pathfinder-1erealm-management
I've been playing in a PF campaign that's been using the Kingmaker rules. You can read about those here on the Obsidian Portal.
The recently released Ultimate Campaign apparently updates these rules. Does it just provide more options, or does it fundamentally rework the system? If there are major balance/mechanics changes, what are they?
Even an answer like "they didn't change much" or "the two systems are completely and utterly different" is helpful!
James Jacobs (Paizo's Creative Director) has once declared that there are as many ways to create gates as necessary for the adventure being written:
Are there other ways to create portals?
Yes. There are as many ways to create portals as the writer of an adventure or supplement that requires portals to play a role can make up.
With that said, there is really nothing that prevents, or will cause trouble, when making a direct conversion from 3.5's rules for creating portals to Pathfinder. If Paizo does release some rules about creating portals, those will not be the only acceptable method for creating them, but just another method.
And this is, in fact, explored in the setting. There are dozens of portals created by different races, from aboleth to elves, using magic or technology. One thing they try to make sure is that the methods are not common knowledge, the knowledge of making portals is either kept secret or is a lost knowledge from an ancient civilization.
The Second Darkness adventure path explores the elf gates to a certain extent, but most of that information is available on the wiki. It is worth checking the second book though, Children of the Void, as it precedes the book about the other planets and shows us the first information about using gates and planetary travel in the setting.
James Jacobs words are confirmed on the Distant Worlds setting book (page 53):
From a game perspective, portals are the easiest means of travel for GMs to manage, as it allows them to control when such travel is possible and where on a given world a party appears, as well as creating natural adventure hooks. Whether they’ve been carefully searching for such a gateway or simply stumble upon it in the center of a dungeon, it’s hard for PCs to resist stepping through a portal and seeing what’s on the other side.
Every planet on the book has a short list of adventure hooks, nearly all of them have at least one entry related to the gate on that planet.
The developers have previewed us with the major system differences on this blog article:
Hit Points, Stamina Points, and Resolve Points. In Starfinder, Hit Points measure the health and robustness of a character, while Stamina Points measure a character's readiness and energy (and can be replenished far more easily). Whenever you take damage, your Stamina Points are depleted before your Hit Points. In other words, you can soak up some hits without too much trouble, but once you start taking damage to your Hit Points, you're taking physical wounds that are much harder to heal quickly.
Starfinder characters also get a third pool of points called Resolve Points, which represent grit and luck. You can spend Resolve Points to power (or enhance) some class features, or to help you stay in a fight longer. Resolve Points also determine whether or not you die if both your Stamina Points and Hit Points are reduced to zero.
You can recover all of your Stamina Points by resting for 10 minutes and spending 1 Resolve Point; Resolve Points and some Hit Points are replenished after an 8-hour rest.
Armor Classes. Characters in Starfinder have two Armor Classes: Energy Armor Class (EAC) and Kinetic Armor Class (KAC). Attacks that deal energy damage (like the fire damage from your trusty red star plasma pistol) target EAC; attacks that deal kinetic damage (like the bludgeoning damage from a gravity well hammer) target KAC. Starfinder has no flat-footed or touch AC.
No Iterative Attacks. Starfinder characters normally get a single attack every round, and this holds true from level 1 to level 20—a character's number of attacks does not increase as their base attack bonus goes up. Instead, any character (even at first level!) can use a full action to make two attacks in a round, each at a -4 penalty.
Attacks of Opportunity. In Starfinder, only three things provoke attacks of opportunity: moving out of a threatened square, making a ranged attack, and casting a spell. That's it. No other actions provoke attacks of opportunity.
Magic is Magic. There is no distinction between types of magic in Starfinder, whether arcane, divine, psychic, or something else. Spellcasting classes like the mystic and technomancer have different spell lists, but are both harnessing the same latent magical energy that permeates the universe. In addition, spells in Starfinder have no components; all you need is the ability to cast a spell and concentration.
But there are way more changes in the system, some subtle, others not so much:
Point-buy. The points are now worth 1-to-1, meaning that the same point could raise an ability score from 10 to 11 and 15 to 16.
Traits. The system was replaced by the Themes, which are similar to D&D 5th edition Backgrounds, but give you an ability bonus at first level an knowledge-related ability specific to each theme, and bonus abilities at higher levels (at 6th, 12th and 18th levels). Themes can be used with every race and class combinations, and will never replace class features.
Archetypes. The idea for archetypes is that you can take archetypes with more than one class now, and depending on your class, the archetype will replace different abilities. There is only one archetype in the book, so we will have to wait to see how this plays out later on.
No classes grant 2 skill ranks per level anymore, they want skills to be more useful throughout the game.
Ability Scores gain a bonus every 5 levels now (down from 4). But the rule has changed, if the ability score is equal or bellow 16, you gain a +2 increase. If it's 17 or higher, it increases by +1. And you gain four increases on four different abilities of your choice.
Carrying Capacity. Tracking the weight of carried gear is no longer an issue, characters have a limit on what they can carry called Bulk, which is half your strength score, and each bulky item consumes a certain amount of bulk. A regular backpack increases your bulk as if your strenght was 1 point higher, and a military one increases it as if your strenght was 2 points higher. Though they cost 1 bulk, they don't cost any bulk when properly worn, only carried.
Critical Hits changed drastically on weapons. They only crit on a natural 20 (unless you have an ability saying otherwise, like soldiers), and they always deal double damage. But a lot of weapons have a special effect on a critical hit, such as causing the target to bleed, or cause extra fire damage, or even cause the staggered condition. A confirmation is no longer necessary for natural 20, but other results like a 19 on a 19-20 attack would require confirmation.
More skills are condensed into others. Like, Athletics now has rules for swimming and jumping, while Acrobatics has the rules for balance, tumbling, flying, and escape grapples and restraints. Handle Animal and Ride got condensed inside Survival, but there are no rules for tricks and training, you simply use the Diplomacy mechanics with animals using Survival.
Use Magic Device is gone, but scrolls and wands still technically exist, they are much less common now in a setting where anyone can buy a flamethrower and jetpacks.
Profession. The skill changed significantly, but the major change is that it now uses any of the three mental stats as base (int, wis or cha), and you get to pick which one if no example is provided.
Craft. It is much easier now to craft something you cannot find on shops, and takes much less time. You spend a certain amount of credit (equal to the market price of the item) and after a certain amount of time, based on the level of the item, it is done. Each item has a level, which decides the necessary ranks in the crafting skill you must have in order to create it. Selling anything crafted by yourself will result in 10% of the market value though. Crafting feats (magical or mundane) are nowhere to be found.
Diplomacy. The skill is still used for the same things, but the DC has changed significantly, it now works similarly to Intimidate, the DC is 10 + 1-1/2 the target CR (CR 4 creature is DC 16) or 10 + his total diplomacy (+5 diplomacy check results in DC 15). The skill clarifies that the target must have 3+ int, speak the same language and that it takes at least 1 minute of interaction. The initial attitude affects the DC (hostile +10, unfriendly +5, friendly -5).
Heal is now known as Medicine (for obvious reasons) and uses intelligence as base ability. The DC for long-term care is now 30 (down from 15, but a medpatch can grant +10 on this check and be used untrained) and still works pretty much the same, but if you exceed the DC by 10 points, they recover three times as many hit points and ability damage. The effects of Treat Deadly Wounds have changed, it takes 1 minute instead of 10 minutes, and now you can treat it twice per day if a medibay is used (up from once per day), and the DC is based on the equipment being used (25 for a medkit, 20 for an advanced medkit). There is a feat called Medical Expert that allows you to treat deadly wounds as a full round action using a medpatch.
5-foot step is gone as we know it. We have an move action called Guarded Step, which allows you to move more carefully for 5 feet. If you gain bonus move actions, you could also use those actions to make extra Guarded Steps.
Conditions. While the game has the exact same conditions from Pathfinder, their effects have changed. The flat-footed condition, for instance, happens if you have not acted in combat yet and you simply take -2 to AC.
Haste and effects that would grant additional attacks simply means the penalties are reduced if you decide to make multiple attacks that round. Autofire weapons allow you to make a single attack roll and affect multiple creatures in an area if your result is enough to hit their AC, like an area spell (source).
Swift Actions. Changing your grip on your weapon and dropping prone are now swift actions, and you only got one swift action per round, but you can downgrade a move action to a swift action. Reactions (known previously as Immediate Actions) and Swift Actions are completely separated from each other.
Reactions happen after the action that triggered them, unless they are a defensive reaction (like Total Defense), then it happens before the trigger. This is a new type of action to cover several situations. Attacks of opportunity are now Reactions and still happen before the action that triggered them.
Precise Shot. The -4 penalty for firing with allies within 10 feet of your target is gone, along with the feat that removes said penalty. The aiming systems of all weaponry are simply superior.
Combat Maneuvers are all Standard Actions, even sunder, trip or disarm. And you can pin a target that you attempt to grapple and exceed his kinetic AC by 13 points. CMB and CMB are gone, and each maneuver must be checked against the target's kinetic AC plus 8. Feats are no longer necessary as no maneuver causes attacks of opportunity.
Difficult Terrain and Hampered Movement. If your character's movement is doubled twice, then each square moved counts as 4 squares (6 on diagonals). If it is doubled three times, then each square counts as 8 squares (12 on diagonals).
Areas and spell terms are now separated from the magic chapter, including descriptors and rules commonly used by spells, such as Charm, Concentration, Instantaneous, Line of Sight, Cone areas, etc
Concentration checks are gone (source). But some spells still require concentrating on their effects.
Prepared spells are nowhere to be seen, both casters presented in the book are spontaneous casters (spells knows and spells per day mechanics).
Spell levels, spells are condensed between 1 and 6 spell levels, certain spells that are 9th level spells in pathfinder are 6th level spells in starfinder.
Touch spells mostly do not allow attacks of opportunity against you. There are other spells with this exception, but each individual spell calls this out.
Best Answer
Sorry, it took me a bit to finish reading Ultimate Campaign. All right, a comparison of the kingdom building rules in "Of Cities and Kings" from Rivers Run Red, the second issue of the Kingmaker Pathfinder Adventure Path, and the kingdom building rules from the Pathfinder RPG hardback Ultimate Campaign.
They are basically the same rules, slightly expanded. What is 10 pages in Rivers Run Read is 30 pages in Ultimate Campaign, plus some pages of optional rules.
Some of that is more options - like in terms of Leadership Roles, Rivers Run Red has 11 and Ultimate Campaign has 14 - and some of it is padding; for example the Councilor entry has the same mechanics but 6 lines of fluff verbiage rather than 1. So that additional page count is part more stuffs and part blabbering (though if you were confused by the sparsity of explanation in the Kingmaker version, that's not necessarily bad).
The "Improvement" phase gets renamed the "Edict" phase and other such, but in general you're getting the same system with a bit more of each of the lists-of-bits. There are some more buildings; you can do terrain improvements (waterways, bridges)... What it doesn't appear to have a bit more of is playtesting. Same system, most of the same holes. They did do bolt-on fixes to plug some of the most well known holes, like in the Income phase you can no longer sell magic items created by your city (no real in-game reason given, just to stop the "infinite monies exploit" popular among Kingmakers). They also took the Economy +1 and left only the Loyalty +1 benefit on graveyards, to avoid the Necropolis Gambit. So the various costs and DCs are left 90% the same, with some tweaks.
In general you are getting the exact same system in Ultimate Campaign (same grid layout page, same mechanics) with some additions and some cursory changes to prevent the most well known of the exploits in the previous system.