Busy Kingmaking

I apologize for falling off the writing wagon. My only excuse is that I’ve made another stab at playing Owlcat’s Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG after buying it on sale many moons ago. I had started a game with a magus (with the eldritch scion archetype to be Charisma-focused) as a main character, but fell away from it around the end of the troll part of Rivers Run Red. Now I’m taking another stab as an Aldori duelist modeled after our own game’s Emperor Satampra Zieros, and have just gotten to the House at the End of Time. So the end is in sight? I think? Owlcat has added a lot to the adventure path, so it’s hard for me to say.

The game is, I have to say, an amazing accomplishment. It is truly massive in terms of areas to explore, plots to discover, character arcs to play out, text to read… and it also manages to be a pretty faithful adaptation of 1st edition Pathfinder, or at least a substantial subset of that sprawling ruleset. It also has all the major beats and characters from the original adventure while adding substantially to them. And it has its own version of the kingdom management rules.

I’ve gone on about the failings of the 1st edition kingdom rules at length already. Owlcat wisely simplified the kingdom management in certain areas, for example by splitting up the Stolen Lands into large regions (North Narlmarches, South Narlmarches, etc.) that have to be annexed  in their entirety rather than hex by hex, and then letting only one settlement per region be built. But then, presumably in an attempt to make it more of a minigame, they introduced a whole new problem with their changes to how the kingdom roles (what they call “advisors”) work. And the result, at least for me, hasn’t been very fun.

To avoid overwhelming the new ruler, they only present half of the ten roles to the player at kingdom inception. Which is fine, except they immediately give you a bunch of tasks that only the Magister can work on, where the Magister is one of the roles locked away at start. Then the game tells you nothing about how to unlock the other roles. It’s not trivial, either; you have to very specifically build your towns up in some very particular directions. Most of the additional roles unlocked naturally for me, but to get to the Magister and Spymaster (the latter of which the game terms “Minister”) you have to prioritize the few structures that have particular kinds of bonuses on them, which you would otherwise have no reason to prioritize.

Only certain characters can fill certain roles, I suppose depending on each character’s inclination rather than their ability scores, which can create problems if you don’t pick up certain NPCs or companions. Jhod (an NPC here) can only be High Priest, for example, and the High Priest can only be Jhod or Harrim, a nihilistic dwarf cleric PC/companion you get automatically. One bit that sunk my first game is that if you fail to find Jubilost the famous gnome explorer, or can’t convince him to join the kingdom, you’ll have no Treasurer for a long time! The game doesn’t tell you this either, of course. Though it does tell you on the loading screens that the Treasurer position is a vital one! 😠😠😠

To make kingdom events more interesting, each has to be handled by one of a particular subset of your advisors. Only certain advisors can handle certain events or kingdom improvement projects, and such endeavors take at least 1-2 weeks to complete. So if your General is busy with bandits over here, they can’t be tasked with dealing with training militias over there. This is a real headache, especially in the early game, before the additional roles are unlocked – the General, High Priest, and Treasurer are all spread very thin and there’s never time to do everything. Or much of anything. Even my current kingdom, at the very end of the game, has about a dozen or more improvement projects that I was never able to accomplish, either because the needed advisors are busy putting out fires (i.e. kingdom events) or because of lack of funds. I’ve found this facet of the kingdom management to be more frustrating than anything.

Finally, the outcome of each kingdom event is determined by your advisor making a d20 check, which is based on their relevant attribute modifier (the General uses Strength, the Treasurer Intelligence, etc.) and some kingdom-derived bonuses. But the DCs get ramped up to insane levels around the time of Varnhold Vanishing, to the point where many of my advisors would only have a 30% chance of succeeding at best (and while there is a Kingdom Difficulty slider in the options, it appears to do nothing). Failure on these checks means taking a big hit to your kingdom stats and possibly also losing BP.

After watching helplessly while failed event checks were sinking my kingdom, and having my entire treasury stolen twice, I finally said screw this and downloaded a mod that lets you cheat on kingdom checks and give yourself as much BP as you want. And I don’t feel bad about it at all! My advisors are still tied up putting out fires, and I still have a zillion kingdom improvements that I couldn’t make headway on. Owlcat made a valiant effort here at fixing kingdom management and trying to make it engaging, but still fell well short of the mark in my opinion.

On the bright side, the non-kingdom gameplay is pretty fun! The game could have just been the character creation & leveling, plus the turn-based combat, plus all the story/character content and it would have been plenty. Or, arguably, better.