Your skill allows you to sway public opinion with your inspiring rhetoric. You may attempt to perform agitate as a free action (that is, it does not take up a character, court or domain action, but is performed in conjunction with another action) by making a small number of speeches and inspiring the masses. You do not need to have a holding in the province (or provinces) in which you perform the agitate action, but you must be physically present.
What is the DC for getting a free agitate action?
Or are you supposed to use your skill bonus instead of the usual modifiers?
If there is not a check required anyone could give speeches for free agitates.
Lead can be used untrained.
You make a domain attitude check as specified under Agitate. Since the character must be physically present during the entire time he is making speeches he is essentially using a full round action. This allows the character to use his personal modifiers (as specified in Chap 5, +1/5 ranks) for the domain attitude check.
I would also ensure that the action being done by the character is conducive to making speeches and the like. If the character is for example using his character action to research a spell then he is not in a position to use this skill.
This skill can be used along with most, but not all, standard domain actions. Casting Realm Spells is the one that crosses my mind as not matching up very well.
I hope that makes sense, it takes some work but you can follow the path and get to most of what I have posted - the part about the DM making sure the action that the agitate is being associated with is conducive with speeches/appearances is not, but only makes sense since the Lead skill says you must make speeches in order to get the benefit.
But it still takes the same amount of time (essentially a full round action) and has the same restrictions (it must be done as part of another action (like I posted earlier this action should be something that is “public”)). You still have to follow the rules for agitate (see domain attitude checks) and all of the other things that go along with that (e.g., see adjustments for/against) - since it is a free action I don’t think allowing GBs to be spent is fitting.
Alright, now that I’m clear on that, I have another question.
Is there anything you make a lead skill check for, outside a great captain/heresy random event?
True enough, but in that case should it still be a “free” action, since the printing itself costs time (the early printing presses were much slower weren’t they? Since they involved typsetting and the like). So at least a character action (profession - spin doctor or craft - propaganda) (or maybe a court action) to “prep” the flyers to be used.
Units are trained by making a successful Lead check and then by paying the necessary difference in muster cost. The DC for the Lead check is 10 + the difference the muster cost of the units + five times the difference between the number of friendly law holdings and unit’s new muster cost in GB.
Ranks in Lead help with:
Unit morale
RP collection (Law and Temple holdings)
I would use a Leadership check during war turns to get the best (or prevent the worst) of my men. I would also use Leadership for public addresses (like smaller versions of the Agitate action) where Oratory skills make more sense than Diplomacy skills.
The use of Craft (Propoganda) and Profession (Propogandist) take a while to develop. Early pamphlets were just mass copies of already existing documents. No extra effort would be required by the court, and the printer is undertaking the printing because news sells. Edicts, letters, and speeches were the most common items printed.
Its rather like you got a good roll on craft (Letter) and handed it to a friendly printer.
Later as people got a more sophisticated understanding of how to use the mass medium of printing, such items would not be simply re-printed as is, but prepared for printing. So introduce a editor, who improves and sharpens the message of the writer. Its like a second roll. Any document might be improved by an editor. Whether an editor just uses an aid another action and grants a flat +2 to the Craft (Speech) check, or whether he makes a totally seperate roll (Feat: Propogandist might allow this) to turn mediocre source material into good propoganda, whether he polishes already good material into great material, or knows when his efforts to improve great material didn’t work and just passes the great material alone without editing.
At first these editors, usually just the printer, looking to make his pamphlet more salable, would put the document in context by writing an introduction. Then they started juxtaposing two documents, like publishing an exchange of letters. The editor improved the propaganda value of the document, but he didn’t do it like a master propogandist to sharpen the regents point, but because a better document sells better. The regent getting message crafters to craft a better message comes still later.
Just for the record, Kgauck, I do think that’s getting a touch specialised on the old skills. Craft skillsare generally used in the production industry - armour, weapons, cooking, stone-carving etc. I’d use the Profession skill you mentioned, but I’d couple it with Perform (orator), so at least I’m not wasting two sets of skill points simply for the price of one.
Writing for content should be an INT based skill and so is a Craft skill. Writing is a craft. A lot of art is craft as well: woodworking, painting, sculpting. Profession is a Wisdom based skill and described the ability to handle the professional angle of the job, not the actual content production. Having Profession (Humanist) means I know how to get a patron, how to please a patron, how to balance the kind of serious work that my peers appreciate and will make me a name for posterity with the kind of work that pleases my patron, and how, when I am lucky to combine the two. But it doesn’t mean I know how to write, only that I know how to find work as a writer.
Perform (Orator) is really the same thing as Leadership, unless people hire professional speach-givers. If I centered a capaign around Law Holdings, where everyone played lawyers in the service of a regent, I’d use Perform (Oratory). Otherwise, Leadership fills the bill nicely.
That’s probably true, but I was considering it more from a Core Rules set-up. What with the 3.5 drive to reduce expenditure of skill points on barely used or very specialised skills, I’m always one to try to reduce unecessary spending.
I am of course all for roleplaying with skill points - my characters always have miscellaneous skills in music or crafts or similar, even if they’re nothing to do with their jobs. I’m just not in favour of people wasting their skills wholesale - such as the person who took 6 ranks in Knowledge (Tarot) and refused to put any in Knowledge (arcana). N.B. Actual example!
Its a question of specialization vs generalization. In a court, the PC’s must have specialists who get technical jobs to do. Win the law case, craft the treaty, make the sword, fortell the future, and so on. The PC’s staff their court and direct the actions of their servants (and making rolls for them and what not). The PC should not have ranks in things for which they have people to do things. On the other hand, the specialist servants of the PC’s ought to be real specialists, min-max’d for their job.
Darien Avan’s groom may well be a 6th level Expert with Skill Focus (Handle Animal) and Animal Affinity. He may also have Skill Focus (Profession:Animal Handler), and Skill Focus (Ride). I’d want to max his ranks in Handle Animal, Profession (Animal Handler), and Ride. I’d be inclined to spend ranks in Heal, Intimidate, Knowledge (Equine), Diplomacy, and maybe Craft (Leatherworking). Not because Darien’s groom fixes stirrups or cares for his horse when its sick, Darien has top experts in those fields too. Rather because the groom knows Darien’s warhorse, riding horse, and the young colt which will one day be Darien’s warhorse. He has to know when to summon the Healer and when to summon the saddler to do their expert work.
I’d actually agree with all that, but I’d broaden Knowledge (Equine) to Knowledge (Nature). After all, if anyone is going to have an epiphany and become an adventuring PC ranger, it’s going to be the stableboy or animal trainer or royal groom.
Now didn’t I say that preparing the “flyers” was a separate action - either a character action or a court action?
So I think we are saying the same thing here - preparing the “flyers” is the time before the speeches part. Using Lead to make free action speeches as part of another action precludes spending GB for the action.
Making the flyers would reflect spending GB but that has to be done earlier than performing the speeches - hence you shouldn’t be able to spend GB to modify the result of the Lead action - since that is spending the money at the time not ahead of time.
Spending money to prepare flyers ahead of time is really a 17th century thing to do. Perhaps the most famous example is William or Orange’s publication of pamphlets prior to his landing in England in 1688.
But during the 1st century after the invention of the printing press, production of pamphlets is just something that happened on its own, from the point of view of of regents. They didn’t cause pamphlets to be made, and their first responce to the new pamphlets was to try and shut them down, not establish public affairs ministries. Soon they decided to befriend sympathetic printers. But the printing was done because it made money for the printer. Printers often adopted a friendly posture because they wanted source material, not neccesarily because they agreed with what the regent was doing.
In short, pamphleteering is not something that regents controlled. Especially where their are guilders not easily controlled by other kinds of regents, and where printing could be done in neighboring territories and moved easily across land into someone elses spehere of influence.
The point of lead used in this way was to influence the opinion of people.
Since this is game use and not necessarily real life it does make a difference too.
And since this was the example you brought up of how spending GB could be used to augment the lead method of agitate then it is clearly tied to the person attempting to agitate. Note that this agitate does not have to be performed by the province ruler either.
My point was that spending gold was really just prolifferating pamphlets, not preparing pamphlets as part of a broader propaganda campaign. Just because players can imagine a modern use of printed material (a domain run newspaper, for example) doesn’t mean I’ll allow it.
Its not a question of being strictly historical, its recognizing that stuff happens for reasons that make sense in the context of the world, and that too much of an appeal to public opinion suggests that soveriegntly lies genuinly in the hands of the people (at least in the last resort) instead of being the birthright of regents all of whom are decended from the heros of Diesmaar.
On the other hand while people power can undermine a regent, it is by its nature what empowers them, making BR regents more likely in my opinion to play to the crowd than historic rulers. I’m wondering about giving RP rewards to characters who do heroic deeds that lift them in the eyes of the populace to reflect a brief formation of the regency link.
I’m considering the way regency works - it could be that when the regent talks the printers are more likely to hear, and more likely to agree, than someone unblooded speaks (if you’ve played Feng Shui regency would therefore act in a similar manner to how control of sites impacts popular perception). The spending of RP certainly could therefore indicate that pamphlets are being printed supporting the regent’s viewpoint, mocking the regent’s opponents. GB spend could indicate nobles funneling taxes to fund the pamphlets and the like.
Gb spend on agitates is however in my view more likely to be big stuff like national celebrations, tax cuts, rewards for local heroes, bribes for local priests, publicans and bards etc - you could get an awful lot of pamphlets printed for 1 GB and town criers, etc are more likely to reach the masses until literacy goes beyond the nobility.