So, nearly three months later, I think I’ve fully prepared my large-scale setting document. I’m still working on the map and description of the specific region the players will be in, but the 24-mile hex map and document are up.
If anyone here is really bored, I’d appreciate it if they took a look through. I’ve enabled comments, if you want to leave notes on specific parts, but forum posts are welcome too. Any general thoughts about how it could be improved, praise for bits you found interesting, etc, would be appreciated. I’m particularly interested in the perspective of other GMs- is this less than you normally work with? More?
The modifications and titles of the domain rules per kingdom are neat! I skimmed the rest, to be honest, but I can say this is quite a lot more than I give out when I GM.
In Zahre, is it even possible to have a profitable domain, with -2 gp land value and +2 gp garrison cost? Or is the intent that overlords need to be constantly looking for other ways to prop up morale?
Hmm, that’s a good question. (Also, I noticed somebody clicked on the hyperlink- I forgot to mention that that I’m planning on putting in a few hyperlinks and then giving permission as the party gains access to that knowledge. The hyperlinks are there initially to serve as a reminder that there’s always more information to find.)
makes a spreadsheet
It’s quite possible. Even if you’ve only got a wilderness domain with 2 GP land value, it’ll start being profitable after 252 families. (Which, admittedly, is a long time to wait, but the negative costs of a starting domain are negligible to an adventuring name-level adventurer, and the growth bonus should help them get out of that stage faster.)
For comparison, even with tax, civilized realms are much, much cheaper, due to both reduced garrison costs and reduced stronghold costs. A domain of 48 families can be profitable there. (Although it’ll total .2 GP a month profit. That’s not even per family; once they pay tithes, taxes, garrison, etc, they’ll have two silver coins left.)
So, my group is looking at ways to transport loot, and last time around, everyone bought a wagon and horses to pull it, but this time we’ve found the “wagons don’t go in forests” rule, and there’s forests all over the place, so they’re considering ditching wheels.
Now they’re confused, because it looks like heavy horses are in all ways superior to mules. They cost twice as much, and can carry twice as much. This means that you get your choice of either loading down the horse to get two mule’s carrying out of it, or giving it one mule’s worth of goods and enjoying a beast that goes twice as fast.
I was actually planning to respond with a post about the different availabilities of mules and heavy horses in different markets.
Then I looked it up and found out that the category is 11-100 gp, and both mules (20 gp) and heavy draft horses (40 gp) have the same availability.
Of course, if you’re in a small enough market, you might not be able to buy enough of each of them (a Class IV market has only a single one of each), but that’s a problem with any piece of gear.
The heavy horse is priced such that it can carry two mules’ worth of goods at the speed of a mule. That is as it should be.
Yes, you can get one mule’s worth of goods and go twice as fast. But then you’ve paid double the price for the carrying capacity.
I know that you feel the flexibility should be worth something but consider this: travel is dangerous; beasts of burden die. If you spend all your money on one heavy horse and it dies or runs off, you have no beast of burden at all. With two mules you can distribute the risk.
So, I’ve seen several discussions on how NPC stats should be generated, but I haven’t seen many about henchman proficiencies.
The last time I ran, the party generally had a pretty clear idea of what they needed their hench to have (We want a Cleric with all the Healing! If Healing VIII existed we would want it!) Now, the easiest and kindest option would be to just let them pick all the profs on their henchmen (this also makes sense for another reason: if Henchmen are backup characters, players will want to write their own sheet) but it feels unsatisfying to have the exact right kind of adventurer hanging around.
On the other hand, even in a class 2 settlement, there’ll be 5d20 (average 50) Normal Men available for hire; if the PCs want to conduct interviews (“are YOU a healer? NEXT!”) it seems reasonable that they’d be able to find the right kind of guy… eventually. Not sure how to simulate that.
I’m also considering allowing players to write a large pile of henchmen of each level, and then creating a sort of henchmen deck. “So, this town has… 2d6 level 1’s for hire, which means there are… ooh, low roll, only three. You meet Steve the Healing Cleric, John the Mage, and run into Steve the Fighter from the last town again!” The downside of this plan is that I doubt my players will want to write an extra 50 characters.
I roll randomly for class and template, and the template provides a proficiency.
In your run-of-the-mill human settlements, I use the table from page 248 to determine what class a henchman will be. I’ve made up my own table for Dwarven settlements and human settlements with a slightly religious bent (mostly it adds paladins and makes bladedancers/clerics a bit more common).
For whatever class gets picked, I then roll for the template in the player’s companion.
Example: The party recruits in Fallcrest, a Class V human settlement. They find a single level 1 henchman for hire. I roll a 6, telling me this hench is an explorer. Then I roll 12 on the explorer templates, telling me this explorer is a “Waylayer” with the proficiencies Ambushing and Intimidation (plus some gear).
If the stats indicate enough intelligence for extra proficiencies, I generally throw my party a bone and let them pick those.
Ah, the Player’s Companion! I knew there were useful things in there I was missing. I need to give that book a more thorough reading for sure. That seems like an ideal solution.
My issue with using templates for bulk henchman generation is that you’re going to see a lot of the 9-12 templates… I think I’d rather use 1d12+2 or 1d12+3 than 3d6 for henchmen - after all, henchmen are probably not that well off, if they’re signing on with adventurers (this also eliminates the possibility of players hiring a henchman, then killing him for his horse…).
yeah, i’ll sometimes “cheat” and reroll when i get bored of getting the same result. If you’re just using it for proficiencies, nothing wrong with making the roll more random, but the gear is based on the idea that each template has slightly more gold than the last, they’re essentially modeled off of 3d6*10gp as starting money.
Yes - that the template roll is functionally 3d6*10 gp is why lowering the mean roll / cutting off the high end might model the fact that well-off individuals are less likely to sign on as henchmen.
Are beastman armies meant to be modelled using the domain system (Recruited as conscripts/mercenaries from the realm, and then trained, and paid wages) or merely handwaved to be however many orcs seem reasonable?
The introductory adventure for my campaign is that the players lead the defense of an important town after a group of beastmen slip past the lines of the ruler to the north; the first few sessions are a Dragon Age style “Quick, make alliances and cajole people onto our side!” followed by a platoon-scale introduction to Domains at War.
The only question is how large to actually make the beastman army, and what composition it should have.
