House&Player character building

[Rax]

I'll have a look at Ser Raleigh and see if I can offer some constructive feedback tomorrow. It's past my bedtime right now...

[HorizonsDream]

I have another question. Are there going to be like, minor houses, under the main house?

I have a couple of ideas. The first is to play the baby sister of the brothers, that is probably trying her hardest to prove that she doesn't need to be protected by her brothers at all times.

The other idea I have is to play a daughter from a minor house that is betrothed to one of the brothers, or is about to be betrothed to one of the brothers.

[Rax]

May 26, 2021 20:16:32 GMT -8 HorizonsDream said:

I have another question. Are there going to be like, minor houses, under the main house?

I have a couple of ideas. The first is to play the baby sister of the brothers, that is probably trying her hardest to prove that she doesn't need to be protected by her brothers at all times.

The other idea I have is to play a daughter from a minor house that is betrothed to one of the brothers, or is about to be betrothed to one of the brothers.

Are you thinking of houses that are vassals of our house (banner houses in Westeros-speak)? If so, we only get banner houses if we buy them with our Power resource. They're not bad as an investment, but the first one costs 20 points, which will mean we have an anemic military of our own. I generally prefer to have some useful units of our own to start with.

Obviously there'll be lots of other minor houses of equal or lesser status to our own, though, so if you're just looking to be from an allied house or a house seeking alliance with us, that shouldn't be a problem at all.

Zero Prime

So, a review by our more technical minded players (looking at you Rax) would be appreciated. I took the -1 to Agility, representing a wound suffered during the skirmish with the Dorne. So that being said, stats are as follows;
Agility 1 (Dodge (1B)), Athletics 3, Awareness 3 (Empathy (1B)), Cunning 3, Endurance 4, Fighting 5 (Long Blades (1B)), Language 3, Knowledge 3, Persuasion 3 (Convince (1B)), Status 3 (Reputation (1B)), Warfare 4 (Tacticsw (2B)), Will 4 (Dedication (1B))

For Destiny, I took Armor Mastery, Blood of the First Men, & Stubborn ... giving me a final Composure of 13 & Health of 14, with additional benefit from my Armor.
For my flaw I took Cripple, again, relating back to the injury to my leg suffered at the hands of the Dornish. That does, severly, limit my battlefield mobility, seeing as my movement will be 2 yards, but I feel it is thematic, at the least. If we think that, coupled with my low Agility will hinder me too much in combat, I can try to switch it around. Perhaps a Dornish Nemesis, that could come up and cause trouble for our House.

Right, so I believe your concept was battlefield leader with a dash of dangerous personal combatant?

For a battlefield leader aiming to make use of the warfare rules, the most important ability is Warfare. You've got a 4 there, which is perfectly fine. However, specialty dice in Tactics won't do much for you when commanding our troops. The Command and Strategy specialties are the ones that count there. Mechanically speaking, the only thing Tactics does is let you give your allies (e.g. the other PCs) bonus dice on their initiative rolls in personal combat.

Cunning can be a useful secondary ability for battlefield leaders. You can test Cunning to discover flaws in your opponent's plans, provided you get a good look at their plans. Logic bonus dice help with the test and if you succeed the Narrator may allow you to add Logic bonus dice to your Warfare test "when battle is joined" (i.e. it probably helps with your initiative test when using the warfare rules). The downside is that you test vs. your opponent's passive Warfare, i.e. ability rank x4 (so you'd have to roll 16 or better to beat yourself).

For personal combat, there are a number of things you need to consider. With Fighting 5, you are a very skilled melee warrior. You're likely to hit often and, because weapon damage is multipled by your degrees of success (DoS), you can count on doing a fair bit of damage with a longsword (damage 4 with Athletics 3).

However, by dropping your Agility to 1 and only putting threes in Athletics and Awareness, you end up with Combat Defence 7. That practically guarantees that you yourself are going to be hit often and for multiple degrees of success (DoS). When testing an ability, the first DoS is achieved by rolling equal to the target number (7 in your case) and you get an extra DoS for every 5 points by which you roll over the target number. The maximum DoS that can be achieved is four.

With Combat Defence 7, the DoS threshholds for an attacker are 7/12/17/22. Even someone with Fighting 3 is quite likely to hit for 2 DoS, and someone with Fighting 4 and a couple of bonus dice will hit you for 3 DoS fairly often.

Obviously, wearing heavy armour will mitigate the damage you take, but armour also inflicts a penalty on your Combat Defence. For instance, full plate stops 10 points of damage (11 with Armour Mastery) but has an armour penalty of -6, dropping your base CD to 1. You can mitigate this by using a large shield (CD +4) and using the Cautious Attack action (if we use the advanced combat rules) for another +3 CD, but the combo of large shield and full plate is very bulky and will drop your move to 1 due to the Crippled flaw you've chosen. I.e. everyone can pretty much walk away from you if you're on foot. Obviously, you don't have to stack on the heaviest armour and shield you can, but having a low base CD makes it difficult to avoid being hit even if you wear lighter armour.

Another down side to having Agility 1 is that this is the ability you use to roll initiative in personal combat and passive Agility is the target number for knocking you down in combat (another advanced rule). Your Armour Penalty also affects all Agility tests! Basically, with Agility 1 you're going dead last in pretty much all combats. Putting a bonus die in Dodge also does nothing for you - the best you can roll when using the Dodge action is still 6, and here your Armour Penalty will interfere again, so there's never going to be a benefit to using the Dodge action - you can't get a higher CD than your base CD while your Agility is 1. 

So, if I were to give one ironclad piece of advice it would be to reconsider having Agility 1. You want at least 2, preferably 3. If you really want to penalize yourself for RP purposes, you can drop Cripple and replace it with Flaw (Agility), which for most purposes makes your Agility count as 1 point lower, but at least your base move will be 4, so your mobility on foot will be average even with heavy armour and shields.

With all that said, if you're going to be hit often, the right way to mitigate that is to have strong armour and high Health. The combo of Endurance 4 and Blood of the First Men is certainly helpful here. The good thing about Health is that you can take Injuries and Wounds to regain Health and prevent defeat, so it's a partially regenerating resource. If you can outlast your opponent you win, even if you might come out of it needing days or weeks to heal.

Similarly, Will 4 is useful in the same way in intrigues, but unless you have a decent offence, you're still going to be defeated by a more skilled opponent. With only Persuasion 3, intrigue is not your character's strong suit. You'll manage against a fair few secondary and tertiary NPCs, though.

Finally, some more general advice. A melee fighter basically needs Agility, Athletics, Awareness, Endurance, and Fighting for Combat Defence, Health, damage and being able to hit things. As a noble warrior, it also wouldn't be amiss to invest in Animal Handling and the Ride specialty. That's especially true if you want to keep the Cripple flaw - if you're riding your own poor movement isn't much of a problem...except for all the times you find yourself in foot combat.

Awareness is a very useful ability for everyone. Besides the obvious stuff like detecting ambushes, people stealing from you and the like, it's included in both Combat and Intrigue Defence. The very useful Read Target action in intrigues is also an Awareness test.

Hope this helps a little.

[Zero Prime]

Honestly that's great, thank you!  Sounds very complicated, I am sure it will start to come together as we work through a scenario, so I will look at those changes and try to make them work for us. 

For House To Be Announced!

[Daos]

Interesting.  This game sounds far more crunchy that I would have guessed, based on the source material.

[Rax]

Depends on what you mean by crunchy, really. The basic task resolution is simple enough and used for pretty much everything - roll a number of d6 equal to your ability rank and total the result. How well you succeed depends on how high over the target number you roll. Since it's a dice pool system, average results will be a lot more common than rolling really high or low.

The combat system shares many features with D&D 3rd ed and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd ed, especially in the sense that you get a number of actions you can take each round and you choose from a set list of actions. The intrigue system uses different abilities and different actions but mechanically it essentially works the same way, as do the warfare rules.

Destiny Points are a currency that you spend (lose the point until you achieve a story goal) or burn (lose it permanently) to achieve various special effects. They can also be invested in qualities - you buy benefits with them and you can voluntarily take drawbacks to get more DP. You can always choose to lose a benefit and get the DP back or lose the flaw and the DP you gained.

Adventures are called stories in this game, and are structured around scenes. A typical story will have one or two scenes at the beginning, three to five scenes in the middle, and one or two more scenes at the end. Each scene is supposed to be a distinct and important moment in game play, centering on an event that has a larger effect on the overarching story's outcome. In effect, each scene should drive the story towards its conclusion. In between scenes, PCs are free to do what they want.

Scenes are benchmarked depending on the expected challenge. In a minor scene, for instance, the highest target number PCs are supposed to face is 9. This applies to Intrigue Defence, Combat Defence, warfare or just maximum difficulty of an ordinary ability test. For a major scene, the suggested challenge benchmark is 15. The rules also suggest how many of each type of scene should be included in a story.

It's actually very important that the Narrator builds his stories using scenes in this way, because they're the basis for the entire reward system for PCs. Rewards come in the shape of gold, experience points, and glory (another special currency), and are given out per scene. When PCs complete a story, they get bonus rewards equal to a major scene and they're also supposed to gain a DP. This is important - you can buy DP with experience points, but the rules assume you'll accumulate DP by completing stories/adventures. So, if you've got your eye on a certain benefit and you're willing to wait, you can pick up a new benefit after completing an adventure by investing the DP you get. Or you save the DP for a rainy day, which is a good idea if you've only got one or even no DP.

[Igordragonian]

sorry.
Really sorry.
So, if you have more or less ideas, I can build characters for you, and we can modify the specfics.

[Daos]

What I have so far is the youngest born, heavy diplomacy focus.  Conflict-averse and wants everyone to get along.  Also...had this idea that maybe having a romance (or a one-sided crush, even) with someone from that Dornish house ours is in conflict with?  Sort of a Romeo/Juliet sort of situation.

[Daos]

It's been a month since my last post, so I was just checking in.  Is this game still on?

[Igordragonian]

Yes. Sorry.
harsh irl, and I want to get it right. Right now working on sheets.

[Daos]

No worries.  I was just checking.

[Igordragonian]

Actually we still need a family name
and can do the smaller purchases.

[Rax]

I've recently joined another PbP game on another site, so I'm going to withdraw interest. Don't really have time for one more game, at least not one that requires heavy RP to be worth the while (as I feel SIFRP does).

[Daos]

What sort of names do Stormlanders have?

[Igordragonian]

Rqx- well. I does take ne much more time to establish then I would have liked to.





Fair enough.


Who still in?



first names,well from seeing lists of names,Andals at least tend to have bastardized europian names. Or straight up eroupian names.
Peter- Petyer.
If you mean houses-
Our leige and mother house is Swann.

list of cannon houses of the Stormlands:

Bolling
Brownhill
Buckler
Cafferan
Caron
Cole
Connigton
Dondarion. (which is a very ancient house)
Eroll
Estermont
Fell
Foote
Gower
Grandison
Hesty
Herston
Horpe
Lonmouth
Mertyns
Morrigen
Musgood
Peasbury
Penrose
Rogers
Seaworth(new)
Selmy
Staedmon
Swann**
Swygert
Tarth
Toyne
Tudbury
Wagstaff
Wensington
Whitehead
Wylde.



Idea I had,since we are connected to Swann
maybe Agoose

or something related to the sea or shores.
Something like Shorington
Safeshore