osprey424's page

Per Joker's request, here are a few responses to some of Tripp's observations:

Maximum Province Level
- The adjustment to maximum province levels for certain terrains (e.g., Desert and Tundra) has significant implications:
- Desert: Reduced from 3 to 1.
- Tundra: Reduced from 2 to 1.
- Impact varies by setting:
- Anuirean Game: Changes are not game-breaking.
- Vosgaard or Khinasi: These changes might feel restrictive.
- Positive aspects:
- Higher levels in certain terrains for dwarves and elves are appreciated.
- Bonuses for sea/riverside provinces add flavor and utility.
- Suggestion: Consider special rules for Goblin and Orog domains to reflect their unique conditions and environments.

I don't know why they lowered the desert and tundra max levels from 2e.

Don't forget when evaluating that maximum levels go up by +1 for a major river border and +2 for coastal provinces.

Any race that has underground settlements I'm not really sure normal terrain rules should apply at all! Dwarves and orogs most notably - I think goblins are still at least partly surface-based in Cerilia.

There has been a lot of discussion in the forums in the past about underground province levels, but it really would require a whole second map with separate settlements with their own rules for max levels, probably based on the sophistication of their mining and subterranean building skills.

Create Province
- Notably absent from this ruleset.
- Critical for realms like Mieres, where creating new provinces is a strategic necessity.
- Suggestion: Reintroduce this action with appropriate mechanics.

It would be good to have rules for this action, it shouldn't be too hard. I don;t really agree that Mieres needs to create any new provinces to thrive (I had a player turn Mieres into the capital of an Adurian Empire without making new provinces until maybe much, much later in the game. Undead hordes roaming the vast Deismaar Wastes have a lot to do with why Mieres has the borders it does.)

Urban Provinces

- Clarifications and considerations:
- Is there a way to create urban provinces?
- Possible mechanic: Use a Create Province action, limited to existing provinces of level 5 or higher.
- Reliance on trade routes feels arbitrary, especially with changes to trade route mechanics.

Urban provinces are really problematic. I think the idea that they are dependent on agrarian trade routes absolutely makes sense to me, but it gets to be a lot of rules just for this special case scenario.

I personally went a different route in my game and allowed certain kinds of Wondrous Structures to be built up and potentially raise province levels above their normal maximums. The main way was building a University Wondrous Structure with different kinds of Land Management (ex: Advanced Agriculture for open provinces), Urban Planning, and Industrial research and engineering specialties as it leveled up. Plus I ruled that any Wonder hitting the province's current maximum level could add +1 to that province's maximum level.

The easiest thing for a more vanilla game is to just not have any urban provinces besides the Imperial City of Anuire, and just let it be that one special case that nobody knows how to duplicate yet.

Law vs. Province Holdings
- The shift in power from realm rulers (province owners) to Law Regents has significant consequences:
- Realms with opposed or enemy Law Regents face increased difficulty.
- Rulers of realms with minimal Law holdings may struggle due to changes in the Rule action and realm actions.
- Suggestion: Rebalance to ensure province owners retain meaningful control over their territories.

Here I feel like the BRCS use of Law holdings replacing Land holdings in function both makes sense and is a big improvement over the 2e rules.

In 2e Law holdings had limited function: you got them to 1/2 the province level so you could max out your Province taxes, and used them to squeeze any guilds or temples you didn't like with seizures.

Meanwhile Landed regents had immense power without really having to do anything other than inherit land holdings and hang onto them. They could use the full province level to support or oppose any other regent doing almost anything in their province, and with higher level provinces this got extremely one-sided and unbalanced.

In the BRCS, Law holdings do exactly what you'd expect: Make the Rules!
I feel like thematically this is the right way to go, and it makes Law holdings more powerful - a needed boost for them (and for Fighter Regents in particular). They also can still do seizures if you want, in addition to their modest base income, and like all holdings at 1/2 or max levels (compared to the local province) can add a bonus to seasonal Attitude checks. All Law, Temple, and Guild holding regents can passively support or oppose a ruler and thus influence their seasonal attitude checks.

As for hostile Law holdings in your lands: They should be big problems! What was the point of them in 2e? How much could they really do in the old system? Not much, in my experience.

As a DM I have used the BRCS system for many years, and I totally prefer the way Law holdings are used there compared to the 2e original.

As for low starting Law holdings...this isn't at all an insurmountable problem for most regents. It just creates an early goal for how you should change your realm to strengthen your rule! Some realms are more challenging than others in this regard, and I think that is just fine. If everyone started with a perfectly strong realm, I think the domain game would just be more boring and less challenging.

Maximum Number of Regents (Table 5-3)
- Deviates from core rules, creating unintended consequences:
- A realm ruler may be disincentivized from raising a province...

In my experience, these limits were usually in line with the numbers you see in Ruins of Empire and didn't change the game too much from the 2e setting.

Finally, you can have any number of level 0 holdings in a province, and the utility of these is bigger than is at first apparent: regular intelligence is gained on the province, and the owner can spend RP to support or oppose many actions there.

And having a reason to not rule every province up higher is a great thing! Just ask any wizard. ;)

@Osprey424

You haven't posted a PC yet (and Elton has posted "which is private so far"). However, you have posted that you plan on being regent of The Siedwode (and Critzible may be building your court wizard).

As mentioned in thread, My own concept is currently: Searmonaiche do Sidhelien (Preacher to Elves). A Half-elven druid (supernaturalist) of Erik, who is trying to bring religion to the elves by establishing an elven church of Erik...

Is such a step away from elven tradition (a religion for the sidhelien) be a problem for your PC? If it's going to result in intra-party conflict, I will find a different concept...

Sorry for the slow reply, been a little busy the last few days!

My character is an elven Wizard, who will be (as far as I know) inheriting Isaelie's throne as the next King of the Sielwode. I assumed this would be her collection of land, law, and source holdings she holds in Ruins of Empire, unless the DM wants them divided up differently.

Elven regents are so rarely PCs that I hadn't really expected other players also wanting to play one. I've never had a pure elven PC in my own games, because they are substantially more alien and on poor terms with humans in general in Cerilia compared to other settings.

FWIW I had originally wanted to play either a human ranger ruler of Coeranys, or a dwarven regent of Baruk-Azhik, and had mentioned the Sielwode as a 3rd option, and Elton asked me to take on that role, so I did. :)

As for other regents in Sielwode: based on the RoE default setup, I would suggest that an elven Rogue or Ranger Guild Regent would be the most complimentary regent type to play there. Guild Regents are freaking *awesome* in Birthright, with rogues being arguably the most potent regent class in the game (lots of skills, lots of GB income, and they gain full RP from both guilds and trade routes! So it's really easy to max out RP collections while focusing on building ever-greater revenues. The tradeoff is every landed regent knows you are the money maker and expects a cut of the profits for allowing you to operate in their lands and protecting your trade routes).

Temples for Elves: nahhhh
In the canon setting elves do not worship any deities. They are themselves divine beings, deeply tied to the land, and fully immortal in terms of aging. They can live forever if violence does not kill them. They probably believe the humans' deep need for gods to worship is what brought them into existence in the first place.

So just having one elf worship a human deity would be quite a stretch, but an allowable exception to the rule. Persuading whole populations of elves to worship them defies credibility. Having temples in elven realms would certainly be a pragmatic benefit: it's humans' divine magics, coupled with their much higher birth and maturation rates, that were a decisive factor in humans steadily pushing the elves out of their Cerilian forest homes - which once covered most of the continent. And immortal beings have very long memories.

That's my feeling on the issue: I think it just breaks the setting a little too much. I expect we all want to be exceptional regents and make our marks in Cerilia's history, but I think we should respect the setting and it's unique flavor as well. It might be less of a stretch to have elves being capable of non-deific divine magic ala 3rd edition concepts (where the divine power comes from a non-deity source like nature or some other source), but it would definitely change the original 2e setting, where every cleric and paladin was required to have a patron deity, and druids were always priests of Erik. Ranger spells were somehow forgotten in these rules, and the source of that power is not explained in the canon as far as I know.

And as roleplaying goes, I don't want to give away too much about my character out-of-game, as elves are extremely mysterious and rarely seen or understood by humans, especially in a friendly context. So playing an elf who is willing to be allies with humans, especially from the xenophobic Sielwode, will be quite the novelty in Anuire!