Draft 0.0 Birthright skills and feats

[DanMcSorley]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Michael Romes wrote:
> Does that mean, that Kings in other settings rule their kingdoms good
> and wise, while retaining all their personal abilities and spending
> all their feats on things like Cleave and Weapon Focus?
>
> So the rulers of Birthright, who are assumed to be above normal
> characters, even above normal kings, having divine blood unlike most
> other mortals and being rulers far superior to other non-blooded kings
> - THEY have to spend feats from their personal feat-slots to make them
> able to rule better - while making them less impressive figures
> personally without their realm and bloodline?

No, again, no one has to buy rulership feats, and they didn`t even exist
in 2e, so I don`t quite understand your objection to them.

Non-BR kings are less effective, by the way, because they can`t increase
the tax base of their kingdom once per season like in BR. I actually
think Rule Province should have an RP cost to reflect that nondivine kings
can`t influence the population this way, and are at the mercy of
demographic growth :)

In other worlds, there are no real rules for ruling, so effectiveness is
totally an out-of-game DM`s fiat kind of thing. If you back-engineered
the BR rules onto Cormyr or Urnst, you`d make them extremely large by BR
standards, but no bloodline or RP use.
--
Communication is possible only between equals.
Daniel McSorley- mcsorley@cis.ohio-state.edu

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[Raedwald]

>So the rulers of Birthright, who are assumed to be above normal
>characters, even above normal kings, having divine blood unlike most
>other mortals and being rulers far superior to other non-blooded kings -
>THEY have to spend feats from their personal feat-slots to make them
>able to rule better - while making them less impressive figures
>personally without their realm and bloodline?

Yup. Of course they don't have to take the feats to improve their raw talent for rule (as mentioned in other posts). If you want to be an effective ruler and devote feats to it, your a more effective ruler and a less effective adventurer.

There are ways around this - cohorts. Have your cohorts take some of the feats (if DM allows). Regent: I'm off to battle the Gorgon. Henchy while I'm gone do something about X, Y, Z. If the cohort is faced with having to do a lot of the domain work, they may take some of the domain feats.

Besides what they do makes them impressive, not what their abilities/statistics are.

[Shade]

At 09:56 PM 2/24/2003 +0100, you 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=1369
>
> irdeggman wrote:
> Birthright was the only TSR (now WotC) campaign that had anything akin to
domain actions and domain style rule. That was one of the things that made
it "special" and why so many of us love it so. It wasn`t just a
forgotten realms campaign with blood abilities added it was designed to be
a blend of wargaming and role-playing. I have always described it as a
blend of "Diplomacy" (if you know the game, if not I`ve just caused even
more confusion) and "Highlander".

That`s exactly how I think of it - a roleplaying game mixed with Diplomacy,
with a touch of Highlander. A really fun mix if you ask me :)

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[irdeggman]

Does that mean, that Kings in other settings rule their kingdoms good
and wise, while retaining all their personal
abilities and spending all their feats on things like Cleave and Weapon
Focus?

So the rulers of Birthright, who are assumed to be above normal
characters, even above normal kings, having divine blood unlike most
other mortals and being rulers far superior to other non-blooded kings -
THEY have to spend feats from their personal feat-slots to make them
able to rule better - while making them less impressive figures
personally without their realm and bloodline?
bye
Michael Romes

Actually this is similar to taking the Skill Focus (Diplomacy) feat, if a character is not involved in diplomatic issues then this is a relatively useless feat. If a character is involved in more combat oriented actions than personnal interaction ones it is also mostly useless. But it was the player's option to choose which way he wanted his character to develop, he could have chosen more combat orented feats like Improved Initiative or Weapon Focus if that was the way he wanted to play it.

[Athos69]

In my humble opinion, Birthright is less a campaign about going on a dungeon crawl, and more about political intrigue. Developing a character that is more suited to the social skills as opposed to becoming a combat machine fits the campaign better.

I will not go so far as to say that anyone who runs a combat-intensive BR campaing is doing it all wrong, but it isn't the impression I get as to the nature of the setting.

all of the BR campaigns I have been in or run have had intrigue, skullduggery and only the occasional quest in them. Straight-up and honest fighting have always been a very minor element of my games, and usually occur either at the end of a chapter (i.e. up against the bosses that have been making the regents' lives miserable), or to punctuate long periods of thought and planning.... usually leaving clues behind as to who was behind *this* plot....

Just my two cents worth, YMMV

-Mike

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Romes" <Archmage@T-ONLINE.DE>
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2003 3:13 PM


> Does that mean, that Kings in other settings rule their kingdoms good
> and wise, while retaining all their personal abilities and spending all
> their feats on things like Cleave and Weapon Focus?
>
> So the rulers of Birthright, who are assumed to be above normal
> characters, even above normal kings, having divine blood unlike most
> other mortals and being rulers far superior to other non-blooded kings -
> THEY have to spend feats from their personal feat-slots to make them
> able to rule better - while making them less impressive figures
> personally without their realm and bloodline?

Yes, because in other campiagns, they just assume that all that realm stuff
just happens. It all takes care of itself. No GB`s and RP`s come in, no
effort is required to maintain it, no time (what BR ruler has much time to
adventure in things unconnected to their realm?) required, and no skills are
required. These other campaigns aren`t about governence. If those
characters were actually asked to do something in governance, they`d fall on
their face. They don`t have the administration skill, and IMC, since I`ve
split "diplomacy" into three skills, (private interactions- Barter, public
interactions- Diplomacy, and public address- Perform: Oratory), they can`t
engage in state interaction. Games only include the skills that are
meaningful to the setting. Since other settings don`t have the political
componants, they don`t include the skills. If my game was focused more on
routine commercial activity, I`d use Barter for that, and have a different
skill for other kinds of personal interactions. Since noble folks don`t
quibble over the price in the market much I don`t bother with seperate
skills for getting the best price on swords, ale, or horses.

And, as has been mentioned, no one has to take these skills or feats. So
you could be just as dungeon ready, and realm unready as a FR character.

Kenneth Gauck
kgauck@mchsi.com

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