I would suggest that several Paragon Paths would be better, as it would allow you to customise them more towards the strengths of the different bloodlines. Plus, you could (eventually) even have more than one for each Bloodline, allowing different foci depending on what aspect of the Line you were emphasising.
However, you could also have one named Great Scion that emphasised the divine spark over any particular aspect, perhaps with some radiant themed powers.
You are on the right path and think that if you want to really mix 4th edition into Birthright you have to do it that way. I was going to simply have different paths for each bloodline leading up through epic. Break up the minor, major and great abilities between them.
I also think you need to create powers that are specific to Birthright. Like a bonus “+2 to ruling law” ability that can be used once every three months type of thing depeding on your class.
This way, someone that wants to excel at rulership will have to sacrifice combat abilities. It will be nice to see two warriors that are level 10 and one could crush the other because one has fought many battles while the other ruled up some law. They are both still warriors at the core though.
The creatures or people with true bloodlines I am not sure how to deal with but they certainly have to be special cases. I will think about it some more.
-BB
Though realistic, in my experience this can be less fun in a mixed group. In one of the campains I ran, we ran into difficulties because the ruler-characters felt useless in combat situations and the non-ruler characters felt usseless in domain play: they basically could not contribute anything when in a situation in which they had not specialized.
Fourth has some drawbacks, but I think that the way fourth handles balance has many merrits. The philosophy that characters should have a distinct but equally important role within each situation is a major improvement for the old situation in which a character had a larger role or smaller to play depending on the situation.
I think that fourth edition Birthright domain play should consist of additional situations in which players have distinct but equal roles, instead of forcing players to specialize in a situation-specific role. Having distinct but roughly equal roles in various situations will simply be more fun.
That’s because 4e envisions only one situation: combat. So, its much easier to balance all characters as equal, but different, combatants. If combat is simply not a part of one’s birthright game, 4e itself is the over-specialized and useless entity at the table.
I can see applying the principle of everyone being different but equal only when the game is basically reduced to one thing. Instead, the thing that has made BR so interesting has been the many different spheres of activity in which the game can take place. The idea that it doesn’t matter what you’re good at because its always useful makes no sense to me.
I wonder why a character optimized for ruling decided to wander away from court and start adventuring. Either the player received no feedback that he was building poorly, or should have used another character for this adventure, or accepted that his character is not all things to all people in all circumstances.
Omnicompetance isn’t so much a feature as it is a bug.
Ken,
I am with you, but I do see some benefit to having a system where everyone can actually play. Perhaps part of the problem was the way skills were implemented in 3.5. The lack of skills on some classes precluded them from being a factor for certain part of adventures. I didn't see the reason why Warriors got such few skills while others got an over-the-top amount.
But I am a big fan of choice and consequence. Even in the current campaign, I try to include adventures every so often to keep my players honest about their combat skills. Most go so heavy into blood powers that they do become weak in combat ... but 3.5 is fairly kind and the feats they blow on bloodpowers doesn't have a major effect on their combat prowess.
In 4th edition, it is mainly a combat system but I think it can be VERY adaptable to a domain level style of play. Have options to replace powers with rulership powers. Instead of a new holy strike you get a new holy temple growing power. Those priests that have spent their days fighting evil on the fringes of society are a very powerful priests, but can only wield influence by reputation and those around them. A powerful priest ruler wields far more power in influencing the flock, but probably can't slay the dragon that is attacking the village. Would need help.
I think it makes for a more dynamic relationship between people.
-BB
Because every class is not suited to every situation, some classes should be precluded from being a factor in certain parts of adventures. The solution to this was the heart of 3x, multiclassing. No BR PC should be a fighter full stop. Fighters exist in Cerilia, but they are single focused, all-I-do-is-fight bodyguards and soldiers. On the other hand, fighter makes a fine dipping class to stiffen up a character.
There are many types of campaigns, from the pure combat dungeon crawls, to the combat free courts of intrigue and politics. So classes tend to reflect pure archtypes and you have to multiclass to get the end result you’re looking for. But with multiclassing its easy for each DM to tell players what proportions of combat and non-combat to expect over the game. As such its easy make the 100% combat character, the 75% combat, the 66% combat, 50% combat and so on.
Most go so heavy into blood powers that they do become weak in combat … but 3.5 is fairly kind and the feats they blow on bloodpowers doesn’t have a major effect on their combat prowess.
Are blood powers balanced or better than combat powers? Do they use blood powers so often that combat is irrelevant? Either the players are doing this to themselves, or the DM is withholding useful information about how the world works. Either way, its not a system problem (unless the powers are unbalanced) its the people playing the game.
Those priests that have spent their days fighting evil on the fringes of society are a very powerful priests, but can only wield influence by reputation and those around them. A powerful priest ruler wields far more power in influencing the flock, but probably can’t slay the dragon that is attacking the village. Would need help.
I think you’ve just recreated the problem above where the leader types become weak in combat.
After all its easy to make a Fighter with one feat every third level and 4 skill ranks per level, if you want to avoid extreme builds. 4e characters can’t trade all their combat skill for non-combat, but in 3e you could have created or limited them to classes whose design philosophy was a good match for you campaign to begin with.
Because I have never had a major NPC in combat where I rolled for them individually, and am content to have combat free games.
The Gavin Tael in the 4e Major NPC thread can be summarized for me as
TRAINED SKILLS
Streetwise, Athletics, Intimidate, Endurance.
ABILITY SCORES
Str 20, Con 16, Dex 14, Int 12, Wis 13, Cha 12, Bld 25
Done. Everything else will never be used by me. And this part of 4e is so blunt and dull all I can do is throw up my hands, because I can’t play with this. Apparently Gavin Tael is a spymaster to rival Guilder Kalien, and for some fluff we can describe him as athletic. The first part is simply not plausible, the second is fluff. So I really have a character who has a 12 INT, a 13 Wis, and 12 Cha, and a Bld of 25, which should be toast confronted with a character who is a skilled diplomat, financier, scholar, theologian, or anything other than a spymaster, I guess.
As far as I am concerned this character is useless, and even at 9th level would never have anything to do were he a PC. Unless I took the spymaster thing seriously. And then he’s good at one thing.
There are many good points raised. In my experience 4e is more aimed at combat for characters and even though there are Skill Challenges now the roleplaying has taken a back seat.
What I plan on doing for my 4e conversion is go back to 2e BR. Bloodlines & abilities were random rolled if the player chose to have a bloodline. This was then additional on top of the normal character. PC’s who did not have a bloodline then recieved 10% extra xp then blooded characters to make up for these extra abilities and wealth they might have. I am going to convert the current Blood abilities and treat them like a magic item. You are the magic item with these extra powers.
I have also looked at the Noble multiclass from Fedual Lords and it is still orientated towards combat. On the other hand the Fedual Lords - Adventurers Guide has other good role playing info that I plan to convert to BR. They have your background which can have different benefits like the Noble gets an income/lvl gain as taxes from their land. There are also allegences that you can have and being sworn to your local lord can give you a benefit. Plenty of role playing extras.
Also just a general comment of adventurers vs ruler. When I was DM my campaign I had rulers and adventurers and I can’t say I had much of a problem with the differences they could do. Even if they had taken skills to be a better ruler and not adventurer. They still pulled their weight in combat or they might have been a slightly better ruler then the other PC.
Simply put: Rulers in BR are ment to be adventurers. It says in the 2e BR campaign so the fact that “4e is all combat” is irrelevant to me because they are suppose to be adventurers and therefore good at combat. I plan to use adventures along side of the domain system and if there is a point where the characters come into contact with other regents then a fight may or may not break out so I got the combat information all nice and handled infront of me.
4E is the engine for the game when things get ugly and everything descends into combat then the system comes into play and I will be using it. I doubt that I am going to offer “non-combat” powers though I may allow these as feats because there are examples of non-combat feats (Skill Focus & Skill Training, right off the top of my head).
I have not decided how I would like to see the Domain system work at this point but I have a few visions for it. The first one is similar to how the Alchemy & Ritual system works but I think this would be best used on the Realm Magic system. I would likely modelled a domain system closer to the 2E system then the 3.x system.
Speaking of combat! I just recently got ahold of the Hard Boiled Ideas: Armies pdf from Bad Egg and I think there is definite potential to use it for a 4E BR mass combat system (aka War!).
I don’t have a problem with adventuring, I have a problem with every obstacle being combat. My players went places and did things, and I prefer a heroic Arthurian tint for BR, but most of their activities took place among other people, and so killing people would have had serious consequences. Adventuring doesn’t have to mean combat. See my extended adventure of Njalgrim’s Doom on the wiki.
Can you elaborate a little more on this? I’m pretty interested on that pdf myself 
As for 4th as a combat system, I see that in fourth is a system that has put its focus on regulating combat. However this does not mean that 4th is only for combat, because other areas of play - though arguably more important than combat - simply need less regulation to work. Therefore seeing fourth as combat oriented is not entirely fair because even though it more heavily regulates combat than other areas, these other areas are just as much presented in a fourth campaign. However, I can understand that if combat is totally absent from your game, 4th seemingly has little to offer compared to 3rd. I say seemingly, because - though I really like 3rd because of its variety - the 4th streamlined, balanced, and to each his/her glory approach to combat offers great opportunities for another birthright-specific area that requires regulation: the domain level of play.
The struggle for influence between ruling powers on the domain level is very similar to combat. The fourth combat system can provide us with excellent design ideas for a streamlined, balanced and to each his/her own glory approach to domain level play. For as a (tabletop) player and DM I want easy domain rules that engage all players equally, so we do not have four one-on-one sessions. And that these rules allow for each action to be role-played when the situation arises. I think a domain system based on the fourth combat system could be a great step towards these goals.
Nobody says it does, combat is simply the part of adventuring that requires most regulation.
Apart from domain conflict that is 
If we are serious about fourth, I suggest we should seriously consider splitting adventuring and ruling powers entirely.
Fourth has its own merits and if we swap out adventure powers – i.e. at-will, encounter, utility, and daily powers, for similar “ruling powers” we will simply create a less fun 3rd edition. However if we take the 4th adventure powers as given and add an extra layer of “ruling powers” along the lines of 4th edition we will end up with a actual fourth edition birthright setting. Does adding extra “ruling powers” to the 4th adventure powers create omnipotent chars so to speak?
Not necessarily so. I would like a system in which a character does not get better at ruling a domain because he had successful adventures, nor get better at adventuring for ruling a domain. A system in which the player is better either at ruling or adventuring; not depending on the choices he or she made during character building, but rather the actual experience they acquired during the campaign.
I propose each character in 4th edition birthright to have two separate experience tracks: one for the adventurer on which we base HP, AC, Defences, powers etc. as per the Players Handbook; and one ruler experience track in which we put all birthright specific abilities related to the domain and domain rule – regency gain, domain preference, domain conflict powers, ruling skills etc. all preferably based on the fourth edition system.
For example young Luqian starts out his career a 1st level wizard/ 1st level guilder, at a later point in the campaign he could be a 2nd level wizard/ 7th level guilder; 4th level wizard/ 4th level guilder or a 8th level wizard/ 1st level guilder depending on how the campaign evolves and the choices the players themselves make: do they take a hands-on approach to actively solve problems, or do they rule from the throne like chess players pulling strings and using their domains to solve their problems.
I am convinced that creating an additional level of play to go alongside the adventure level is the way to go for those of us that are serious about 4th edition Birthright. I for one would gladly share thoughts and contribute towards this goal, and hope there are still a few people left on this forum that are serious about a fourth edition birthright
I disagree. Skill challenges have been reduced to a coin flip. AFAIC, the skill system is the game, and combat is something to do once in a while to change things up to add some dramatic tension. Frankly, I’d rather resolve combat with a coin flip and keep the skills system.
That’s the point of my critique of the Gavin Tael write up. As a 9th level character, he’s either a +4 on a skill or +9. All of the range of choices from zero to combination of synergies, feats, and specific items is gone. The skills system is now so simplified, with few skills and no skill points, that you can’t build a game on the skills system and ignore combat.
The number of skills has been reduced, the choices involved in which skills to be good at is remarkably reduced to almost nothing, so that skills and adventures based on skills are no longer a viable way to play a game.
I must regress that the original write-up for Gavin Tael was a mistake. A) it didn’t use NPC rules (which is moot if Gavin Tael is a PC which I understand) but also B) I didn’t use the correct ability score systems and instead I pulled the scores from the wiki-writeup which granted I probably shouldn’t have done.
Even with those mistakes there isn’t just a +4 or a +9 to the skill rolls. His skills vary more then that and may vary even greater if I used the correct ability score methods for 4E.
Now to address Sir Tiamat. That is definitely adding a complex level which probably isn’t a bad thing except you are keeping track of two different character sheets. I personally wouldn’t build it that way because I definitely lean more towards the 2E view that Regents ARE adventurers and should be quite successful adventurers at that. I am interested in the idea if I saw it complete so I wanted to see it get alittle more attention…
Guild Holding Regents = Guilder Class
Law Holding Regents = ? Class
Temple Holding Regents = ? Class
Source Holding Regents = ? Class
Province Holding Regents = ? Class
First, I definitely agree with you that regents - especially PC regents - should be adventurers or hero-kings so to speak. I would not like a campaign in which regents never left their throne rooms. However, I would like to see a distinction between the regent that spent half of his life on horseback and the regent that spent most of his time in various courts. While at the same time keeping a roughly similar division of adventuring and ruling abilities within the party. Moreover, I want to keep the core rules as intact as possible, apart from a few necessary changes - like player races and bloodlines - that should not be too unbalancing.
Second, the class I propose is actually a merger of the regent’s abilities and the domain. So the “ruler level” of a character would both represent the ruling of the regent and the ability of the regent’s court and domain. The names of these classes are obviously less relevant, though I admit that a good name can be a major selling-point. see some of my rough thoughts below. As you can see it still needs a lot of work and I will privide more structure later.
[b]General principles:
Holdings will have Hitpoints, 10/lvl for example. If a holding is reduced to 0 hitpoints it wil have lost a level. Lvl 7 holding has 70 hp when reduced to 0 it wilhave become a lvl 6 holding with 60 hp. Can also be used for rule…
Domains have ability scores and defences
Attacks are aimed at other domains
All other domain actions are skills/skill challanges or utility powers
A regent will get better at ruling a larger domain as (s)he gains more ruling levels[/b]
-Guild Holding Regents = Guilder Class
-Law Holding Regents =(Feudal) Lord Class
-Temple Holding Regents =Cardinal/ Bishop Class
-Source Holding Regents = Archmage Class
-I do not know whether province rule would require a separate class: I consider the province ruler to be the legitimate ruler, but whether this ruler can wield actual power depends on the other holdings, especially law.
Domains will have ability scores, for example:
• Force
• Bureaucracy
• Devotion, commitment, loyalty
• Responsiveness, awareness
• Secrecy
• Morale??, authority , divine right, bloodline??
And also Defences:
Fortification
Loyalty
….
…..
Attacks (political battles between Holdings or realms)Contest holding (varies)
Block Trade
Seize
Assault
Arrest
Assassinate
Agitate
Pestilence (arcane)
Plant spy
Bribe
Blackmail
smuggle
Realm Skills: (½level + ability mod. +5 training)
Choose 4 per realm? Should skills be independent of holding level?? Possibly because it is something a realm and ruler can do… use utility powers for holding actions?
Actions (skill challenge?)
Build: engineering, administrate, force
Create holding: gather info, subterfuge, diplomacy, administrate
Create trade route: subterfuge, diplomacy, administrate, finance
Diplomacy: Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, gather information
Rule holding: engineering, administrate, diplomacy, intimidate, lead
Rule province: administrate, diplomacy, intimidate, gather info, lead
Move troops: administrate, awareness, subterfuge
Gain popularity: administrate, gather info, lead
Decree: administrate, intimidate, awareness
Loan or lend: Finance, diplomacy, administrate
Cast realm spell: harness arcane, divine, natural
Smuggle (a utility because dependent on holding level?): subterfuge, awareness, bluff