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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen
Kingdoms and War / Kingdom Building

Founding a Settlement

Source Ultimate Campaign pg. 212
Before you can start your own kingdom, you first need a base of operations—a fort, village, or other settlement—where you can rest between adventures and where your citizens know they can find you if they need help or want to pay their taxes. Once you have a kingdom, you’ll want to create more settlements in order for the kingdom to grow and prosper. To found a settlement, you must perform the following steps. (These steps assume you’re building a new settlement from scratch; if you’re attempting to incorporate an existing settlement into your kingdom, see Free City under Special Terrain)

Step 1—Acquire funds. You’ll need money and resources in the form of build points.

Step 2—Explore and clear a hex. You’ll need to explore the hex where you want to put the settlement. See the Exploration Time column on Table 4–6: Terrain and Terrain Improvements to see how long this takes. Once you have explored the hex, clear it of monsters and dangerous hazards. The time needed to clear it depends on the nature of the threats; this step is usually handled by you completing adventures there to kill or drive out monsters.

Step 3—Claim the hex as yours. Once you have BP and have explored and cleared the hex, you can claim it. Spend 1 BP to do so; this represents setting up very basic infrastructure such as clearing paths, hiring patrols, setting up a tent city, and so on. This establishes the hex as part of your kingdom (or the beginning of your kingdom).

Step 4—Prepare the site for construction. To put a settlement on a claimed hex, you’ll need to prepare it. Depending on the site, this process may involve clearing trees, moving boulders, digging sanitation trenches, and so on. See the Preparation Cost column on Table 4–6: Terrain and Terrain Improvements for the BP cost.

If your settlement is in a hex containing a canal, lake, ocean, river, or similar large body of water, you must decide which of your settlement’s borders are water (riverbanks, lakeshores, or seashores) or land. Some types of buildings, such as Mills, Piers, and Waterfronts, must be adjacent to water.

A new settlement consists of 1 district, represented by the District Grid map on page 226. Mark the four borders on the District Grid as land or water, as appropriate.

Step 5—Construct your first buildings. Construct 1 building in your settlement and pay its BP cost. See Building Descriptions for building types. If this is your kingdom’s first settlement, you should start with an Inn, Shrine, Monastery, or Watchtower. In addition, you may also purchase and construct 1 House, Mansion, Noble Villa, or Tenement. If your first building is an Inn, you must construct a House or Tenement next to it, as building an Inn requires an adjacent House or Tenement.

When you complete these steps, you’ve founded your settlement! If this is your first settlement, it’s considered your kingdom’s capital city.

Magic Items in Settlements

Source Ultimate Campaign pg. 213
In addition to the commonly available items in a settlement as determined by its base value, some buildings increase the likelihood of having specific or unusual magic items available for purchase.

Gaining Item Slots: When you construct one of these buildings, mark the appropriate boxes in the Magic Items section of the settlement’s District Grid; this indicates that the settlement has gained a slot for an item of that type.

Filling Item Slots: In Step 3 of the Upkeep phase, you roll to fill vacant magic item slots in each district. Roll d% once for each district that has an open magic item slot (if the district has more than one, select one randomly). There is a 50% chance (51–100) that an appropriate magic item becomes available in that slot. This item’s price cannot exceed the base value for the settlement (reroll if the item’s price exceeds the settlement’s base value).

Example: Jessica’s settlement has a base value of 200 gp. She built an Herbalist last turn, giving the settlement 1 minor potion slot. In the Upkeep phase this turn, she rolls d% and gets a result of 62, meaning she can roll a random minor potion to fill the settlement’s empty slot. She rolls on Table 15–12: Potions and gets a result of 45, indicating a potion of a 1st-level spell. If she had rolled anything more valuable than the 200 gp base value for her settlement, she would have to reroll until she got an acceptable result. Once a magic item is rolled for a settlement in this way, it remains on the market until someone purchases it.

Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Equipment includes extensive random magic item tables for specific slots and price increments. These tables may be more convenient than using the magic item tables in the Core Rulebook.

Emptying Item Slots: If you are unsatisfied with a magic item generated by a settlement, there are three ways to purge an undesirable item and make its slot vacant. The first is to purchase it with your own gp, which makes it your personal property and means you may do with it what you please (use it, sell it at half price for gold, deposit it in the kingdom’s Treasury during the next Income phase, use it as a reward for a local general, and so on).

The second method is to manipulate your kingdom’s economy to encourage an NPC to purchase the item (such as a random adventurer passing through the settlement). During Step 3 of the Income phase, you may attempt one Economy check for each filled slot you want to empty. For every such check after the first one in a turn, your Economy decreases by 1, since these manipulations are harmful to your kingdom’s economy and typically only serve to get rid of an item you consider undesirable. If the check fails, nothing happens. If the check succeeds, erase the item from that slot; you may attempt to fill the empty slot as normal in the next Upkeep phase. You do not gain any gp or BP from this sale; the money goes to the building’s owner, who uses it to acquire or craft the next item.

The third way is to spend BP (1 BP = 2,000 gp) to purchase the item. If you take the item for your own use, this counts as withdrawing BP from the Treasury for your personal use (see Make Withdrawals from the Treasury on page 207). If you use the item in a way that doesn’t directly benefit you or the other PCs (such as giving it to a hero of your army or donating it to a settlement as a religious or historical artifact), then purchasing it is essentially like other kingdom expenditures and does not increase Unrest or decrease Loyalty.