Why does Rule no longer use regency?

[Arentak]

In 2ed, Rule Holding cost (x) regency and 1GB where x was = target holding value

Ruling from 0 to 1 costs no regency
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In the version presented at this website, the cost is 1gb.
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In the version used in RoE2 the cost is = (holding level)gb.
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With some regents getting obscene amounts of regency, isn't this a good way to funnel some of that away?

[Rowan]

I think the idea was to make it possible to run domains with little or no bloodline.

You seem to want to require regency costs for Ruling holdings as a way of making those regents with large RP incomes use up that RP. The goal seeming to be to level the playing field.

I think requiring regency costs for Ruling holdings will actually have the opposite effect. It will make it comparatively more difficult for regents with small bloodlines to rule their domains, leaving them with less of a surplus with which to oppose the Contestations, Agitations, Espionage, or other actions of those regents with tons of RP.

Put another way, by requiring more RP to be spent on routine actions, you make RP a more scarce and precious resource. When you do that, those regents with more of that resource have an even greater advantage against those with less of it than they did before. Vice versa if you diminish the make RP less scarce by not requiring it to be used on routine actions.

If you want a game where Avanil, Boeruine, Mhoried, and Ghoere are truly dominant and can do what they wish against rulers of lesser bloodlines, then by all means retain the 2e system. The 3e BRCS, however, actually levels the playing field more.

In my view, RP use should not be a requirement to perform an action. It should merely modify the actions. And I don't think GB should modify actions as easily as RP, otherwise GB is clearly the best commodity. In other words, if 1 RP gives you a +1 bonus to resolve an action, it should cost you 2GB or more to give you a +1 bonus to resolve that action. That way, RP is more effective at modifying actions than GB is.

Alternatively, it might make more sense to raise the base cost of every action, perhaps doubling the GB required for each domain action. That would reduce the incongruity of spending 6 times the GB required to perform a 1GB action and only getting a +5 bonus (when you've paid the base cost 6 times over). It would also make GB less available for boosting the success chance of an action, letting RP fill in its proper role in that place.

[AndrewTall]

BRCS deliberately removed RP from the base cost of actions - that way you can have unblooded rulers which was presumably the norm before Deismaar, and likely in many places for long afterwards.

While it might sound from the rule change that an unblooded ruler has a fighting chance against a scion, the apparent parity is an illusion. Without RP to spend to boost success, the unblooded regent has to spend gold, actions cost 3-5 times as much to complete, or take 2-3 attempts while the scion rakes in the RP and routinely succeeds in actions for a single GB spent.


Similarly scions with a powerful bloodline can gain RP from far larger realms and thus apply regency to even routine actions giving them a substantial advantage over lesser scions.


As for rule actions, the DC increases with size which generally makes a ruler spend more RP to rule up higher level provinces. The GB increases as well for province rule actions and if you are risking more cash then success becomes critical.

One BRCS aspect to note is the cost of failed random events - regency losses are fairly easy. Otherwise RP is likely to be burnt in contests and restoring lost bloodline much as with any game.

[darkon]

Well, allowing regents to use regency to rule holdings might give an advantage to blooded over unblooded regents, but it does not exclude unblooded characters from regency. It just makes it more difficult for them. There is no mention in BR lore (from what I can recall) that ruling a domain should not be easier to blooded regents. On the contrary, from what I understand from the various descriptions on what "bloodline" is, I think that blooded characters are linked to their land in ways unblooded ones are not, and as a result, should be in general more effective regents than the unblooded ones.

Either way, I have no problem with the way ruling a holding is currently implemented in the BRCS 3rd edition. I just wanted to present my point of view.

[irdeggman]

Well, allowing regents to use regency to rule holdings might give an advantage to blooded over unblooded regents, but it does not exclude unblooded characters from regency. It just makes it more difficult for them. There is no mention in BR lore (from what I can recall) that ruling a domain should not be easier to blooded regents. On the contrary, from what I understand from the various descriptions on what "bloodline" is, I think that blooded characters are linked to their land in ways unblooded ones are not, and as a result, should be in general more effective regents than the unblooded ones.


Birthright Rulebook (2nd ed)

pg 32

Regency is the mystic power associated with blooded rulers and leaders.


Unblooded characters don't have a bloodline strength or derivation and cannot be regents.

pg 37

Every domain, turn a regent increases his Regency Point score by a number equal to his bloodline strength score or his Domain Power, whichever is smaller.

So in 2nd ed it was mandatory to be blooded in order to be a regent.

The BRCS went the way it did (as pointed out earlier) to allow unblooded characters to be rulers (i.e, regents) only to not be as effective since they couldn't accumulate RP through rulership and hence couldn't spend it on actions. The basic thought process on this was an effort to produce something that could be more readily portable to other games and not Birthright. The BRCS was actually written and posted prior to Eden Press' Fields of Blood which presented a system for running a domain without any ties to bloodlines or RP (in the Birthright sense).

Subsequent polls and such have indicated a strong desire by the general community to increase the effectiveness of RP in domain actions in some manner. That is to emphasize that using RP is much better than GB for domain actions.

[darkon]

irdeggman, I see your point. Indeed you are right about the case of unblooded regents in Cerillia. However I still believe we should modify the sentence:

"Unblooded characters don't have a bloodline strength or derivation and cannot be regents."

to

"Any character, blooded or not, can be a regent".

That sentence is apparently wrong, since there were regents before the Deismar, as you pointed out yourself.

Of course this would mean that unblooded regents cannot accumulate any RP, but this should just mean that they are more likely to fail, not that they cannot be regents.

I am not suggesting going against the flow. Once again, I point out how I see things in BR, and how I would implement rules in my BR campaigns.

[Arentak]

Those explanations make sense to me.

Unless we accept that in the pre-deismarr world no holdings over level 1 existed.

Or, if we allowed that GB can be spent in place of regency anytime regency is needed.

[AndrewTall]

One way to permit holdngs pre-deismaar, while keeping the old RP costs would be to allow regents to gain RP equal to half their leadership score plus their bloodline strength, or retain an amount equal to half their leadership + 5 times BLS.

That keeps the scion advantage, although it lessens the impact - particularly for small domains.

[Sorontar]

Um, can someone please explain to me why we think there were regents pre-Deismaar? I think that there were rulers and the equivalent of Gold Bars, but not anything that could be equated to regency points, such that the land giveth and the leader taketh away. So that would mean no Regency in the strictest sense. Ditto, the sense of sources being hampered by a province's regency level would not exist.

Or is there something in the original lore that I have missed?

Sorontar

[irdeggman]

That sentence is apparently wrong, since there were regents before the Deismar, as you pointed out yourself.



I did?

When? I don't remember doing it - but then again I'm "old".

[Rowan]

Um, can someone please explain to me why we think there were regents pre-Deismaar?

I don't think there is an argument that there were regents in the sense of blooded regents. As you say, though, there were certainly rulers. The problem with the RAW was that any action that requires the use of RP to even attempt is an action that by definition is denied to someone without RP. That's a problem when you're trying to conceptualize rulership before bloodlines.

Even if no one is interested in playing a pre-Deismaar game, or even of running a domain without a bloodline, I think it's a worthwhile thing to address for game continuity. Note that portability to other settings can retain RP intact without bloodlines, substituting some other mechanism in their place.

I think it's most important when considering the elves. While humans and dwarves would see bloodlines as a blessing and have that much more cultural pressure to ensure that their rulers were blooded regents, elves might more reasonably actually look upon a blooded elf as accursed and share no cultural preference for one to rule. By this reasoning (more consistent with the original concept of the Sidhelien, I think), the rules should not make it impossible for a non-blooded elf to govern, and perhaps shouldn't even really put him at too great a disadvantage as compared to a blooded regent.

[darkon]

I did?

When? I don't remember doing it - but then again I'm "old".

I confused you with AndrewTall:


BRCS deliberately removed RP from the base cost of actions - that way you can have unblooded rulers which was presumably the norm before Deismaar, and likely in many places for long afterwards.


The argument sounds valid though.

This is not my day :)