The NEW KINGMAKER for Pathfinder and D&D! (1 of 3: Should you get it?)

i have to say that when i opened kingmaker i did not expect rules for frognatos kingmaker is the new huge adventure path being put out by paizo in partnership with legendary games and i was excited about it because one piezo staff is all over this i see james jacob leading the design team and two it's gets to benefit from over 10 years of feedback from game masters who ran the first version of king maker made for pathfinder first edition and additionally it gets to benefit from the editions by the team at owlcat which adapted this to a computer role-playing game if you want to know how this works with 5th edition i'll spend a little time on that and also point to a time stamp to that part of the video i will not spoil anything about the story except for the obvious that you will explore a untamed land settle it and establish a kingdom and deal with the problems that kingdoms face including possibly war this is the sandbox adventure path the kingdom building adventure path in which there are hexes that the party explores and can do many things uh in whatever order that they want so it's very good for some groups but also at sandbox nature means that you can steal elements from it and insert into your own campaigns and also it's easier to customize this campaign and put insert things that you like from your homebrew or from other campaigns it was designed with pathfinder second edition in mind but you can also run it for dnd fifth edition or pathfinder first edition or dnd third edition for that matter because there are optional bestiaries that convert all of the unique monsters uh into stat blocks for those systems if you're coming from the alcat computer game know that it basically has all of the additional story from the alcat games but the details are different in them including the fact that there are not nearly as many encounters as in the computer game the computer game medium allows for a higher quantity of combat uh because a computer calculates everything for example in an early dungeon uh in the computer game there are about 40 encounters but here in the book it is uh sticks to the original design from 10 years ago of having about 10 encounters also there's some additional contents near the end that will be a surprise to players from the computer game if you come from the pathfinder first edition version of this campaign know that this incorporates the additional story content from the computer game and it goes from level 1 to 20. some of you may want to know off the bat do i have to run the kingdom and because i think for many people for the computer game that was the least liked part i'll say first that the kingdom rules have been substantially changed from the original rules from the first edition campaign and from the computer game and i would say they've been second editionified i'm gonna invent that word now i'm gonna go more in more detail about that in part two of this review um but i quite like it and i'm quite excited about it uh second thing is no you do not need to run uh the kingdom and warfare systems you can run the kingdom as just developing and growing in the background of the story and you may still want to use the random kingdom events system that is in the book however as i said this adventure is huge if you take the pathfinder 2nd edition adventure paths that go from level 1 to 20. i looked at some and i averaged out the total page count of adventure content specifically the part of the book that is describing story encounter locations events the core content and it comes out to about 360 pages over the course of that adventure path one with king maker i add all of the pages and also include the companion optional quests that are on the companion book that comes with together it comes out to about 550 pages so it's about 50 percent extra size compared to their level 1 through 20 adventure paths if we were to use page count as a guide so it is huge the structure of the book is like the computer game you start with a an opening scenario that takes characters through basically level one it's pretty linear and then the sandbox opens as they are near level two and are starting to clear the land for their future kingdom and chapter two covers the hexes that the party can explore it also serves as a model for how pathfinder second edition gms can run a sandbox because there is the problem of aggressive scaling the math is tight uh levels uh escalate quickly in power from one to twenty and a level one party going in to a level two area will be in over their heads they might be able to manage they probably should be able to manage but is significantly harder so how to solve that well the chapter handily divides the wilderness area into 20 zones and each zone is has an overall approximate level for it that the gm can use as a guide to lead the players that direction entice them that direction and also steer them away it gives the gm's the freedom and it also and the players the freedom but also gives the gm's the tools and they need to keep uh manage expectations chapter two is huge for that reason it's about 120 pages you can treat it as a guess a tier and a locations chapter if you will then the following nine chapters are basically the story chapters uh 340 pages total that uh basically cover the story beats and locations that are involved with the progression of the main story the nine chapters track with the six volumes of the original series uh and includes the extra chapter from the computer game and also the dlc uh is a chapter and there's a as i said there's additional content near the end this combined with the fact that you have about 60 pages of additional adventure content from the accompanying companions book means that you have the biggest adventure by far that paizo has ever published and the amount of okay if we use page count if that were to be a truly accurate measure of uh what amount of gameplay and xp a party would get you would have an additional 50 of content that the party can work with that poses an interesting problem to gm should they have a slower xp track should they slow it in the first place or should they do milestone and that is left up to the individual gm i've not read it all in depth but from what i've seen so far it's the usual piezo treatment uh there's usually the connections between npcs and locations and quests are pretty clear and given to you where you hope they will be given and there's a very useful quest index that at the very end of the book that helps you find the 61 side quests that the party can encounter and the area chapter 2 the about the exploration of the wilderness has a wandering encounter a random encounter chart for each region that you can roll on and also has details a little information about a couple of those encounters to be a spark for uh gm creativity so it's very well done and it has the usual tabs on the side that helps subdivide every chapter to help you find your way around the companion book is a gm facing book and the title has two meanings one it is a necessary supplement companion to the main book and two it covers the the majority of the page count is devoted to the non-player characters the companions that the players will meet and it has rules for weather and camping and okay so first on the npcs uh there are seven that are uh covered in detail uh oh by the way all 12 npcs that are given here um come with unique uh feats that they have and that can be they can teach to the party and also unique activities that they can do or teach others during camping and during kingdom building so uh they enter these all interact with the other rules that this whole set introduces so that's really cool well seven of the npcs are covered in full detail and they each have a side quest a companion quest um that covers six to eight pages in which the npc is assumed to go along with you and they uh usefully give you the stat blocks for for them when you encounter them early in the campaign and also stats for them at the level it is expected you will go on their personal quest with them so that they can accompany the party on that quest some of the npcs have unique structures that the kingdom can build or you or bring unique spells or items so a lot of mechanical support for each companion which is uh pretty cool for each npc it also uses the influence subsystem which if you don't play pathfinder second edition is free online where basically your interactions uh with the npc can essentially be quantified uh possibly behind the gm screen by the gm in which they give more and more benefits to the party the camping system is interesting there is a system for cooking and using recipes and companions have their favorite recipes and these recipes can give a boon to individuals or the to the party there are camping activities you basically have a limited time which also incurs a risk of triggering a random encounter these include interesting activities such as hunting and gathering disguising the campsite learning activities from companions telling a rousing campfire story that will give the party bonuses in combat in case they get ambushed camping subsystem can be used in any campaign to liven up camping and also cooking there are recipes in here as well the recipes this is a new subsystem that you can enter it into any campaign uh are formulas that players can learn there are recipes for things like fish on a stick or haggis uh up to something as exotic as hearty purple soup which is made of purple worm meat we also have rules for governing weather which is of course appropriate for a wilderness exploration campaign and they're relatively simple and can also be inserted into any other campaign where you use random roles to determine uh amount of precipitation and temperature and then roll for a random weather event and the weather events are presented as hazards they also have levels to them and are can also be sources of xp there are 12 weather events that are statted out here one of them is supernatural storm where the party can be accosted by a rain of sharded glass or of frogs there's also a small chance that there can be two events that hit the party and one of them is a tornado hence the frog nato now how easy is it to run this in dnt 5th edition a lot of what i'm about to say is also going to be applicable to people who run this in pathfinder first edition or dnd third edition which is that it includes a optional book which is called the bestiary and for the fifth edition one it is 210 pages this book gives you stat blocks for most of the monsters that you won't find in some other source and it also gives you stat blocks for the non-player characters including the big villains and stats for the non-player characters that can be companions it also includes rules for some of the hazards and traps that parties will encounter but converted for fifth edition it opens with a couple pages explaining how to run it in fifth edition there's just a few terms to uh clarify uh overall it's uh pretty straightforward the kingdom and warfare subsystems which again are optional in running this campaign are system agnostic they don't require that you have pathfinder second edition characters to for the kingdom rules to work the monster stat blocks generally have a challenge rating equal to the level that same creature has in pathfinder's second edition roughly and if you know both systems you know that is not a perfect conversion because a level 5 creature and pathfinder is roughly comparable to a level 5 character in power but cr5 and dnd means they're supposed to be an appropriate challenge for a party of that level however if you run fifth edition enough you know that uh cr is a guideline it's not a strict science and you'll be doing what you usually do anyway in terms of juggling balance what is not as easy to convert however are the magic items magic items are designed quite differently in pathfinder second edition and so you'll want to be using your own judgment which you were using anyway in tnd fifth edition on when to award magic items there are a couple magic items that are converted uh associated with some key npcs but they generally are not converted here i've dm'd some fifth edition but not enough to make me feel qualified to comment on how well the monsters are designed and whether they have unique abilities which is what i would hope was done with these monsters a lot of them are conversions from the pathfinder 2nd edition stat block and pathfinder 2e has a design philosophy of trying to give a unique ability to each monster so my hope is that that was translated in the conversions and from what i saw it looked like it was done for some of them since recording this i consulted swing ripper from my discord server who has much more experience dming 5e than i do he was impressed by the stat blocks he saw in my advanced copy he thought there were useful high-level moocs that were easy to run this makes sense to me because the original campaign is designed to run from level 1 to 20 with a variety of roles filled by monsters at every level he also likes seeing more signature abilities that don't take a player out of the fight completely and more of what he called counter play in this stat block of a bodak he thought the abilities were more balanced than what he usually saw and that they allowed for more of what he called counter play ways for players to adjust their tactics to its abilities i also counted 51 monsters with reactions in this 210 page book many of them modeled after their original reactions in 2e so it looks like some monsters have more things to do so who should get king maker first i'm gonna say some negatives uh because it is a sandbox campaign there's uh less connective tissue leading from um one place or one quest to the next and you there could be multiple things going on and there's a lot to track um so it's some work for the gm um an organizational challenge but perhaps that's something that you want also on that same note the kingdom rules involves a lot of bookkeeping and you definitely will want some at least one player to help you if you're at the gm uh track uh the kingdom sheet and also the what's going on on the settlements which are also tracked on the other hand the kingdom and warfare rules are optional as for pros um i would say that on while i have not had time to read it thoroughly yet this is an early review uh partly because i don't want to spoil myself for this story i'm working through the computer game right as we speak uh i trust paizo they usually have high quality adventures and from what i've glanced uh and i've read the first uh edition adventure path um it looks quite compelling um you'll need the right group you'll want a group that is motivated by the sheer idea of exploring a wilderness that doesn't need to have a overriding plot thread you know pushing them forward um that likes the openness and you want players who want to portray rulers of the kingdom again the kingdom system is optional however i will say more so than in the first edition the second edition version of the kingdom rules allow for some more moments of role play also this is a sprawling sandbox you can borrow and steal from this to insert into whatever other campaigns you're running and you may very well run an adventuring party from level 1 through 20 and still not visit all of the content there are also subsystems you can also steal the kingdom rules the warfare rules the camping rules the cooking rules the weather rules also uh the sprawling nature of this the ambition of running a kingdom and the sandbox nature of it uh all mean that you kind of have a bigger scale that you can work with more so than in other adventure paths you can have a longer period of time pass every kingdom turn is one month so this is an opportunity to explore crafting and earning income and doing other things in your downtime and some groups might even want to have a stable of characters you have these uh fun npcs that can rotate in and out uh why not have more than one player character uh uh since there are many leadership roles also in a running a kingdom that can be filled and a player may very well want to have more than one character to deal with ruling the kingdom which you only need to have um the pc devoted to it one week per month but still it's an idea and why not so that's part one of my overview of king maker i think it i'm really excited myself to have a physical version of this which is not yet available um but i would love to run this with some of my players and in part two uh i will go over the kingdom rules and warfare rules so i'll see you there i am ronald the rules lawyer and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

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Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d, kingmaker 10th anniversary, pathfinder 2nd edition, kingmaker, kingmaker for D&D, kingmaker for dnd, kingmaker for pathfinder 2nd, kingmaker for pf2, kingmaker for pf2e, kingmaker for pathfinder 2e

Id: YI9cVLym8LI

Length: 20min 4sec (1204 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 10 2022