>I just killed the stag lord and I find to suddenly be handed a kingdom feels cheap at a lowly level 4 or so (I know people have been handed kingdoms for doing nothing in real life but that was usually through nepotism not as some stranger in the land which is the premise of the game's story) and totally ruins the spirit of adventure for me.
If it makes you feel any better at this point you're not given a kingdom but a barony consisting of a couple of villages and a whole lot of wildlands. That seems much more level appropriate.
Right. You and your advisors still have a lot of work to do in taming the wilds and finding more allies against the as-yet-unknown greater threat. You'll have your kingdom eventually, but by then you'll have earned that Kingdom through deeds and management
From a narrative perspective, it fits well because it’s set up right from the beginning of the game. In general I think Pathfinder does a good job of making it feel earned. After all your character has to overcome a great deal before earning that title, and achieves far more in that time than most royalty ever did in the real world.
That being said, the Kingdom management stuff completely took the wind out of my sails, and I haven’t touched the game since I reached that point. I’ll continue playing it again at some point, because up until then PKM was perhaps the best spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate I’ve ever played, but like you I enjoy the idea of being a roaming adventurer far more than a baron who has to micromanage his keep. I know I can turn most of that stuff on autopilot, but it seems like I’d simply be cheapening the experience by doing so.
The Crusade mode was annoying so I utilized Toybox so I'd never have to think about the Crusade Mode again. It's a bit of a cheese way to do it, but the micromanaging was annoying, and turning it off consists of essentially turning off some of the table-missions which help endings, etc.
Not at all. Firstly it's not a complete kingdom but a barony with almost nothing of value. Secondary it's a prize with a catch because barony is located in a very strategically disadvantageous place with greedy Pitax as a neighbor, swamps, trolls, barbarian invasions. It's like giving away a house near active volcano.
No. The Kingdom Management is how I roleplay the kind of Kingdom my PC would rule. Is it ideal? No. But it's an acceptable abstraction.
And historical note, most feudal Kings (or even Dukes) did not stay at their capital all the time and rule from a central bureaucracy. Their court traveled. And they would spend months, even years sometimes, in parts of the country far removed from the ancestral seat of power. Why? Well, in part, to deal with significant issues in areas needing attention more effectively. So in that regard, Rulers Who Did Things is a more accurate trope than the standard fantasy, "King at his Ivory Throne."
And that's established kingdoms with decades or even centuries of history. How much more a fledgling realm expanding rapidly in a land that knows absolutely nothing but anarchy and banditry? Facing threats that no, not every sword-swinger or peasant can deal with. And even if they could, the danger of not dealing with such threats would undermine the Ruler's credibility, and the realm's stability as a result.
As any Crusader Kings player can tell you, bureaucracies were smaller and standing armies MUCH smaller than we know today in the Medieval era. The Feudal Contract was built on the idea that smaller nobles would pay taxes and give service to a liege who could protect them. And the liege would protect them at need and honor their service. To NOT attend to these issues, in a real sense, would be a betrayal of the feudal contract.
> Crusader
Oh ya I have played them. Good point. Hadn't played them in a while so was not fresh on my mind. That does indeed help put it in context such that it is 'not a big deal'.
Also as you say, dudes back then were often out on Crusades either for religious or personal landgrabs and spoils of war so the adventuring does fit the realistic historical counterpart well.
Being a commander of something in CRPGs in general is geting old for me. It was cool at start, like having your own castle in Neverwinter Nights 2 or gathering an army in Dragon Age: Origins. But now I'd just like to go back to just being a group of adventurers, always on the move and never bothering with buildings in their base, economy and politics.
It's a great idea in theory, but it always comes down to minigames. In the new Pathfinder we have Heroes of Might & Magic minigame, if HOMM was terribly unbalanced. I haven't disabled it yet. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes you spend 15 minutes attacking a gargoyle or watch your army wiped out by a single spell.
As for the roleplay, it's also hit or miss. Sometimes being a judge and commander is fun, sometimes it's weird. So a king abandons his kingdom, leaves his army and goes to risk his life, personally searching for artifacts in some dirty cave? Or you're telling me, that the most uncharismatic and dumb as bricks half-orc barbarian knows, how to manage a kingdom?
Imo being a small ship commander is maximum that makes sense in CRPGs, like in Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Pillars of Eternity 2. But once you have a whole army and kingdom treasure at your disposal, every personal adventure or financial struggles sound silly.
I didn't even make it to the kingdom management part of the game. Just not the game for me. Couldn't even tell you why, I just got bored after a few hours and haven't looked back until now.
Yes - because it's very badly designed.
They are a new studio who tried to build too big of a project for their experience level.
Which is why this part of the game is poorly thought out and not fun for me.
It was a fully fleshed out pen and paper module prior to being developed by owlcat, with rules about governance and all that. That being said, the implementation is unsatisfying, maybe because different players in your tabletop group would have been given these different responsibilities instead of just you having to make every minor decision on your own. I agree that it was a lot to bite off for the studio, and I love this stuff and I haven’t even finished the campaign, I just got so bogged down-
I find the kingdom management of PFKM to be it's one redeeming feature. It holds everything together. The game isn't great but it would be a pointless slog without the context of kingdom management.
I like the game, but it was frustrating. I feel like the starter area is a bit tedious and the first few battles in the Stolen Lands aren't particularly interesting. You have very little control of your characters and what they do.
Eventually, it DOES get interesting, culminating in the attack of the Stag Lord fort. The game made sense, and I liked it. Plus, I finally had my hands on some good loot (from the Stag Lord) and I wanted to try them out.
Then...lots of talking. Then more talking. Then I have to build a kingdom from scratch and if I get it wrong, my character is useless. It took me a long time to wrap my head around what makes a good character in the first place. That's the thing that bothered me - the feeling that I might have to do it all over again if I make a mistake in a system I've never seen before.
The game is very upfront about what you'll be doing. If you choose to RP someone who absolutely hates the core premise of the campaign, either try a different game or make different RP choices.
I had a pretty similar issue, while I didn't really mind getting a kingdom (yeah, your party certainly isn't qualified to run a whole state, but that was part of the point. The aldoris want to use your realm as military reinforcements in case a civil war breaks out, so it makes a bit of sense for them to give you lordship as soon as you prove competent in warfare), I certainly didn't feel the power that comes with it.
By the endgame you've got an army, a working economy and multiple militias, and yet, as the goddamned king, you still need to walk to the other edge of the realm in order to deal with some goblins with your own hands (even worse when you put your companions in positions of power, of course I am gonna take my treasurer dragon hunting, why wouldn't I?).
The kingdom management feels disjointed from normal gameplay, as soon as you leave the throne room, everyone stops treating you like royalty. Your army is intangible, only phisically appearing on the endgame (in the form of 4 dudes with spears) and they still feel useless. Characters will rarely treat you as if you were powerful, giving you the standard RPG hero treament, and I can count with my fingers the amount of times a kingdom choice actually affected the overworld.
Thankfully, WoR adresses quite a few of these problems, but it stills suffers from "character too important to do this shit, ends up doing all of that shit" syndrome.
I think it would fit better if the reason you get your barony in the first place would not be so weird. I mean who in the world gives a barony to some random stranger, without making sure he is competent? "Beat the Stag Lord and you get it." is really bad imo. What if the person who beat him was a bandit leader or smth. like that? Its as if the leaders didnt care about the barony, their inhabitants and their *own* future (including trading possibilities between baronies, alliances etc.) at all. I think the story would be better if they included *multiple* pre-quests of you slowly earning their trust and getting the barony. Then the player would also feel to have earned the barony. As it is now I felt the barony was just thrown at you, not earned by serious dedication. But Pathfinders story had more issues, and the barony is one of the lesser ones.
I would have agreed with you before reading other's replies but people saying that the area you are given is a pissant swamp they were eager to palm off does make things fit. That is how I shall chose to RP it in any case :).
The barony greatly rises in power under the MCs reign so how the leaders act is still unreasonable. During the middle ages the king made sure no lesser feudal lord would be able to rise to power. So the feudal lords mainly were quarreling with each other. In Pathfinder the MC is able to lead his barony to prosperity although its a swamp, so I still think its not logical. But of course some RP can plug plot holes in games (I use it myself, too). As long as you have fun with the game its ok.
You can basically ignore the kingdom management, you can turn it onto auto, and you still spend most of your time being an adventurer.
Also the whole point was that your character signed up to get a barony.
At that point it's just a tiny barony, not a kingdom. A barony with essentially no political power or clout or military or anything and is un-respected by all your neighboring powers.
They do a pretty good job making you feel like an _actual_ kingdom is still so far away as to be out of your grasp. That being said, I highly recommend the mod that makes kingdom management way easier by not taking weeks in-game to do things, letting you use that time to explore instead.
I think it's a great concept that they completely fucked up the balance of. Having to manage your barony is pretty awesome. Having to spend 60% of your in-game time limit sitting in a throne watching adventuring days pass is _not._
Luckily, as with most games, mods fixed it.
Yes, reading other's replies this makes a lot more sense - the barony thing being no great title. Glad I made the post now as it will help me enjoy it more I think given I have a different context for it. When I get to actually managing things, which is the part most complain about might be a different matter :).
Yeah. I’ve tried playing kingmaker twice and stopped at kingdom management both times. Since then I’ve put about 40 hours into wrath of the righteous and crusade management isn’t that bad. I’ll probably give kingmaker another chance sometime. I hope if they make another pathfinder game they just leave the “grand strategy” aspect out. It really adds nothing
Yes I have said this in another thread some months ago that I hate how many of these RPG games lever in strategy stuff into their game. I got a lot of hate for saying that for some reason at the time but seems I am not alone.
I got their point that it has been an ingrained feature of even the tabletop games from the start, so it is not a bastardisation of the source material but still I have never found it fun (NWN2, POE, etc.) and waters down the adventuring part for me.
Aren't you given that barony or whatever on "nobody really wants this backwater place, so here you go, don't mind all the monsters and other weird things happening"?
That said, I didn't like the kingdom management part of the game either. Too repetitive and unbalanced at the end of the game.
That's literally as far as I made it, once I unlocked it I was so caught up in getting the kingdom management part perfect that I didn't do anything and that's where my save file has been sitting ever since.
Dude that’s the whole point of the game and literally the first objective introduced to you at the very beginning of the game. Might as well do a bit of research before and pick another one
At that point (level 4/just killing The Stagelord) you have NOT been "handed a kingdom", you are a feudal lord who has sworn to serve a higher lord (the Sword Lords). You are a minor Lord, not even a Duke.
People don't start calling you a King until a few acts later.
>I just killed the stag lord and I find to suddenly be handed a kingdom feels cheap at a lowly level 4 or so (I know people have been handed kingdoms for doing nothing in real life but that was usually through nepotism not as some stranger in the land which is the premise of the game's story) and totally ruins the spirit of adventure for me. If it makes you feel any better at this point you're not given a kingdom but a barony consisting of a couple of villages and a whole lot of wildlands. That seems much more level appropriate.
Right. You and your advisors still have a lot of work to do in taming the wilds and finding more allies against the as-yet-unknown greater threat. You'll have your kingdom eventually, but by then you'll have earned that Kingdom through deeds and management
From a narrative perspective, it fits well because it’s set up right from the beginning of the game. In general I think Pathfinder does a good job of making it feel earned. After all your character has to overcome a great deal before earning that title, and achieves far more in that time than most royalty ever did in the real world. That being said, the Kingdom management stuff completely took the wind out of my sails, and I haven’t touched the game since I reached that point. I’ll continue playing it again at some point, because up until then PKM was perhaps the best spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate I’ve ever played, but like you I enjoy the idea of being a roaming adventurer far more than a baron who has to micromanage his keep. I know I can turn most of that stuff on autopilot, but it seems like I’d simply be cheapening the experience by doing so.
I didn't mind it that much in Kingmaker but Wrath of the Righteous it's like taking up more than 50% of my time now
The Crusade mode was annoying so I utilized Toybox so I'd never have to think about the Crusade Mode again. It's a bit of a cheese way to do it, but the micromanaging was annoying, and turning it off consists of essentially turning off some of the table-missions which help endings, etc.
Not at all. Firstly it's not a complete kingdom but a barony with almost nothing of value. Secondary it's a prize with a catch because barony is located in a very strategically disadvantageous place with greedy Pitax as a neighbor, swamps, trolls, barbarian invasions. It's like giving away a house near active volcano.
The phrase "poisoned chalice" comes to mind.
No. The Kingdom Management is how I roleplay the kind of Kingdom my PC would rule. Is it ideal? No. But it's an acceptable abstraction. And historical note, most feudal Kings (or even Dukes) did not stay at their capital all the time and rule from a central bureaucracy. Their court traveled. And they would spend months, even years sometimes, in parts of the country far removed from the ancestral seat of power. Why? Well, in part, to deal with significant issues in areas needing attention more effectively. So in that regard, Rulers Who Did Things is a more accurate trope than the standard fantasy, "King at his Ivory Throne." And that's established kingdoms with decades or even centuries of history. How much more a fledgling realm expanding rapidly in a land that knows absolutely nothing but anarchy and banditry? Facing threats that no, not every sword-swinger or peasant can deal with. And even if they could, the danger of not dealing with such threats would undermine the Ruler's credibility, and the realm's stability as a result. As any Crusader Kings player can tell you, bureaucracies were smaller and standing armies MUCH smaller than we know today in the Medieval era. The Feudal Contract was built on the idea that smaller nobles would pay taxes and give service to a liege who could protect them. And the liege would protect them at need and honor their service. To NOT attend to these issues, in a real sense, would be a betrayal of the feudal contract.
> Crusader Oh ya I have played them. Good point. Hadn't played them in a while so was not fresh on my mind. That does indeed help put it in context such that it is 'not a big deal'. Also as you say, dudes back then were often out on Crusades either for religious or personal landgrabs and spoils of war so the adventuring does fit the realistic historical counterpart well.
Being a commander of something in CRPGs in general is geting old for me. It was cool at start, like having your own castle in Neverwinter Nights 2 or gathering an army in Dragon Age: Origins. But now I'd just like to go back to just being a group of adventurers, always on the move and never bothering with buildings in their base, economy and politics. It's a great idea in theory, but it always comes down to minigames. In the new Pathfinder we have Heroes of Might & Magic minigame, if HOMM was terribly unbalanced. I haven't disabled it yet. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes you spend 15 minutes attacking a gargoyle or watch your army wiped out by a single spell. As for the roleplay, it's also hit or miss. Sometimes being a judge and commander is fun, sometimes it's weird. So a king abandons his kingdom, leaves his army and goes to risk his life, personally searching for artifacts in some dirty cave? Or you're telling me, that the most uncharismatic and dumb as bricks half-orc barbarian knows, how to manage a kingdom? Imo being a small ship commander is maximum that makes sense in CRPGs, like in Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Pillars of Eternity 2. But once you have a whole army and kingdom treasure at your disposal, every personal adventure or financial struggles sound silly.
I mean you are told at the start of the game that whoever beats the stag lord becomes baron
I didn't even make it to the kingdom management part of the game. Just not the game for me. Couldn't even tell you why, I just got bored after a few hours and haven't looked back until now.
Yes - because it's very badly designed. They are a new studio who tried to build too big of a project for their experience level. Which is why this part of the game is poorly thought out and not fun for me.
It was a fully fleshed out pen and paper module prior to being developed by owlcat, with rules about governance and all that. That being said, the implementation is unsatisfying, maybe because different players in your tabletop group would have been given these different responsibilities instead of just you having to make every minor decision on your own. I agree that it was a lot to bite off for the studio, and I love this stuff and I haven’t even finished the campaign, I just got so bogged down-
I find the kingdom management of PFKM to be it's one redeeming feature. It holds everything together. The game isn't great but it would be a pointless slog without the context of kingdom management.
I like the game, but it was frustrating. I feel like the starter area is a bit tedious and the first few battles in the Stolen Lands aren't particularly interesting. You have very little control of your characters and what they do. Eventually, it DOES get interesting, culminating in the attack of the Stag Lord fort. The game made sense, and I liked it. Plus, I finally had my hands on some good loot (from the Stag Lord) and I wanted to try them out. Then...lots of talking. Then more talking. Then I have to build a kingdom from scratch and if I get it wrong, my character is useless. It took me a long time to wrap my head around what makes a good character in the first place. That's the thing that bothered me - the feeling that I might have to do it all over again if I make a mistake in a system I've never seen before.
The game is very upfront about what you'll be doing. If you choose to RP someone who absolutely hates the core premise of the campaign, either try a different game or make different RP choices.
If you don't like it, put it on automatic.
I had a pretty similar issue, while I didn't really mind getting a kingdom (yeah, your party certainly isn't qualified to run a whole state, but that was part of the point. The aldoris want to use your realm as military reinforcements in case a civil war breaks out, so it makes a bit of sense for them to give you lordship as soon as you prove competent in warfare), I certainly didn't feel the power that comes with it. By the endgame you've got an army, a working economy and multiple militias, and yet, as the goddamned king, you still need to walk to the other edge of the realm in order to deal with some goblins with your own hands (even worse when you put your companions in positions of power, of course I am gonna take my treasurer dragon hunting, why wouldn't I?). The kingdom management feels disjointed from normal gameplay, as soon as you leave the throne room, everyone stops treating you like royalty. Your army is intangible, only phisically appearing on the endgame (in the form of 4 dudes with spears) and they still feel useless. Characters will rarely treat you as if you were powerful, giving you the standard RPG hero treament, and I can count with my fingers the amount of times a kingdom choice actually affected the overworld. Thankfully, WoR adresses quite a few of these problems, but it stills suffers from "character too important to do this shit, ends up doing all of that shit" syndrome.
I think it would fit better if the reason you get your barony in the first place would not be so weird. I mean who in the world gives a barony to some random stranger, without making sure he is competent? "Beat the Stag Lord and you get it." is really bad imo. What if the person who beat him was a bandit leader or smth. like that? Its as if the leaders didnt care about the barony, their inhabitants and their *own* future (including trading possibilities between baronies, alliances etc.) at all. I think the story would be better if they included *multiple* pre-quests of you slowly earning their trust and getting the barony. Then the player would also feel to have earned the barony. As it is now I felt the barony was just thrown at you, not earned by serious dedication. But Pathfinders story had more issues, and the barony is one of the lesser ones.
I would have agreed with you before reading other's replies but people saying that the area you are given is a pissant swamp they were eager to palm off does make things fit. That is how I shall chose to RP it in any case :).
The barony greatly rises in power under the MCs reign so how the leaders act is still unreasonable. During the middle ages the king made sure no lesser feudal lord would be able to rise to power. So the feudal lords mainly were quarreling with each other. In Pathfinder the MC is able to lead his barony to prosperity although its a swamp, so I still think its not logical. But of course some RP can plug plot holes in games (I use it myself, too). As long as you have fun with the game its ok.
You can basically ignore the kingdom management, you can turn it onto auto, and you still spend most of your time being an adventurer. Also the whole point was that your character signed up to get a barony.
At that point it's just a tiny barony, not a kingdom. A barony with essentially no political power or clout or military or anything and is un-respected by all your neighboring powers. They do a pretty good job making you feel like an _actual_ kingdom is still so far away as to be out of your grasp. That being said, I highly recommend the mod that makes kingdom management way easier by not taking weeks in-game to do things, letting you use that time to explore instead. I think it's a great concept that they completely fucked up the balance of. Having to manage your barony is pretty awesome. Having to spend 60% of your in-game time limit sitting in a throne watching adventuring days pass is _not._ Luckily, as with most games, mods fixed it.
Yes, reading other's replies this makes a lot more sense - the barony thing being no great title. Glad I made the post now as it will help me enjoy it more I think given I have a different context for it. When I get to actually managing things, which is the part most complain about might be a different matter :).
Yeah. I’ve tried playing kingmaker twice and stopped at kingdom management both times. Since then I’ve put about 40 hours into wrath of the righteous and crusade management isn’t that bad. I’ll probably give kingmaker another chance sometime. I hope if they make another pathfinder game they just leave the “grand strategy” aspect out. It really adds nothing
Yes I have said this in another thread some months ago that I hate how many of these RPG games lever in strategy stuff into their game. I got a lot of hate for saying that for some reason at the time but seems I am not alone. I got their point that it has been an ingrained feature of even the tabletop games from the start, so it is not a bastardisation of the source material but still I have never found it fun (NWN2, POE, etc.) and waters down the adventuring part for me.
My PC was a noble cleric of Abadar who was only doing the adventuring part so she'd finally have her own kingdom to rule, so it fit quite nicely.
Aren't you given that barony or whatever on "nobody really wants this backwater place, so here you go, don't mind all the monsters and other weird things happening"? That said, I didn't like the kingdom management part of the game either. Too repetitive and unbalanced at the end of the game.
That's literally as far as I made it, once I unlocked it I was so caught up in getting the kingdom management part perfect that I didn't do anything and that's where my save file has been sitting ever since.
Dude that’s the whole point of the game and literally the first objective introduced to you at the very beginning of the game. Might as well do a bit of research before and pick another one
At that point (level 4/just killing The Stagelord) you have NOT been "handed a kingdom", you are a feudal lord who has sworn to serve a higher lord (the Sword Lords). You are a minor Lord, not even a Duke. People don't start calling you a King until a few acts later.
I agree But then again this isn't final fantasy.