Benedict wrote:1st Concern: Factions by themselves can go up to 3d for a whoomping cost of 8pts.
Yes. This is intentional. It means one character of
any social class can technically be a member of a powerful faction with a T5 trait choice. If they are a greater noble, they can use their points to either be a member for 6 points, or a leader for 8. It's absolutely possible for a single PC to still be in control of one of the most powerful political forces in the country on their own.
On the other hand, the more PCs who are involved in the affair, the cheaper it becomes. This is also intentional. The more PCs are wrapped up in the thing, the more focus that thing has in the story by comparison, the cheaper it thus becomes to bring it into play.
If we want to put all this into perspective, though, the previous "greater noble" gains from BoB gave you like 50 dudes and a hall. On a whole, it was probably worth somewhere between a 1d and 2d faction.
Benedict wrote:There's no option for a 4d faction.
3d already gives you a major influence over an area. You're a house big enough to influence national events, yadda yadda. When working out the actual figures for what factions mean (the full-fledged faction system), we had to cut off the scale at the high end of regional. Once you start trying to model kings and nations, things get really silly in terms of scale, and they'd wind up having to have attributes that scaled up way past the 1-10 scale we tried to set for faction attributes. At a certain point, we just cut it off and declared "this is beyond the scope of what we are trying to model."
The characters being the royal house is such a fundamental change to the premise of the campaign that it would need to be cleared with the GM anyway, so if it's something that the GM and players want to do badly enough, they can as easily handwave it, tweak it, whatever.
Benedict wrote:A 4d Status means that we will be tapping 4 dice any time we pull our weight as Hounds, which honestly from a rules point of view seems a bit much to me. Not so with a 2d Faction. Still if everyone is cool with the +4d I'm cool with it.
To be fair, any time you
could apply that, one of two things is happening:
1) You're flaunting your badge in front of some poor individual dude who has no means to resist you in the first place, in which case -- as a regular dude on the street
you try to refuse one of the Emperor's interrogators? That sounds like a quick way to conjure up some unpleasantness.
2) or you're entering a pissing match with someone who has power/influence of their own, in which case if you whip out yours, they'll whip out theirs and it will be your 4d tap vs their 2d or 3d tap (depending on their own station, the station of their patron, etc). Not as bad as you think.
One also has to keep in mind that if it works against you, it's that much worse (say, the person just
hates the Empire), and there are certain people against whom it just won't apply at all -- i.e. trying to interrogate a hardened criminal. Your authority comes from the law. For people who make their living by being on the other side of the law, you're just another jackboot with a badge no matter how fancy or important those jackboots are.
Benedict wrote:2nd Concern: That means that everyone involved will have to invest heavily in Status.
5pt (4d, from the Emperor)
-3pt (A station of honor and importance, but with an extremely limited scope of responsibility or influence. Personal champion, bodyguard, herald or messenger.)
(2pt total)
Meaning a min Trait ivestment of 2. Which I fear will complicate builds for the other guys, given they have high priorities in Attributes and/or Proficiencies.
That's why I opted of creating the Faction with my extra noble points. It's a min investment of 1pt per person. Plus they can get Status, Reputaion, temptable Traits, or other goodies more easily.
Unless someone wants to be an apprentice hound (in which case it'd be 2pts, I'd argue. One step down from you), then no one else really needs Status unless they want a status or faction independent of yours. You're the Hound here. If they are your retinue, any Hound-cred they might have is only through you anyway. The -3pt station would be more like if they were a bodyguard
to the Emperor himself. They don't need a status to be
your bodyguard/henchman/etc.You aren't yourself important enough to count as a status-giver.
Benedict wrote:And a question. Is it ok to replace the armor with a library?
Sounds good to me, but are you going to try and travel with said library, or is the idea that you have a residence in the region?
ThirtyThr33 wrote:My impression was that it was set at the "edge of the empire". We could reasonably bump the status down to 2 or 3 dice to represent people being less loyal to a king that lives half a world away.
I'd be fine with that, if you want to save some points.
