Feats for nobles

[Pagan priest]

Currently, nobles can take Trust Fund, which provides a measly 200 Cr times SOC per month, yet high living is defined as spending 250 Cr times SOC per month. Even just maintaining an ordinary lifestyle would leave a noble far short of being able to pay for a yacht.

As such, I am looking to create one or a couple of new feats that allow noble characters to reflect some of the other possibilites for the nobility. I would greatly appreciate any feedback folks can offer.

Imperial Letter of Enfoeffment In addition to the Patent of Nobiity, the character has been confirmed into a feif, with all rights, priveliges and duties therein.
Benefit: The character holds an Imperial feif and is entitled to any profits the property generates. Managing the property requires either time from the noble, or the hiring of a steward to maintain the holding.

Using the T20 SOC values, a duke has a SOC of 24 while a knight has a 16. In other words, the duke is only 1.5 times as high as the knight, yet a duke would hold an entire subsector while a knight would only hold a few square kilometers. Using SOC as a multiplier just does not look like it will work here. Even using the square or cube of the SOC does not make for a significant difference, since 24 cubed is only 3.375 times greater than 16 cubed. I suppose that I could pull out the tax income chart from Trillion Credit Squadron, but that is getting into a lot more work than I want to do.

I suppose that I should mention that the campaign that I am doing this for will have all the charcters as nobles around the court of the sector duke and is based far more on intrigue than on combat.

Any suggestions?

 

[Qstor2]

I think there's some nobility type feats in Fading Suns d20 that might work.

Mike

 

[Pagan priest]

I think there's some nobility type feats in Fading Suns d20 that might work.

Mike

Arrgh. Yet more books to buy and find room for... Or is this just the one book?

 

[Qstor2]

Arrgh. Yet more books to buy and find room for... Or is this just the one book?

For the d20 version, I think there's just the main book and a dual stat critter book.

Mike

 

[Pagan priest]

For the d20 version, I think there's just the main book and a dual stat critter book.

Mike

I guess that won't be too hard on the wallet then...

Off to eBay!

 

[Vincimus]

What if you squared or cubed the SOC modifier instead of the SOC score? With squared, a Duke (+7) would get 49 units, as compared to a Knight's 9 units (or about 5.444 times as much), while cubing the bonus could give a Duke 343 units vs a Knight's 27 (about 12.7 times as much). For extra fun, go exponential; if we use 2 as the base, and the SOC bonus as the exponent (using the score would be a little excessive, perhaps), a Duke would receive 2^7 units (128) and a Knight would receive only 8 (thus, the Duke would receive 32 times as much). This multiplication could be increased by increasing the base or by using the SOC score instead of the SOC bonus (for example, using SOC score, a Duke would get 2^24, or 16,777,216 units and a Knight would get 2^16, or 65,536 units, thus granting the Duke 256 times as much). Just thought I'd throw some math out there (remember: even painful math is cheaper than more books).

 

[Pagan priest]

What if you squared or cubed the SOC modifier instead of the SOC score? With squared, a Duke (+7) would get 49 units, as compared to a Knight's 9 units (or about 5.444 times as much), while cubing the bonus could give a Duke 343 units vs a Knight's 27 (about 12.7 times as much). For extra fun, go exponential; if we use 2 as the base, and the SOC bonus as the exponent (using the score would be a little excessive, perhaps), a Duke would receive 2^7 units (128) and a Knight would receive only 8 (thus, the Duke would receive 32 times as much). This multiplication could be increased by increasing the base or by using the SOC score instead of the SOC bonus (for example, using SOC score, a Duke would get 2^24, or 16,777,216 units and a Knight would get 2^16, or 65,536 units, thus granting the Duke 256 times as much). Just thought I'd throw some math out there (remember: even painful math is cheaper than more books).

The big problem that I see is that if we arbitrarily define the value of a knight's holdings as 1, then the value of a duke, holding an entire subsector, is going to be, what... a couple of thousand times larger?

A knight might hold a small section of a planet. Maybe not even that much, but if he holds anything, it will be small, like a downtown shopping area or an industrial park. If it is well managed and prosperous, maybe he could get several thousand credits each month. Probably he's get less than that...

How many hundreds of such little holdings are there in a subsector duke's feif? A single world with a high population, good starport and decent economy might have thousands of such money makers, all tossing money up the chain toward the duke.

Mind you, I don't think that this is pure profit and fun for the enfoeffed noble, they will have duties and responsibilites, many of which will cost money.

Hmm...

3^(SOC - 16)

For a knight, that is 3^0=1
For a duke, that is 3^8=6,561
For the emperor, that is 3^14=4,782,969

So, if the unit is equal to 1,000cr/month, then the knight still needs a day job, since ordinary living expences will be 1,600cr/month. So far so good.

The duke is bringing in 6.5Mcr each month, but he will have to have a good fast yacht, an escort and a couple of couriers that he is paying for, plus his staff.

I think this might work. What am I missing?

 

[Vincimus]

Looks pretty good. How do you suggest handling increasing profitability/managing stuff well and expenses for doing so? Maybe monthly P/(applicable to whatever's being managed) checks on the Knight level, probably P/Admin on the Duke level (since he's probably not actually tweaking the economy so much as making sure everyone's paying taxes)? Heck, maybe P/Admin all around... they are running administrations of sorts...

Maybe Leader instead, if they're trying to attract talent to their areas and organize people to perform better...

 

[Pagan priest]

Looks pretty good. How do you suggest handling increasing profitability/managing stuff well and expenses for doing so? Maybe monthly P/(applicable to whatever's being managed) checks on the Knight level, probably P/Admin on the Duke level (since he's probably not actually tweaking the economy so much as making sure everyone's paying taxes)? Heck, maybe P/Admin all around... they are running administrations of sorts...

Maybe Leader instead, if they're trying to attract talent to their areas and organize people to perform better...

I'd go with P/Admin for all of them, unless they have hired a manager to run it for them, then Leader. Monthly checks to keep everything running smoothly, hmmm... P/Admin DC 20 to avoid a mishap that causes a loss of income, say 10% on a simple failure, missing by 5 or more reduces it by 25%. Three failures in a row causes a permanent reduction.

For increasing the value of the holdings, I would want to do that on a quarterly basis, not monthly. P/Admin DC 35, with a DM for every monthly check success or failure. Also, a negative DM for every extended period of absence. Success means a permanent increase in value by 10%.

 

[Kogen]

In the version of traveller my friends and I play, we differentiate between planetary and Imperial nobles. So if this was a two level feat first would be planetary at the 2^(soc-14) level and the second would be Imperial at the 3^(soc-16).

For the planetary nobles we set it up that they start at 14 and go up by one so a king/emperor of a planet would be a 21, while an Imperial Count 22 would actually be in charge of that type of planet.

 

[Gvadakoung]

I would call the overseer of a fief who manages that estate in place of its titular lord a Seneschal rather than a Steward, to avoid confusion with the high-passage starship crew position.

An ordinary noble may have a trust fund to offset some expenses, but would probably also want to have other sources of income, shares in a megacorp, entrepreneurial ventures, etc.

My impression of the 3rd Imperium is that very few folks, even in the upper strata of society, can really afford to be idle. The Imperium likes to keep citizens productively busy & profitably employed.

 

[Pagan priest]

In the version of traveller my friends and I play, we differentiate between planetary and Imperial nobles. So if this was a two level feat first would be planetary at the 2^(soc-14) level and the second would be Imperial at the 3^(soc-16).

For the planetary nobles we set it up that they start at 14 and go up by one so a king/emperor of a planet would be a 21, while an Imperial Count 22 would actually be in charge of that type of planet.

I don't think that having a 2 level feat would be a good idea, if you mean having the first level be a prerequisite for the second. That would mean that an Imperial noble would have to start out as a local noble first.