Om, nom, nom, nom! Chewy!

Going to take me time to go through this one... but so far... Grrrooovvvyyy!

Story feats, retraining, downtime, investments, reputation, talismanic components for magic item creation....

The kingdom building rules from Kingmaker are expanded upon - and very much welcome.

So far... pretty happy with the PDF, looking forward to the hardcover knocking on my door next week.

Much happier with this than I was with Ultimate Equipment or NPC Codex.

The Auld Grump

Just picked this up myself, and I think it's worth it just for the Story Feats (Hey! Instant Plot Hooks! Pick Me! Pick Me!) and the expanded Traits list. Haven't had a look at much else, yet, but I know that I'll be making heavy use of those whenever I can.

yeah starting to look through it myself. I'm focusing on the Downtime system. I am running Serpent Skull, and the group is out "adventuring" 6-8 hours a day, and then they come back and hang out with the Tribe of the Sacred Serpent. They don't do anything while there. They were required to have some kind of craft skill to join the Tribe and stay there, but they don't do much with them. I like the idea of being able to spend some downtime and build up resources and build buildings and such.

Ordered my copy from Amazon yesterday, but one of my players picked it up in a store and he is incessantly emailing me about nice things he's finding in it. So, I'm looking forward to getting it.

One downside - players that are wishing that we had the book when they generated their characters.... Primary offender in that regard? Story Feats....

The Auld Grump, delicious book....

It does have a lot of good crunchy bits, doesn't it? I think I'd probably move more informally with something like haggling to make it more realistic. I'll use the 75-150% spread as a baseline though.

Warfare is very interesting. I may also crib from this to create some epic scenes.


Edit: Also, what were your quibbles with the NPC/Equipment books?

My quibble with the NPC book was that it was not useful for me. It was only core classes, none of the archetypes and new base classes from the various supplements.

As an example - in both my 1630s setting and my 1750s setting the most common spellcasting class is Witch, with the Hedgewitch archetype being found in almost every settlement.

The Equipment book... I just hated the format. Works wonderfully, but I just hate the look of it.

Well organized, useful information, and the book sees use every game!... Grrrrr..... It is too... polished. It looks like a guide for a computer game.

Neither is a bad book... and one is incredibly useful.

The Auld Grump

Well. I'm not planning on playing pathfinder in the foreseeable future.
But I still bought this book last night simply for the expanded kingdom building rules and downtime events ideas. I'll be able to use both in most any system I run next.

I have to say, I've barely cracked it open and already found it well worth the price I paid for the PDF. If the entire book is as useful as the character background section, this book is going to stay on my iPad for a long time as I plan out more games.

Got my copy yesterday. I'm liking it. I like the optional character background rules. I'm tempted to force my players to roll to determine their background and upbringing next time, but I'm sure they won't like not being in control of their characters 100%.

I really like the expanded kingdom rules. They eliminated a few oddities and fleshed out some other areas that were sorely lacking in Kingmaker--especially being able to build different things in each hex. (mines, farms, lumber camps, highways, etc.) I don't think it's the BEST system, but it's pretty decent. It's kind of a socialist system were the king decides every business that's going to be built in each city, which is odd. But it seems like a good, playable system, nonetheless.

I don't know if it's a good thing that the players can't make the kingdom money by selling magic items now, though. That seemed like an interesting possible approach when building your kingdom in the past. (do I try to build up the Economy bonus or build buildings that will produce magic items that we can sell to get the BP to build more stuff?) I can see that selling magic items could create a snowball effect as a kingdom gets big, though. An exponential increase in income as the kingdom grows, in effect. So, I can see why they would want to change that.

I like it... buut..

They could have done a better job with alternate Kingdom start points and fantasy.

My players had so much fun on Smuggler's Shiv that I was tempted to have the local gentry sell it to them and have them run it as a city state. Last I checked, the Shiv is about 1 hex. It has a variety of ruins, and the only magic dry dock on Golarion. This would get you some strife with the mainland, and of course, pirates would find this a more intriguing place go.

In the Kingmaker path, I'd like to expand on the Kobolds. I'd like to see them get some seed money and expand as a subterranean vassal state. I'm leaning towards, 5X cost and construction time for equivalent subterranean hexes, and regular cost for city construction.

Finally had some time to read into it. Overall its very good.

I think its overlooked but if you aren't going full hog with the 'Kingmaker' idea, they do a good job of expanding the idea of running your own business.

I feel that they could have done a better job of figuring out missions for players in large scale combat. Grump already pointed me to a 3.5 D&D book which really expands on the concept. (Hero's of Battle? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_of_Battle)

I'm also sort of waking up to the idea of adapting companions or familiars to full on cohorts for the players. As a DM if you don't want to put too much effort into creating and controlling cohorts, this is an excellent way to go. Besides... what could be more fun than a Quasit? A Quasit Rogue? A Quasit Abjurer?

Someone mentioned Kobold Tatzlwyrm Riders on the Paizo forums, so I came up with this render.


(I know... it should be a night time render..)

Heroes of Battle is one of the few official 3.5 books that still sees regular use.

Seriously - the core mechanics do not care what system you are using. 3.5, Pathfinder, Runequest....

The Auld Grump