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  1. #1
    Senior Member Arentak's Avatar
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    Class/regency proposal.

    My idea is that each class should have either a Full regency and Half regency holding type, or a Full Regency with bonus type.
    Province Law Guild Temple Source
    Cleric Full -- -- Full/Favored --
    Fighter Full Full/Favored-- -- --
    Paladin Full Full -- Half --
    Ranger Full Full Half -- --
    Rogue Full -- Full/Favored --
    Warlock Full -- -- Half Full
    Warlord Full/Favored Full --
    Wizard Full -- -- -- Full/Favored
    Favored grants +1 to Rule, Create, Contest for that holding type. Bonus increases
    to +2 at Paragon Tier, and +3 at epic tier.
    Feat: Focused Holding
    Requirements: Class has a Full/Favored item on the regency collection table.
    Benefit: The bonus doubles from favored. +2 at heroic, +4 at paragon, +6 at epic level.
    The idea is that some classes lend themselves towards doing multiple things, and some are specialists. There is a degree of balance in all of them.

    Comments? Ideas?
    Last edited by Arentak; 01-06-2009 at 04:20 PM.

  2. #2
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    It is simple, so starts off well.

    If you are moving away from skills but mostly keeping straight 4e, then classes become the obvious candidate, in which case your approach sounds pretty good.

    If however you decide to build a non-adventure side to your game, then I'd place domain rulership, RP, etc squarely in that section. So your PC with a 'background' of sailor, craftsman, etc gets skills in those areas, your PC with a background in 'merchant, noble, clergy' etc gets various skills they can use in domain rule.

  3. #3
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    I personally like the approach of divorcing realm rulership almost entirely from classes, providing a bonus perhaps only in terms of a tier bonus.

    As Andrew says, then, regency would be matched to backgrounds of some kind instead. This rulership-focused side would entail a separate progression in realm-appropriate skills, feats, and powers. I would link it to bloodline advancement, organically growing through deeds and experience in ruling the realm, as well as study in some instances.

  4. #4
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    You could have feat progressions.

    As a Pc gains 'levels' they can either spend feats to gain bonuses to actions with a holding, or in gaining the types of holdings from which they can gain RP.

    So regent A specialises in law holdings and spends their 3 feats getting 'gain regency from law', 'gain +2 on all law actions', 'gain +5 on claim tax action' or some such things

    Regent B spends their 3 feats on being able to gain RP from province, law and sources, they likely have more RP, but have to spend more to have the same success on actions...

    The exact number of eats required and the effect of the feats would, of course, need balancing in the context of a developed system.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
    I personally like the approach of divorcing realm rulership almost entirely from classes, providing a bonus perhaps only in terms of a tier bonus.

    As Andrew says, then, regency would be matched to backgrounds of some kind instead. This rulership-focused side would entail a separate progression in realm-appropriate skills, feats, and powers. I would link it to bloodline advancement, organically growing through deeds and experience in ruling the realm, as well as study in some instances.
    I am very much against divorcing realm rulership from classes. D&D is very much dependant on classes not to mention the original Birthright system used classes.

    The thing is, like everything in Birthright, things are left vague and open to DM's to explain. With Birthright I see the classes not as your standard run of the mill classes like standard D&D. The Priest we play isn't the priest that walks from town to town doing good and destroying undead ... we play the priest that runs the churches and gives the hands on priest the ability to do good. Wizards aren't the blast fireballs at the goblins in the dungeon, they are the wizards that influence rulers or rule themselves. The warriors we play aren't the tank that fights trolls in the swamp to save the village ... we play warriors that have a knack for leading men into war.

    Classes has to be a part of the equation. How is it hard to explain that a higher level wizard would be better at ruling a source than a low level wizard if blood was equal. If that wizard took realm like powers they should be superior. In the 4th edition this can be accomplished by replacing combat powers with realm like powers. Because people are taking realm powers instead of combat powers they will be very weak class for adventuring but strong in rulership.

    Now blood scores are still separate. Low level people with high blood scores are still going to be a force to be reckoned with ... but a highly seasoned opponent with a weaker blood score might be able to hold his own against the talented youth at first.

  6. #6
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    BB, in this respect I am trying to balance a simulationist perspective with a game play one. I want a player to be able to have their cake and eat it too. Particularly in 4e, if you swap anything from the adventuring class for a realm class, you make that class woefully underpowered to the point of throwing completely out of whack the adventuring system. If you want adventurer regents, their abilities cannot eat the same pie.

    I frankly don't care how 2e BR was constructed. With 4e we are now farther away from those even more faulty and shortsighted game mechanics. The story and setting is what matters. The best functioning rules that do justice to the story and setting should always be used, IMO.

    The primary problem with tying realm rulership to classes is that, even moreso in 4e than ever before, the adventuring classes are just that--ADVENTURING classes. They are not designed to mimic all walks of life and pigeonhole all living PC races into this or that class. Life exists beyond classes, and it typically takes the form of things like: farmer, fisherman, artisan, merchant, courtier, noble, general, etc.

    4e describes the adventuring classes by tiers because it points out that even a 1st level adventurer is in the "Heroic" tier. Are all regents adventuring heroes? You could play it that way, but the default BR setting does not seem to assume this. It assumes that PCs will be adventurers, but that the majority of their peers will likely spend most of their lives just living out their roles, not dungeon delving.

    Further, just as skill at blacksmithing or sailing does not increase the more ogres you slay, skill at leading and ruling people, keeping financial books, balancing favors and needs, interpreting and applying law, making good policy, etc. does not increase with the number of ogres slain, or even most skill challenges (climbing cliffs, navigating wilderness, bypassing traps).

    If you can't conceive of life without classes and levels, I do see some adjustments that can be made to anchor back to them. First off, give significant XP for standard ruling of a realm. Otherwise you have the bizarre occurrence of a noble who has spent his whole life at court, studying everything he can, taking leadership risks, and doing everything that regents do day in and day out, suddenly looking like he knows nothing compared to the adventurer who has hardly spent a day at court but has cleared out a whole bunch of dungeons.

    Second, to keep your regents capable of adventuring per the rigorous level-based D&D regime, don't force them to swap out powers and feats for regent-specific ones. Grant these in addition to the normal adventuring progression. Otherwise your group of level 15 characters will get their asses handed to them by an 11th level adventure challenge. You destroy the tiers and play balance entirely if you force power swapping.

    Of course, in this world defined entirely by adventuring class and level, now that noble who has never spent a day in the wilderness or in serious life-threatening combat is now as able as the dungeon sweeper. Which is why I maintain that it is folly to tie realm rulership to class and level. Keep it independent and nothing suffers--your adventurer hero-kings can still adventure and do brave deeds, but they can also become wise rulers so exceptionally forged in the crucible of adversity that by their noble upbringing they can compete with more sedentary regents. And best of all, such a "both, and" system does not do violence to the story and setting in such a way that suspension of disbelief is seriously strained.
    Last edited by Rowan; 11-26-2008 at 03:23 PM.

  7. #7
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    An approach I have been working on might satisfy both Rowan and bbeau22.

    Basically, everything remains class based as bbeau22 suggests, and I think his argument is compelling. However, Rowan is right, 4e is not a multi-classing environment, so to have both adventuring and realm abilities, characters need extra abilities to manage domains.

    Ultimately, that means deciding what kind of ruler a character should be at some benchmark locations, say 1st level, 5th level, 10th, 20th, and if one desires, beyond. Then create a pattern of abilities that produce that end result.

    Because the power-up at each level in 4e remains profound, I prefer to maintain a low level environment for BR. Tentatively, I remain structured around the range of class levels typical in the published materials, so that the top rulers will be just beginning their paragon path, and characters at the end of the paragon path will be diminishingly rare. Based on the feel of things, I am slightly increasing the levels of characters, just so that the top end is no long my 3x standard of 10-12, but more like 11-14. Basically, Aeric Boeruine becomes a 13th level Warlord, instead of the published 12th level 2e fighter, or a Fighter 4/Noble 8 in 3e.

    There are two tracks of abilities for domain powers, one is a standard every regent needs this stuff package of abilities, like the ability to attract dedicated cohorts, followers, and contacts, recruit lieutenants, perform court ceremonies, Iron Will, stuff like that. Then there are talent trees so a regent can focus on diplomacy, administration, finance, warfare, espionage, trade, rapport (what we would call public relations), and such abilities. Each talent tree is intended to have roughly a six level arc, so that a 13th level character like Aeric Boeruine has just picked his first power from a third talent tree.

    Third, is a path of blood ability power-ups. So every character gets their starting blood abilities, plus blood mark and blood history. All of these powers are weak, almost tainted at 1st level. The 1st level version of Aeric Boeruine does not have the full strength version of Battlewise that impose the kinds of problems that made ECL an issue compared to the character that had Animal Affinity, or something like that. Instead the 1st level character who selects Battlewise can effect one unit with a minor bonus. Every three levels you get a blood ability power up. You can't select the same ability to power up consecutively.

    A character like Aeric Boeruine, might have selected Battlewise twice (at 3rd and 9th levels) Bloodmark at 6th level, and Anduiras' Resistance at 12th.

    The result is that a character gains realm abilities, and has a distinct class identity. In a sense, everyone is automatically multi-classes as a noble (which is pretty much how I built 3x characters), and commoners get the same thing, but based more on the idea that everyone is multi-classed as an expert in some profession.

    A commoner fighter might select weaponsmith has his "profession" and get get abilities that allow them to master that "domain". So they can attract apprentices, make masterwork items, join a guild, derive an income, operate a workshop. Their life outside of adventuring. What do they do between adventures.

    So that's my idea, and I will post on it further as I get more of it worked out.

  8. #8
    Senior Member Arentak's Avatar
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    In some online games, one levels as, say a Fighter, but also levels as a Blacksmith. I'm not sure I like making it more complicated.

    If we don't allow too many "optimizations" then it doest matter if Prince Avan is a level 30 fighter or a level 1 fighter.

    in my proposal, the 2nd example would get a +2 bonus over the 1st example.

    So, the uber-master prince of Anuire with 1000's of gold and regency really could be a level 1 fighter, and still be an effective regent.

    if there are not tons of bonuses that you can tweak and optimize into the char.

    If good rulership is more a function of player then character, I think we can sidestep the issue.

    If a given DM thinks level IS very important, then go with the (max regency = 1/2 bloodline + Level) variant.

  9. #9
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    The 'non-adventure' classes are likely to be quite simple - no hitpoints, saves, ac, attack, etc - just skills and feats, possibly with blood abilities on the side with the same base ability stats.

    As such I'd hope that they could be quite simple.

    You could then either take the easy view - 'domain' class and 'adventure' class advance in lockstep, so a L20 fighter is going to be very good at the 'domain' stuff - possibly 'general' but equally possibly 'wastrel'.

    Personally I'd prefer to track the progression separately, and possibly do away with levels entirely - just gain 'domain xp' that buy skills or feats.

    I like Ken's take on blood, but would prefer to simply make a string of abilities that could be chosen in place of adventure abilities by the blooded if the power has adventure level application, or put a cost on the power if it has domain application.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    The 'non-adventure' classes are likely to be quite simple - no hitpoints, saves, ac, attack, etc - just skills and feats, possibly with blood abilities on the side with the same base ability stats.

    As such I'd hope that they could be quite simple.

    You could then either take the easy view - 'domain' class and 'adventure' class advance in lockstep, so a L20 fighter is going to be very good at the 'domain' stuff - possibly 'general' but equally possibly 'wastrel'.

    Personally I'd prefer to track the progression separately, and possibly do away with levels entirely - just gain 'domain xp' that buy skills or feats.

    I like Ken's take on blood, but would prefer to simply make a string of abilities that could be chosen in place of adventure abilities by the blooded if the power has adventure level application, or put a cost on the power if it has domain application.
    I am convinced that a seperate "ruling class" is the way to go in 4th edition. As the 4th system provides streamlined combat and balance, we should try to keep it intact and add to it rather than swap out powers.

    That said, I have begun pondering the subject, whether the "non-dventure classes" or "ruling classes" should perhaps not be tied to the ruling character, but to the domain. In which each domain has "levels" and abilities and of which the nature and level of the ruling character is but a part of its total abilities. We could then tie "domain classes" or better yet domain skills or powers to holding type.
    Last edited by Sir Tiamat; 11-28-2008 at 06:14 AM.

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