Settlements (back)
| Capital City |
|---|
| A kingdom should have a capital city—the seat of your power. Your first settlement is your capital. If you want to designate a different settlement as the capital, you may do so in Step 7 of the Edict phase. Your capital city primarily comes into play if your kingdom loses hexes. If you change the capital city, attempt a Stability check. Success means Unrest increases by 1; failure means Unrest increases by 1d6. |
The greatest assets of your kingdom are its settlements. For a kingdom to grow, it must be able to cultivate great cities to serve as the linchpins of its trade, culture, and productivity. Even in the most rural of nations, a great many of its citizens congregate in its urban centers, and here also its armies muster and train, its culture blossoms, and its future is forged.
Villages: When a settlement is founded, it begins its existence as a thorp, hamlet, or village, a small group of buildings situated around some appealing natural feature or existing trade-way. Villages may grow slowly, serving as the focus of social and commercial life in rural areas, though they can grow rapidly if your rulers wish.
Towns: Villages growing beyond their initial square evolve into towns as business increases and more settlers move to avail themselves of greater opportunities for work, trade, and access to services. Single-family dwellings may soon be outnumbered by crowded apartments built over the top of inns, workshops, or other businesses.
Cities: Towns whose prosperity allows them to continue expanding grow into true cities, sprawling tangles of streets and buildings where lavish culture walks hand in hand with crime and corruption, balancing industry with education and
trade with the lingering vestiges of provincial traditions.
| District Preparation |
|---|
| Terrain | Prep Time | Prep Cost |
| Desert | 1 month | 4 BP |
| Forest | 2 months | 4 BP |
| Hill | 1 month | 2 BP |
| Jungle, Mountain, or Underground | 4 months | 12 BP |
| Marsh | 3 months | 8 BP |
| Plains | Immediate | 1 BP |
To put a settlement in a claimed hex, you'll need to prepare the site. This process may involve clearing trees, moving boulders, digging sanitation trenches, and so on. See the District Preparation table for the time required and 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.
Districts are divided into 9 large blocks separated by streets. Each block consists of 4 smaller lots separated by alleys for a total of 36 lots per district. Each lot is approximately 200 feet per side, an area of roughly an acre per lot. On each lot you may eventually construct a building, and each building affects your kingdom's Economy, Loyalty, and so on.
Most settlements only have 1 district. If a district is full and you want to add another, you can create an additional district in the same way as the first. Remember that additional settlements will affect your kingdom's Control DC.
You improve settlements by constructing Buildings, which provide bonuses to the kingdom in general and the settlement in particular. Some buildings also intersect with the mass combat rules, notably with fortifications and reserve armies.
The placement of buildings in your district is up to you—you can start in the center of the district and build outward, or start at the edge and build toward the center. Some buildings (such as the Guildhall) take up more than 1 lot on the grid. You can't divide up these larger structures, though you can place them so they cover a street.
| Settlement Size |
|---|
| Size | Type | Population Multiplier | Max Base Value |
| 1 lot | Thorp | x1 | 50 gp |
| 2 lots | Hamlet | x1 | 200 gp |
| 3-4 lots | Village | x1 | 500 gp |
| 5-16 lots | Small Town | x2 | 1,000 gp |
| 17-36 lots | Large Town | x2 | 2,000 gp |
| 2 districts | Small City | x3 | 4,000 gp |
| 3-4 districts | Large City | x3 | 8,000 gp |
| 5+ districts | Metropolis | x4 | 16,000 gp |
Construction of a building is completed in the same turn you spend BP for the building, no matter what its size is. A building's benefits apply to your kingdom immediately. At the GM's discretion, construction magic (such as lyre of building, fabricate, or wall of stone) can reduce a single building's BP cost by 2 (minimum 0). This is a one-time reduction per turn, regardless of the amount of magic used.
Base Value: The base value of a settlement is used to determine what magic items may easily be purchased there. There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale in the settlement with little effort. The base value of a new settlement is 0 gp. Certain buildings (such as a Market or Tavern) increase a settlement's base value. A settlement's base value can only increase above the values listed in the table if special permission is given by the GM.
Consumption: Each hex can support a single village with up to 4 lots of buildings without increasing Consumption. Other than that, each settlement district increases consumption by 1.
Defense: A settlement's Defense is used with the mass combat rules. It otherwise has no effect unless the settlement is attacked. You can increase a settlement's Defense by building certain structures (such as City Walls).
Population: A settlement's population is based on the buildings which occupy its lots, multiplied by a value based on its Size. (On average, each lot will have a base population of 50 people, resulting in a base population of 1,800 people per district.)
Magic Items in Settlements
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. When you construct one of these buildings, note in your kingdom records 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.
Example: Jessica 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. Using the tables from the Core Rulebook and Ultimate Equipment results in the herbalist acquiring a potion of endure elements. 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). 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.
Redevelopment
Demolition: If a lot has a building, you can clear it for new construction. Doing so costs 1 BP. You may construct a building on a lot the same turn you demolish the old building there. You do not regain BP for a demolished building (but see Rebuilding, below).
Destroyed Lots: If an event or a pillaging army destroys 1 or more lots, the devastation causes Unrest to increase by 1 per lot destroyed.
Rebuilding: If you rebuild the same type of building on a destroyed lot, the cost is halved, as you can reuse some of the materials for the same purpose. If you rebuild a different type of building on that lot, reduce the cost of the new building by 1/4 the cost of the old building (minimum 1 BP). If you build smaller buildings on top of a site that held a multi-lot building, split the discount evenly over the new buildings. For example, if you demolish an Academy and construct a Mansion and a Luxury Store on top of those lots, each building gets a 6 BP discount (1/4 of 52 BP is 13, divided evenly between the two).
