I  would like to take opinions for the whole player roster on the question of PCs using craft skills to make items.  :)

Kingmaker comes with huge amounts of down time.  These recent fuzzy threads have covered about three (game) months.  All the previous threads (in the whole game) took about nine (game) months.  Realistically PCs were probably away from 'base' for less than half of that time.

That leaves (roughly) 8 months of down time.  The Kingdom Rules assume you are doing 'every-day' stuff during that time, such as overseeing new settlers, minor policing actions or running your 'Personal Empires'.

You also finish up with quite a lot of money from Loot or 'bonus payments' and clever use of Economic developments can get you quite big skills bonuses.

How much time should I give PCs to craft potions, alchemical mixes, scroll and other such items?

Note:  So far I have picked (or rolled) a random small number of items.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:49, Tue 02 Apr 2019.

Are you referring to PC when you mentioned "people" above?

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I do like the fact that we've keep the kingdom building and the economy at the Macro level. Not sure that I would be favor of adding more things on the Micro level.

The entourages are not allowed to take Craft/Profession skills that might turn into micro-economy. Is the question opening the doors to change all of that going forward?

In reply to Kendrick Winters (msg # 2):

yes -  PCs :)

Are these items to be used in play, or sold off as a source of income?

Nothing will change as far as Entourage-Assistants go.  It is way too easy for unbalance the game if Entourage-Assistants are creating stuff for you  all the time.

My concerns relate to PCs cafting -  the way the game runs, PCs could easily have 100-150 days per year of crafting, aided by entourage assistants and MW tools in craft workshops they own (so quite a few pluses), with (potentially) a lot of money to spend.

Speaking as someone who doesn't have any of the craft feats, I would actually support the concept of PCs being able to use them to make magic items. There are very few games where that is an option, and I think this one is perfect for it considering the amount of downtime.

What you could do is make it an either/or proposition. Meaning, either you participate in kingdom building this round or you craft. That may be too harsh, but something like that.

The issue with crafting had always been, what are the rest of the PCs doing during that time and what advantages are they getting. I don't think it has to be equal, considering it takes a feat to craft magical items, but as long as there is something else to be gained by others (ie. Kingdom building) then I think it's fine.

I suppose that crafting will be part of the PC if that is the route that they took. It's a matter of how much time will be allowed to do that AND the other Kingdom events.

Thought that most of the time, the PC was using their time to do Kingdom things. So now, we'll be able to do Kingdom Things, Craft, and whatever else we can find :)

If the character were to craft 10 Wands of Eel Detection, not to be used on campaign, but solely to be sold for gold, then an (somewhat) equal opportunity would need to be made for characters with other income producing abilities as well, such as Performance, Merchant, or Eel Pie Eating Contests.

If instead, the crafting is intended for a campaign item such as a Mithral Fork of Greater Eel Summoning, then I would be in favor of these unique bonuses. It can add flavor, RP, and progression to the game. If such an item is considered unbalanced, then it can be denied at the beginning. Or it could always be eaten by the Mother of All Eels for an RP solution.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:30, Tue 02 Apr 2019.

PCs have always been able to make things  - so far scrolls, potions, alchemical items and (I think) Holy Water.  Before long some PCs may be able to craft other items.

We already have Fuzzy thread, and 'fudged' time to get everyone back in town at about the same time.  Then there is the 'assumption' that you are doing stuff for Henry, business, organizations etc ....

The key question is how much time is reasonable?

If the PC has the crafting skills / feats, why shouldn't they be able to use them? Crafting is part of the game, and one that I've seen used very rarely. And it's not like Kingdom turns would occupy all of their time. Depending on what they actually do during Kingdom turns, it might not even occupy any of their time, especially if they have NPCs actually running things for them.

(Up to) 10 days a month, or 120 days a year? This could equate to about a third of their time working for Henry, one third kingdom building and other personal tasks, and one third for crafting.

Safiya - As I said, Crafting has always happened in the game.  The question is how much?    So far I have been making arbitrary decisions about that.  That isn't very fair, and  it is starting to irritate me doing that on a case-by-case basis.  So I want some guidance from across the player base :)

Cass - When was the last time you were able to tell me when a month or a week had passed in this game?

Kendrick has been in the Midmarch for 3 Kingdom Turns + 1 Adventuring Turn. Does this mean that he has been in the game for a year?

If we go with Cass' suggestion :)
Then 10 days a month gives 30 days per Kingdom Turn. That sounds reasonable. Or is it too high or too low?

EDIT: I've been trying to figure out Jensen :)
This message was last edited by the player at 21:06, Tue 02 Apr 2019.

Whenever you tell me it has, boss. :)

If you say that a character has been traveling for 3 weeks, then they can't have more than 7 days total of downtime. Even if they are able to dedicate 50% of that downtime to crafting, they can't have more than 3.5 days of craft time for that month.

I think what you need to decide first is how much time other "kingdom round" activities take, and then you can figure how much time there is for crafting.

For example, how much time does "running a business" like Adoven does, take? If he's spending BP to extend that business, does that add additional time since there is the buying of goods, negotiating agreements, overseeing construction, etc.? Should the amount of time be connected to how many holdings they have, or how many BP those holdings add up to? I would think managing V&A Shipping is going to take a lot more time than managing a single Tailor Shop.

How much time does filling a "stewardship role" take? Obviously Cass expends some amount of time as the Mayor of Tusk Town and Kendrick now spends time as the Marshal.

And then of course there is the point that perhaps a PC could have an entourage member pick up at least some of those duties. For example in Marik's case he has Pekwik to manage Sootscale and Valgard to manage Iron Keep. The easiest answer here would be to allow an entourage member to manage one holding (or perhaps multiple small holdings in the same location as Marik has) or fill one stewardship role, but then they can't do anything else substantive.

Once we have a rough idea of how much time these activities take, then you can see how much time people have left for crafting. It is probably also worth taking a look at Ultimate Campaign to see what other activities could be done during downtime for those without crafting feats to fill the time as well.

As some who has used Crafting in my and other people's campaigns, I think you are making too much deal out of it. Look at it this way, each crafting check takes a week of time. The amount created is DC of the item x the check.

For example, I want to create some bladeguard. It's a 40gp item. I rolled a 31 and upped the DC to 25, to speed things up. In 2 days I am 220sp of the way to that 400 total.

There is no impact on the economy with these rules. It just a hobbie for those in town.

In reply to Stanislav Wolkov (msg # 17):

My focus is more on the crafting of magic items using the crafting feats.

In reply to Marik (msg # 18):

Ok. Potions, wands and scrolls are self limiting in terms of number of spells the caster knows and cost associated with making the item. Player characters selling items receive 1/2 the items value, so unless they are into business of making these things there is not too much profit. If they are into business then they are not adventuring and it's a full time position. Hitting other to run it is already covered by rules.

What it's mostly good for is getting people items that they can not find or are not for sale.

I'm thinking about feat and game balance, myself- if we go ahead and throw open the doors to crafting, doesn't that really open up a whole big brouhaha of just what kinds of things could be crafted?  I mean, yes, there are all sorts of wonderful fun things that could be created to help out adventuring parties- stuff like wands of knock, detect secret doors, detect magic, read magic... pretty much creating a working stash of equipment for the use of Henry's people.

Maybe it requires a certain amount of trust or something for certain projects?  I mean, I wouldn't trust some random person in my town to just start making stuff willy-nilly because a) I don't know what they're making and b) who the blazes are they selling to?  I mean, if an unknown alchemist came in and started brewing up huge batches of alchemist's fire, I imagine Henry would have something to say about that- mostly because of the fire danger that could represent, as well as if he starts selling it to every adventurer that came through with the coin, because having massive amounts of something even a goblin could use to torch a town out there wouldn't make me sleep much better at night.

Maybe the OOC rule is only sell the dangerous stuff to fellow PCs- IC, it would be people that can be obviously trusted to do the right thing with said item, and not for sale to NPC randoms.

That actually sounds like something the Marshal should keep tabs on. He can have everybody register their skills, weapons, lovers, haters, next of kin, etc. LOL
Sorry I got off-topic there ;)

Just not going to happen. Do the math.

As someone who is planning on taking magical craft feats moving forward I'm very interested in this question.

Part of my Kingdom building plan IS setting up magical (aka Exotic artisan) craftsmen. I plan to use those shops/resources to aid my own crafting eventually.

120 days of crafting per year is equivalent in Magic Item terms to 120,000 (base price) gp in magic items per year assuming all craft checks succeed. DC to craft a magic item is only 5+CL+other modifiers. Example, for me to forge a ring of Protection (some future day when we make it to 7th level) without knowing the shield of faith spell, is DC 15.

At 7th level I should easily be able to craft a Ring of Protection +1 in 2 days for 1,000 gp, or 60 of them a year. Not planning to do this, just for the theory exercise of it all.

What would I sell those rings for if I have magic shops? If I'm partnering with Adoven and his trade routes or have set up my own?

I mostly plan to use my crafting for myself or for other PCs in trade for other items/BP/political favors ;) I just want to give context to what we're talkin about on the crafting side of things.

In the Trade thread, we roughly estabilished that a BP is worth ~ 5,000 gp locally. Can I trade a Ring of Sustenance for 0.5 BP to Henry or others as negotiated?

But there is a possibility that a PC would want to pay much more for a particular magic item since BP hasn't been clearly defined. There is some wiggle room when converting BP to GP.

So we have two different aspects of the problem there.

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It takes Stas 4 days to make  a pot of Blade Shield, while it would take a (slightly higher level) Zelona two days to make Ring of Protection +1.  Money doesn't always limit what can be produced magically, especially when there are a lot of PCs around to purchase  'Items made to Order', or an End Boss drops a load of monetary wealth.

Items Crafted or  and created like that won't become part of the economy - the Business Section of the kingdom rules cover that sort of sale.  Nor will they be saleable for a BP allocation - tried that and it didn't work well :)  Nor does it finish up affecting the amount of magic available to the group as a whole -  because I'll adjust treasure dropped to accommodate WBL considerations  :)  *Evil DM Grin*.  What it does affect is magic and gear distribution inside a party - as I reduce the treasure drop -  the crafter finishes up with a larger proportion of the Party's magical gear (etc).

I want to find  something that has the backing of the group -  rather than me making arbitrary decisions each time the question of  'How much time do I have' comes up.

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The second issue has to do with Time during the Kingdom round, which is something that I haven't really addressed.  I have played around with various methods.  I was intending to have 4/year.  That never quite worked and I went for a kingdom round each level up.  That hasn't quite worked as I would have liked it either.  The end result is that Tusk is almost a city in the space of one year of adventuring.  Uber-Boomtown!

That becomes important because, as someone said earlier, 'In a conventional game, time for creating is controlled by how long the other PCs are prepared to hang about'.  In this game, I Fudge and Fuzzy time quite a lot to keep all the groups on something like the same time line.  That matters so that I can allow interaction between groups from different players, manage advancement so that everyone is in some sort of sync and to let me reorganize groups, when it is appropriate.

As someone has pointed out

I have been hand-waving time for kingdom Round jobs

Public Appointments (such as Mayor, Treasurer, Councillor, Marshal)
Running a business or organisation.
Tasks for Henry.

I am going to pick on Cass here as an example.  Nothing personal, and Cass hasn't done anything I haven't encouraged  :)  However he is:...

• Mayor of Tusk
• Stronghold owner for Silverton
• Boss of the Mithral Hotels Chain
• doing simple background jobs for Henry.

All within times that have been hand-waved and used to fill the very Fuzzy/Fudgey kingdom round time.

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I am not sure that running a large business/Organisation takes up more time that a small business.  As the business gets bigger, you get a larger organisation backing up the decisions, junior managers etc.  You still just make 'Strategic Calls' and carry out oversight.

In the trade thread a Midmarch BP has been loosely  as worth about 5000gp, that can roughly equate to a 2,500gp redemption value - in certain circumstances. That takes  gold / cash wealth out of the BP barter economy -  and isn't a standard sale price.  Do it too often and the value will decrease and the realizable wealth is drawn from the economy to be replaced by favours.

That value is a device that will allow you guys to get a foothold in places like Restov, Mivon or New Steven.  It is not a regular exchange rate.

Another thing - Going away from the computer to get a coffee leaves the mind free to wander ....

I don't want to punish people for taking part in any of those Kingdom activities.  For Example - Zelona and Safiya want to take part in those  AND craft :)  And I don't want a system that discourages that.

I'm with Stanislav here, as far as mundane crafting is concerned (alchemy included), there really is no need for limiting crafting time. Mundane crafting is already so slow it's just not going to break anything. The most it can do is provide a discount on some already cheap gear. Crafting magical items is a bigger concern, because it's far faster in value per time. But here the limiting factor is not going to be time, but money, at least until someone has hundreds of thousands in gold to burn for crafting.

And like Zelona, I too am interested in how crafting magic items is going to interact with existing economy rules. I have never used crafting with my characters before, but this campaign seems made to try it out. Zelona, what feats are you planing on taking?

Really depends on what levels we get to eventually... The main two I want to get/do are Forge Ring/Craft Staff. Brew Potion/Cultivate Magical Plant are also potentials before I get the right levels for those.

Most useful would be Craft Wondrous but I'll probably leave that one open for others to do.

My understanding is that a Caster's Tower costs 6 BP to create. This investment returns 3 BP each Kingdom turn. This is in line with any other type of commercial development.

That a BP is "roughly" equivalent to 5000 gp is just a frame of reference to help the DM (and maybe players) adjust developments outside of Midmarch. BPs can never be converted to coinage, coinage can never be converted to BPs.

Also that a Caster's Tower is capable of creating 1 minor magical item and 1 medium magical item each Kingdom turn.

And that one of the questions is how much crafting time a magic user (who owns a caster's tower for example) can have to produce magic items in addition to the 2 produced by the tower during a Kingdom turn.

And that leads to the request for a more definitive answer to how long a Kingdom turn is, to calculate the answer to the first question.

Is that about right?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:23, Wed 03 Apr 2019.

In reply to Zelona (msg # 28):

I was thinking of going with Craft Wondrous Items next level, and maybe Arms and Armor later. But I would not mind it at all if you wish to take Wondrous Items as well.

*grin*  I suspect I need to revisit that.  A caster's Tower will return 3.5 bp per Kingdom turn.  The Minor, Medium and Major magic indicators are actually an economic (BP) return based on all the magical items the tower makes -  not the specific number of items the tower can make.

And the secret is out :) Making magic Items, can make you very rich (in BP terms)

Other than that, you are pretty much right.

Large arenas net you 4 BP each KT for a 6 BP investment.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 07:41, Wed 03 Apr 2019.

No.  A large Arene returns 2bp per kingdom turn.  You get 0.5bp per point of economy.

Warning: This is kind of all over the place.  I started writing an idea but it took on a mind of its own.  I didn't want to cancel, rewrite and so on because there are concepts I thought important that came out as I wrote so forgive the unruly presentation and please accept the content for its intent and forgive the chaos.

One thing I am not seeing addressed is the non-crafting aspects of the game.  I for one cannot craft anything more than a bandage but yet am potentially a top tier healer through professional and skill even before clerical magic is involved.  We're discussing how much one spends on items, how long it takes and so on but what is the idea behind someone like myself who will by game rules have to pay full price for an item?  If I took the feats to make magic items I could easily save a fortune enchanting my sword but I don't want to do that.  What do I do when I want to upgrade my MW sword to something more?  Sure I can say "Dara goes to some merchant and spends hard earned money from an adventure to get it done" but I would much rather go to a Fuzzy thread and RP talking to another player who owns a shop and skill for it and purchase from them to do it.

I would recommend we keep it as close to the book as possible.  Businesses run as per downtime, points are generated and so on.  If a character wants to craft, they can use their business and its benefits to pay 50% and do it.  If someone without a business wants to craft, say a Wizard writing a scroll or Alchemist brewing a potion using their level 1 feat, they can pay the cost to do so.  For those like myself who lack the skills, let us engage a player who does and pay them to do it.  They used a feat that could have easily been put towards something else, let them earn something from it!  But don't forget the people with Professions.  The single biggest point of a profession is making a wage during downtime.  I really don't like how some books allow other skills to mimic profession's ability but that's for another time and discussion.  Let Dara spend her downtime working, give her gold based on her skill so she can then pay a player to craft the item she wants.

Then we run into a disparity.  Let's assume Dara takes 10 every week of downtime.  Calculating her skill that is roughly 10gp a week.  She could work as a manager for 5gp a day per one of the rules but let's rule that out for the moment.  Now if she wanted to upgrade her scimitar to +1 she'd need to work 40 hours a week for years.  9 months of downtime would net her ~390gp which is still not even close so adventuring money would be required to fill that gap.  A crafter making the sword would charge her 2000gp (200 weeks' wages or almost 4 years' salary assuming she never takes a vacation or goes adventuring) and pocket 1000gp of the profit (as they should!).  It will take them 2 days per the rules to do it.  Crafters will make a significant amount more over non-crafters so some kind of balancing might need to be considered for this.

Downtime duration?  I suggest we do 3 rounds of DT for every round of adventuring.  It slows things down on the timeline, allows ample time to build and grow business and so on.  We don't need to make them hard and fast times either.  No one is going to adventure for 3 months and then stay home for 9, it isn't like military deployments.  They might adventure a week, work a month, adventure a month, work six months, adventure two weeks...

Anyways, this is all over the place and I admit it.  Summary: Let's let the players go to players for crafting needs, give Professions an equal opportunity to earn and be useful and find a way to balance them so that one is not impoverished compared to the other.

Welcome to my can of worms :)

Dara - this isn't meant as an attack of you, or your argument -  just a recognition that this isn't as simple an issue as it might appear :)

Which I came to realize as I was writing, hence the chaotic nature of the end product. Revelation while writing.

We are not taking into account supply and demand. As pointed out above its 4 years' salary for a NPC to afford a +1 scimitar. Who is going to buy this in a small town besides a PC? How many can you sell in a year? There is just no market for these things. There is like 1% per week that you can sell a magical sword at full price through a store. I would say maybe 5% chance if you start selling at a discount, but then there are all of these guilds who will now go after you for undermining their business. And speaking of which 50% of the item price is just materials, how about guild dues, taxes and insurance(protection money).

If you actually consider these things, yes a PC can make a living selling magic items, but it will be a full time activity and he is not getting super rich.

I am thinking the best way to do it is take that 2000 and say that the crafter gets 0 of it.  The money is absorbed by business, expenses, materials, payroll, gas, electric, cable, insurance, guild fees, lawyer fees, loan sharks and so on...

Downtime rules balance things out by saying that you get (10+Skill)/2 GP per week of downtime labor using profession, craft, perform or whatever.  For balance sake I would think go by the rules.  Does it make sense?  Not completely, but it is even.  And when you think a profession is something done daily while a seller of magical items might spend a lot of time waiting for that one adventurer to make that one big sale, it kind of works?  The crafters will get a benefit of making their personal use items on the cheap but that's not entirely game breaking.

So did the GM get what he needed?
Have we narrowed down the options that will work for you?

I have taken the sense of the discussion so far  :) and have a feel of what people have said.  I haven't yet had time to let it peculate around in my head -  nor have I had a chance to read over the rules.

Once I have done that (which may take a few days) I will come up with (what  think) is a workable solution.

I am currently considering way to tie this into the Kingdom Rules.  One of the things I never liked about the Paizo kingdom rules is that they didn't match up with their down-time rules.

My only comment would be that it should be Ok for characters to create items for themselves that effectively mean they can get (up to) double the bang for their buck for the treasure they earned adventuring. If they have invested all their feats in item creation feats instead of combat-oriented or other adventure-oriented feats there is no reason they should be penalised for that choice, just as there is no reason that they should be allowed to gain a huge advantage either.

The only problem with a limit on the proportion of days that can be spent on item creation is that it might have no effect on lower level characters and disproportionately higher impacts on higher level characters. For example, a 1st to 4th level wizard wants to scribe his highest level spell on a scroll, that's less than 200gp each so only takes 2 hours, so he can scribe 4 scrolls in a day. A 5th to 8th level wizard is looking at a scroll value of under 1000gp so 1 day per scroll. For a 9th level wizard creating a scroll of a 5th level spell that's 2 days per scroll.

So, if you want to say a 1st to 4th level wizardess shouldn't be allowed to create more than say 12 scrolls for herself between adventures, you limit item creation to only 3 days per kingdom round. That only lets a 5th to 8th level wizardess create three 3rd or 4th level scrolls and a 9th level wizardess can only create one 5th level scroll and one 3rd or 4th level scroll. And they can forget about ever enhancing their own +1 ring of protection to +2! Not to mention ever crafting that staff they always dreamed of. (Yes, that might be  an extreme example but just illustrates the point I am making.)

Perhaps that's why D&D used to impose an experience point cost on the item creator, as well as the gp cost? Perhaps you could impose a 'temporary' XP cost on the item creator instead? For example, the exhaustion associated with excessive item creation might temporarily drain enough XP to lose a level until the middle of the next kingdom round, which affects their abilities in the upcoming adventuring round too.

I don't see this as a problem. You need more time to enchantment, then stay home and enchant or go adventuring. Everything has an opportunity cost.

My current view is :-

• Three Kingdom turns, two adventuring turns and one 'Winter' turn  per calendar year.
  
• Each Kingdom Turn will have 20 days free in which you can Craft or pursue Professional interests.   The rest of the time will be taken up running Businesses, Civic Duties and carrying out background tasks for Henry.
  
• However, there will be restrictions on levels of and types of components available to you.
  
• You will be allowed to sell items to other PCs (for GPs not BPs) via an 'exchange' -  which will take a percentage of the sale price.
  
• There will also be restrictions and benefits related to the elements of the kingdom Building rules.
  
• There will be a thread (or maybe more than one) where you will be required to post (In Private Lines) the calculations that you have used in your Crafting / professional work.

Your thoughts?

About selling items, is selling / buying BPs from other players for gold also prohibited? If not, then it's just an extra step to sell them for BPs.

At the moment, I am in two minds about that.  I always intended to keep distance between the Adventuring and Kingdom sides of the game - which is why I shied away from giving BPs a cash value.

Part of the problem is that in a couple of years of Kingdom rounds, some PCs could be generating quite a lot of BP per kingdom round.  Henry started out with an 'income' of about 10 BP - and he has spent quite a chunk of it on civic and low return developments -  but even so his personal income has doubled in the time the game has been running.

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Spoiler for Yeah.  I'm sad: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
I do all the same calculations and apply all the same rules to Henry's personal holdings,  the Midmarch holdings and Ringbridge as well.  :)

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My 5 cents worth ... thinking out loud, so apologies if I've missed someone already saying some or all of this.  :>

1a) crafting magical items is all about supply and demand (as someone(s) noted).  If you're making to order you have to wait till those orders come in before you can start; if you're making up items then you take your chances as to whether anyone wants or can afford them or not - if you have unsold stock on hand, you're rich on paper but might not be able to afford the rent this month due to cashflow problems.

1b) Still on supply and demand - magic items require raw materials as well as the relevant Feats, spells and XP costs.  In settled lands, in a big city you can easily find what you want - out here it'll either need to be made for you or ordered in.  To use the extreme example, if you're making 60 rings of protection +1, then you're going to need someone to supply and craft you 60 rings of precious metal, which will take time (and in a small economy, when they discover how much you're paying them and how much you're selling the finished item for, the cost of raw materials might just rise).  Even normal weapons - you should be able to get the weaponsmith to make you what you need, but he might have to finish up a few other orders ahead of yours.

2) Too much coin ?  I vaguely recall some rules in previous editions (or maybe other RPGs) that covered living expenses ... would it be possible to adapt them to the BP measure ?  The more BP you have, the more coin you are assumed to spend to maintain the lifestyle expected of someone in your position (rich food, parties etc).  Conspicuous consumption.  If all else fails there's always taxes and tithes.  Perhaps some of that coin goes in bribes to speed up build time.

3) Fuzzy time ... I'd base it on how long it takes to build all these temples, walls, warehouses etc.  If we need to skip ahead six months or a year at any point to keep the timeline straight, then it matters not.  With Kingdom building there's an awful lot of stuff that a character has to keep an eye on and they're rarely going to have time to head out adventuring.  And if the years roll by and my character dies of old age ... I'll just roll up another one.  :>  I know our GM has a fondness for character family trees, and would just love to have the children and grandchildren of our current PCs venturing out on their own.  <grins>

More about selling / buying BPs...

It would make sense that one can sell or buy BPs in some way. BPs are not just money of course, but money still makes a very big part of it. If a rich merchant were to arrive in Tusk tomorrow and offer a big bag of gold for a shop build there, why could he? And if he can't buy BPs directly, why couldn't he buy a shop someone else already build there?

The problem of converting BPs to large amounts of cash could be avoided by putting a few limitations on it. Maybe a PC can only sell certain (very low) amount of BPs per turn? Or there is an inefficiency in form of sales tax, licences or what not, so that part of the BPs sold go to waste instead? And the more BPs are in the sale, the worse it is?

Percy - Unfortunately I have already used 'Cost of Living' as a core element of the Kingdom Rules.  It is (in part) built into each character's arrangements with Henry - and into the Star rating for residential buildings.

Supply and demand (particularly for magical items) will be covered by various limitations - possibly based on the  Purchase limit of the settlement.

And if Percy wants to see his children running around in this world, he had better start dating .....

Safiya - As you know, we have discussed (and probably agreed) a base value(*) for  BPs in the trade thread.  And restricting the number that anyone can realise as cash in any given turn (or perhaps number of turns) is a good idea.  It costs a lot of good will from 'The Community'
 to convert a BP to hard cash - sometimes that good will runs out ...

That part of the Trade thread was based around the desire for Adoven (now) and other merchants (later) to be able to build in places other than Midmarch - ie Restov, Mivion, etc ...

And, as I suspect you worked out - Duma came to Midmarch to buy the right to build a  settlement - and payed a huge amount in cash and magical items.  However, I won't make any of you pay at the same rates as he did  :)



(*) Note1:  In Midmarch a BP is seen to represent 5000gp worth of labour, goods, services, permissions, favours and money.  If you cash all of that 'good will' in for cash - you can get 2500gp.  BUT -  it has made life difficult for your trading partners.  If you do it too often and you will annoy partners and they will stop playing ball witgh you - and the rate will drop.

(*) Note2:  Just because a BP represents 5000gp worth of value in Midmarch -  doesn't mean it represents the same amount of value in Restov or Mivon.  A building that costs 1 bp in Midmarch might cost 1.5 bp in Restov and 2bp in New Stetven.

Response to Note 2.....that depends on how much Influence you can bring to bear.

Since I joined and took over Adoven from his previous player, was it ever established what city he was born in, and what family he has/had?

Yes - Influence will play a part in the price of buying in a different city -  however, not sure how much yet -  because that thread has been put on hold, while we debate other matters.

Don't know if it helps but I did spot this

Adoven - From the far north, up by the lake of mists and veils where he was originally a sailor. Co-owner of V&A shipping.

1. Three Kingdom turns, two adventuring turns and one 'Winter' turn  per calendar year.
   - Are you proposing Kingdom, Adv., Kingdom, Adv., Kingdom, Winter? What can be accomplished in Winter? Anything other than RP/background management of our stuff?
   
2. Each Kingdom Turn will have 20 days free in which you can Craft or pursue Professional interests.   The rest of the time will be taken up running Businesses, Civic Duties and carrying out background tasks for Henry.
   - So 60 days of crafting per calendar year. Totally fine at our levels. If we ever get to high level play and we wanted to craft anything in excess of 60,000 gp value we'd either have to 1) step down from our kingdom duties, 2) not adventure, or 3) Spend multiple years crafting a single item?
    - Tackle that problem when we get there? ^.^
   
3. However, there will be restrictions on levels of and types of components available to you.
   
4. You will be allowed to sell items to other PCs (for GPs not BPs) via an 'exchange' -  which will take a percentage of the sale price.
   - Fixed % or variable on each sale?
   
5. There will also be restrictions and benefits related to the elements of the kingdom Building rules.
   - So those involved in crafting will be limited in some way on the Kingdom Building side?
   
6. There will be a thread (or maybe more than one) where you will be required to post (In Private Lines) the calculations that you have used in your Crafting / professional work
   - This totally makes sense to keep everything straight for you!

I am assuming this is Magic Item crafting and does not cover Craft skills?

Pretty sure it's both since DM mentioned Craft & Professional interests

In reply to Zelona (msg # 55):

That would make Crafting pretty much useless.

If I take 10s on making DC15 items with my +12 Crafting I would be able to make 282.85 gps worth of items per year.

(10+12) x 15 / 7 * 60 / 10 = 282.85

DM - if you can up it to 21 days/KR that might be better so it's 3 weeks evenly for the craft mechanic?

@Stanislav - I don't know what your craft skill is in, so it's hard for me to say. If you're crafting a Masterwork chain shirt, you can do 2 of those in 8 weeks of crafting (DC 14 for the shirt, 100 gp, DC 20 for the MW, 150 gp). Cost to produce = 83.34 gp, sale price 250 = 166.67 gp per x2 = 333.33 gp in a year, plus whatever you earn adventuring.

For normal crafting that is a really good #. As your skill goes higher you'll be able to craft faster. Not sure what level you are, but at +14 Craft you'll be able to complete 3 sets in the 3 weeks of downtime.

Right now you could craft 1 set of MW Chain in 7 weeks. at +14 mod you could do 1 set in 5 weeks. (See my new post below for ideas on how to improve that).

That is money you'll probably always be able to make, whereas magical crafters are only going to be allowed to sell to other PC's, subject to a bunch of limits above. I don't think you're going to be earning a ton less than magical crafters really.

Plus - things that we're really going to be crafting as items to sell to other PC's have a huge upfront cost. A suit of MW chain shirt only costs you 83 gp. A +1 RoP costs 1,000 gp in raw materials. Much harder to come by, especially if our DM sets value ceilings based on town size as he's proposing above and limits component availability.

I'll be surprise if magical crafters end up being able to craft more than 2 or 3 items in a kingdom year in practice with how much just the materials cost. To make a 6,000 gp ring, I'll need to come up with 3,000 gp of raw materials. To make a 40,000 gp staff... you guessed it, 20,000 gp of raw materials. I'm not going to just be able to buy that stuff off the shelf either probably, it's going to involve traveling to Restov or somewhere else then traveling back to craft, etc.

Armorsmiths are goin to be able to use the Iron out of our own Iron mine near Tusk on the other hand.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:26, Fri 05 Apr 2019.

I don't know, that still looks less than impressive to me. Sure, if you pump the skill as much as you can, you can get something out of it. Something worth putting all those skill points in? Hell no.

I say, let's double mundane crafting speed. Pathfinder economy already makes no god damn sense, so why not.

DM could allow the Unchained version of crafting for mundane crafts. I think it mimics doubling the speed.

At 5 Ranks you double your craft check before multiplying by DC. If you roll a 1 on the craft check, that means you still beat a 25 DC (so no failure) and you're crafting a suit of MW chainmail in 2 weeks if you rolled a 20 on any of those checks.

At +14 modifier an armorer could craft the chain shirt portion in 1 week (accelerated crafting +10 to DC), and the MW portion in 1.5 weeks.

I think my math in the post above might have been off... I'm going to edit the post above.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:28, Fri 05 Apr 2019.

Or we can leave Crafting as is and not limit it to 60 days a year.

Stas - you can craft 365 days a year, and not go adventuring, nor get involved in the Kingdom side of the game if you prefer.

Or you could make a positive suggestion that recognizes the games overarching story-arc of Kingdom building.

But 'I want RAW' just isn't going to happen, as we discussed last time you were playing in the game.

I think you're looking at this a little wrong. Crafting is limited to 60 days assuming you want to play the game as a PC getting involved with everything the game has to offer.

From what our DM has presented, it looks to me like he's basically broken things down into 2 month increments; 3 kingdom turns, 2 adventuring turns, 1 "winter" turn equals 6 turns.

So, the assumption is you can't craft while adventuring, so those 4 months are lost.

The 20 days available per kingdom turn assume that you are involved in the various aspects of kingdom building, whether that be managing your own holdings, serving in an important position (like Cass as mayor of Tusk) or other similar activities.

I'm honestly not sure what the reasoning is for not allowing crafting in winter, I'd probably treat it exactly like a kingdom building turn.


So, I would say, if you wanted your character to be a hermit, who does nothing of value for the community, and never adventures, you should absolutely be able to use every day for crafting. But I feel like that would be an extremely boring game to play.

Now, I guess you could make the argument that your character wants nothing to do with running a business, or building a castle, and just want to use all of the kingdom building time for crafting. I'd be okay with that as an option assuming you forfeit the BP Henry has offered and just not get involved in that part of the game.

If the character is adventuring then he is not Crafting. If he is busy doing other things then is not crafting. That is all I am saying.

We are actually saying the same thing, but I am saying it with out specific limitations.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Fri 05 Apr 2019.

The problem we have, is that time is Fuzzy, Fudged and also taken up with other parts of the game - and none of us can actually define what time that takes up and what time is available.

Worse, this style of game needs to run over years of game time - which leaves way more down time than a standard game.  Normally, your party would get hacked off and bored enough to insist you went out adventuring again.  I manage it with Kingdom stuff.

That is the nature of this game, and about the only way I can run three (sometimes four) groups at the same time to keep you all in some sort of Sync, create space for some RP threads, and find enough Real-Life time for me to do the housekeeping and keep the game running.

It would be much more straight forward if I ran a game with one group of players and no Kingdom or large scale RP activity.  However, I don't :)

I have been doing some calculations using the same formula that Stas used – and the results highlight some of the anomalies of the Crafting rules.
While Stas can make  283gp of DC15 items.  He can make  377gp worth of DC20 items (or DC10 using accelerated crafting).  If he were to take a chance on DC15 items – and use accelerated crafting to increase the DC to 25, he could make 471gp worth of items.  So the amount of stuff you can make while crafting within the  20 day limit – varies quite significantly.

Stas has used a 7 day week -  I had intended for the calculation to work over a 6 day week, which makes for 10 weeks (or a fifth of the year) given over to crafting.  That puts values up  to DC15=330gp, DC20-440gp & DC25=550gp.

Ironically, Stas has about the same skill levels as a L3 Master Craftsman Expert using a MW tools.., That is the senior craftsmen in the Mastercraft Workshops available Under the Kingdom Rules.  So, using the 6 day wee, that master-craftsman, who works all year just crafting, makes can make 2112 gp worth of gear in a  year.  A  very top Craftsman (who can make dc25 and can likely be found in an Exotic Artisan) can  make 3000gp worth of items a year.  Their journeyman assistants can make 1080gp worth of items in  a year.

However, as I said the rules are anomalous and inconsistent.  I find it somewhat strange that a skilled worker can make More (by value) DC15 items faster than they can make the easier DC 10 items.  Or at least until they  are so good they can add a +10 to the DC to make things faster.

So I am prepared to make a change to the Accelerated Crafting rule.  If you ‘take 10’ when you make the roll, you can increase the DC of the task to (Skill + 10) –BUT only if you are taking 10 :)

That would mean that a standard craftsman can make 22.5 gp of items a week.  A masterCraftsman (and Stas at present) can make 48.4  worth of items a week.  And a top Craftsman can make 62.5gp of items per week.

OK.  I have started a post in the House Rules thread that covers crafting.  It is based on my earlier list, but is expanded to address some points that you have made.

Just because it is in that thread, doesn't mean those rules are fully decided and set in stone.  I am happy to keep taking constructive suggestions in this thread.

Don't forget that Master Craftsmen often have apprentices, who only need hit a DC of 10 to Aid Another. I don't know if there is a limit to how many +2s you can benefit from.

I haven't forgotten that :)  It will be added, but restricted to one Entourage-Assistant :)  The multipliers  can get very large very fast :)

So, the most highly skilled armourer available would take about 6 months to make a create a masterwork suit of full plate armour (1650gp) on his own, or 2 or 3 months with a small team of apprentices and journeymen helping him.

"Vambraces again sir? Yes, sir, I know I am good at vambraces but couldn't I do pauldrons this time sir?"

That sounds about right. I'm glad I got my order in with Rikka before winter. :o)

And if he had the services of a wizard, it works out even faster. Guidance orison and Crafter's Fortune stack benefits I believe.

One of the reasons I am tying crafting down :)

I do not believe that can be used for Crafting as it only lasts for a minute and a Crafting check is taken once a week (or per day)


Yes that can be very useful.


This is unclear to me. To actually make something you need to make the Crafting check, if you are bumping something by +10 DC a lot of times you are putting it about your Crafting skill +10. Unless you are making something very simple with starting DC 5 lets say, its never going to work. In the example I used, I rolled like an 18 to make the item with a DC 25. If I am taking a 10, I would never be able to accelerate.

Am I seeing it wrong?

As per our PM  conversation -  I am allowing you to add smaller increments for accelerated Crafting, rather than the +10 that the rules state.

So you could add 4 to the DC,  or 5  or even 9 - to get the DC up to (10 + Skill Modifier) - but only when you Take Ten on a crafting roll.  That means it is an auto-success, but means you can craft a bit faster.  The knock on effect of that is that you can craft more material in the time you have available.

Got it. Thank you.

Work Pressure is easing up -  mainly because D-Day has passed, I handed my resignation in, and have been working a 4 day week recently (3 days for my employer and 1 day looking for new work, this Thursday is my final day). That means I have some time to get back to the rules discussions.  I think I have the Build Point and Merchant Rules sorted out now, and they are both linked from ...

http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....paign_systems2:start

Comments and thoughts welcome on both.

But now I can turn my attention back to Time and Kingdom Turns and Crafting.  Already I have spotted a  'make winter a kingdom round'  comment that I hadn't really considered properly.

Just a heads up - Time is a real problem in this game because I run more than 1 group.

All three groups left Tusk at about the same time - but all three groups have spent different amounts of time out adventuring - For one group, some travel elements have been hand-waved through and three or four days have passed in a single GM post.  Another group is currently in combat (and had been for a few GM posts) even though I use dangerous monsters that could kill a PC in a couple of rounds.  There are already days of difference between the two groups -  and I suspect it could get worse.

At various times in this AP there is the broad instruction to 'just let the years pass until ....'  But there are other times when I am supposed to conclude a three level adventure in a couple of weeks of game time.  And you guys are currently working across three different books of a six book AP series ...

Whatever solution I come up with, isn't going to be pretty, or universally loved  :)

Maybe we can talk about a time travel spell. Tie things together nicely, add an epic spin on Kingmaker no one else has tried!

Yes, you're not running one game ... you're running three separate games, all intermeshed and, as you've noted, having to juggle disparate timelines as well.  The gods alone know how that'll work when/if any one of those parties splits up too, as parties as known to do.   So the workload is substantially more than if you were running three games in separate universes.  Yup, you must be mad ! <grrrins>

Which is my way of saying that if there are no good solutions, pick one that minimises or alleviates your GM workload - might as well make it easier on yourself.

In reply to ~ Percy Arndell (msg # 77):

With hindsight -  I think I should probably have hand-waved a year through at level 3 and every other level afterwards.  That would resolve the 'leave things for a few years'  issue.  :)

I might have a look at applying that retrospectively.

More thoughts on balancing timelines between groups ...

My preferred solution would be to simply balance the number of "encounters" for each group.  One group might meet an NPC on the road, fight some bandits and finally make their way to a simple shrine where matters are resolved.  Another group might be in that three level dungeon ... but just pick the key encounter areas and wave through the rest of it as "you wander darkened corridors, avoiding the creatures that lurk therein".   Nothing is ever wasted - there might be an interesting area that you can pull out and use elsewhere in a different context and as a standalone encounter for another time.

ATM, I am considering a couple of different models ...

1. If I make the Kingdom rounds into Fuzzy Threads, we could do it all in the background -  after all the Kingdom Builders have Entourages and managers to run things on their behalf.
   
   
2. Alternately, I could separate the three groups a bit more, run them on more independent time lines,  with separate levelling and  Kingdom Rounds.

Both have benefits and drawbacks.  Ironically, this might have been easier if I wasn't using  Group levelling, rather than Level by XP.  However, the thought of doing the XP admin for (approx) 15 characters  and overview XP for all the NPCs is depressing!

H'mm ... may or may not be a problem, depending on whether people are that fussed about levelling.  Is it important that all characters maintain absolute parity in levels (bearing in mind that those players who have been playing in the game longer probably have higher level characters than those who joined more recently) or are most/all happy to progress as their story unfolds ?  Personally I'm happy to play my character and don't worry so much what their current level is (though it's always nice to level up !).

I have enjoyed switching between different groups - making new friends, meeting old ones again, and that wouldn't work under the second model, whereas the first model has the drawback that those who want their character in the thick of town politics would miss out if that's delegated to their entourage.

As you said, no easy solutions.  <grins>

Now (thinking out loud) if we had three groups based loosely around three population centres (Tusk Town, Ringbridge and Olegs) then they could adventure and politic independently ... and whenever you choose to reorder groups then it's "six months later you find yourself in".  Those whose characters (not just their entourage) are invested in a particular place could be constants there, with the characters of those players who like me prefer to chop and change moving between places - hopefully allows for both approaches ?   Should allow for group levelling too, to keep the GM's lot easier.  :>

I have been thinking about a few issues I have with managing the game.  Things work as they are, but they aren’t as straight forward or as equitable as I would like them to be.  This is the first time I have run a multi-party game -  so I am learning as I go along.  And this game has lots of ways of making life complicated for me.

The character level spread between the parties, quite often means that I am working to integrate information from more than one source.  Today I used information from 4 of the 6 books in the Adventure Path – as well as other game specific sources.  That causes a bit of a timing issue for me.as events in the different books are supposed to move at different speeds. – and there are supposed to be gaps between the events.  I can wing that, compress gaps, fudge a few things -  but  only so far.  And it also makes it more difficult to manage the politics in the wider world.   (I understand that I might be the only one who is concerned about achieving a reasonable level of time and political continuity -  but, hey-ho, IMO it gives the world a better and more realistic feel)

To resolve this I intend to make time even more abstract, and go to a variant of a system that was widely used on NWN Servers.  Characters there measured their time and level in Seasons -  rather than anything else.  I am going to adapt this so that there is one adventuring turn, and one Kingdom/down-time turn per calendar year  (my interpretation of ‘season’).  By judicious use of Fuzzy Time threads for the kingdom side of the game, I can push things along as a sensible speed for the game world.  It might mean, in some cases, that a players from a group might have to run one of their entourage characters during a down-time RP session rather than their main character -  but at least they will be represented.

At the same time, I intend to change the way that I award experience points.  At the moment, I ‘award’ the right number of experience points to allow each character to go up a level at the end of each Adventuring Turn and nothing during the Kingdom Turn.  This means every one advances at the same speed, and there is no chance to catch up to the players who were here earlier.  Now I am going to start giving experience in a number of different blocks.

• Adventure XP – Based on CR of Monsters / Traps / Situations etc.
• Kingdom Round XP – which will be based around the BPs you generate / control.  That means it has some chance or remaining relevant at a number of different levels.
• Down Time XP – which will reward people who use the down time system to craft or use their profession or perform skills.
• Story Line XP – This, as always, is a bit arbitrary.  However, there could be two or three different award possibilities across an Adventure/Kingdom turn pair.
• RP XP – If I particularly like a bit of RP -  I will hand out an XP award.  Amount (etc) is purely arbitrary.

You will have the opportunity to level up at the end of the Adventure Turn and at the end of  the Kingdom Turn -  so two opportunities per ‘year’.   This should give lower level characters an opportunity to catch up to the higher level characters - especially if you work all aspects of the game. :}

It has a second advantage for me, in that it gives me a nice system for managing XP awards for stay-at-home characters, Characters who don't post and NPCs.

Will this affect entourage advancement at all, or will they still just advance when the main PC advances?

Entourages stay the same  :)  I am not looking forward to calculating this for the PCs and main  NPCs ......  let alone any other characters

Sounds like you're setting yourself up with even more complications. But it does cut back on how often you will need to wrestle with them.

In reply to Adoven (msg # 85):

It may  not be as bad  as you think - or I first thought :)

Spreadsheets are my friend.  And I am going to work in big handfuls.  The only thing that really needs calculating is the  adventuring XP - and a practice run on your current Varnhold  section  only took about 15 minutes, once I had done the groundwork.    All the rest are either arbitrary values or easily calculated from information I work out already.

I'll tweak the Story Line awards to make sure that we get to a base position of one level advancement per 'season/year' - for the highest level members of each party.

Characters whose players post and take a fairly active part in the game -  will progress a level every 'season' as we have been doing so far.

Those who participate enthusiastically in the various aspects of the game, and/or travel with higher level characters will get more XP and should level slightly faster.

Those who finish up along for the ride (or with me running them)  will get Less XP,, won't advance quite so fast and will lose levels compared to their peers.  They will slip down the pecking order -  but still be playable if their player decides to act on their behalf.

So long as you are having fun and not headaches with the game.

What type of additional RP are you interested in seeing outside of the adventures and the kingdom building meetings?

All sorts :)  here are some examples -  but  it is certainly not an exhaustive list of character driven RP I have enjoyed in this game.

• I liked Andalon's reaction  to being asked to donate to the Three Ladies School - It's a loan, I want it back next round -  was exactly right for a cleric of Abadar.
• I enjoyed the conversations between Alisa, Dara and Domitius in the  Library of Iomedae.
• I liked it when the bards took  the opportunity to perform on-stage at the Dragon's Den.  I would also enjoy watching Kendrick's comedy juggling act ...
• Quinn / El and their adventuring relationship.  Mind you that was a really difficult one to pull off and circumstances got in the way of its development.
• Going further back - I enjoyed the hesitant relationship between Aris'ta and Rook, and I enjoyed the more calculated relationship between Cyrus and Valoria.  Or Pipre's 'ownership' of the bathing pool at Olegs.
• Marik and Mariam's relationship was starting to bear fruit - but unfortunately it looks like Mariam's player has left us  :(  Still, I am sure one of the other 'ladies' (or gentlemen) will soon spot his potential as a life partner ....

Anything that bring out your character's personality.  Posting partners are often a good way of doing that, although it doesn't have to be just one other character or  a  romantic relationship -  look at the way Wyn, Berta and Gedd banter ...

I have updated the first post of the House Rules thread with the rationale behind the time changes ...

link to a message in this game

... although I am still open to comments.

And I have just added the XP Award overview to the House Rules thread.

Things are moving on ...  Xmas is a marvellous time for finding time to sit down and concentrate.  Ironically, it looks like my Xmas break might well run until the 20 Jan - as I appear to be getting all those extra hours  back in one big lump!  Mind you the last week or two of January is going to be manic .....   I WILL get it to a nice steady three days per week .... one day .....

I have been working on the Wiki - and will keep working (on and off) for the next couple of weeks -  then I hope to start the next Campaign Round.

The current over view is that there will be once Fuzzy:Campaign Round per game year, that will see all the characters get one year older, and all the Entourage-Assistants level up (if they are eligible).

The various kingdom building bits will happen during the Campaign Round as well.  BPs will be allocated, and you will be allowed to spend then, or cash them in.  I have changed the BP vs GP section to say that you need to sell a building to convert your BPs  to cash.  You can either sell to other PCs or NPCs -  and I will be introducing a number of new NPCs in the next Campaign Round.  If you are thinking of buying in another areas (such as Jovvox, Mivon or Restov)  you might want to start investing in properties that you are prepared to sell now  :)  You can find the (slightly) modified rules at http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....ystems2:build_points

The down time rules are pretty much completed now as well at http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....n_systems2:down_time -  I have not yet considered the cost of poisons, in respect to the changes I have made in the effects of poison -  but it is still in mead as something to do.  Unfortunately that is an area that  I do not properly understand and it might take me a while to get my head around.

Buying and selling can happen through the new 'Guild Hall'  that Henry will build for the Midmarch chapter - although there will be a small fee for management services (writing contracts, agree terms, registering ownership etc)

The Kingdom Rules stay pretty much the same -  except that I want to present them differently in the new campaign page.  I certainly want to make them a bit easier to understand and break them down into easier to use sections.

It is all coming together on this wiki page ...   http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....paign_systems2:start

As always, I am happy to consider comments and thoughts.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:44, Fri 27 Dec 2019.

And now an update for the Secondary Settlement rules.  They haven't really changed very much and this won't affect anything in place, and shouldn't really affect anything (that I know of) that is planned.

These rules never really got beyond an advanced draft stage -  and questions from Safiya, Marik and Adoven have had me thinking about them for a while.

• I have restricted them to hexes with a Village, Town or City.  (in the past you could build them in patrolled wilderness hexes!)
• I have removed the requirement for a defensive building and changed the benefits that some developments provide.
• I have restricted them to being smaller than their Primary Settlement
  prices have come down (for some items)

http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....secondarysettlements
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:38, Sat 28 Dec 2019.

I have updated the Wilderness Stronghold rules.

Looking back on it, Under the old version of the rules it wasn't really possible to build a Wilderness Stronghold without external funding. Henry (as governor) has subsidised the developments in the Northern Narlemarch - but that isn't the point.

I have tweaked the rules to bring basic costs down, and then expanded the Secondary Settlements concept into a wilderness setting.  It is a touch more complicated -  but it can be used to build a Stronghold that can expand under its own steam  :)


http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....fensive_developments

And, I think, I have finished with the Stronghold rules now.

There have been some changes to the Rural rules -  partly due to some discussions with Marik and Safiya made a little while ago.  I have taken away the Rural Developments that gave Consumption benefits and replaced them with secondary developments, that make a lot more sense  :)

However, there have been a couple of minor changes to secondary developments, the main one restricted them to size 4, but they are much easier to build and establish.  Iron Keep operates as a village, so there are no problems there, although I may need to tweak a rule or two so that we can set up mining villages in the future.

I still need to tidy up Rewards, Titles and honours -  but they aren't liable to change very much, if at all.

http://rp.baileymail.net/doku....paign_systems2:start


Assuming no one spots anything horrendous in those rules -  I intend to start a Kingdom Round next week (I am on vacation the week after).  It is my intention to hold two campaign rounds per RL calendar year (each one representing a game year)  one around about Xmas  and one around about mid-summer.

However, there will be four Downtime rounds per RL year (each representing half a game year) -  Summer, winter, and the two equinoxes, so that you can spread your crafting / down time out a bit more. It also means I stand a chance of thinking about the costs of  poisons before the spring downtime.

“You earn your Profession/Craft check result in silver pieces per day of dedicated work... "


How does this work for skills that are not directly listed as a profession or craft? The diplomacy skill for Cass as an example.

Will the changes to Strongholds alter the costs of Fortified Villas or other Hinterland structures?

Cass -  It doesn't  :)  There isn't any casual work for casual or Part-Time Diplomats :)

Adoven - Nope.  The only changes to Hinterland Structures (which could affect your longer term plans) is that I have limited them to  size 4 rather than size 6.

I see.

Yep.

How do I work myself back in?

Nice to see you back  :)

Not much back reading to do in the adventure thread - probably just the last 2/3 posts or so.  Your group are still in Varn - and have realised that the village is deserted and some of it appears to have been trashed.

1. They have looked in the Inn  (and found a dead fey creature encased in a magical force field
   
2. Then they look ed the temple -  and found some clerical scrolls hidden in the altar.
   
3. They have just  gone to explore a new building.  Currently, they are looking at a half-starved cat hiding under a loom.

Personally, I'd suggest fussing over the cat, gets you back in the group and talking to them.

If you mean Kingdom building etc -  PM me.