Lieutenants: Your lieutenants will now give you a bonus of 1 character or court action per action round… OR… if your regent is busy elsewhere (say an adventure), your lieutenant may temporily rule in your place and even perform a domain action for you. This will allow GB poor regents to still perform at least 1 court action without maintaining a huge and expensive court (useful for wizard who have little income).
Hmm, I’m not sure I like the idea of Lts. being cheap. In my games, I always ran it that the only Lts. who don’t require maintenance are the extremely loyal ones gained through the Leadership feat. Which then requires any regent with this feat to decide between a military cohort or a loyal and able Lt. Additional Lts. may be recruited and confirmed through the Ceremony action, but these generally have a maintenance of at least 1 GB per season (possibly more at higher levels).
Courts: You may no longer use your regent’s skills and feats to influence court actions, only domain actions, although you may spend RP. As an optional rule I’ll be introducing rules to allow the hiring of advisors. When conducting court actions you may designate one of your advisors to handle the action and use his/her skills. This would allow a low-level regent with few domain related skills to hire a skilled administration to improve the success chance of his rule holding court actions, or hire a general to lead his armies to victory. Advisors will have a maintenance cost (something for those regents with lots of gold to spend it on).
I would add that the effects of a Court’s reputation modifier on domain actions needs to be clarified. Does this replace a regent’s or Lt’s skill synergy bonus, or is it strictly limited to Diplomacy actions? I would prefer to see it expanded to include all Domain actions, given the tremendous expense of maintaining a high-level court. Why wouldn’t a court represent administrators, beauracrats, courtiers, and advisors? I think special advisors, those who stand above the typical court employee, are suitably represented by Lieutenants, although any NPC advisor, etc. need not be a designated Lt. with the powers to rule in the regent’s stead.
Research of Realm Spells: Although this is something more for chapter 7, I’ll be adjusting the research times for realm spells to…
Level 1-3: 1 month
Level 4-6: 2 months
Level 7-9: 3 months (1 domain turn).
Research will still be subject to roll for success, but will be a little quicker now.
Boy, am I glad for this change! You’re right, this was necessary to put source regents back in the competitive game.
I’ve been considering ley lines; one idea I’ve been using is that ley lines can’t cross large bodies of water, especially seas and deep ocean, although source regents may still gather regeny from disparate island sources. The reasoning is a metaphysical one: oceans and seas aren’t like land, they constantly mix and shift with currents, tides, and winds; if ley lines could remain stable within such an environment, then why wouldn’t sea or ocean zones be capable of holding source potential? Now if we’re talking about underwater races like tritons or merfolk, that might be a different story, but I’d tend to rule that landlubber mages just can’t reach beneath the sea to access these potential sources - the shifting seas pose a formidable barrier.
Spy Networks: Will become a seperate domain action. The role of a spy network will be expanded somewhat, allowing you to recruit spies within a enemy regent’s court that pass on a continuous stream of information, such as tracking the movement of enemy troops. Each deployed spy would have a maintenance cost.
I’d be carefuly about over-detailing this aspect, as it could very quickly become too cumbersome for a domain level of play. If a spy network remains a general net of spies and informants (hence giving the +2 Espionage synergy bonus, and allowing Espionage as court actions), it is still quite potent. Here as in the court, skilled lieutenants and hirelings can be used to represent the particularly useful spies coordinating Espionage actions in the province. I have several PC regents in my own game with Spymaster lieutenants who utilize spy networks to great advantage.
Concerning Espionage, I’ve been using a few additions that might be of interest to the revised BRCS. The major one is that Law holdings (in addition to Guild holdings, if any) may add their levels to any defensive Espionage actions, i.e. Counter-Espionage. This seems a natural role for any police force. This doesn’t get out of hand so long as the DC’s for these actions are sufficiently high (DC 20-30+ to uncover a spy network isn’t unreasonable, given their secretive nature).
I also use a sliding scale of success for all Espionage actions. After establishing the base DC for the action, regents learn progressively more information the better their success on the action. If they succeed against the base DC, I give them basic information relating to the objective information, or a simple success in intrigue. For every 5 points by which their Espionage check beats the DC, I give them progressively more detailed levels of information or more complete and intricate successes in intrigue-type schemes.
Speaking of intrigue, this was an important part of the original BR game that seems to have gotten lost in the BRCS. I would love to see a revival of some detailed information on intrigue-oriented espionage written into the revised BRCS, including some specific examples that give players and DM’s some ideas of what these actions might entail and how they would work, and what might be some typical DC’s and effects of successful actions.
Some thoughts on Intrigue: Gather Information doesn’t seem like the appropriate key skill here, though an info-gathering Espionage action might be a necessary precursor to a successful intrigue. The original BR had Intrigue as a seperate skill; whether this should be reintroduced or not is up to debate. In truth, intrigue actions could be a combination of any number of roguish skills: Bluff, Gather Info, Diplomacy, Disguise, Forgery, Intimidate, Sense Motive, Listen (eavesdropping), and Search (finding or planting evidence) might all be potentially usefula skills depending on the nature of the intrigue and the favored methods employed. Profession: Courtier and Kn: Nobilty would also be helpful in knowing how best to implement an intrigue at a court level.
