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Fringe benefit


steph

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The FB noble title, (Knight,Baron,Duke etc etc)

 

As a gm you give what concretely to the players when they pay for that.

 

For you paying for FB like a Baron (4pts) grant players a castle, army, land, subjects for 4 PTS ?

 

Steph

 

Hope my english is clear.

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I've always thought that one of the biggest perks of a title of baron or higher is good ole noblesse oblige. You can call on your "cousins" - fellow lords - in their demesne and pretty much expect a night of food and a place to rest, whether you're penniless or not. You're not, after all, a member of the common rabble, and hence worthy of some consideration. Commoners would also be expected to defer to you, but this carries the obligation that you may be called upon to render judgement (low justice) if the local lord isn't available, or even defend the poor peasants. You can also be called upon to render service to your liege.

 

Personally, I've always thought that the costs for the title are too high....-UNLESS- the lands, servants, incomes, and so forth come along with it. Which require either paying the points for them, as stated above (Demesne, Money, Followers, etc.) or earning them through the course of the campaign. Without them though, as above, I've never seen that the title alone carries that much more benefit compared to the obligations that come with it. After all, if you're a baron, and your count or duke are called by the king to form an army and come to render service, guess who that means they're calling to form the knightly cadre of that army?

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Personally, I've always thought that the costs for the title are too high....-UNLESS- the lands, servants, incomes, and so forth come along with it.

 

 

In a medieval society, just not being a worthless wretch anyone with a title can use to sharpen their sword on with zero payback is a pretty big benefit.

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The main benefit is that you get treated like a noble.  You can expect hospitality (wherever your nobility is recognized) and deference and respect from those of lower station.  Even without the Money perk, people will probably treat you as if you had money, so you can probably get credit, at least.  Superior nobles may be looking out for you, and giving some help (because it reflects well on them and the noble family) - but usually not solely for your benefit, which would usually require the Contact perk.

 

And Kesedrith is right that the costs are too high.  Well, to be precise, they *may* be too high depending on further details.  Specifically, the size/importance/prominence of your noble authority.  If you're the king of a huge region spanning hundreds of miles with millions of subjects, then yes, the listed prices are probably about right.  But if you're the king of an isolated island nation that no one more than ten miles from the nearest coast has ever heard of, then the price should only be about 10-20% of what it says in the book.  Likewise, you may be the top-ranking sovereign of a relatively poor nomadic tribe - definitely not worth the same perk cost as Alexander the Great or Xerxes or Henry VIII.

 

When designing a campaign world, it might be a good idea to give a "King Cost Rating" for each nation to reflect its size/strength/importance.  This would be a number of points it would cost for the title of "King" (or equivalent) of that country.  And lesser nobles would have commensurately lower costs.  So for a major central power in the campaign world, the listed prices are probably correct, but for a much smaller kingdom, being king might only be a 5-point perk, and being a duke, only 3, and a baron maybe 1.  If there's a world-wide empire with one supreme overlord in charge, noble titles might be doubled in value and price.

 

Likewise, different fantasy races and their cultures might affect the value of this perk.  Some races/cultures might have only a very loosely structured society, so that the king doesn't really have that much authority at all, so a noble title among them would be worth less.  Or they might even view ranks of nobility differently, such as by giving top authority to a king, but almost none to any lesser noble.

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Of course being a penniless baron may be why they're out adventuring too, so it could be a good plot hook. Your lands are all rocky stubble and with no ore or stone quarry to speak of, so how do you pay the king's taxes and keep your title and lands? :D

 

My thinking is just that there's a lot of obligation that goes along with a title of nobility. If nothing else, there's the expectations on behavior and lifestyle. It's not just getting a title and being able to lord it over anyone beneath your station.

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One of my wife's characters had noble as a perk.  She was baron's daughter who ran away from a marriage she didn't want to be part of.  She had the money Perk as well.  It was just enough so my wife wouldn't have to do any gaming bookkeeping for the day-to-day life stuff.  It gave her the ability to get into places other people in the party couldn't get into.

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I've always thought of Title as being something that gives a slight bonus to interactions within a region. You're the Prince of Fantisalia? I'll give you a +2/2D6 to Presence based skills and attacks, but only within the realm of Fantisalia.

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My current FH campaign is a "road trip" game, so PCs with Nobility may well have lands & followers back home, but since they're not going to come up in the game (at least not often) they're not reflected on the character sheets. If they are going to come up in the game, then yeah you need to pay points for them.

 

I think of it as the opposite of a Social Complication/Disad in that it changes how others react to you, typically in the nobles' favor. Commoners will defer to you; other nobles are less likely to piss on you. I don't typically use it as a Skill bonus per se, but it does heavily flavor the situation.

 

Say you're trying to convince the Prince of Whereveria to take up arms against the Dark Lord of Badistan. A serf or commoner will have to work to even get an audience with him, and good luck getting him to listen to you. A lesser noble can probably get an audience, and he'll probably listen to you, but your counsel might bear less weight than if it were coming from a peer. A visiting King gets invited to dinner and gets to talk to him all through dinner. So it's not a Skill bonus per se, but it affects the difficulty of the Persuasion Roll needed to convince him.

 

And I agree the price of the Perk should vary with the size & power of the country. In the year 1000 AD (when my current campaign is set), Ireland had 150 "Kings" for a population of under 500K, an average of one King per 3333 subjects. By contrast the ruler of the Kievan Rus (Russia) is "only" a Prince but he has 5 million subjects, a powerful army & fleet, and controls the major trade routes through Eastern Europe to Constantinople & Baghdad. Which Perk should cost more?*

 

* Rhetorical question obviously.

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nothing wrong with characters being from or having nobility. Of course, being nobility has its own rewards and complications attached as well. If your a prince you have certain obligations that must be fulfilled. If the kingdom isn't doing well the peasants will see you as  part of the cause. They see the prince and the request line soon forms..and so.

 

So it can be a fun addition to a campaign and a pain in the rear as well. Will depend what a GM wants to deal with and even what the players wish to deal with as well. In a D&D campaign I was in one of the characters was a king, so naturally the party would always send the castle the bar tab and the cost of the best rooms we always ordered :)

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Some structures required a fee paid to maintain your noble status as well, like licensing with the king.  You paid a sum to have your title and coat of arms, which if you're broke entails going deeper into debt with other nobles to pay for it all.

 

In other cases, it works like this:

"When asked by what right he held Lewes Castle, he grabbed the sword of his ancestor who had fought alongside William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and said: “This is my warrant. King William did not conquer this realm all by himself”."

 

"He" in this case was John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey (1231-1304). This anecdote may not have actually happened, of course, but it reflects a certain attitude.

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Various genre books discuss this issue, usually the rational is that such people have poor spending habits or bad luck. So all that wealth they find in the dragon's lair gets spent on drugs and sex, or gets stolen by burglars who bought Wealth.

Naturally, if such a rational doesn't work for the style of campaign (such as in D&D styles games where Wealth is effectively a closely monitored resource shared by the group), than the GM should prohibit taking Wealth as a Perk/Complication.

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Not necessarily...

There are lots of viable, reasonable special effects for your wealth level. Regardless, the only Complication that actually affects your level of wealth is Wealth, all of those other things you mention are simply potential special effects for your Wealth (or lack there of)

 

A person can be a Compulsive Gambler (has to make EGO Rolls not to Gamble), yet because of their Wealth Perk they win more often than they lose, or just make so much money elsewise that their massive losses are a drop in the bucket (and the special effect of somebody else's Wealth Perk).

 

Ash Catchum is Hunted by Team Rocket (who are pokemon thieves), yet Team Rocket never successfully steals anything for long (because they took Destitute and probably massive amounts of Unluck and Ash didn't).

 

Years ago I was writing a story about an adventurer that got lucky and found a dragon's horde with the first party she adventured with. The party retired to their own interests, and everybody but the protagonist spent their share of the horde wisely, building academies, strongholds, or businesses (I.E. they bought appropriate levels of Wealth and other perks with the XP from that adventure)... but not the protagonist, she blew through her fortune living like a queen for a year or so (and maybe bought a few cool magic items with the XP from that adventure). So a year later she's broke and has to find a new party to adventure with because all her former party members were living successfully in retirement and didn't want to adventure anymore.

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Maybe Our Hero sends all his money back to his starving home town. That's the only impact his starving town has on the game, and that's all the impact the player wants.

 

Perhaps it all gets donated to the Church.

 

Maybe he just pees it away because he's a spendthrift.

 

Why can't a character sheet say:

 

Unlucky with Money - Destitute

Hunted by Burglars - Destitute

Expensive Girlfriend - Destitute

Generous Donor - Destitute

or

Compulsive Gambler - Destitute?

 

It can say

 

Firebolt - 12d6 Blast

Lightning Strike - 12d6 Blast

Acid Spray - 12d6 Blast

Bolts from the Blue - 12d6 Blast

or

Rabid Elephant Charges From Nowhere, Smashes into Foe and Vanishes - 12d6 Blast

 

If one SFX is not right for the campaign (maybe my game does not have fire, or gambling), fine - ban that particular effect.

 

But it does not mean the player is wrong for choosing a mechanic that reasonably simulates his vision of the character.

 

It's not d20 - you can have a Power Attack with any number of mechanics, not just "+X DC's, side effect -Y OCV".

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So Clark Kent is the same person as Bruce Wayne or Carol Danvers?

 

A Public ID because I'm a world famous rock singer who gained superpowers on live TV when VIPER attacked the superbowl is the same as a two headed alien?

 

And those are just two examples of a Social Complication, and closely related at that!

 

Aunt May, Lois Lane and Franklin Richards are the same person too, by that reasoning. So is J. Jonah Jameson and Jarvis the Butler!

 

The Joker, HYDRA, the CIA and Lex Luthor are also one and the same, I guess.

 

Is there a power more SFX based than Vulnerability and Susceptibility?

 

That just scratches the surface - what Complication ISN'T about special effects?

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