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Thread: Classes

  1. #61
    So it comes down to how to we measure experience and how much of a factor does it come it.

    With the level 20 wizard example the level 20 wizard has controlled source for a very long time, just happened to be born with a minor bloodline limiting his power at birth. So the level 1 that shows up is not only less experienced with source but also with adventuring magic ... just simply has a more powerful bloodline.

    How does D&D measure experience? Well through classes. We certainly can't and shouldn't create two difference experience tables for a class and their ability to rule, we need to find a way to tie them together.

    I still think they should be tied to level, it is the closest thing D&D has to general experience as a character. We will have to take assumptions that some of the experience is geared towards domain play between adventures. And if we use the paragon path method to give additional domain powers it means they have mostly gone away from their original adventuring side of their class and starting to be more domain. They may be still gaining levels in their chosen class, but many of their powers and feats will be tied into ruling their domains.

    First we would have feats and some lower level powers available to assist with realm ruling. They can take these throughout their leveling but would be geared for 1-10 for improving domain rulership while leveling up in your chosen adventuring class. The thing to remember here is if you are taking these powers and feats your ability to actually adventure will be greatly reduced ... which makes sense because you really haven't been adventuring.

    Paragon paths starts at level 11. We can have them available to blooded characters and they would look something like Guilder path, Source path, Temple path, Ruler path. So instead of getting powerful paragon powers that adventures would certain take, they would be getting paragon powers that assist with realm ruling, again making them weak adventuring but strong rulers.

    Back to the example of the wizards. If a level 20 wizard never held source in his life and a weak bloodline then he will not have any powers or feats to assist him in ruling them. He certainly is extremely powerful but wouldn't stand a chance against someone experience or someone with a powerful bloodline. Even a low level wizard that has focused on ruling source will be more effective than the level 20.

    Sorry for the wall of text. Takes me a while to explain things.

  2. #62
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    There are three areas of contrast in this example. First there is the question of adventure level. Second there is the question of bloodline, who has the greater claim on rulership in a general sense. And third, there is possession. This third example has been overlooked in discussions so far, but in the classic case, it is possession that has been more important. The 20th level wizard with a low bloodline who is collecting regency and slowly building a reserve is traditionally the one with the advantage.

    If one imagines that the 1st level Great Bloodline truely has an advantage, how does he overcome the adversary who has 10 RP per turn plus another 10 in reserve? The Wizard in place has the benefit of his own sources as a modifier in his favor. What does the new guy get? He must come into the province and place a zero level holding to even begin contesting the established wizard. Even if the established wizard anticipates a long duel, and keeps his RP in his back pocket, he still has a huge advantage, the modifier of his own source. If the interloper is contested, he's got to start again, but if the existing wizard is contested, its likely he holds on to some of his source.

    However, a long term contest battle costs a GB per attempt. Where is this young wizard getting gold to play the odds? If he has but a mere GB, and the established wizard presumes shallow pockets enough just to spend half of this season's RP on the attempt, he's established a DC of 10-source-RP for the new wizard.

    How does one presume that the new wizard has an advantage to overcome all of that?

    Now let's consider skills, even if the Wizard 20 can't use is Knowledge Arcana in the Contest action (and I saw no clear indication in my cursory review of the BRCS) he still gets to use it when calculating RP generation. Since Knowledge Arcana is one of the things a Wizard really uses, its not implausible to suppose that he's got more ranks in this than the young wizard has years of abstract reasoning to rely on.

    So how does one assume that the young wizard with the high bloodline wins? I presume he has access to blooded abilities that the experienced wizard doesn't, but do they overcome the advantages of source modifiers, RP generation and reserve, and a very high Knowledge Arcana?

  3. #63
    Ok so we are looking at three parts. Experience (level), Talent (Bloodscore) and possession. I agree possession has been largely ignored and it does have an impact although I think it is a relatively small impact.

    Experience

    A character that has leveled up controlling and ruling holdings their whole life should have some advantages to that. People have offered up solutions by seperating domain level skills from adventuring level skills, but I feel we can keep them linked by simply give character the abilities to replace adventuring feats/powers and skills with domain type feats/powers/skills. They will become very weak adventures because they are using up power combat skills for domain skills. Of course they are still tied to that class for hp, saves etc.

    How much should experience help and what type of help should they get. Gaining an additional court action makes sense. Make one domain action a court action makes sense. For the wizard example I could see.

    1. Forge Leyline as a free action once per turn.
    2. Automatic know when another wizard leyline passes through a province you control source in. It includes the start or end of leyline.
    3. One realm spell per year can be cast only paying one half the regency that would normally be due (high level.)

    In the above examples they tie in with experience in my mind and not a strong bloodline. The wizard can Forge a leyline as a free action because he has done it enough time before and is familier with leylines to complete the task more quickly. Or the reduced realm spell cost because he has learned how to tap his source and draw more power from the source instead of using his own regency.

    You also included skill levels with knowledge arcana. Because 4th edition removes the varying levels of skill by making them set numbers, I thought that we would have to change that for a 4th edition conversion. I offered up the 2nd edition method of gaining regency because character classes are more similer to 2nd edition than 3rd. If you want to muliclass there are feats you can take ... but your primary class will always be the one you choose at character creation.


    Talent

    On an example of level 1 great bloodline vs. level 20 minor bloodline wizards. Assuming that the experienced wizard had the foresight to see the challenge coming months in advance (which is rare,) the amount of regency he can have stored up is still small because we have a top amount. If he had a 10 bloodscore you are talking about a max regency held of what? 20? Now lets say the great bloodline young wizard has a score of 40. If he canablizes his bloodline to gain regency just once he will have twice the regency that the experienced wizard. And if the low level powerful bloodscore wizard had just a little backing from someone who would give them some regency, the battle was over long before it ever started. A more prudent powerful wizard who could see the challenge coming month in advance is better off leaving and finding source somewhere else. Mind you I am also giving the experienced wizard the best senario situation. In a real situation he would probably only have 10 regency because of spending on other actions.

    I think the raw talent of a powerful bloodline is power enough. They are going to possess some blood powers that will give them an advantage at a domain level and an adventuring level. Charming everyone around them, giving courage to his troops, teleporting around the contenant.

    Now I totally agree that a great bloodline character should have many advantages and the above is totally acceptable. I would just hate to tie in extra domain powers with bloodline like other have suggested because not only would the above example happen but the more power bloodline will have all of the advantages listed in experience.

    Possession

    The reason why I dismiss this is because the number is set in stone and can't really be changed on a province bases. If you control a source 2 in a province that can only support a level 2 source, the number isn't going to get better. In the end you are talking about a +2 advantage over a challenge where regency can be spent to influence the number. If someone is spending 20-40 regency in a hostile take over the +2 is fairly minor. It helps for sure, but lets not over-state its place here.

    If a wizard controls a level 9 source then the advantage is al ot greater, but can still be overcome. Controlling a source of this power is fairly minor I think I can count on my fingers how many level 9 source there are in all of Cerilia.

    With two wizard of equal bloodline and source controlled, possession of a strong source level is certainly an advantage. It breaks the tie so to say.

    Conclusion

    Not sure how we got this crazy with it. I just wanted to state we need to give some domain powers tied to level to represent experience. I used the example of a weak and power wizard to show that a powerful wizard should have at least some extra tools to help run his domain because he has so much experience tapping into source.

    I offered standard levels for experience really everything is already in place to make that successful, we would just have to create a series of feats and powers that will replace ones typically adventures will take. I offer this than creating a seperate experience table for domain, as I would rather use core rules and create around them than create a new system to add in.


    And wow. Another wall of text.

  4. #64
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Wall of text = good. I actually feel guilty if I'm expressing very little but agreement or disagreement. Its a discussion forum, not an aphorism forum.

    Its funny, when I look at the problems of fitting both character and domain powers into a character, I want more slots for power and abilities (in 3x). 4e then looks so attractive, but all the powers and abilities are all at the adventure level, and taking domain powers and abilities might get you killed (at least early on).

    Very few characters are really full time adventurers. We just abstract away skills that we don't bother playing. We used to do that with ruling. You got to name level, boom, you get a stronghold and followers. It just happens. Now we have a system to track how a character goes from adventurer to regent and what a character does as a regent. However, while I certainly believe there are opportunity costs involved in deciding to be more adventurer or more ruler, I don't think that these are the only two options, just because we don't have a game system that handles the rest of life.

    So while characters should have to make choices (represented by the feat system, or in 4e picking abilities too) that serve either adventuring or domain ends, there should also be parts of the character that are added only for the domain side. This might the the role of blood abilities. Because we bother to simulate running domains, and don't bother figuring out what adventurers do with the rest of their time (and I simply don't believe they adventure 24-7, that's an abstraction in which we don't examine what happens during down time).

  5. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by bbeau22 View Post
    4th Edition Classes

    The classes in the 4th edition players handbook are ...

    Rogue - Allowed

    Rogue - As is

    -BB
    Ok - one of the key rogue weapons is shruiken. We all know that shruiken don't fit; they're low penetration weapons that don't apply in a eurpoean-based culture system, a place where weather alone requires wearing the clothes and having the houses that would make shruiken virtually useless.

    But there it is nonetheless; rogues and shruiken go together like ice cream & apple pie in 4e.

    So: what to do?

  6. #66
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Darts and throwing knives would make sense, and could be such that they do the same damage as the discarded weapon.

  7. #67
    Senior Member Arentak's Avatar
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    I don't think level should be a direct indicator of success in domain actions, nor should bloodline. Its all about how effectively you use what you have.

    A 20th level wizard would adventure to gain a bonus on his domain action contest source. If you had a Heroic=+2, paragon=+4, Epic =+6 as a general rule for adventure reward, then the 20th level wizard's advantage is that he gets more oomph then the low level guy's adventure.

    Bloodline's too can be mismanaged, which is why Regency is the key. Good Regency management lets you expand your Bloodline and always win contests. Poor regency management (always raising your bloodline, wasting rp's taking non-important things) should be punished. A major bloodline duke playing well shouldn't auto-lose to an equal level great bloodline duke.

    If we are going to insist on bloodlines giving a benefit, how about tainted = -1, minor = 0, major =+1, Great=+2, True=+3

    I wouldn't mind seeing level as a soft indicator, i.e. Bloodline score+level = max rp collection, or even follow the example above, heroic = -1, paragon = 0, epic = +1.

    That way there is some benefit from level, but its not overwhelming. Or even 0/2/4 wouldn't be too much.

    Also, each holding could have a favored class which gets a bonus in actions creating/ruling/contesting based on adventure tier, +1/2/3, or 2/4/6 maybe.
    (so level 25 rogue =+a lot to guild actions)

    I have some ideas about feats/powers management, but I'll hold off on that til we get to that thread.

  8. #68
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arentak View Post
    I don't think level should be a direct indicator of success in domain actions, nor should bloodline. Its all about how effectively you use what you have.
    Sorry, implicit assuption that bloodline score is similar to bloodline strength - so tainted stop at under 20, minor at 40 major at 60, great at 80 (simplifying) - I agree that score is the determinant in RP collection although long run score and strength should lockstep - but probably won't due to dominating local issues.

    Quote Originally Posted by Arentak View Post
    A 20th level wizard would adventure to gain a bonus on his domain action contest source. If you had a Heroic=+2, paragon=+4, Epic =+6 as a general rule for adventure reward, then the 20th level wizard's advantage is that he gets more oomph then the low level guy's adventure.
    Interesting point - but at some point the high level character runds out of challenges - milord, a griffon is raiding our caravans ruining the trade route' - adventure action for any trade ruler, but a mornings romp for the epic guy as opposed to a months long slog for the heroic chap.

    Quote Originally Posted by Arentak View Post
    Also, each holding could have a favored class which gets a bonus in actions creating/ruling/contesting based on adventure tier, +1/2/3, or 2/4/6 maybe. (so level 25 rogue =+a lot to guild actions)
    the issue is whether you move back to a class RP style system (2e) or stay with a skill based RP collection system (3.5e), alternatively you could do a feat system...

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