I've recently re-read Ruins of Empire and it struck me how in the write up for Elinie, Coeranys and a lesser extent Mhoried and Roesone's regents purposefully don't rule up their law holdings too much as they and/or their people oppose heavy handed rule.

The mechanics however benefit regents to rule up law holdings as it allows them to generate more wealth, regency and ignore domain attitude changes. If one plays with the optional build rule for units, the benefits are further compounded. I can certainly see this is as a sort of different perspective on how best to rule other than interpretation based on alignment. i.e. a lawful evil regent's law holdings would be more oppressive than say a lawful good regent and so forth. As it stands, there's no mechanical reason other than keeping reserve cash and regency from ruling up holdings.


One idea I've come to consider are potentially removing the ignore domain attitude changes for controlling 50%/100% of law as the BR 3.0/3.5 rules have done away with taxation levels which were the major driving force behind attitude changes. Having a higher level of law would already represent that increased taxation as law holdings now generate income on their own. That said, I'm reluctant to give a benefit to domain attitude for having low number of holdings because it might seem like it places value of Freedom over Security and a strong government or conversely imposing penalties for maxing out law.


Another would be modifiers on handling random domain events but I've been able to argue both sides of the coin so have a hard time deciding where one might be better over the other.


Has anyone come up with any solutions or suggestions on how having a realm with light law holdings might be beneficial?