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  1. #21
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    You're probably right. Which makes my 3.5 library a great comfort to me.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    Why do you suppose that one who spends 20 years swinging a sword as a fighter has the same ability to command an army as someone who spent 20 years commanding soldiers? Doing a task and supervising a task are entirely different skill sets.
    I see what you are saying, that is why we need to find a way to have a soldier have the option to become a more leader type.

    In 4th edition they come as Paragon Paths where the fighter has access to different abilities. We could have a Paragon Path called Noble Ruler that would give different feat options that have to do with ruling more than fighting. They would still be leveling up as a warrior and get some warrior abilities, but many more that had to do with realm rulership or more specifily law rulership.

    Not to mention that being blooded we could also have feats and powers they have access to that allow them to rule a realm more effectively starting at level 1 instead of level 10.

    This can be applied to every class.

    I also don't like to pigeonhole noble as a certain type of class. Nobles can be warriors or priests, rogues ... they can all be noble. Why force them into one class type when we can have a set of feats that any class can take from. Some feats will have pre-req's for certain classes, but mostly any noble born ruler can pull from.

    -BB

  3. #23
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bbeau22 View Post
    I see what you are saying, that is why we need to find a way to have a soldier have the option to become a more leader type.
    No problem there, at some point most leaders have to make the transition from a doer of things to a leader of those who do.

    In 4th edition they come as Paragon Paths where the fighter has access to different abilities. We could have a Paragon Path called Noble Ruler that would give different feat options that have to do with ruling more than fighting. They would still be leveling up as a warrior and get some warrior abilities, but many more that had to do with realm rulership or more specifily law rulership.
    This is a fine explanation for people who started as doers and then transitioned, but it offers too little for those who always lead and never did. In fact its worse than that, because it presumes that everyone is an adventurer. The DMG gives you what, two pages on NPC's? It may be worth pausing here to note that I expect PC's to be adventuring classes and to dabble in leadership. I expect their bloodlines to give them some capacity to rule. I don't think most characters ever get a chance to reach paragon paths, but that's not a hard fix. But NPC's don't adventure necessarily. That doesn't mean they're not formidable, but it does mean that they are formidable as scholars, diplomats or administrators. How does one take a character like Brulan Broweleit and build him in 4e? Invent all new encounter, daily, and at will powers? This is a character whose purpose is to make Talinie's administration produce more GB per realm turn and to add bonuses to certain realm actions.

    To think for a minute that by taking Administration as a skill is the same as being Brulan is enough for me to put 4e back on the shelf. Here's a 4th level character optimized for domain play. Domain play is what sets BR apart. You can't optimize characters for domain play, if everyone does everything equally well, just differently, I don't even see the point in naming characters.

    I also don't like to pigeonhole noble as a certain type of class. Nobles can be warriors or priests, rogues ... they can all be noble. Why force them into one class type when we can have a set of feats that any class can take from. Some feats will have pre-req's for certain classes, but mostly any noble born ruler can pull from.-BB
    Opportunity costs for one, transportability of skills for two. Once a person knows how to manage people, handle money, and negotiate, it doesn't matter whether they do so for a state, guild, or temple. Its a separate thing, not part being a fighter, priest, or rogue. And do a considerable extent, people who are good at running things, its because they were not out slaying dragons, but taking care of things back at the castle/guildhall/temple. Especially if one wants to see BR remain a lower level setting, being good at running a realm can't mean that I need to have paragon paths, or get loaded up with a bunch of powers I never actually acquired.

  4. #24
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    I think you can work over those problems Kenneth. First, on 4e that character should pick Skill Training and Skill Focus feats (for a +8 for that skill). With a high score in the relevant attribute your NPC will have around +10 to +12 to Administration at level 1. That's more than the Administration skill from Brulan Broweleit (4th level) in the wiki. And probably more than most PCs.

    Secondly, you can allow several uses of the Administration skill only to be allowed to Trained users. So, even if a level 10 warrior would get also get +5 from his level to Administration, it's less worth than the +5 from the Skill Training your NPC gets.

    Even in 3e, if your NPC is a level 3-4 guy he is not going to have his skill bonuses much better than the level 3-4 4e NPC (I'm pretty sure they end more or less the same).
    Last edited by Vicente; 06-17-2008 at 09:24 PM.

  5. #25
    Another way to handle NPC's is to just make them completely seperate. Just some thoughts on the top of my head.

    - Make administrators and the like have 1 hp which means they die very easily. Heck they never picked up a sword their whole life, they should drop almost instantly. 4th edition would call them minions.
    - Have three levels of administrators. Novice, Experienced, Expert. Just to toss numbers out there have novice have a +5 on one skill. Let have Experts have one skill at +10 and another at +5. Make a true expert have a +15 on one check, +10 on another and +5 for a third.
    - This can be part of a characters court and each expert can be listed with which level they are at and what their skills are. Would not need any other information.
    - I would assume more powerful luitenants would have adventuring levels and possibly more skills to assist in rulership.

    -BB

  6. #26
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    I'm still reading my 4e books (just came in a few days ago due to Amazon's poor pre-order policy), but I think there are a couple of ways to handle rulership skills and so forth.

    Beau, you've mentioned Novice, Experienced, and Expert guidelines for NPC creation. Well, the DMG has Templates designed to apply quickly to NPCs or monsters to make them fill a role well, and to bump standard ones up to elite or solo. Your idea could be translated into templates to do something similar.

    If we want templates that can be applied to player characters with no effect on adventuring ability, we would just need to have the template focus on domain-level only skills and feats and so forth, with no bonuses to powers or hp or level-based stats.

    Something else occurred to me that might prove even easier and more freeform:
    --Create a suite of skills (Administrate, Warcraft, Rulership, per holding, whatever), feats, even powers (weekly, monthly, seasonally/per turn, annually) that have to do with rulership and domain level play with no adventure impact.
    --Give NPCs access to a number of these based on a basic NPC level you assign, using the PC generic class chart to determine how many they would get. This allows all NPCs to be freely customized into any specialist you wish--scholar, ruler, magistrate, bandit lord, merchant, etc. It also keeps stat detail focused on only what is needed and allows mid- to high-level NPCs who are not incongruously devastating fighters (of course, you could just ditch even this and say that NPC X just has a +10 modifier to Administrate and leave it at that, but for the Chamberlain and others it would be good to know a little more)
    --Give PCs access to these skills through their bloodline, gaining a certain number in addition to their adventure abilities as they go up in level, sort of like Paragon paths but starting at level 1
    --Give PCs the ability to freely swap any of their other powers, feats, or skills with those in the Domain Rulership suite if they wish to focus their characters even more on rulership

    NPCs should be pretty easy this way, even easier in the absence of Powers. Just assign a basic level and you know almost all you need to know; you do need to pick the skills and feats that matter you want to focus on, but the level basically calculates on its own the modifier for the skill. In this level-dependent system, you could even derive hit points, attack abilities, and defenses in a pinch if you needed to, without having to list them ahead of time, if we had a fallback NPC template for this.
    Last edited by Rowan; 06-18-2008 at 03:58 PM.

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