis.
You can assume that going below Small Town has similar modifiers making the buildings cheaper while also reducing both upkeep and economy, effectively making any thorp, hamlet, or village overall a net +/-0 to the Kingdom. However since numerous small untracked settlements should dot the map of the PC's kingdom once they are settled, you can opt to give a 20% discount on the first 6 buildings of any new town the PCs build after their first settlement reaches large town status. Additionally you may let your PCs build twice as many buildings per month as normal when establishing a small town, until the first 6 buildings are completed.
These buildings are not entirely free, and instead just a discount, because there is still a lot of work to be done to expand the infrastructure of the town to accommodate a larger population, a higher population density, and all of the other little things that get abstracted into a single building in larger settlements.
Stabilizing the Economy
Economy checks in the Kingdom rules are very much all or nothing. Paizo obviously wanted failing the Economy check to be bad, but it went too far bad. Players already want economy because their economy determines BP gains when they do succeed, so more is always better even when you can't fail that check. But failing 50% of the time (or more!) early on can be debilitating, causing a kingdom to stagnate and growth to slow to a screeching halt. Maybe this was intended, to make it so many kingdoms fail due to not boosting economy to ridiculous heights early on to make sure they never fail a check. Personally, I think a more staged approach is appropriate.
Failing an Economy Check
When you fail an economy check to collect taxes, calculate the BP you normally would have gained (your total roll result divided by 3). The amount you actually collect is that reduced by 20%, and the kingdom generates 1 unrest as the economy appears to be floundering. For every 5 points by which you fail, reduce the collected amount by an additional 20% and increase the unrest generated by 1.
Kingdom Wealth/Magic Items
-The Kingdom Building rules writers are clear that the PC treasury is measured exclusively in build points, there is no gold in a King's treasure vault unless he puts his personal wealth there. I find this ridiculous. As much as raw materials and man power are important, a Kingdom needs gold to get things done, especially when dealing with other nations and armies. Gold is in general a big part of what keeps the wheels turning. As a result, a kingdom's treasury has approximately 1000gp on hand for every point of BP. If following the optional rules for lower BP exchange rates for smaller kingdoms, this treasury amount is 1/4th the value of BP. So a small kingdom has 250gp on hand per point of BP.
-All normal rules are followed for exchange rates for buying or selling BP. Just know that if the Kingdom has 300BP, they have 300kgp sitting in a vault somewhere that can be used for Kingdom related expenses if the need arises. Emptying that vault for a kingdom related expense will leave the Kingdom with 225BP still, despite not having any gold on hand. Gold on hand refreshes back to the expected amount after 1 month (after the next taxation phase if it is relevant). Trying to take the gold for personal use invokes the standard exchange rate, and thus costs the Kingdom 150bp and generates 150 unrest (effectively destroying the kingdom, or at least forcing the person stealing so much money out of power)
-No building that produces magic items shows up in an area below small town. This doesn't mean there aren't hermits living in the woods that don't pawn off a potion now and then, it just means that in the context given above (don't care about anything below small town), you don't have a ton of random magic item slots popping up from small villages. Assume if they do have any items, they are exclusively minor consumables (level 1 or 2 potions and scrolls) that get used up by locals or adventurers, or eventually makes their way to town. Anything bigger/fancier eventually makes its way to a real settlement.
-Magic items turn over naturally, but at a fairly slow rate. Each month, every minor magic item in a settlement has a 30% chance to be sold, a medium magic item has a 10% chance to be sold, and a major magic item has a 1% chance to be sold. A minor magic item being sold generates 1 bp, a medium magic item being sold generates 2bp, and a major magic item being sold generates 3bp. This has no bearing on the actual value of the item, and instead represents the immaterial gains the kingdom gets from moving these magic items.
-The normal rules for buying or forcibly selling an item to an NPC work as normal. If you coerce an NPC to buy an unwanted item, there is no associated BP gain.
Raising an Army
You cannot raise an army larger than your population is able to support. If you have a small kingdom with 5000 people, no matter how you try you cannot raise a colossal army of 2,000 soldiers. Doing so would cause your kingdom to collapse into anarchy. Use the following rules to determine what kinds of armies you may raise:
Recruiting Militia
By default, all armies you recruit are made up of 3rd level NPC classes (usually warriors). A typical militia can raised from a small town is 10 warriors per building in the town. For every size the settlement is above Small Town, increase the number of warriors raised by 100%. (So a Large Town raises 2x as many per building, a small city raises 3x as many per building, and so on). Militia may be raised from a hex without any settlements, gaining up to 1/10th of the hex's population as militia recruits. It takes 2 weeks to raise militia from an unsettled hex.
You may raise a militia from as many settlements or hexes as are under your control as you desire simultaneously, pooling together the warriors gathered in this way, however as normal raising a new army unit counts against your buildings that you may build for the turn. It is generally better to raise a militia as the largest possible army, and then break it up into smaller units as needed.
Raising a militia requires a Loyalty check against your control DC. A militia unit won't stay in the field for more than 6 months without needing to return home and see to their affairs. Militia raised in this way follow the standard ACR rules (so a medium army of level 3 warriors is an ACR1 army).
Training a Regular Army
You can convert a militia into a regular army given 3 months of training. You must pay the upkeep cost of the army for these 3 months, but they may not be used in any activity besides their training. At the end of this training, the army's ACR increases by 2, representing training in formations and standard issued equipment (cost covered in the upkeep paid over the 3 months) making the army as a collective much more effective in mass combat. These benefits may not be applied to an army smaller than "small" (50 soldiers).
A regular army must be maintained to keep these benefits. If the army is disbanded for whatever reason, you will need to train a new militia into a regular army, you can't just call up the old soldiers again and expect them to gel as well as they did while actively training in the past. However, the regular army will stay in the field as long as their upkeep continues to be paid.
Recruiting Higher level characters
It is possible to raise armies consisting of higher level characters. By dividing the number of recruits you gather by 20, you can increase the level of the recruits raised by 3. So if you have a settlement normally capable of raising a colossal militia (2,000 warrior 3), you can put out a more specialized call and raise 100 Warrior 6s. Or 5 warrior 9s. While this generates an army that is likely weaker overall than the larger army, it can be very useful for training and recruiting officers, or other special units.
Benefits of Officers to an army
In addition to the normal benefits (bonuses on morale checks, access to tactics, etc), an Officer who is higher level than the average of his army adds +1 to the ACR of the army for every 3 levels in advantage he has over his average soldier. Additionally, any class features the officer has that will affect a group will affect the entire army under his command (conversion to be handled on a case by case basis).
Recruiting PC Classes
PC Classed characters are relatively rare, but they are around. Generally recruiting a PC class requires having buildings in a settlement that are associated with that class. Mage Colleges, Bard Colleges, Fighting Schools, Temples, Black Markets, etc. What building is associated with a given class can be handled on a case by case basis depending on what you want to attract. If you have these buildings, you can choose to actively recruit armies only from those buildings, in which case you gain 1/2 as many recruits as you normally would have from those buildings, but they are of the class desired. So given a small town with 10 Mage Colleges, you could recruit 100 level 3 Wizards. You can recruit higher level characters just like you can for NPCs, so instead of 100 level 3 wizards you could gain 10 level 6 wizards, or a single level 9 wizard.
You can attempt to recruit PC classes from non-specific buildings, but doing so means gaining 1/200th the normal number of recruits. So in the example of the city that had a militia of 2000 NPC warriors and no mage colleges, instead of raising 2000 warriors, you could instead raise an army of 10 level 3 Wizards.
Recruiting lower level PC Classes
If you are willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel, you can hire on all sorts of wannabe adventurers who have 1 level of a PC class. You can recruit an army 5x larger than usual from the general city, or 2x larger than normal from associated buildings, in exchange for taking level 1 PCs instead of level 3.
Mounted Units
As normal under the mass combat rules, except the ACR of the unit is recalculated when you purchase mounts. Figure the CR of 1 mount and 1 rider together, and use this as the unit's base CR. If the rider is part of a regular army, treat their CR as 2 higher than normal for this purpose.
For example: A regular army trained level 3 Warrior riding a Heavy Warhorse. The Warrior is normally CR1, but is treated as CR3 thanks to his war training, and the Heavy Warhorse is CR2. A CR2 and CR3 together act as a CR4 encounter, so a Medium Army of mounted level 3 warriors is ACR4.
If instead you made a unit mounted on trained CR8 Dire Bears, the CR3 Warrior and CR8 Dire Bear is still a CR8 encounter, so the army acts as ACR8, as the humans riding the bears simply don't contribute enough to make a difference to the ACR (though they still allow the army to be formed, and use tactics, due to being in control of the mounts).
Recruiting Monsters
If you have allies belonging to intelligent monstrous races, you can raise armies from among their ranks (either by directly raising it or requesting support, depending on your relationship with them). Monstrous races tend to be much more warrior-like than the typical humanoid, and will devote larger numbers of their population to a war effort. When the call goes out, approximately 1/3rd of the population of a monstrous race will come to arms to form an army.
Most monstrous races resist the formal training and standardized kits that give humanoid standing armies an advantage, and so follow the normal ACR rules. However a group that can be convinced to organize can gain those benefits, and really be something to fear. If the monstrous race maintains a humanoid-like civilization, handle them like ordinary humanoids for this purpose instead.
Heavy Recruiting
As a general rule, any building or hex can be tapped for a militia once per year. After a year the population has generally stabilized enough (if you formed a regular army) or had enough time back home (in the case of a militia) that you can tap the area again for more recruits.
However, in times of great need you can recruit more heavily from the population. By taking a -10 penalty to your Loyalty check, you can attempt to raise an additional militia unit from a settlement or hex. Every additional time you attempt to raise an army from a settlement, the Loyalty penalty increases by a cumulative -10. If you fail the loyalty check to raise a militia beyond the first for a year, the kingdom suffers 2d4 unrest for 1 year.
Exception: When a settlement is under attack, a full militia from that settlement may always be raised for the defense of the settlement. A militia raised in such an emergency stays formed until the battle is resolved, at which point it disperses.
Area of Control
However, just because a hex is claimed does not mean it is protected. Villages on the frontier face dangers encroaching from the wilds. In D&D/Pathfinder land, there are always threats lurking around the corner and an unvigilant kingdom will soon find itself falling apart as unchecked threats attack from all sides.
Quick Use Rules
A settlement with a city guard secures its own hex. A settlement from which there is at least a 200 infantry can secure itself plus all adjacent hexes. By trading out 100 of the Infantry for Cavalry, the settlement may secure 2 adjacent hexes
Upgrades such as Forts and Watchtowers can be used to station troops and secure hexes as though they were a settlement.
If the Kingdom has hexes that are not secured, there is a 15% chance per month (check for each unsecured hex) that some random monster or bandits shows up and starts causing trouble. If this occurs make a Stability check with a penalty equal to the number of months since the last patrol. If successful the leaders find out immediately about this new threat and can deal with it as they choose. Dealing with a potential threat promptly should grant a +1 bonus to the nations loyalty.
If unsuccessful, the threat goes unchecked and unknown for 1d3 months, and once discovered the kingdom generates 1d4 unrest per month that it went on. If the unrest generated by this effect causes a hex to be abandoned, the hex that caused the issue must be abandoned first. Leaders ending the problem personally will restore 1d4 unrest generated from this.
Note: Even a secured hex can have bad things happen in it, it is merely much less likely to happen and far more likely the rulers will become aware of it immediately. The unsecured hex check is handled independently of the normal Kingdom Event check, which can generate issues like Monsters or Bandits. If these events occur, they are handled normally as described in the event.
Spoiler: Sidebar: More Complex Securing
Some players will want a lot more detail in determining things like patrols, how many soldiers they have, and what they are doing at any given time. In that event, use these rules.
Securing in Outlying hexes
- Armies used to secure a hex are treated as reserve armies, and thus their consumption is charged once per month instead of once per week. They need to be housed in an appropriate building.
- A patrol is usually a company of 25 soldiers that checks in with villages and either handles minor threats or sends back to the settlement reports of larger threats.
- A hex is considered secure if a patrol passes through at least once per week. A typical patrol unit will go on 4 patrols per week. So a single foot patrol can secure 4 hexes, while a single mounted patrol can secure 8 hexes.
- To cover the maximum area, 5 mounted patrols (50-125 cavalry) can cover 2 hexes surrounding a settlement. 2 foot patrols (20-50 foot) or 1 mounted patrol (10-25 cavarly) can cover 1 hex surrounding a settlement.
- Each time the patrol goes out they tend to leave and return in the same day, rarely camping in the open. If the force is camping in the field, increase their consumption as though they were an active army, but they can cover much more ground than normal. Allow such an army to cover 3 times as many hexes as normal.
- Since each patrol spends 3-4 days in 7 at the settlement, you can assume that at any given time 50% of the patroling soldiers are available for the town's defense if needed.
- If a unit has a speed significantly greater than 50, they may be able to secure more hexes and have a wider range, at DM's discretion. For example a unit of cavalry mounted on CL12 phantom steeds with 240ft movement could likely cover 4-5x as much area as a standard horse cavalry.
Securing a Settlement
In order to secure your settlements, a certain number of guards are needed to act as a backbone of defense and to act as a police force in times of peace.
- Guards are only necessary in a settlement of Small Town or larger. Smaller settlements are handled by outlying patrols described above.
- For every block of 4 buildings, a town requires a squad of 10 soldiers.
- A city requires 25 soldiers per block.
- A metropolis requires 30 soldiers per block.
- For every block that is unsecured increase Crime and Corruption in the settlement by 2.
Note: An army can be split up as needed. So as an example, if you have a small city with 1 full district (9 blocks), to secure that city you want at least 225 soldiers. To secure 2 hexes all around, you need 5 patrols (125 cavalry).
You could handle this by buying multiple tiny (25 person) armies, and tracking them all separately, but it is far more efficient and simpler to add up the total of what you need, and buy that total. So instead of buying 9 tiny infantry and 5 tiny cavalry, you get 1 large cavalry (200 units) and 1 huge infantry (500 units). This makes it easier to track, and means you don't have to go raise a new army every time you want to expand a little. Also since minimum cost and consumption for an Army is 1 BP, this typically saves some money for low ACR armies.
If the city comes under attack, just treat the cavalry (patrolling other hexes) as Medium instead of Large, as the other half is on patrol elsewhere.
Spoiler: Sidebar: Of Adapting Kingmaker
I mentioned at the start of the thread, I started this because the way the villages in Kingmaker were represented bothered me. Using these rules, instead of a small city of 5250 people, Varnhold is a small town of 1,100. This is still significantly bigger than the Varnhold presented in the adventure path, but much closer in scale. And since a small town is the smallest settlement considered large enough to be worth tracking under this, it makes sense that is where Varnhold is at.
This does mean reworking the map of Varnhold slightly, but mostly in a cosmetic way, providing more room for houses. At the end there will need to be more soul jars with captured townspeople, but again that's mostly cosmetic unless your PCs are unabashedly evil.
A similar cosmetic rework is required for Tatzlford, along with a beefing up of the besieging army (which is laughably small, to the point where the PCs could handle it easily on their own) to compensate for Tatzlford being a Small Town, and thus likely having a contingent of trained warriors on hand (and make the besieging army seem like a real threat instead of a joke).
Fort Drelev I don't think ever got a building breakdown in the AP, but could be designed as a small city with a Castle, but all outlying areas have been abandoned, so the PCs can annex the city and get significant building resources, but need to go exploring/reclearing the hexes in what was previously the Drelev duchy.
Pitax can be statted as a small city easily (fitting with its described 9000 population), but I will be upgrading it to a large city for my purposes (mainly to make it more believable that they have the kind of resources they are throwing at the PCs), and winning that war gives the opportunity to annex that entire kingdom.
