KickStarter Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Luckmann]

They should have added spells such as these https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/create-food-and-water/ for people that want to give up spell slots for lower rest times.

On the surface, I'd be inclined to agree, but if you consider the results of such an option in actual play, the smart thing was to leave it out. People would just rest a lot more if this was an option, which would exacerbate a lot of the issues people are already bitching about.

That said, I think that the hunting mechanic should be revised and it should be less dependable.

(admittedly evil/lawful baronies can construct buildings that boost these rolls)

This is even worse. I can see why Lawful states would benefit but Evil? Really? Are the developers telling us that it is better to be Evil than Good? That a state that is a benevolent dictatorship is worse than the worst excesses of Imperial Japan circa WW2? Really?

hitler was a min/maxer.

Hitler may have been a powergamer, but I think we can let it slide since the GM was clearly abusing his position and setting the party up against mismatched CR. I'm still not convinced he was even reading the stats correctly, it feels like he was just making shit up on the spot.

 

[toro]

Chapter II

That's why. Chapter 2 is when you just got introduced to kingdom management and it's not that obnoxious yet. You got what, 4-5 advisors tops by this point? Your stats are also low so you don't particularly care about missing out events that just spawned in the last week of a month and more importantly your travels don't take you too far from your capital, you're never more then a few days away.

By the time you do the Varhold questline (chap 3 I believe?) travel times will start becoming a factor (one location in particular is so far away deep in the mountains it all but guarantees you will miss out on a month) you need to plan around but it's still manageable. By later chapters the frequency and difficulty of events will intensify and necessitate more looking after, leading to a lot more check ups.

And while in theory checking in twice a month should be ok (once in the first week, second in the last week for those late events), in practice it was more like 5-6. Granted due to a previously mentioned bug I had (I couldn't level up most of my advisors and their related kingdom attribute because their event bugged out), I only had 3 advisors high levelled, and this meant I was frequently in situations where I'd have to juggle having few advisors try to solve twice or thrice their amount of problems, leading to situations where I would need to return 14 days later to reuse my treasurer for a quick 5 day feast followed by a 9 day long event then have him free to deal with any last sec event.

Perhaps someone not having this bug and a wider variety of competent levelled up advisors might have had an easier time of it.

BTW speaking of competent advisors. Nintendo power tip: The priestess of Lamashtu is awesome if you get a chance to recruit her. She and Jubilost were the real mvps in my game keeping the kingdom together whilst apparently everyone else whored and partied.

I mostly agree with you however you can do kingdom management while you travel. You have to visit the capital at least once a month.

Basically an optimized play should look like this: assign advisors to 2 weeks events, do an advisor level up for 2 weeks, assign advisors to events, go explore for 2 weeks and return to the capital, rinse and repeat.

Edit: Also welcome back

 

[Jasede]

You guys convinced me, I'm getting this.

Bought ToEE and Arcanum on release too. Nearly unplayable buggy both, especially ToEE. Still had an absolute blast.

Once a game reaches a certain complexity, nasty bugs are impossible to avoid.

 

[toro]

Anyone knows what is with the research projects? They don't do shit except blocking advisors for like 60 days.

 

[fantadomat]

(admittedly evil/lawful baronies can construct buildings that boost these rolls)

This is even worse. I can see why Lawful states would benefit but Evil? Really? Are the developers telling us that it is better to be Evil than Good? That a state that is a benevolent dictatorship is worse than the worst excesses of Imperial Japan circa WW2? Really?

hitler was a min/maxer.

And lost the war because of it. Stalin was spray and pray kind of guy.

 

[ArchAngel]

You guys convinced me, I'm getting this.

Bought ToEE and Arcanum on release too. Nearly unplayable buggy both, especially ToEE. Still had an absolute blast.

Once a game reaches a certain complexity, nasty bugs are impossible to avoid.

Just don't play too fast (like try to limit yourself to only few hours per day) so your playthrough does not catch up to speed of their patching efforts :D

 

[Luckmann]

You guys convinced me, I'm getting this.

Bought ToEE and Arcanum on release too. Nearly unplayable buggy both, especially ToEE. Still had an absolute blast.

Once a game reaches a certain complexity, nasty bugs are impossible to avoid.

Just to be clear here, though, the majority of bugs in PF:K are not due to complexity. It's sometimes really basic stuff, and at other times it's clear that no testing whatsoever was done. Some things are systemic, while others are narrative/mechanical. It's a fucking trainwreck much precisely because the game is both systemically complicated and untested and narratively complex. And it's a mess on all those levels.

And it's still the best thing I've played in years in oh so many ways (much which I will attribute to personal opinion since I always loved the IE games and in many ways they were effectively my introduction to the genre). The game has managed to translate a lot of the things that made the IE games good, while also being flat-out better in many ways, even better than BG1.

You guys convinced me, I'm getting this.

Bought ToEE and Arcanum on release too. Nearly unplayable buggy both, especially ToEE. Still had an absolute blast.

Once a game reaches a certain complexity, nasty bugs are impossible to avoid.

Just don't play too fast (like try to limit yourself to only few hours per day) so your playthrough does not catch up to speed of their patching efforts :D

At this point, I would advise anyone to wait. They've said that the big patch is coming after the 22nd, so probably in a week or so. So if Jasede plays slowly, it will be very possible that she doesn't hit any of the major bugs before the major patch, at least.

Spoiler

Which will of course create new bugs in addition to not fixing even a fraction of the bugs in the game.

 

[Shadenuat]

Anyone knows what is with the research projects? They don't do shit except blocking advisors for like 60 days.

They give you Arcane+ which is hard to get other way before you upgrade; or so game thinks because just building 2 Mage Towers in one of the cities with 2x2 tiles solves the problem and is a lot better than having your dude spend an absurd amount of time on the project.

 

[Luckmann]

(admittedly evil/lawful baronies can construct buildings that boost these rolls)

This is even worse. I can see why Lawful states would benefit but Evil? Really? Are the developers telling us that it is better to be Evil than Good? That a state that is a benevolent dictatorship is worse than the worst excesses of Imperial Japan circa WW2? Really?

Lol, political extremist much?

No, but seriously though, it's a good point. Take the entirety of the Lord's Alliance or similar kingdoms in Forgotten Realms or almost any D&D setting, and you have what is essentially a Lawful Good government that can be expressed as nothing short of "benevolent dictatorship"; but they still have punishment, they still have laws, they almost always have death penalties for various crimes. Killing militarism has nothing to do with the alignment system at all.

There's nothing inherently evil about stockades or gallows. Hell, a Paladin that takes an evil-doer to the stockades is nothing short of benevolent. In no way does the very existence of stockades imply the abuse of power, the endorsement of corruption, or nothing like that. All it implies is punishment and adherence to law and structure; an enforced social order. This is Lawful, not Evil.

 

[panda]

Then you start realizing how utterly pointless buildings are, the real way to raise your stats is through successful resolution of events. And that you're better off saving your bp for either feast events or advisor training opportunities, then finally trade agreements if you've managed to squirrel away that much. I don't think I built a single military building yet military was a stat I was able to max easily, I guess my nation built entirely around brothels, breweries and taverns have bred a sturdy bunch.

I think this is the major problem really. Almost all the buildings and projects are traps, where you pay tens of BP for each stat point, and stat points are worth less than one tenth of a BP per week. This means that it takes more than half a year of in game time before it starts to generate value.

You guys, what, wanted 300% investment return on infrastructure projects in a couple of months?
PC was warned about situation from the very start of the game: you'll be given shithole with almost nonexistant economy in the middle of nowhere, making it prosper will take years.


Strategic management part is hard and lacks instant gratification gimmick common in modern games, but from roleplaying perspective it actually brilliantly makes you feel like a baron in a troubled lands plagued by bandits and magical curses for centuries. It even gives you "i wish i were simple adventurer again" vibes, already mentioned by several people.

And if you really wish to be adventurer again:

Spoiler

By the time you do the Varhold questline (chap 3 I believe?) travel times will start becoming a factor (one location in particular is so far away deep in the mountains it all but guarantees you will miss out on a month)

Varnhold is chapter 4. I cleared tomb + all regular locations there in 27 days, and visited capital once in the middle of process.
If you want just tomb, then travel time from capital is 4 days and a half.

 

[Jarpie]

If it'll be a problem that you have to go back and forth in the later chapters and it's tedious could be fixed with the faster traveling times, or make it so that you can handle the kingdom stuff inside your borders. The game is also not good at telling if you can spend time on those 14 days events or not, that could be fixed by pausing those if something urgent, like time-gated event coming up or something. Hopefully they'll work on the kingdom stuff after they've dealt with the most bugs.

 

[Cael]

(admittedly evil/lawful baronies can construct buildings that boost these rolls)

This is even worse. I can see why Lawful states would benefit but Evil? Really? Are the developers telling us that it is better to be Evil than Good? That a state that is a benevolent dictatorship is worse than the worst excesses of Imperial Japan circa WW2? Really?

Lol, political extremist much?

No, but seriously though, it's a good point. Take the entirety of the Lord's Alliance or similar kingdoms in Forgotten Realms or almost any D&D setting, and you have what is essentially a Lawful Good government that can be expressed as nothing short of "benevolent dictatorship"; but they still have punishment, they still have laws, they almost always have death penalties for various crimes. Killing militarism has nothing to do with the alignment system at all.

There's nothing inherently evil about stockades or gallows. Hell, a Paladin that takes an evil-doer to the stockades is nothing short of benevolent. In no way does the very existence of stockades imply the abuse of power, the endorsement of corruption, or nothing like that. All it implies is punishment and adherence to law and structure; an enforced social order. This is Lawful, not Evil.

The stocks was just basically gaol with the added humiliation factor. You were locked up in a place that other people can see you, so they know who you are. Some places allowed others to abuse you while you were in the stocks, even physically, but it is not a far fetched thing that a Lawful Good society would frown on physical abuse of people in the stocks. Being an open and public affair, it would be an even bigger deterrent to crime than a closed gaol where all sorts of things can happen out of sight.

There is nothing inherently Evil about the thing. Or executions. So long as it is done according to the law.

What is Evil is allowing rapists back into society after a slap on the wrist punishment so that they can rape again and even escalate to murder.

 

[Nryn]

Got to what I assume to be the final dungeon and the game does some C&C things involving companions that has the potential to cause massive amounts of butthurt on the Steam and Owlcat forums due to bugs that misinterpret the outcomes of companion quests.

 

[Elex]

why they don’t put in a buildable upgrade mage tower with a portal circle and a “ring of the king” that allow the king to go back fast? CD 1 week.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Nah, they should add a special Onion Elf Pie Recipe that allows you to travel 1.3 times faster.

 

[Haplo]

I'm loving the stats on those "Tongi" and "Falcata" weapons. Any good specimens by any chance?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

We already know that there must be enough of people capable of doing it (in other terms: supply) to meet the demand at this price level. Otherwise it couldn't be bought at this price. That's how economy works.

Not necessarily. Even if there were only 1 person who could cast it in 1000 miles, they would still either need to price their service at an affordable rate to their market or else never sell it.

And the spell isn't subject to economy. Only the caster. So of the 6000, 5000 is just the spell components.

A pauper could never afford this, so there isn't a point in lowering their price too much. Adventurers are most likely to use their service, being far more accident prone than nobles, so the price could simply be what is affordable to adventures - the player and his party of level 20s, owning their own kingdom and having a sack full of +5 items are not a typical example of which btw. A different price could always be quoted to nobles. Businesses do this in real life all the time. A flower shop, for example, will charge 2x the price if you tell them the arrangements are for a wedding - and that's in the modern age, where anyone can easily price competitors online.

Though again, as I said, comparing a video game price to a real world isn't logical. The price wasn't set be any economy, it was set by the devs for balance reasons. They could just as easily have set it at 10000.

 

[Salvo]

Travel times are fine as they are. The only problem is that the map is a bit wonky and sometimes finding the right path to a location is a bit counter-intuitive.

EX: the Sunny Hillock, which you have to approach from the North/Above even though every road keeps going west.

 

[Jaedar]

Strategic management part is hard and lacks instant gratification gimmick common in modern games, but from roleplaying perspective it actually brilliantly makes you feel like a baron in a troubled lands plagued by bandits and magical curses for centuries. It even gives you "i wish i were simple adventurer again" vibes, already mentioned by several people.

It's not actually hard though, because as long as you assign advisors to all the events, it barely matters what you do with anything else. This is what the complaint is actually about: the stuff I do barely matters, because the majority of my barony stats comes from random events.

I also suspect the game only lasts like 5 years, which probably means that after 3 have passed, nothing you build/do will have time to pay off any more.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I would rather own something like Friendly Arm Inn than a swamp barony with cardboard mock-up villages.

 

[thesheeep]

I would rather own something like Friendly Arm Inn than a swamp barony with cardboard mock-up villages.

You are devaluing the lives of thousands of swamp people living in their cardboard villages. Shame on you!

 

[Sykar]

(admittedly evil/lawful baronies can construct buildings that boost these rolls)

This is even worse. I can see why Lawful states would benefit but Evil? Really? Are the developers telling us that it is better to be Evil than Good? That a state that is a benevolent dictatorship is worse than the worst excesses of Imperial Japan circa WW2? Really?

hitler was a min/maxer.

Yes he was proficient in maximizing Arbeit which macht you frei.

 

[Serus]

We already know that there must be enough of people capable of doing it (in other terms: supply) to meet the demand at this price level. Otherwise it couldn't be bought at this price. That's how economy works.

Not necessarily. Even if there were only 1 person who could cast it in 1000 miles, they would still either need to price their service at an affordable rate to their market or else never sell it.

And the spell isn't subject to economy. Only the caster. So of the 6000, 5000 is just the spell components.

A pauper could never afford this, so there isn't a point in lowering their price too much. Adventurers are most likely to use their service, being far more accident prone than nobles, so the price could simply be what is affordable to adventures - the player and his party of level 20s, owning their own kingdom and having a sack full of +5 items are not a typical example of which btw. A different price could always be quoted to nobles. Businesses do this in real life all the time. A flower shop, for example, will charge 2x the price if you tell them the arrangements are for a wedding - and that's in the modern age, where anyone can easily price competitors online.

Though again, as I said, comparing a video game price to a real world isn't logical. The price wasn't set be any economy, it was set by the devs for balance reasons. They could just as easily have set it at 10000.

All this is running in circles, you recycle arguments that have been already covered. No point doing it any more.
The question was about the internal consistency of high fantasy settings which include raising dead type of magic that is affordable for a relatively significant section of population. In P:K specifically but also in general. It's a reasonable (although very, very nerdy) question in my opinion.
HOWEVER, and you correctly pointed it out - Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a video game. And in a game, gameplay considerations often take precedence which I recognized from the beginning. So yes, it makes sense as in: it makes sense gameplay-wise. It makes sense as a game mechanic to allow the player to raise dead companions at an affordable price. And that's all that really matters in practice. Everything else is just me doing the silly nerd routine.

 

[Canus]

Ah fantastic, the project which halves the time it takes to rank up a Kingdom stat doesn't work.

 

[Jarpie]

Here's a mod for those who hates going through the town-map when leaving the throne room:

https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/25

Lets you leave any map to the map screen by pressing shift + m.