Ch. 5 What to do with RP.

[pmcaveney]

I'm new to this discussion and may have missed something, but ...

In my games nobody EVER ends with a stockpile of useless RP - they are the bottleneck in most cases, the most precious thing in the game. The bidding and counter-bidding that goes on during Contest and Investiture actions soak up any excess - and every regent has to maintain a reserve of points to defend themselves against enemy actions. If the NPC regents aren't forcing the PC's to do this then the DM is making it too easy for them.

Have I misunderstood the rules? Is this idea something I picked up from the Gorgon's Alliance computer game and mistook for an actual rule?

From the playtest:

Regency Points: +1 per RP spent to support, -1 per RP
spent to oppose. Regents may spend RP to support or oppose
most domain action checks. The province regent and any regent
that has any holding of any level in the province in which
the domain action is taking place may spend RP to support or
oppose the action. There is no limit (save availability) to how
many RP may be spent to support or oppose an action.

[geeman]

At 10:15 PM 10/29/2004 +0200, pmcaveney wrote:



>I`m new to this discussion and may have missed something, but ...In my

>games nobody EVER ends with a stockpile of useless RP - they are the

>bottleneck in most cases, the most precious thing in the game. The

>bidding and counter-bidding that goes on during Contest and Investiture

>actions soak up any excess - and every regent has to maintain a reserve of

>points to defend themselves against enemy actions. If the NPC regents

>aren`t forcing the PC`s to do this then the DM is making it too easy for

>them.Have I misunderstood the rules? Is this idea something I picked up

>from the Gorgon`s Alliance computer game and mistook for an actual

>rule?From the playtest:Regency Points: +1 per RP spent to support, -1 per

>RPspent to oppose. Regents may spend RP to support or opposemost domain

>action checks. The province regent and any regentthat has any holding of

>any level in the province in whichthe domain action is taking place may

>spend RP to support oroppose the action. There is no limit (save

>availability) to how many RP may be spent to support or oppose an action.



Yeah, I`d agree with your assessment. Aside from being a bit of a

reinterpretation of what regency is, a RP cap strikes me as being a kind of

last stopgap for the domain level against what really is an issue of the DM

being too lenient on PC regents or not playing the NPC regents aggressively

enough.



That said, there are the occasional problematic NPC that, in the absence of

a cap, would probably have an incredibly high RP pool. Most notably the

elves and those few long lived awnsheghlien, but also those who simply have

high bloodline scores (like 50+) might have RP pools that get quite

high. Some of those character might have been collecting regency for as

many as 6,000 domain turns. Even if one subtracts a period of time (a few

years or decades) to build up a domain certain NPCs might have been able to

create a RP pool that would have thousands of RP in it unless there is some

way of controlling how much they can accumulate.



Personally, I`m not real happy with a RP cap, but I can see the motivation

for it. When it boils right down to it, though, it is amongst the easiest

things to house rule away, so I don`t really mind it being included in a

BRCS. It`s one of the things that I`ll just set aside, like magician being

a favored class for Cerilian elves....



Gary

[Angelbialaska]

Am I missing something from the rules or anything?

As I read it, then the DC to do stuff is most often 10+holding level. And the roll you make is 1d20. And then you get a few bonuses. For instance you get +1 to the roll for each 5 ranks you have in the associated skill. And you can get a feat to boost a few things. And you can take the regent focus, which applies only to one thing. So we might have perhaps +1-+5 to the roll, unless of course you directly spend a feat on just that one action. Sounds to me like you'll need to play with your RP to have more than around 50% chance of success. And remember that in ruling up a province you can't spend RP. Which makes your chance low. And it'll be lower the higher you want to rule it. No big deal to raise your province from 1 to 2, but raising it from 7-8 might take you many turns and massive amounts of money.

[irdeggman]

Am I missing something from the rules or anything?

Actually things have evolved well beyond the playtest document. Chap 2 has been revised and sanctioned - restoring the 1-100 system for bloodline score. So gaining RP is different than was presented in the playtest.

As far as spending RP to rule up a province - well that hasn't been decided yet. You have to remember this is a discussion of the revison to the playtest, looking towards a sanctioning of it and not a discussion of what the playtest document specifically says - pretty much everything is up for discussion for revision right now.

Polls have also been run to work on RP and domain rules.
One of those was that the modifier to the domain action roll is to be the total modifiers to the skill divided by 5 (makes it higher than the ranks divided by 5 in the playtest).

Many feats have been redone in chap 1 that add various things to the rolls, master level feats add bonuses to the domain action check as well as to individual skill rolls (a double benefit).

It is going to a lot easier to gain some substantial bonuses to domain action checks now.

And I'm fairly certain there will end up being some realm spells that will affect domain actions too.

[Angelbialaska]

Oh, okay. Is there any way that the completely updated rules can be found? I think the playtest version fount here is from February 2003 or something.

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by Angelbialaska@Nov 2 2004, 10:11 PM
Oh, okay. Is there any way that the completely updated rules can be found? I think the playtest version fount here is from February 2003 or something.

There isn't one.

It was decided to work out one Chapter at a time instead of rewriting the entire BRCS and going for the whole thing at once. There will be "sanctioning" votes a Chapter at a time. You'll have to check the threads to keep up on the discussion though.

The FAQ (pinned thread) has a lot of information that should be useful (also the link to the "sanctioned" version of Chap 2. I started a thread to keep track of the "latest version" of Chap 1. I've been waiting to close a couple of polls before puttng the "finishing touches" on Chap 1 and putting it out for final discussion and eventual "sanctioning" vaote, but the recent board/server problems has put a temporary hold on the process. I don't really know when the server will finish its self-correcting so that people can access the site again on a regular basis. I inserted the "patch" posted on the WotC discussion boards on my home PC and can get back on - unfortunately I don't have administrator access at work to allow me to do the same there.



Here are some links to the latest versions (text only) of Chap 2 and Chap 1. Try downloading them from the links below (all on the Birthright.net board).


Chap 2 sanctioned version:
http://www.birthright.net/forums/index.php...e=post&id=25154

Chap 1 (mostly sanctioned version):
http://www.birthright.net/forums/index.php...e=post&id=29614