So in my campaign, I tried to add a few affiliations. I used the old PHB 2 guidelines and the Savage Tide affiliations as guidelines (in fact, I cribbed pretty heavily from a couple of them) but my players are pretty dissatisfied. Has anyone else tried making their own affiliations? Any advice? One complaint that I'm having is this:
"I should not have to change my character plan to take advantage of an
affiliation. I want my character to *act* differently because of the
affiliation."
This regards the warrior-centric affiliation I made based pretty heavily on Zelkarune's Horns from ST. The rewards included bonuses to intimidate, and the option to take a bunch of custom feats tailored to specific fighting styles. Affiliation score bonuses were gained by "soloing" monsters or winning duels, taking certain feats/skills (Weapon Focus, Combat Reflexes, Intimidate, etc.) and flat 1/2 BAB progression, among other things. The players have felt that gaining bonuses through taking certain feats/skills are inappropriate because they "change" the character (see above).
I guess what I'm mostly needing to understand is, how should affiliations basically function? What should the basic model for gaining aff. bonuses be (i.e. what types of things should give bonuses to the score) and what kind of rewards should be offered for gaining higher ranks?