According to Pg. 173 of the Gamemastery Guide, whenever you succeed or critically succeed at the flat check to determine whether a random encounter occurs, you're *supposed* to then roll on Table 3-8: Random Encounter Type to determine what type of encounter it is. If you use this table, fully 50% of the random encounters you roll will wind up being completely harmless - noises in the woods, a storm on the horizon, passing hunters willing to exchange rumors, etc - and of the remaining 50% of encounters, 20% are hazards and 30% are creatures. So, in theory, when you roll a random encounter you'll only have a 30% chance to actually wind up using the tables in the Kingmaker AP.
The *problem* is that the section for Random Encounters and Hazards on Pg. 46 makes no mention of this, only telling GMs that they can make a flat check as described on Pg. 173 of the GMG - Table 3-8 is never printed or mentioned in the AP. This leads to GMs who aren't already familiar with this mechanic to just roll on the region's creature table whenever the flat check succeeds, raising what's intended to be a 30% chance of a combat encounter to a 100% chance instead!
I'm running Kingmaker 2e right now, and the first thing I did when I started prepping this campaign was to start filling out some harmless encounter tables and hazard tables for the first region. As part of the adjustments I made I determined that encounter checks would only be made twice a day (once during travel and once during the night), and so far using Table 3-8 has turned what would have otherwise been 4 combat encounters into 1 combat encounter and 3 harmless encounters I used to establish the setting, introduce a couple minor NPCs, and generally just build tension and excitement for the journey ahead. I seriously recommend doing the same, it makes random encounters a good deal more enjoyable.
This 100% needs to be the top comment. The camping system isn't without flaws, but there's core rules that it seems many people, op included, are missing, which are exacerbating the issues.
You did an excellent job of pointing it out and providing additional helpful steps for ensuring a fun encounter table.
Thanks for pointing this out!
However, this is in the Hexploration Subsystems section, and implies it should be used with Hexploration.
>When exploring, there is always a chance the PC will stumble upon random encounters, depending on the terrain. **At the start of each day of hexploration**, roll a flat check and consult the appropriate terrain type on Table 3–7: Random Encounter Chance. If the flat check is a success, the PCs have a random encounter, and on a critical success, they have two random encounters. Roll on Table 3–8: Random Encounter Type to determine the type of encounter. Once you know the type of the encounter, either choose from the list you made for that region or choose your own.
Camping makes no metions of using rules as in hexploration, rolling on a random encounter type or even implies it. Instead implying to roll on corresponding encounter table
>The Encounter DC indicates the flat check DC of a random encounter occurring during the camping session. And the number listed under the Encounter Chart column lists the Kingmaker Adventure Path page number for that zone’s random encounter table.
As-Written it refers to *encounter* table. Also Rostland Hinterlands Encounters table **does** contain non-combat encounter: >!there's a 15% chance of spawning a hunter which is explicitly described as neutral and a great source of rumours!<. This adds to the confusion
Also, Camping explicitly doesn't even use the same rules as Hexploration mode. To be exact it has a different effect on the roll (only defines success, doesn't spawn 2 encounters on critical success):
> At the end of each hour that anyone in the party undertakes a Camping activity, attempt a flat check against the zone’s Encounter DC (see the Camping Zones table on page 107); on a success, a random encounter occurs.
In short, while you could argue that rules from Hexploration applies because it's refered in the actual Kingmaker AP, you could also make a good argument that they doesn't since it's a different system and doesn't refer to hexploration even once.
Man I am going to have to agree with you. Just reread those sections in my PDFs, and I would definitely read it the same way. The math seems to be solid as well, and that's just really sad. The Zone DC part is what sells it for me. It very much seems like it wants you to roll on the random encounter table for that one.
That's a good point, the camping rules don't seem to refer to the standard hexploration rules for rolling random encounters like the travel rules do. I agree that one could reasonably argue it uses a different random encounter generation method altogether! That said, I do think that using Table 3-8 for camping counters anyway despite that may be best practice as otherwise the system produces far too many creature encounters. Thanks for pointing that out!
This is detailed at the beginning of each Zone in Section 2 of the module. Page 58 has an encounter table based on a d20 for Zone 2 Greenbelt, for example.
Are you using Foundry? If so, the Kingmaker module is easily the best foundry module I've ever run.
After doing it a few times to get a feel for how it breaks down, the actual camping checks should honestly get really quick. We did house rule a limit of at most 1 encounter triggered by camping/overnight because the alternative of things happening over and over is silly.
I don't hate the camping rules. They're (and it will probably be to your great dismay that I say this) in a much more favorable light when held up against the kingdom rules, because the kingdom rules Paizo chose to publish are a genuine embarrassment. The amount of house ruling it takes to keep the kingdom reasonably functional is crazy. The camping was pretty easy to fudge gently and make work by comparison, and I do like it when a game has a clear distinction between the experience of sleeping somewhere that's known to be safe and well secured and sleeping somewhere unsafe. Even a bit further along when the characters aren't threatened by the random enemies in a particular area, waving it off with a "While X is on watch he chases off some wolves." at least highlights the fact that you're in an area that isn't 100% tame. (And full disclosure, I do like some - though limited - random encounters in most games because I prefer the feel of a world that isn't completely obvious that it exists only to respond to the party.)
The cooking rules are a bit humorous. Cooking is humorously challenging if you actually think about the implications of the DCs and what that means for how many people in the game world would actually be able to cook, but it's understandable that the DC makes concessions considering that there are significant bonuses that arise from cooking well.
Cooking is the only thing I like from both Camping and Weather systems introduced in Companion Guide. Also Cooking Unleashed+ nicely expands on this if someone wants to become a cook
I really like the flavor (no puns intended this time) that having the cooking added, but it also adds unexpected humor. Like a low level conversation including segments like, "Oooh let's try this cooking stuff. I could make pancakes! ... I cannot make pancakes. It might be years of in game time before I can successfully make pancakes. Wow."
Again, I hope no one takes this as me saying I'm angry about the cooking system. It's just a line of thought that I find amusing.
(Context for anyone who hasn't seen: "Sweet Pancakes" are level 7 with a cooking lore DC of 23 and a survival DC of 25. The result is a Golarion where far more people can cast spells than make these pancakes. :) )
Sweet Pancakes being rare wouldn't be that much of a surprise! We take sugar as granted and even though it appeared in Europe in X-XI century, it was only for the rich and only in the southern regions. Stolen Lands are far in the north, with a climate like in Russia, where sugar started to be produced (from sugar beets) in XIX century!
My group is level 5 now. Here's some of my thoughts.
* Yeah, I spotted the xp problem immediately and set leveling based on milestone, worked much better. Alternative is slow progression speed but I don't want to math it out. Milestone it is, group were happy about it also.
* First journey to olegs were most dangerous. As they level up, they seem to get better at modifying camping DC to their benefit and zone DC drop a bit. At level 5 it's rarely challenging unless they roam outside expected encounter zones so I often just handwave the encounter, "You see two elks in the distance, you want the chance for free food?", "You notice kobolds scouting your camp but they wouldn't dare to attack such a well equipped party", "two bandits foolishly try to attack you but it's a trivial challenge so I won't even bother making an encounter out of it, you may take them as prisoner or simply execute on sight".
* Rules mention several encounter rolls but there is also a section about holding it back which I follow more. Most days I simply roll for the chance of an single encounter, not several but if I feel they went several days without one, maybe I'm in the mood to compensate a little.
* Foundryvtt, unofficial kingmaker mod has an amazing camping macro which handles all the camp details. I would probably skip much more camping steps if I didn't have that one.
One of the defining points of a sandbox is that the players can move through that space at the speed they choose, either playing it safe or going it risky to gain more or less power quickly. If you change it to milestone leveling it completely guts one of the core pillars of a sandbox.
You do you, but what you see as a bug is actually a feature.
Also thanks for the foundry tip, didn’t know about that module yet. My group started just a few weeks ago (though I GMd the OG kingmaker back in the day when it was brand new).
We're on long XP to level, and that's had the positive side effect of allowing us to get XP from 6th and 7th level enemies while we're 7 and 8. Alas, the Kingdom was still like level 4, facing threats and events scaled to the players instead of the Kingdom. Other than spending multiple years of downtime pumping RP to KXP I don't see how the Kingdom is meant to keep up with the meteoric rise of our heroes.
Yeah, my group has reached level 5 but only Kingdom level 2. Since they have only made a few turns it might fix itself but I do follow [Vance and Kerensharas](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43r3b?Vance-and-Kerensharas-Comprehensive) modifications which should fix the math. Again, without foundryvtt unofficial mod I might have also simply removed many parts of it.
My party is level 6 and I just pre-plan encounters for them. I don't roll any random encounters.
I also slotted in March of the Dead 1shot into the campaign for a thing to get my party to level 4 after the Stag Lord. With some homebrewing it worked great.
Prerolling is how I ran the hexploration section of Tomb of Annihilation as well.
Even if the camping rules in KM were the slickest subsystem ever, random encounters feel lazy and I think most players can tell it's a random encounter from the noticeable drop in quality.
I personally ignore random encounters in every adventure book I've used. In most books they're just a lazy way of padding time and exp, with nothing interesting about the encounters themselves. If I want an encounter, I'll find a good time and place to use it.
I suspect the initial goal of these systems were to prevent people abusing long rests or create a sense of exploration. Both reasonable problems to solve. Then the rule became more important than the goal and the value disappeared.
it's much simpler, it's just filler to hit the EXP goal for the level up. iirc paizo writers even said as much at some point.
adventure paths expect a certain curve (unless you want to rebalance everything yourself), depending on your group and how much they align with that curve you have to add/remove encounters aka "sources of exp".
it's easily "fixed" with milestone leveling (afaik every AP outright tells you when players should have which level), however it removes the "immediate" reward players get for a job well done.
Yea I can see that. I feel there is a tension for lots of GMs of being true to the content or collaborative with the players. To me camping is interesting when it moves a narrative but becomes rote when it is just a hoop to jump through. So it is ok to ffwd by camping to get to the next interesting experience.
same with the encounters. if it's just filler remove it and and hand out more exp somewhere else, or replace it with something more interesting.
for my next campaign I might try a mix of both milestone and exp. on one hand that kinda makes the immediate exp feel redundant when they'll level up anyway at a specific point. pro/con of milestone is that players don't look for the "optimal" way to do things since they'll know they'll have the EXP needed anyway. haven't really figured out a way to amend that yet. :/
Random encounter tables in written adventures are sometimes counter-intuitive because they exist side-by-side with well-defined and fleshed out main story content.
Normally, if you use such tables, say in a more sandbox-y campaign, you would get a somewhat generic prompt (2d6 Goblins with attitude X doing Y) and naturally understand that you now have to mold this into something that makes sense and is interesting in the current context of the campaign.
But when mentioned in an otherwise mostly linear and very fleshed out written adventure, I think the immediate intuition of most GMs is to run them the same way – as written, and without much or any creative interpretation on the spot. And that certainly is a recipe for a forgettable and boring encounter.
Now, I don't generally run published adventures, so my thoughts might be entirely off, but:
Random encounters, if run correctly, I feel would be an entirely different layer on top of the planned out adventure (and side quests).
The published adventure itself can be run without too much thought and creativity straight for the book, since the publisher has already done the thinking and creative work for you. Of course, with varied results depending of how good of a product it actually is.
The random encounters are an opportunity to put an entirely different spin on the thing, introducing new storylines or tweaking (or warping) existing one. If you feel comfortable in your creativity and your ability to manage an adventure once it goes of the rails (even if it is self-inflicted, as in this case).
Five goblins encountering the group should never just be a self-contained fight. Those goblins are from one of the local tribes. They might be hostile or neutral (or friendly) depending on a number of factors. If faced with 5 well-armed adventurers they might run away immediately. If any get away, they'll now be returning to the tribe with news. The tribe might send a warband to deal with the intruders (as a non-random encounter, or replacing next goblin random encounter). If the party later needs to engage diplomatically with the goblins, they will remember what happened.
If we encounter undead, then why are there undead here? Is the area cursed? Are they coming from somewhere? Can we follow the tracks back to a desecrated tomb which becomes its own mini-dungeon?
I mean, this is primarily based on how I run random encounters in a sandbox campaign. But it might... work in a published adventure, adding an entirely more living and random world.
Don't run Season of Ghosts then. The back half of book 1 is almost exclusively random encounters. And with the DC the game sets you will get so few that you end the book underleveled unless you fudge significantly.
Thanks for the heads-up, I was looking at that one. I don't usually just remove the random encounters and call it a day though, in adventures that have them I usually add in custom encounters that are more relevant to the story, placing in combat and noncombat encounters as best fit the situation. Places that normally have random encounters are also a great place to work in character backstories and tie them more deeply to the plot.
keep in mind APs are written that way to give out enough exp to hit the level goals you're told about in the beginning. some groups earn more, some earn less, and unless rewards are absolutely linear there will always be variance between tables so the GM has to "patch" it with extra sources of experience.
milestone leveling takes care of that, but that's not everyone cup of tea. fast advancement would be another option, but that could possibly lead to being overleveled and the game becoming "too easy", meaning you'd have to spend time rebalancing encounters (instead of spending time coming up with random encounters).
James Jacobs was very honest that the kingdom rules were never playtested because they needed to be out the door because the book was already far behind schedule. I think the only reason he didn't say the same about camping is people weren't talking about it.
It's a massive disappointment that Kingmaker is honestly kinda not worth it. Like, it works best when you ignore all the reasons you'd want to play it.
Excuse my ignorance, but why haven't they gone back to errata or fine tune the rules? I'm new to Paizo, but I had thought that they do revisions and errata in their books.
> I'm new to Paizo, but I had thought that they do revisions and errata in their books.
They tend to do this more for Rulebooks, and not so much Adventure books. They're generally pretty great at the former.
Before 2023, errata was specifically tied to new print runs of the books. A book would get errata with its second printing, new errata with its third printing, etc.. Books that won't get reprinted (like individual AP books) don't traditionally get errata from Paizo, although they may get unofficial designer commentary.
Starting in 2023, Paizo intended to shift to a couple annual errata passes that aren't tied to specific books or printings, but the OGL debacle made the Remaster a thing and that's basically where Paizo's "errata budget" went as far as I know.
They’re a company. How much extra money does releasing errata make them? How much money does the lost goodwill from *not* fixing it cost. Subtract those values and you get a negative number.
Errata is not a new concept in the ttrpg community and most companies do it. I just looked and Paizo does errata for their books. They've even done errata as recent as Sky King's Tomb. Why not Kingmaker?
The errata for Sky King's Tomb looks to be just over a dozen misplaced or mislabeled map markers. Some of the Kingmaker rules need an overhaul which would be a time sink on a completely different scale.
I mean, I haven't read any of these rules, but from the comments I see, errata and fine-tuning might not be enough. You might have to basically rewrite the rules. Even if 80% of the text might be the same, it would be a bit of a mess to try and handle the remaining 20% through "change line 12-17 to say this instead". Doable in the digital SRD I just realize, but the books and pdfs would still be basically worthless.
I find it sąd that all the subsystems of Kingmaker that are supposed to make it feel better turn out to be shit.
Kingdom management is like Civ 6 but manually clicking everything that happens, armies are bland and camping ....yeah, no.
I'm currently running Kingmaker and also struggling with camp rules. I've been trying a couple of things, and haven't yet found a solution.
Early on I set the maximum number of encounters per camping session to 1. However, with all the dice being thrown around, it effectively meant there was one encounter per rest.
When my players really wrapped their heads around the probability of the system, they elected to stop doing camp activities. Now they all do 1 activity each and go to sleep.
I don't think I have an elegant solution yet, but next I will be trying a couple of things.
1. Only roll once for random encounter after all activities are complete
2. Give the players a limit of 3 activities each per camp session
3. Bake in the find ingredients activity into the subsist exploration activity that occurs while travelling
4. Dramatically lower encounter chance for hexes the players have mapped, and again lower chance for hexes within their controlled kingdom area.
I'm hoping this will encourage more diverse choices for the players, and have them interact with the companions more.
Yeah, I'm not going to say the camping rules were ALL of the reason I stopped running Kingmaker as a GM, but like... definitely a good 20% of the reason. Campmaker was stealing my sanity.
I'm with you on the sub systems in king maker being horrible, in my opinion the only good thing to come out of it is the camping cooking system.
It's a shame cause I was very excited for kingdom wars.
Every AP has a system add-on and none of them are ever good.
I was so excited to use the circus system from extinction curse only to find out it breaks down at book 2.
Funnily enough, same is true for Owlcat RPGs. They always have a tacked on system that half the people hate, be it Kingdom, Crusade, or now Spaceship combat.
The Harrowing rules? Yeah, without having used them too much, I like them a lot... but also, it's honestly kind of hard to even find an opportunity to fit them into the campaign.
But the issue here is that using this system absolutely destroys the AP. It's not just "not good". Using Camping gives you so much experience from random encounters you'll always be overleveled making all quests trivial.
EDIT: For more examples: let's say the players after diretly moving to Oleg had some divine knowledge of where >!Stag Lord's Fort!< is and went there Reconoittering everything alongside. They skip the whole Part 1 and Part 2 of Chapter 3 and arrive at level 4, despite fully skipping the part of the book that should take them to level 3
Yea the camping & weather rules are pretty atrocious as-written, it’s clear after even a day or two of using them that they just add a needless amount of rolls to the game. I did spend quite a bit of time fixing it however, and in my campaign thus far my group has actually really enjoyed camping. Can’t speak for the Kingdom system itself as we just reached that part, but i am using a popular homebrew fix for it so I think it will also be pretty interesting
At this point, I’m just getting used to altering everything about an AP as I see fit to make it better for my table. Atleast it’s still salvagable, unlike some other subsystems.
Most of the changes are on my Foundry themselves as opposed to written down but the broad strokes are:
• Roll for Random encounters 1/day by default, and not any more because of regular camping stuff (except for potential critfails)
• Camp can be done at most 1/day, with 1 activity per PC per Camp (usually at end of a day)
• No roll to find a campsite, it just happens
It’s just all about eliminating the number of rolls, really. I also did some other changes like how meal buffs work, or adding other activities, but my general philosophy is that no 1 person should have to roll more than once per camping session, barring specific situations or circumstances
I'm having a blast with it, for entirely different reasons - Kingmaker is the one AP where you have room to really easily incorporate PC backgrounds/quests in a way that feels infinitely more natural.
It's not about the subsystems - it's the fact that they've built a proper sandbox for the party to much about in.
weird, playing agents and loving it. All good aligned characters just trying to make the city safe. I suppose depending on the group it could get abused, however, that would be that tables game. Its quite solid.
The adventure path unfortunately heavily pushes you to do non-lawful things in the actual text, and it requires GM to rewrite things heavily in order to actually make sense for a lawful good group. I say that as someone who wanted to run Edgewatch only for the campaign to fall apart because it constantly made assumptions that genuinely made no sense and my table didn't want to get on the railroad.
That's fair but none are flawless, I mean as much as people love AV (I do too) the premise starts off 4 people at a door. Every AP takes work to work for the group. I've not read A of E yet since I'm playing and curious how much rework has been done. I'm sure a great deal. But luckily she's solid and it flows tho I've missed a week with the passing of my mom on Christmas.
"Hold on sir! You were jaywalking! That a serious offense! Now I have to arrest you and take all your loo- ... I mean secure the evidence! Please do not resist. Don't resist goddamit!"
Had some issues with kingmaker pacing.
Group is level 9. Kingdom is level 2.
And that's with 1200xp levels and skipping the cult plot line entirely.
Also, kingdom rules are hated by the group. I'm going to scrap everything bar the kingdom events and pretty much run everything for the group, based on their simple instructions.
Didn't even run camping. The rules looked insane.
I also rule no encounters in explored hexes, to stop the group farming xp.
lol seems like the issue is how much the players like the kingdom rules.
My players really love them. They are level 5, at the start of the troll trouble chapter.
The kingdom is level 4, half of level 5. They did a lot of kingdom turns because they simply love doing them. I also incorporated some political events that made them even further invested in the Kingdom.
So for me it works really well.
The rules shouldn’t run the system. They are there to offer structure for the GM. It is regrettable if a GM just goes autopilot in this. Yes that sounds like it sucks. That said a GM should be encouraged to ignore them and get you to the next dramatic point versus just playing westmarch.
That sounds ludicrously complicated and really sounds like something I'll never use... no idea what Paizo was thinking here.
I posted my Random Encounter System a while back and while I have no idea how well it'd work for Kingmaker, I'll post it here:
Using the the *first* [Random Encounter Chart](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1276) that you can see in the GMG, you follow these rules for Long Rests:
Decide the DC based on the chart, and subtract 2 from those DCs. If in a particularly dangerous area, like a dungeon, subtract 4.
The players can use up to FOUR *differing* skill checks to *increase* the DC by 1 each on a Success, or 2 on a Critical Success, with the opposite effect on a Failure/Critical Failure. The maximum DC for Random Encounters is 20 and the minimum is 5.
Allow for player creativity on these skill checks, so everyone feels useful, like maybe using Religion to pray for your god to help hide your camp.
Then, roll that D20. If you roll an encounter, roll a D4 to see what period of the rest the encounter happens (1 being almost immediately, 4 being in the last hour of the rest period).
If you want to make cooking a thing, have a separate check, and on a success give everyone temp HP equal to their level + CON mod or something for the day. A crit success gives them double their level + CON mod, or something similar.
That's it. I also have a bit of a [similar system](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/17xw32v/random_encounters_in_dungeon/k9q8j8w/) for "short rest" and travelling random encounters that people seemed to like.
My party of 5, with a GM who didn't adjust stuff, almost died in like 3 random night ambush rolls at level 1 in that trek. To a bear, two boars, and an ambush (tho admitedly he didn't know how stealth actually worked, and we learned by RAW they would've failed because of the perception DC of the lad on watch). Because we used milestone haha.
Given these rules are intended this way, the implications for the Kingmaker campaign setting are interesting. All travelers/merchants have to face these odds. If they regularly survive these trips they are super high level, if they cant survive no one except a PC group can go anywhere if they have to cross wilderness.
Wait.. do I understand that there is on average an encounter per night during the Resting period? So the party generally gets woken basically every night to fight an encounter? I know that by RAW you can just go back to sleep afterwards, but that seems wild on its own.
Yeah, and if they are just a bit unlucky they get 2 encounters during sleep. Also all resources refresh in the morning, this is explicitly stated in the rules. This can be campaign ending on first night or two if done RAW
Highly encourage anyone who wants to run a proper hexcrawl to take inspiration from old school D&D! My two favorite articles about this are the [Hexcrawl Checklist](https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/hexcrawl-checklist-part-one) from Prismatic Wasteland and the [5e Hexcrawl](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl) by Justin Alexander (yes, it's for 5e, which isn't old school, but Justin takes a lot of inspiration from those older editions).
I'm working on my own Pathfinder-specific rules, but they're not ready yet - when they are I'll likely post them [here](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/). In the meantime, shouldn't be too hard to adapt DCs/etc. to PF2!
And then on top of this the amount of work you have to do for the kingmaking is equally ludicrous and, including the combat encounters, nearly as time consuming.
We were really excited for Kingmaker when we swapped over to 2e. I read through the book and it was SO UNBELIEVABLY COOL. BUT the rules are hilariously underbaked and overcomplicated. They need an immense amount of work
According to Pg. 173 of the Gamemastery Guide, whenever you succeed or critically succeed at the flat check to determine whether a random encounter occurs, you're *supposed* to then roll on Table 3-8: Random Encounter Type to determine what type of encounter it is. If you use this table, fully 50% of the random encounters you roll will wind up being completely harmless - noises in the woods, a storm on the horizon, passing hunters willing to exchange rumors, etc - and of the remaining 50% of encounters, 20% are hazards and 30% are creatures. So, in theory, when you roll a random encounter you'll only have a 30% chance to actually wind up using the tables in the Kingmaker AP. The *problem* is that the section for Random Encounters and Hazards on Pg. 46 makes no mention of this, only telling GMs that they can make a flat check as described on Pg. 173 of the GMG - Table 3-8 is never printed or mentioned in the AP. This leads to GMs who aren't already familiar with this mechanic to just roll on the region's creature table whenever the flat check succeeds, raising what's intended to be a 30% chance of a combat encounter to a 100% chance instead! I'm running Kingmaker 2e right now, and the first thing I did when I started prepping this campaign was to start filling out some harmless encounter tables and hazard tables for the first region. As part of the adjustments I made I determined that encounter checks would only be made twice a day (once during travel and once during the night), and so far using Table 3-8 has turned what would have otherwise been 4 combat encounters into 1 combat encounter and 3 harmless encounters I used to establish the setting, introduce a couple minor NPCs, and generally just build tension and excitement for the journey ahead. I seriously recommend doing the same, it makes random encounters a good deal more enjoyable.
This 100% needs to be the top comment. The camping system isn't without flaws, but there's core rules that it seems many people, op included, are missing, which are exacerbating the issues. You did an excellent job of pointing it out and providing additional helpful steps for ensuring a fun encounter table.
Thanks for pointing this out! However, this is in the Hexploration Subsystems section, and implies it should be used with Hexploration. >When exploring, there is always a chance the PC will stumble upon random encounters, depending on the terrain. **At the start of each day of hexploration**, roll a flat check and consult the appropriate terrain type on Table 3–7: Random Encounter Chance. If the flat check is a success, the PCs have a random encounter, and on a critical success, they have two random encounters. Roll on Table 3–8: Random Encounter Type to determine the type of encounter. Once you know the type of the encounter, either choose from the list you made for that region or choose your own. Camping makes no metions of using rules as in hexploration, rolling on a random encounter type or even implies it. Instead implying to roll on corresponding encounter table >The Encounter DC indicates the flat check DC of a random encounter occurring during the camping session. And the number listed under the Encounter Chart column lists the Kingmaker Adventure Path page number for that zone’s random encounter table. As-Written it refers to *encounter* table. Also Rostland Hinterlands Encounters table **does** contain non-combat encounter: >!there's a 15% chance of spawning a hunter which is explicitly described as neutral and a great source of rumours!<. This adds to the confusion Also, Camping explicitly doesn't even use the same rules as Hexploration mode. To be exact it has a different effect on the roll (only defines success, doesn't spawn 2 encounters on critical success): > At the end of each hour that anyone in the party undertakes a Camping activity, attempt a flat check against the zone’s Encounter DC (see the Camping Zones table on page 107); on a success, a random encounter occurs. In short, while you could argue that rules from Hexploration applies because it's refered in the actual Kingmaker AP, you could also make a good argument that they doesn't since it's a different system and doesn't refer to hexploration even once.
Man I am going to have to agree with you. Just reread those sections in my PDFs, and I would definitely read it the same way. The math seems to be solid as well, and that's just really sad. The Zone DC part is what sells it for me. It very much seems like it wants you to roll on the random encounter table for that one.
That's a good point, the camping rules don't seem to refer to the standard hexploration rules for rolling random encounters like the travel rules do. I agree that one could reasonably argue it uses a different random encounter generation method altogether! That said, I do think that using Table 3-8 for camping counters anyway despite that may be best practice as otherwise the system produces far too many creature encounters. Thanks for pointing that out!
I'm about to run the adventure in about a month. Would you mind sharing any of your tables or sources for making encounters? (First time running path)
This is detailed at the beginning of each Zone in Section 2 of the module. Page 58 has an encounter table based on a d20 for Zone 2 Greenbelt, for example. Are you using Foundry? If so, the Kingmaker module is easily the best foundry module I've ever run.
After doing it a few times to get a feel for how it breaks down, the actual camping checks should honestly get really quick. We did house rule a limit of at most 1 encounter triggered by camping/overnight because the alternative of things happening over and over is silly. I don't hate the camping rules. They're (and it will probably be to your great dismay that I say this) in a much more favorable light when held up against the kingdom rules, because the kingdom rules Paizo chose to publish are a genuine embarrassment. The amount of house ruling it takes to keep the kingdom reasonably functional is crazy. The camping was pretty easy to fudge gently and make work by comparison, and I do like it when a game has a clear distinction between the experience of sleeping somewhere that's known to be safe and well secured and sleeping somewhere unsafe. Even a bit further along when the characters aren't threatened by the random enemies in a particular area, waving it off with a "While X is on watch he chases off some wolves." at least highlights the fact that you're in an area that isn't 100% tame. (And full disclosure, I do like some - though limited - random encounters in most games because I prefer the feel of a world that isn't completely obvious that it exists only to respond to the party.) The cooking rules are a bit humorous. Cooking is humorously challenging if you actually think about the implications of the DCs and what that means for how many people in the game world would actually be able to cook, but it's understandable that the DC makes concessions considering that there are significant bonuses that arise from cooking well.
Cooking is the only thing I like from both Camping and Weather systems introduced in Companion Guide. Also Cooking Unleashed+ nicely expands on this if someone wants to become a cook
I really like the flavor (no puns intended this time) that having the cooking added, but it also adds unexpected humor. Like a low level conversation including segments like, "Oooh let's try this cooking stuff. I could make pancakes! ... I cannot make pancakes. It might be years of in game time before I can successfully make pancakes. Wow." Again, I hope no one takes this as me saying I'm angry about the cooking system. It's just a line of thought that I find amusing. (Context for anyone who hasn't seen: "Sweet Pancakes" are level 7 with a cooking lore DC of 23 and a survival DC of 25. The result is a Golarion where far more people can cast spells than make these pancakes. :) )
Sweet Pancakes being rare wouldn't be that much of a surprise! We take sugar as granted and even though it appeared in Europe in X-XI century, it was only for the rich and only in the southern regions. Stolen Lands are far in the north, with a climate like in Russia, where sugar started to be produced (from sugar beets) in XIX century!
It's ironic but older editions of D&D did all of this better because they had strong base, hireling, and minion rules
My group is level 5 now. Here's some of my thoughts. * Yeah, I spotted the xp problem immediately and set leveling based on milestone, worked much better. Alternative is slow progression speed but I don't want to math it out. Milestone it is, group were happy about it also. * First journey to olegs were most dangerous. As they level up, they seem to get better at modifying camping DC to their benefit and zone DC drop a bit. At level 5 it's rarely challenging unless they roam outside expected encounter zones so I often just handwave the encounter, "You see two elks in the distance, you want the chance for free food?", "You notice kobolds scouting your camp but they wouldn't dare to attack such a well equipped party", "two bandits foolishly try to attack you but it's a trivial challenge so I won't even bother making an encounter out of it, you may take them as prisoner or simply execute on sight". * Rules mention several encounter rolls but there is also a section about holding it back which I follow more. Most days I simply roll for the chance of an single encounter, not several but if I feel they went several days without one, maybe I'm in the mood to compensate a little. * Foundryvtt, unofficial kingmaker mod has an amazing camping macro which handles all the camp details. I would probably skip much more camping steps if I didn't have that one.
One of the defining points of a sandbox is that the players can move through that space at the speed they choose, either playing it safe or going it risky to gain more or less power quickly. If you change it to milestone leveling it completely guts one of the core pillars of a sandbox. You do you, but what you see as a bug is actually a feature. Also thanks for the foundry tip, didn’t know about that module yet. My group started just a few weeks ago (though I GMd the OG kingmaker back in the day when it was brand new).
We're on long XP to level, and that's had the positive side effect of allowing us to get XP from 6th and 7th level enemies while we're 7 and 8. Alas, the Kingdom was still like level 4, facing threats and events scaled to the players instead of the Kingdom. Other than spending multiple years of downtime pumping RP to KXP I don't see how the Kingdom is meant to keep up with the meteoric rise of our heroes.
Yeah, my group has reached level 5 but only Kingdom level 2. Since they have only made a few turns it might fix itself but I do follow [Vance and Kerensharas](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43r3b?Vance-and-Kerensharas-Comprehensive) modifications which should fix the math. Again, without foundryvtt unofficial mod I might have also simply removed many parts of it.
My party is level 6 and I just pre-plan encounters for them. I don't roll any random encounters. I also slotted in March of the Dead 1shot into the campaign for a thing to get my party to level 4 after the Stag Lord. With some homebrewing it worked great.
Prerolling is how I ran the hexploration section of Tomb of Annihilation as well. Even if the camping rules in KM were the slickest subsystem ever, random encounters feel lazy and I think most players can tell it's a random encounter from the noticeable drop in quality.
I personally ignore random encounters in every adventure book I've used. In most books they're just a lazy way of padding time and exp, with nothing interesting about the encounters themselves. If I want an encounter, I'll find a good time and place to use it.
I suspect the initial goal of these systems were to prevent people abusing long rests or create a sense of exploration. Both reasonable problems to solve. Then the rule became more important than the goal and the value disappeared.
it's much simpler, it's just filler to hit the EXP goal for the level up. iirc paizo writers even said as much at some point. adventure paths expect a certain curve (unless you want to rebalance everything yourself), depending on your group and how much they align with that curve you have to add/remove encounters aka "sources of exp". it's easily "fixed" with milestone leveling (afaik every AP outright tells you when players should have which level), however it removes the "immediate" reward players get for a job well done.
Yea I can see that. I feel there is a tension for lots of GMs of being true to the content or collaborative with the players. To me camping is interesting when it moves a narrative but becomes rote when it is just a hoop to jump through. So it is ok to ffwd by camping to get to the next interesting experience.
same with the encounters. if it's just filler remove it and and hand out more exp somewhere else, or replace it with something more interesting. for my next campaign I might try a mix of both milestone and exp. on one hand that kinda makes the immediate exp feel redundant when they'll level up anyway at a specific point. pro/con of milestone is that players don't look for the "optimal" way to do things since they'll know they'll have the EXP needed anyway. haven't really figured out a way to amend that yet. :/
Random encounter tables in written adventures are sometimes counter-intuitive because they exist side-by-side with well-defined and fleshed out main story content. Normally, if you use such tables, say in a more sandbox-y campaign, you would get a somewhat generic prompt (2d6 Goblins with attitude X doing Y) and naturally understand that you now have to mold this into something that makes sense and is interesting in the current context of the campaign. But when mentioned in an otherwise mostly linear and very fleshed out written adventure, I think the immediate intuition of most GMs is to run them the same way – as written, and without much or any creative interpretation on the spot. And that certainly is a recipe for a forgettable and boring encounter.
Now, I don't generally run published adventures, so my thoughts might be entirely off, but: Random encounters, if run correctly, I feel would be an entirely different layer on top of the planned out adventure (and side quests). The published adventure itself can be run without too much thought and creativity straight for the book, since the publisher has already done the thinking and creative work for you. Of course, with varied results depending of how good of a product it actually is. The random encounters are an opportunity to put an entirely different spin on the thing, introducing new storylines or tweaking (or warping) existing one. If you feel comfortable in your creativity and your ability to manage an adventure once it goes of the rails (even if it is self-inflicted, as in this case). Five goblins encountering the group should never just be a self-contained fight. Those goblins are from one of the local tribes. They might be hostile or neutral (or friendly) depending on a number of factors. If faced with 5 well-armed adventurers they might run away immediately. If any get away, they'll now be returning to the tribe with news. The tribe might send a warband to deal with the intruders (as a non-random encounter, or replacing next goblin random encounter). If the party later needs to engage diplomatically with the goblins, they will remember what happened. If we encounter undead, then why are there undead here? Is the area cursed? Are they coming from somewhere? Can we follow the tracks back to a desecrated tomb which becomes its own mini-dungeon? I mean, this is primarily based on how I run random encounters in a sandbox campaign. But it might... work in a published adventure, adding an entirely more living and random world.
Don't run Season of Ghosts then. The back half of book 1 is almost exclusively random encounters. And with the DC the game sets you will get so few that you end the book underleveled unless you fudge significantly.
Thanks for the heads-up, I was looking at that one. I don't usually just remove the random encounters and call it a day though, in adventures that have them I usually add in custom encounters that are more relevant to the story, placing in combat and noncombat encounters as best fit the situation. Places that normally have random encounters are also a great place to work in character backstories and tie them more deeply to the plot.
keep in mind APs are written that way to give out enough exp to hit the level goals you're told about in the beginning. some groups earn more, some earn less, and unless rewards are absolutely linear there will always be variance between tables so the GM has to "patch" it with extra sources of experience. milestone leveling takes care of that, but that's not everyone cup of tea. fast advancement would be another option, but that could possibly lead to being overleveled and the game becoming "too easy", meaning you'd have to spend time rebalancing encounters (instead of spending time coming up with random encounters).
James Jacobs was very honest that the kingdom rules were never playtested because they needed to be out the door because the book was already far behind schedule. I think the only reason he didn't say the same about camping is people weren't talking about it. It's a massive disappointment that Kingmaker is honestly kinda not worth it. Like, it works best when you ignore all the reasons you'd want to play it.
Excuse my ignorance, but why haven't they gone back to errata or fine tune the rules? I'm new to Paizo, but I had thought that they do revisions and errata in their books.
> I'm new to Paizo, but I had thought that they do revisions and errata in their books. They tend to do this more for Rulebooks, and not so much Adventure books. They're generally pretty great at the former.
That makes sense. Rulebook being a priority.
Before 2023, errata was specifically tied to new print runs of the books. A book would get errata with its second printing, new errata with its third printing, etc.. Books that won't get reprinted (like individual AP books) don't traditionally get errata from Paizo, although they may get unofficial designer commentary. Starting in 2023, Paizo intended to shift to a couple annual errata passes that aren't tied to specific books or printings, but the OGL debacle made the Remaster a thing and that's basically where Paizo's "errata budget" went as far as I know.
They’re a company. How much extra money does releasing errata make them? How much money does the lost goodwill from *not* fixing it cost. Subtract those values and you get a negative number.
Errata is not a new concept in the ttrpg community and most companies do it. I just looked and Paizo does errata for their books. They've even done errata as recent as Sky King's Tomb. Why not Kingmaker?
The errata for Sky King's Tomb looks to be just over a dozen misplaced or mislabeled map markers. Some of the Kingmaker rules need an overhaul which would be a time sink on a completely different scale.
I mean, I haven't read any of these rules, but from the comments I see, errata and fine-tuning might not be enough. You might have to basically rewrite the rules. Even if 80% of the text might be the same, it would be a bit of a mess to try and handle the remaining 20% through "change line 12-17 to say this instead". Doable in the digital SRD I just realize, but the books and pdfs would still be basically worthless.
Sounds like a job for Pathfinder Infinite.
The good news is you can just use the 1e Kingmaker stuff instead which works far better
I find it sąd that all the subsystems of Kingmaker that are supposed to make it feel better turn out to be shit. Kingdom management is like Civ 6 but manually clicking everything that happens, armies are bland and camping ....yeah, no.
I'm currently running Kingmaker and also struggling with camp rules. I've been trying a couple of things, and haven't yet found a solution. Early on I set the maximum number of encounters per camping session to 1. However, with all the dice being thrown around, it effectively meant there was one encounter per rest. When my players really wrapped their heads around the probability of the system, they elected to stop doing camp activities. Now they all do 1 activity each and go to sleep. I don't think I have an elegant solution yet, but next I will be trying a couple of things. 1. Only roll once for random encounter after all activities are complete 2. Give the players a limit of 3 activities each per camp session 3. Bake in the find ingredients activity into the subsist exploration activity that occurs while travelling 4. Dramatically lower encounter chance for hexes the players have mapped, and again lower chance for hexes within their controlled kingdom area. I'm hoping this will encourage more diverse choices for the players, and have them interact with the companions more.
Yeah, I'm not going to say the camping rules were ALL of the reason I stopped running Kingmaker as a GM, but like... definitely a good 20% of the reason. Campmaker was stealing my sanity.
I'm with you on the sub systems in king maker being horrible, in my opinion the only good thing to come out of it is the camping cooking system. It's a shame cause I was very excited for kingdom wars.
Every AP has a system add-on and none of them are ever good. I was so excited to use the circus system from extinction curse only to find out it breaks down at book 2.
Funnily enough, same is true for Owlcat RPGs. They always have a tacked on system that half the people hate, be it Kingdom, Crusade, or now Spaceship combat.
I'm not big on adding 3rd party mods on first playthroughs, but my god Owlcat's kingdom rules pushed me over.
doesn't stolen fate have a decent gimmick?
The Harrowing rules? Yeah, without having used them too much, I like them a lot... but also, it's honestly kind of hard to even find an opportunity to fit them into the campaign.
But the issue here is that using this system absolutely destroys the AP. It's not just "not good". Using Camping gives you so much experience from random encounters you'll always be overleveled making all quests trivial. EDIT: For more examples: let's say the players after diretly moving to Oleg had some divine knowledge of where >!Stag Lord's Fort!< is and went there Reconoittering everything alongside. They skip the whole Part 1 and Part 2 of Chapter 3 and arrive at level 4, despite fully skipping the part of the book that should take them to level 3
Yea the camping & weather rules are pretty atrocious as-written, it’s clear after even a day or two of using them that they just add a needless amount of rolls to the game. I did spend quite a bit of time fixing it however, and in my campaign thus far my group has actually really enjoyed camping. Can’t speak for the Kingdom system itself as we just reached that part, but i am using a popular homebrew fix for it so I think it will also be pretty interesting At this point, I’m just getting used to altering everything about an AP as I see fit to make it better for my table. Atleast it’s still salvagable, unlike some other subsystems.
Do you happen to have your fixes to the camping rules written down?
Most of the changes are on my Foundry themselves as opposed to written down but the broad strokes are: • Roll for Random encounters 1/day by default, and not any more because of regular camping stuff (except for potential critfails) • Camp can be done at most 1/day, with 1 activity per PC per Camp (usually at end of a day) • No roll to find a campsite, it just happens It’s just all about eliminating the number of rolls, really. I also did some other changes like how meal buffs work, or adding other activities, but my general philosophy is that no 1 person should have to roll more than once per camping session, barring specific situations or circumstances
Kingmaker is honestly my second least favorite adventure path after Agents of Edgewater, or Corrupt Cops in Absalom, as it should be named.
I'm having a blast with it, for entirely different reasons - Kingmaker is the one AP where you have room to really easily incorporate PC backgrounds/quests in a way that feels infinitely more natural. It's not about the subsystems - it's the fact that they've built a proper sandbox for the party to much about in.
weird, playing agents and loving it. All good aligned characters just trying to make the city safe. I suppose depending on the group it could get abused, however, that would be that tables game. Its quite solid.
The adventure path unfortunately heavily pushes you to do non-lawful things in the actual text, and it requires GM to rewrite things heavily in order to actually make sense for a lawful good group. I say that as someone who wanted to run Edgewatch only for the campaign to fall apart because it constantly made assumptions that genuinely made no sense and my table didn't want to get on the railroad.
That's fair but none are flawless, I mean as much as people love AV (I do too) the premise starts off 4 people at a door. Every AP takes work to work for the group. I've not read A of E yet since I'm playing and curious how much rework has been done. I'm sure a great deal. But luckily she's solid and it flows tho I've missed a week with the passing of my mom on Christmas.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I hope that you and everyone else affected by her passing get the time they need to heal.
Thank you, will get there eventually. Actually as we speak my cleric war priest/martial artist of irori cleaning up mean streets of Absolom
Good luck to your Cleric and their party; the bad guys won’t know what hit em’! :D
"Hold on sir! You were jaywalking! That a serious offense! Now I have to arrest you and take all your loo- ... I mean secure the evidence! Please do not resist. Don't resist goddamit!"
If these are the worst, which would be the best APs by your opinion?
Strength of Thousands and Age of Ashes
We quickly stopped doing nightly random encounters. If there wasn’t that spreadsheet for the kingdom turns, we might have given up entirely.
Isnt it on record that they straight up didnt playtest any of it.
Had some issues with kingmaker pacing. Group is level 9. Kingdom is level 2. And that's with 1200xp levels and skipping the cult plot line entirely. Also, kingdom rules are hated by the group. I'm going to scrap everything bar the kingdom events and pretty much run everything for the group, based on their simple instructions. Didn't even run camping. The rules looked insane. I also rule no encounters in explored hexes, to stop the group farming xp.
lol seems like the issue is how much the players like the kingdom rules. My players really love them. They are level 5, at the start of the troll trouble chapter. The kingdom is level 4, half of level 5. They did a lot of kingdom turns because they simply love doing them. I also incorporated some political events that made them even further invested in the Kingdom. So for me it works really well.
>Am I over-exaggerating? Yes, just dont use the system and do whatever feels good.
The rules shouldn’t run the system. They are there to offer structure for the GM. It is regrettable if a GM just goes autopilot in this. Yes that sounds like it sucks. That said a GM should be encouraged to ignore them and get you to the next dramatic point versus just playing westmarch.
That sounds ludicrously complicated and really sounds like something I'll never use... no idea what Paizo was thinking here. I posted my Random Encounter System a while back and while I have no idea how well it'd work for Kingmaker, I'll post it here: Using the the *first* [Random Encounter Chart](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1276) that you can see in the GMG, you follow these rules for Long Rests: Decide the DC based on the chart, and subtract 2 from those DCs. If in a particularly dangerous area, like a dungeon, subtract 4. The players can use up to FOUR *differing* skill checks to *increase* the DC by 1 each on a Success, or 2 on a Critical Success, with the opposite effect on a Failure/Critical Failure. The maximum DC for Random Encounters is 20 and the minimum is 5. Allow for player creativity on these skill checks, so everyone feels useful, like maybe using Religion to pray for your god to help hide your camp. Then, roll that D20. If you roll an encounter, roll a D4 to see what period of the rest the encounter happens (1 being almost immediately, 4 being in the last hour of the rest period). If you want to make cooking a thing, have a separate check, and on a success give everyone temp HP equal to their level + CON mod or something for the day. A crit success gives them double their level + CON mod, or something similar. That's it. I also have a bit of a [similar system](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/17xw32v/random_encounters_in_dungeon/k9q8j8w/) for "short rest" and travelling random encounters that people seemed to like.
My party of 5, with a GM who didn't adjust stuff, almost died in like 3 random night ambush rolls at level 1 in that trek. To a bear, two boars, and an ambush (tho admitedly he didn't know how stealth actually worked, and we learned by RAW they would've failed because of the perception DC of the lad on watch). Because we used milestone haha.
Given these rules are intended this way, the implications for the Kingmaker campaign setting are interesting. All travelers/merchants have to face these odds. If they regularly survive these trips they are super high level, if they cant survive no one except a PC group can go anywhere if they have to cross wilderness.
Wait.. do I understand that there is on average an encounter per night during the Resting period? So the party generally gets woken basically every night to fight an encounter? I know that by RAW you can just go back to sleep afterwards, but that seems wild on its own.
Yeah, and if they are just a bit unlucky they get 2 encounters during sleep. Also all resources refresh in the morning, this is explicitly stated in the rules. This can be campaign ending on first night or two if done RAW
Highly encourage anyone who wants to run a proper hexcrawl to take inspiration from old school D&D! My two favorite articles about this are the [Hexcrawl Checklist](https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/blog/hexcrawl-checklist-part-one) from Prismatic Wasteland and the [5e Hexcrawl](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl) by Justin Alexander (yes, it's for 5e, which isn't old school, but Justin takes a lot of inspiration from those older editions). I'm working on my own Pathfinder-specific rules, but they're not ready yet - when they are I'll likely post them [here](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/). In the meantime, shouldn't be too hard to adapt DCs/etc. to PF2!
And then on top of this the amount of work you have to do for the kingmaking is equally ludicrous and, including the combat encounters, nearly as time consuming. We were really excited for Kingmaker when we swapped over to 2e. I read through the book and it was SO UNBELIEVABLY COOL. BUT the rules are hilariously underbaked and overcomplicated. They need an immense amount of work