Renown

[Trekkie90909]

Renown is something all adventurers gain by completing various tasks; heroic deeds, quests for important individuals, or helping the needy. It doesn't work as a class ability; at least not in its current form.

My thought is that we need to change the focus from Renown itself to ways the Vigilante can capitalize on his Renown. Currently this is only a geographic centric intimidate bonus (while nice is bland).

Mechanically this would be accomplishable by taking the other social abilities (loyal aid, quick change, etc) and condensing them into a pool system. The Vigilante gets a 'renown pool' (alt: favor/influence pool) for accomplishing suitable deeds, and can expend points to gain special bonuses. The baseline pool would be capped at half his level +cha and the number of points he has in it would fluctuate based on his natural charisma, his activities building renown, and the number of favors he calls in.

Bonuses would be applicable even outside areas the Vigilante is known (he can pontificate in great bardic fashion about his past deeds). He starts every day with a number of points available equal to his charisma modifier, and regaining more would require being in an area he already has built up a lot of renown or by accomplishing new and more daring deeds.

Most of the current social abilities are lackadaisical, so they could mostly be available right at level one and limited only by your pool.

Thoughts?

[PIXIE DUST]

Honestly this ability just reminds me WAY to much of video games...

Here you are, running around saving the whole of world and it seems like no one knows who you are...

[Milo v3]

PIXIE DUST wrote:

Honestly this ability just reminds me WAY to much of video games...

Here you are, running around saving the whole of world and it seems like no one knows who you are...

What? People still know who you are as much as you would normally + renown. It doesn't take anything away.

[Trekkie90909]

Yes, so an area of clarification would be: "area you have built of renown" includes the area through which tales of your exploits have traveled (yay bards! -- codified already in the existing renown system), and at a minimum you'd get your natural charisma from what I admit is an homage to superhero and villain monologues everywhere. It works equally when flavored as your social and/or vigilante personas spreading rumors and going around helping people in the area.

The idea was to make the system more flexible, and give it a working floor for areas where you haven't built up a lot of renown (including PFS) while rewarding players for active involvement with (read playing) their character.

[Manwolf]

Renown means having to stay in the public eye. Just because a bard sang your ballad (and everyone knows they don't embellish) once a couple months ago doesn't mean anyone remembers or immediately recognizes you when you pop into town. And of course everybody will believe you when you start telling them the stories of your exploits, of which there were never any witnesses, so how can anyone recognize the heroes saving the world when nobody saw them doing it?

This vigilante version of renown is more localized urban-centric than the adventure stories bards tell of heroes nobody has ever met nor will likely ever meet; this is someone in their town that saved somebody they know or they actually witnessed the event, etc. There should be more benefit than just a small intimidate bonus in your area of operation, not sure what else but I hate pools of points to limit what can be done, but it should be something less outside of that area until you actually build up renown in the new area, and they learn you are who you say you are and not a pretender trying to get free drinks. Go back where you started from a year later and you're already known, but more legend than fact and not many people are imposed until you gain back that retain by being in the public eye again.

As a DM I don't let the PC'S get a free ride somewhere they have never been. The Heroes of Sandpoint title may mean something in and around Sandpoint, but that means very little in Magnimar and it means nothing in Riddleport, regardless of what the bards said. There's always someone bigger, badder, or otherwise more famous in town, just by benefit that they're local and their name is in the public eye, until proven otherwise.

That's how I see this talent operating, and why it shouldn't automatically be spread beyond that without the work of establishing it in the new area.

[Trekkie90909]

Your peasants are more critical of people and used to random adventurers than mine apparently :P. If it's a good ballad people will remember it and hum it themselves, repeating it when at the tavern or alone and staring off dreamy-eyed; if it was a good ballad kids etc will play-act it. These things aid longevity of memory.

Not sure if you actually read the proposed system as it fixes many of your complaints in the second paragraph.

Separate but related: I agree that pool systems are lazy fixes; the current social talents are lazier, and if they want to just slap a system on the existing mechanics and keep level restrictions to make them work a pool is better.

A) You're now contradicting yourself: above you were arguing that the Vigilante needed to be able to use its renown in areas it had not been. Now you are saying your players would never be able to benefit from that in your games.

B) There are features proposed in the system to balance this.

To clarify this is not a talent suggestion; the existing talents would all be accessible off the pool from level 1, with upgrades unlocking automatically at higher levels.

[Manwolf]

Yeah, my peasants are probably more self centric, survival focused, so if the heroes aren't helping them, then they're just a nice story. :-P

I was more thinking out loud (in writing, that is) and didn't mean to sound like I was complaining. Maybe this will come out better this time :-)

I agree it should be more scalable, but without the pool. Something like a bonus to all your social and knowledge skills, bluff, intimate, sense motive, perform, knowledge: local, history, religion, etc. as appropriate to your locale and guise, that is based on how far you are from the center of your influence. To get that bonus you have to spend the time in your various guises keeping in the public eye and doing your deeds. In order to maintain this, the vigilante should have to keep going out, and if he doesn't he loses the effects after month or something. What we have received is silent on maintaining this renown one you have it, but I think there should be some maintenance or you lose it, as people come and go, a new beneficent ruler takes people attention away from the vigilante, etc.

I didn't mean to sound contradictory. The vigilante would have these effects, but nothing automatic because a bard came thru town (sure it was a good story, but you don't really believe all that do you, that's how they make money, telling fantastic stories), they have to work it out by spending their week putting themselves out there in their new locale. I agree with the system that renown is localized, but should scale, so if your big in Sandpoint (+4), you're still only a story in Magnimar (+1), and not yet a footnote in Riddleport (+0). I think it should have more effect than a single diplomacy success and a bonus to intimidate. If you're out there promoting yourself you should be learning more about the people and so have more influence through the other appropriate skills as well.

[Trekkie90909]

Thrawn007 has suggested some fixes which might be better than my proposed system in this thread, but could be alternatively be worked into this system; brainstorm on the horizon.

To respond you your suggestions (very good):

I like the renown/location idea; perhaps with temporary points to begin with, and then if you do something really epic (like saving the king/country/town) your exploits become the stuff of legends at that location and stop degrading.

If a pool system were enacted this point/location system could very easily translate into the bonus points per day (instead of the free 1/2 level proposed earlier). I like that idea, and scaling between say 1 and 5 at a given location sounds reasonable.

These bonus points would be temporary, and refresh (or be gained/lost) when changing location or performing a particularly noteworthy deed.

Overall nice suggestions; please keep the input coming!

EDIT: Thinking more on this input I need to revise my thinking on the pool; there are long term social benefits (safe house, loyal aid), as well as short term social benefits (Social Grace, quick change). So if a pool system were implemented there would need to be a way to distinguish between the two.

Really the best way to do that would be to separate some of the abilities to unlock as you increase your renown in a given location and leave them location specific (so you wouldn't necessarily have a safe house prepared simply because you walked into town, but if your renown covers the region it is in then the loyal aid of your support organization could have some prepared there). And make the others (intimidate/social grace bonuses, faster change, disguising yourself) directly tied to a pool, or uses per day, or even the current talent buy system.

[Manwolf]

I like the idea you have of getting something for your exploits, maybe, as you say bonus points for a pool, or an increase in your bonus, or a decrease to the time it takes to either gain renown in a new area or an ability to increase your level of the community's starting attitude from renown in your social guise from one step to two or three.

Edit: reading Thrawn007's and there's definitely some good stuff there