Assassination of player characters

[Green Knight]

Hi

I say go right ahead, although assassination shouldn`t be too easy, nor
too common. Games of Birthright should be mre about domains and
dynasties than single characters. Besides, is a dead regent any worse
than having a plague sweep your realm, or someone trash your army???

BJorn

-----Original Message-----
From: Birthright Roleplaying Game Discussion
[mailto:BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM] On Behalf Of Solmyr
Sent: 17. desember 2002 22:56
To: BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
Subject: Assassination of player characters

My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

--

Solmyr of the Azure Star
solmyr@kolumbus.fi
World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
"War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."

************************************************** **********************
****
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives:
http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Solmyr]

My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

--

Solmyr of the Azure Star
solmyr@kolumbus.fi
World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
"War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[geeman]

At 11:55 PM 12/17/2002 +0200, Solmyr wrote:

>My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
>of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
>significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
>was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
>assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

Well, if I were to run a PBeM I`d have a moratorium on assassinations and
on dueling. The characters in the published materials have such a wide
range of character levels that direct conflict is probably not
fair. That`s not to say there would be no "adventure level"
assassinations/duels. They`d just be DM/PBeM Master inspired events rather
than player conflicts.

Gary

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[kgauck]

Its nearly impossible to kill someone without getting someone to be able to
work unnoticed on the inside. That means either you need to get one of your
assassins to become a regular inside the court of the potential victim, or
you need to have someone with a grievance (already inside) willing to carry
out the mission. This requires multiple espionage missions. Actually, as
might be becoming apparent, I prefer complex events be modeled by multiple
actions, even if, when all is said and done, the odds remain about 50:50.
The reason is that multiple actions allow for discovery and intervention by
victims and third parties. It costs more to take multiple actions, and more
time is a precious commodity. I`d say that an assasination requires 3
actions for a regent, at minimum. And if the PC were being espionaged, I
wouldn`t keep him totally in the dark, unless the espionage rolls were very
good. I wouldn`t tell him what was up, but I would drop hints like
describing that a known freelance agent was captured and killed himself
before revealing his connections. Makes you wonder, but what is the problem
to uncover? Good espionage actions should be covered by still and
additional action to ideally be discovered instead of the true action. I`m
now up to 4+ actions to kill someone. One to recruit the inside connection,
or to place the insider, one to collect intelligence and formulate a plan
based on collected intelligence, one to perform the assasination, and one to
create a diversion. If someone can do all of that without being discovered,
I`d allow an attempt. I`d also disallow bidding on the assasination action
itself.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Lord Grave]

>
> > Besides, is a dead regent any worse than having a plague sweep your
> > realm, or someone trash your army???
>

Personally, I feel more attached to my character than to my domain.
That`s while I like to play high level characters regardless of their
bloodline power or domain.

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Lord Grave]

I roleplay this with the character in question.

If someone wants to personally attack an enemy, it is a simple adventure
action that involves sneaking through the palace and the final combat.

If someone wants to locate an assassin, it is Espionage action. However,
this action is used only to locate the assassin. Indeed, individuals who
would be willing to attempt assassination of important figure are very
rare. If assassin is successfully located, I roleplay the combat with
the target character.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Birthright Roleplaying Game Discussion
> [mailto:BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM] On Behalf Of Solmyr
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:56 PM
> To: BIRTHRIGHT-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
> Subject: Assassination of player characters
>
>
> My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the
> possibility of assassinating player character regents? In my
> experience it can cause significant amount of bad feeling all
> around, especially if the player was particularly attached to
> the character. Yet is total immunity to assassination the
> only option? Any thoughts on this?
>
> --
>
> Solmyr of the Azure Star
> solmyr@kolumbus.fi
> World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
> The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
> "War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."
>
> ************************************************** ************
> **************
> The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
> Birthright-l Archives:
> http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-> l.html
> To
> unsubscribe, send email to
> LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
> with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.
>

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[ryancaveney]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Bjørn Eian Sørgjerd wrote:

> I say go right ahead, although assassination shouldn`t be too easy,
> nor too common. Games of Birthright should be mre about domains and
> dynasties than single characters.

While I would like to agree, unfortunately assassination is necessarily
at least in part about single characters, and therefore depends upon the
way they are modeled in the FRPG underlying the domain system. Part of
the problem is determining the proper difficulty to assign to the
assassination attempt. It is a contest between the abilities of the
assassin and the preparations of the target, in which magic plays the role
of high technology -- a simple spell like Wizard Lock can completely
defeat even a very high-level assassin who lacks the appropriate magical
tools. Certain regents are so personally powerful that they should be
essentially unkillable except by opponents of the same "epic level"; this
goes not only for awnsheghlien, but also for wizards of decent level --
knocking off Darien Avan ought to be child`s play compared to an attempt
to kill High Mage Aelies, because even though Avan`s domain is much more
powerful, he as a person is pretty weak, comparatively.

> Besides, is a dead regent any worse than having a plague sweep your
> realm, or someone trash your army???

Depends on who the regent is. If a band of superpowerful adventurers got
together and managed to kill the Gorgon, the political repercussions would
be vastly greater than yet another defeat of his latest army of conquest.
I in fact played a wizard regent in one of Solmyr`s BR PBEMs who
participated in an analogous commando raid, which essentially ended the
whole PBEM then and there. Then, of course, there were the views of the
player whose court wizard I was, who said that the way the campaign was
structured, it was basically impossible to defeat this big bad guy on the
domain level -- or that even succeeding at doing so would be irrelevant,
because he could just keep coming back.

This was essentially using an adventure action to play out the effect of
an espionage (assassination) action, which is pretty much the only way I
can see of figuring out whether it works when full-blown D&D magic exists
underneath. The best way I can see to make assassination work in a
domain-only game is to eliminate nearly all concept of regents as people,
and say that holding levels alone determine target number, and a success
causes some loss of regency and an action or two to the victim, and a
greater number of random events for the next few domain turns as things
shake themselves out.


Ryan Caveney

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Peter Lubke]

On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 08:55, Solmyr wrote:
> My question pertains mainly to PBEMs. How do people view the possibility
> of assassinating player character regents? In my experience it can cause
> significant amount of bad feeling all around, especially if the player
> was particularly attached to the character. Yet is total immunity to
> assassination the only option? Any thoughts on this?

PBEMs

Assassination should be perfectly fine.
In a PBEM (in any domain game) the player is playing a Domain not a
Character. The domain endures after the assassination of the regent -
although a domain action may be lost, eventually the heir takes over.

Yes, even the greater awnsheghlien. Rumour has it that the Spider isn`t
the original of that name for example.

Assassination as an attempt to usurp the throne is another matter
entirely. This would require extensive lead-up work, and the targeted
domain would have to be pretty shaky and ready to fall due to a number
of possible events - assassination being but one of them. Assassination
by itself is not enough.

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[irdeggman]

Assassination was always one of the domain actions that I personally despised. The fate of a character down to a single dice roll? I always insisted that the dice roll determined whether or not the opportunity existed for a potentially successful assassination and then role-played the "encounter". Now in a PBEM game this is a different situation and I tend to agree with Peter Lubke. It is possible (and likely) but also requires a substatntial amount of time to set up, hence it is not really a single action but a series of actions. In the Alternity RPG there was a thing called a complex skill check which essentially involved making a series of successful checks in order to obtain the desired result.

[Ariadne]

In the Cerilian History assasination is already practiced: The mage-King El-Arrasi (foundor of the modern Khinasi) was assaninated by the Serpent.

IMO this can be a practice in evil lands, but not common in others. Assasinating PC's might anger them, but they should lern early to fortify their private rooms. My priestess' bedroom for example is protected by serveral "glyph of warding"s, a "Symbol: Stun" and a scroll with a "page guardian" laying there. The complete room is warded by a "forbiddance" spell. So the chance, someone of the "Brotherhood of Khet" can enter (and survive) it to assassinate her, is very small (No one has tried it until now)!

[ConjurerDragon]

Ariadne wrote:

>This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
> You can view the entire thread at: http://www.birthright.net/read.php?TID=1158
>Ariadne wrote:
> In the Cerilian History assasination is already practiced: The mage-King El-Arrasi (foundor of the modern Khinasi) was assaninated by the Serpent.
>IMO this can be a practice in evil lands, but not common in others. Assasinating PC`s might anger them, but they should lern early to fortify their private rooms. My priestess` bedroom for example is protected by serveral "glyph of warding"s, a "Symbol: Stun" and a scroll with a "page guardian" laying there. The complete room is warded by a "forbiddance" spell. So the chance, someone of the "Brotherhood of Khet" can enter (and survive) it to assassinate her, is very small (No one has tried it until now)!
>
Is your priestess paranoid? Sounds like pretty much magical defence ;-)
But a highlevel rogue could still disable them and sneak past those
glyphs of warding...
Hmm, now that I consider it - who cleans your bedroom up, and sweeps
dust and cleans the floor? You have to be very specific with those magic
(and allow some other people to enter) or you´ll waste much of your time
needed to rule with cleaning your private chamber :-)

However I concur in that assasination is EVIL - Machiavelli certainly
could not convince the good regents to use it as a tool.
Even less likely the Anuireans with their code of noble war, chivalry
and such - assasination is something anyone calling himself knight,
paladin or cavalier would despise. Evil rulers on the other hand :-)
bye
Michael

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Onwen Agelmore]

Assassination always was an easy way to handle some problems...
It was on history. In braveheart the LongSwanks try to assassinate Willian Wallace to silence his word. An Assassination is the best way to end whith a Hero. What is Domain whitout his Leader?
Imagine if Avan sent someone to kill the Arch Duke, it was easy to him to defeat what remain of hes kingdon...

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Romes" <Archmage@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 12:31 PM

> Even less likely the Anuireans with their code of noble war, chivalry
> and such - assasination is something anyone calling himself knight,
> paladin or cavalier would despise. Evil rulers on the other hand :-)

But there are rulers in Anuire other than the knightly landed rulers. Would
guilders object to assasination? We know somthing about many of the
Anuirean guilders, and as a group I don`t think these guys would scruple to
reject assasination. I`d even throw the templars of Sera in there too.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by ConjurerDragon

Is your priestess paranoid? Sounds like pretty much magical defence ;-) But a highlevel rogue could still disable them and sneak past those glyphs of warding...
Oh jes, a little (She has already got some attacks). A thief might get trough the wardings, but he must be REALY GOOD (and he will still do enough noise to wake her up, if he DETECTS those traps)...


Hmm, now that I consider it - who cleans your bedroom up, and sweeps dust and cleans the floor? You have to be very specific with those magic (and allow some other people to enter) or you´ll waste much of your time needed to rule with cleaning your private chamber :-)
That I already asked myself too. She gave one or two trustful peoples the password, I think (and a CG character with the password can always pass her wardings)...

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ariadne" <brnetboard@TUARHIEVEL.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 1:37 AM

> That I already asked myself too. She gave one or two trustful
> peoples the password, I think (and a CG character with the
> password can always pass her wardings)...

Such a figure maintains a minimal court at best, and probabaly has a
reputation of paranoia. Even smallish noble houses were maintained by what
would look to us as an army of servants. Watch the opening sequence of
Dangerous Laisons some time, and notice that both the vicomte and the
marquis are dressed by a half dozen people. Throw in the food preperation
and you have another half dozen. Then you have the folks who clean. Other
staff have duties like moving your conveyance about, still others are likely
in a noble household. Even if you imagine Cerilian households as being
something less grand than Earth`s early modern period, that still adds up to
many servants.

Even so, contraversial nobles who lived in times of greatest risk of
assasination (Italian Renaissance, English & French Reformation) endured a
high ratio of attempted assasinations to successful ones. Further, they
tended to be in public places when a noble was moving between seccure
locations. A ruler who isolates themselves will not have day to day control
of their holdings and may become vulnerable to a great captain. If you want
to kill Caesar, you do it in the Senate and you make sure that the plot goes
as far as Brutus. You kill Lincoln at Ford`s Theater, Henry IV in the
streets of Paris. And this despite large households. In fact, in many
regards, the larger the household, the harder it is to get into the bedroom.
The hermit has a mere handful of servants to kill/ sleep/ hold while the
grand noble has an army of eyes and ears to sound the alarm. Even if you
send a ninja to kill a ruler in their sleep, its more likely that a crowded
palace will find a trail of dead/ sleeped/ held servants and thereby tip off
the ruler.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Onwen Agelmore]

just to know, how much GB has your cleric ariadne?
What is the incoming of your province?

[Lawgiver]

These assumptions are all well and good assuming that the assassin isn't willing to be a martyr. It is not overly difficult to get near a regent and then make a blazing attack leading to one's own death in the process. Heck its not even that hard to get within crossbow range and pluck an unsuspecting sap. Assassination by someone with little heed to self-preservation is easy... of course you have to find a suicidal maniac willing to die for the name of the cause, but that's just details. :P

[geeman]

I think one should role play out all the domain actions whenever
possible. The domain level should _interact_ with the adventure level, but
not sublimate it. If there are any of the domain actions that cry to be
role-played out at the adventure level, assassination is one of them. It`s
such a classic basis for an adventure (killing the leader of a opposing
group or preventing the murder of your own leader) that I really think it`s
best played out. The Rulebook suggests that such events are "most exciting
if the actual attack is played as a one-scene adventure" (p40) but I`d take
that as a minimum at best. An assassination could be extended to become
the basis of campaign, let alone a domain action, so turning it into a
little one or two die roll event strikes me as being a horrible waste.

If I were to run a PBeM (since that was the original question) I wouldn`t
allow assassination of PCs for a couple of reasons.

1. I think it might take over the game, especially if someone used the
rules based on the Espionage action from the Rulebook in which performing
an assassination on the majority of the PC regents isn`t all that
tough. Unless I was trying to emphasize that for some reason, I think that
might be a problem.

2. If I were DMing a PBeM I would do as much as I could to keep the amount
of miscellaneous stuff I needed to do at a minimum, and one of those things
would be that I`d try to avoid going through the character generation
process more than once with each player. If PC regents start getting
assassinated then you have to do the character generation stuff again and
I`d just find that annoying. That`s assuming, of course, the player still
wants to participate, and that`s something of a question mark. Getting a
PC assassinated is something that might turn off a lot of players and not
without some good reason. "By the way, on the second action round of
domain turn 2 an assassin`s arrow pierces your eye. You
die." Huh? What? I was going to establish a trade route.... "Nope,
you`re dead. Come up with another character." Ah, man, this
sucks.... OK, here`s my new character. "Good. Oh, wait.... Someone
slipped some hemlock into your tea. You`re dead. Give me another
character." ::sigh::

There should, however, be some sort of access to assassination. Like so
many aspects of the domain rules, I`d like to see some additional
descriptions of effects on such actions. Things like what happens if you
don`t assassinate a regent, but his lieutenant? His advisor? His wife or
heir? A military advisor or just the commander of a unit of soldiers? His
ambassador to a nearby domain? Not only should such targets have different
a DC, but they`d have different effects at the domain level. An
assassination of a NPC in a PC`s domain is quite different from
assassinating the PC. Depending on how close that NPC was to the PC I may
or may not want to role-play it as an adventure. I`d certainly want to
role-play an assassination attempt on a PC`s wife or heir, and probably on
his LT, but I`m less interested in role-playing the assassination of the
captain of a particular company of a PC regent`s soldiers. We should,
however, still have numbers and effects for the assassination of regents,
heirs, LTs and family members, because the DM might want to use them to
determine events in an NPC domain, or if he really wants to he could use
them to determine a PC`s fate.

The base success number for an Espionage action is 20 - province population
level of the target province - levels of guild holdings the acting regent
controls in the target province + levels of law holdings in the target
province controlled by the assassination target. So two questions:

1. What additional modifiers might be applied to that success number for
attempting to assassinate different kinds of people at the domain
level? The aforementioned heirs, LTs, family members, advisors, etc.

2. How might a successful assassination of one of those characters effect
the domain? That is, if one assassinated the captain of a unit of elite
infantry for some regent might that unit take "a hit" for a domain
turn? If one assassinated a regent`s heir might that have an effect on
loyalty in addition to the obvious loss of his heir? What kinds of
characters might be assassinated that would have an effect at the domain
level and what might those effects be?

Gary

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary" <geeman@SOFTHOME.NET>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 7:38 PM


> How might a successful assassination of one of those characters
> effect the domain?

Nearly always I think the effect of killing anyone is that the action they
were leading doesn`t take place. That`s really all that happens even for
rulers unless they have some problem with their succession. If the captain
of a unit is killed, there are still two to four lieutenants as well as an
ensign still there. But I could certainly see that the order to move from
Seasedge to Monsedge is delayed. In some cases the costs are lost, in other
cases they may be preserved, in some cases a GB may have to be paid to
sustain the action another turn. But these are more circumstantial than
anything.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by Onwen Agelmore

just to know, how much GB has your cleric ariadne?
What is the incoming of your province?
My priestess is ruler of the "Chosen of Khirdai" (I rule no province, only temples and law). I have an income of about 10 to 15 GB every turn (substract maitenant costs), I think. But if you think, I pay a wizard, I must disappoint you. My priestess is 15th level and makes her wardings herself...

[Ariadne]

Originally posted by kgauck

Such a figure maintains a minimal court at best, and probabaly has a reputation of paranoia. Even smallish noble houses were maintained by what would look to us as an army of servants. [...]
Yes and no. As the high priestess of a Temple of Khirdai, she has only about 3 to 5 direct servants (maintenance costs are paid for other things :) ). Yes cooks, etc. are servants too, but only in her bedroom are these wardings (she lives in a temple). A Kitchen etc. can can be crossed by anyone. [To stop the next idea: She ALWAYS has prayed for a "detect poison" ;) or a priest at hand, who has]



[...] Even so, contraversial nobles who lived in times of greatest risk of assasination (Italian Renaissance, English & French Reformation) endured a high ratio of attempted assasinations to successful ones. [...]
That's right. There is Napoleon, who had the constant paranoia of being poisoned. That's why he gave himself always a little bit of Arsenic to get a resistance (we all know, he fell because of other things).

[ConjurerDragon]

Gary wrote:
...

> the basis of campaign, let alone a domain action, so turning it into a
> little one or two die roll event strikes me as being a horrible waste.

And players who really got attached to their character will cry out loud
to lose him/her because of 2 dice rolls :-(

> The base success number for an Espionage action is 20 - province
> population
> level of the target province - levels of guild holdings the acting regent
> controls in the target province + levels of law holdings in the target
> province controlled by the assassination target. So two questions:
> 1. What additional modifiers might be applied to that success number for
> attempting to assassinate different kinds of people at the domain
> level? The aforementioned heirs, LTs, family members, advisors, etc.

I would first make certain that a succesful espionage action used for
assasination gives the player
not a dead enemy but only the possibility - it should only give him a
successful attempt which still could fail.

> 2. How might a successful assassination of one of those characters effect
> the domain? That is, if one assassinated the captain of a unit of elite
> infantry for some regent might that unit take "a hit" for a domain
> turn? If one assassinated a regent`s heir might that have an effect on
> loyalty in addition to the obvious loss of his heir? What kinds of
> characters might be assassinated that would have an effect at the domain
> level and what might those effects be?

ITSOD had a rule for assasinating military units:

> <http://www.birthright.dk/itsod/Images/die.gif> New way to use
> Espionage - Espionage may be used in a combination of locate troops
> and assassination. This variation can be used to assassinate the upper
> levels of command in a unit, thus reducing it`s efficiency. The
> mission can target an already know unit (+2 to success), the first
> unit encountered (no modifier), or following a list of targets based
> on priority (-2 penalty). If the mission is successful, the unit
> functions as a lesser unit. knights will become cavalry, cavalry will
> become infantry, elite infantry will become infantry; infantry,
> archers, pikemen, and scouts will get a -1 to all their stats except
> movement. Scouts will also get faulty information when they attempt to
> look for enemy units. Irregulars will become levies (but will not gain
> any more hits). Levies cannot be targeted because their command
> structure is weak to begin with and the people do not have the army
> soldier`s need for a command structure. The effects of this action
> wear off after one full month.
>
The computer game of Sierra allowed assasination to kill one unit of
soldiers when successful on the other hand.

About heirs and wifes being assasinated I would say use the already
existing rules:
p. 48 Rulebook "Losses of Regency" divided into minor, major and
catastrophic losses - they are due for failure to respond to events and
assasination is an event. And the severity is dependant on who is
assasinated, e.g. wife or designated heir killed major loss, lieutenant
or other children than the heir killed minor loss or something like that.
bye
Michael Romes

[Birthright-L]

The way I did it in a PbEM I was helping with was this : A successful espionage
action would get the assassin close to hisvictim, nothing more. The actual
encounter then proceeded like an adventure. We had a system based on characters`
(and monsters`) experience points, and also several other factors, to determine
how these encounters went (complete success, partial success, etc).

Some Regents were assassinated, but only very few. One assassin (a mage) was
killed by his intended victim. I worked rather well.

Robin

************************************************** **************************
The Birthright Homepage: http://www.birthright.net
Birthright-l Archives: http://oracle.wizards.com/archives/birthright-l.html
To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM
with UNSUB BIRTHRIGHT-L in the body of the message.

[Arsulon]

I've had to give this topic serious consideration as my guys tend to resemble "The Black Hands" from Knights of the Dinner Table. Likewise, they wholeheartedly subscribe to the Sun Tzu/ Machiavellian principle of winning a war by not fighting one and are always looking for that unconventional warfare angle. Mind you, we haven''t started the campaign yet but the topic has come up.
Personally, I have no problem with assasination in general and that of PCs in particular. However, I am treating the idea of domain/regent security in greater detail than the rules do. First of all, you create a spymaster as a lieutenant. That spymaster can either be engaged in active intelligence gathering, insurgency, etc. OR can be wholly on the defensive and occupied with counter-insurgency. You can, of course, create two dedicated lieutenants: one for domestic security and another for foriegn operations (kind of like how the F.B.I. and C.I.A. were intended, in theory, to compliment each other.)
When it comes to the die rolls, the enemy spymaster is trying to overcome the defending spymaster with difficulty modifiers reflecting the province level and defending spymaster's level of skill. At best the enemy will be captured WITH proof of the operation; not as good, the enemy will be intercepted and killed; worse, a plot is identified but the assassin cannot be found/intercepted; finally, worst case scenario, the regent has been cornered and you roleplay the dire deed. In the case of the plot being identified but the assassin is still at large, you roleplay the attempt but allow the regent PC to stipulate certain placement conditions (reflecting the fact that he or she was on alert status.)