The hex clearing rules draw a distinction between Civilised, Borderland and Wilderness hexes, but I was under the impression that unpopulated hexes were always treated as Wilderness, irrespective of how close they were to civilisation. Am I wrong about this? If not, what are the borderland and civilsed columns even for?
Also, how does claiming a hex work when there are no possible lairs in the domain, can the lord simply declare the hex is now in their domain, and stroll in like they own the place?
The hex clearing rules draw a distinction between Civilised, Borderland and Wilderness hexes, but I was under the impression that unpopulated hexes were always treated as Wilderness, irrespective of how close they were to civilisation. Am I wrong about this? If not, what are the borderland and civilsed columns even for?
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I can't find anything about unpopulated hexes defaulting to Wilderness. I think that status is based exclusively on proximity to large settlements.
[quote="James K"]
Also, how does claiming a hex work when there are no possible lairs in the domain, can the lord simply declare the hex is now in their domain, and stroll in like they own the place?
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Well, he'd still have to build a stronghold to secure it, and if there's no possible monsters, that means it is Civilized, which means he's about to be someone's neighbor. Presumably the local baron will want to have words with whoever is building a castle on his doorstep.
I was thinking of a situation where a PC has built up a domain in the wilderness and has a class IV market making the surrounds civilized. In this scenario could they just add as many hexes as their stronghold permits?
I think this answer to this depends in large part on the answer to the “Hexes with zero lairs” question, namely how does a PC know when a hex has no lairs left.
If a PC was aware that the surrounding hexes were clear of monsters, then yes, I would allow them to just add the hexes to their domain. (Doing so would not automatically increase their population though!)
Yea, most likely. If they've done the work to ensure the hex is clear and it's covered by their stronghold, the only thing that's missing is families and garrison.
I don't think the rules really touch on "zero population hexes", so; I'd want one to have to increase their garrison by the amount they roll on the "new families by domain type" table to treat the hex as "owned" - just so the player has some skin in the game initially. (for the next NPC that comes by thinking, hey, I can take this empty hex...nope, it's patrolled...)
If the hex has absolutely no one in it, the PC would probably want to bootstrap it with investment to start getting something out of it faster, perhaps, regular growth rates would be horrific.
I’m doing this right now in the game I’m runninh. The party is staking out a domain in territory uninhabited by humans. I’ve ruled that securing it requires a daily patrol of, I think, around 150 gp worth of troops? I can’t recall off the top of my head. The garrison size is based on the number of families, and since there are no families yet I ballparked a number. The party has already cleared the hex and I’ve decided that if they patrol it daily they will automatically encounter any wandering monsters before they have a chance to resettle in a lair.