Settlement Rules

Settlements and Districts
The greatest assets of your kingdom are its settlements. Most settlements start as simple villages, and some grow over time into bustling cities. You can use the District Grid to create the initial design for your settlement and decide where to place additional buildings as it grows. You may want to photocopy the District Grid so you can build multiple settlements in your kingdom.

The District Grid is divided into 9 large blocks separated by streets. Each block consists of 4 smaller lots separated by alleys. Treat each lot as approximately 750 feet per side, so overall the district takes up about 1 square mile. On each lot you may construct a building, and each building affects your kingdom’s Economy, Loyalty, and so on. Descriptions of these buildings, as well as the bonuses they provide once they’re added to a settlement.

Most settlements only have 1 district. If your District Grid is full and you want to add another district (for example, if you run out of available lots in that settlement and want to construct additional buildings), you can create an additional district for that settlement by paying the preparation cost for the settlement’s terrain as listed on Table: Terrain and Terrain Improvements. Remember that your kingdom’s Control DC is based on the number of districts in your settlement.

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. (Streets do not count as lots.)

Construction: Construction 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.

Population: A settlement’s population is approximately equal to the number of completed lots within its districts × 250. a grid that has all 36 lots filled with buildings has a population of approximately 9,000.

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 never increase above the values listed in Table: Settlement Size and Base Value (except under special circumstances decided by the GM).

Defense: A settlement’s Defense is used with the mass combat rules presented here. 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).

Table: Settlement Size and Base Value
Population Settlement Size Base Value
Fewer than 21 Thorp 50 gp
21–60 Hamlet 200 gp
61–200 Village 500 gp
201–2,000 Small town 1,000 gp
2,001–5,000 Large town 2,000 gp
5,001–10,000 Small city 4,000 gp
10,001–25,000 Large city 8,000 gp
More than 25,000 Metropolis 16,000 gp
Founding a Settlement
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.)

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: 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: 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. 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. 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
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: 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.

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.

Claiming Water and Islands
When you claim a hex that contains part of an ocean or lake, your claim includes the water portion of that hex. In effect, your kingdom automatically controls a small portion of the waters adjacent to its coastline. Because any new hex you claim must be adjacent to an existing hex in your kingdom, if you want to claim land beyond that water (such as an island), you must first explore and claim the intervening deep water hexes. Your exploration only applies to the water’s surface—you are searching for uncharted islands, dangerous reefs, and so on. The GM may want to treat the underwater portion of a hex as a separate hex, much like a network of large caves under a hex may count as its own hex, allowing a village of merfolk or sahuagin to thrive in your kingdom without your knowledge.