Administrate And Maintenance

[Osprey]

After playtesting for 6 months, here's an issue I quickly ran into: once a landed domain grows to any size, the maintenance costs grow out of the reach of any administrator to curb the seasonal maintenance. By the time a domain has 20 GB maintenance (which isn't hard with castles, court, troops, etc.), it is DC 35 to reduce maintenance by 1/4!

In my own campaign, I tailored the rules in 2 ways to compensate:

1. Base DC for the seasonal Administrate check is 10 + seasonal maintenance.
1a. For a Master Administrator, base DC is 10 + (1/2) (seasonal maintenance)

This makes Master Administrators essential for running larger domains efficiently, which seems accurate. However, knowing that most landed regents (being fighters, etc.) aren't going to be Master Administrators, this brought up a second issue. Wouldn't many well-off lords have skilled administrators to help run their economies? As the rules stand, only the regent can make the Administrate check to reduce seasonal maintenance. I decided to change that.

2. A regent may use an invested Lieutenant for the purpose of managing domain expenses and maintenance. If a Lt. makes the seasonal Adminiistrate check, however, he/she [/I]is unable to take any other domain actions for the remainder of the season. Managing seasonal[I] maintenance is a time-consuming job that in fact stretches throught a domain turn.

In practice, this means many landed regents will end up finding skilled Administrators to act as dedicated Treasurers, Chancellors, Chamberlains, etc. (call it what you will) whose primary task is managing the domain's assets. And as Master Administrators, they might even be able to keep up with larger domains, at least for a while. But large armies and many assets (like Avanil, for example) will stand beyond the reach of even these experts, which is not unreasonable (things get inefficient as they get bigger).

Having used these mods for a few months now (of real time), I like the balance they created, especially in giving landed warrior-lords a chance to not go bankrupt as soon as they raise armies of any real size. It does up the income a bit, which some players might not want, but all in all I found it to work well.

I am curious as to what the veteran Dm's and designers think about this.

-Osprey

[Raesene Andu]

They seem to be well thought out changes that do not unbalance the game.