How would you build a character who at a very young age has been thrust into a princedom or duchy or something similar.
Would you build him at just a couple life paths and force him to Circle up his resources in play to represent having to build or extract a power base? My goal would be to have him young, but to allow him the (theoretical) authority to excise the powers of a Lord. But maybe that’s all color-- I don’t really understand all this stuff, yet.
The youngest I can think of legally to do it is Born to Rule – Coeptir – Forged Lord. The spare point from Coeptir buys Your Grace or Your Majesty, the requisite for Forged Lord. Forged Lord provides the trait Forged, which gives a character access to the resources of a Forged Lord.
Or perhaps my question is this: the time listed in the Life Path is kind of the amount of time the character has been doing that job, right? What if you wanted to play someone who just started being a Forged Lord?
Start him with just his Born path or Born to Rule and Coeptir. At that age, he’s just a figurehead. It’s his regent and advisors who have all the true power.
Sure, if he has the trait points to buy it. Oh, he doesn’t? So sorry to hear that. Better start stacking the deck before the first trait vote!
At this point, he just stepped up. He wasn’t fully groomed for the throne, or if he was, the sudden removal of his groomer has cast doubt upon his reign. Power rests with the stewards, the Anvil Lord, the Hammer Lord. If I were him, my first conflict of my first maneuver would be a Duel of Wits with whichever Lord has the lower dueling skills, stakes being his loyalty.
EDIT: Check out Your Grace. It grants the ceremonial power of a Forged Lord. The actual, hard, boots-on-the-ground-and-a-budget-to-pay-them power comes from the Forged Lord trait. If you have Your Grace, you are Forged and everyone treats you as such. If you have Forged Lord, you command a Forge and you may ACT as a Forged Lord acts, and everyone obeys you ask such.
Like Devin said. A kid that age doesn’t have any actual temporal power. His regent and advisors hold all the cards. He’s Forged Lord in name only until he either wrests the power from them or they bestow it upon him when he comes of age. Sounds like the set up for a great Burning Empires game!
Okay… so probably the bulk of the character’s development would be Circling up and obtaining those resources, eh? Hmm… Now I wonder how much a fleet would cost during play. (Although it occurs to me it would be easier to Circle up a Hammer Lord, wouldn’t it.)
I dunno. I think I could consolidate my power without a single Circles or Resources tests. I’d do it all with Duel of Wits and carefully planned Close Combat.
Yeah, the DoW is going to be key. Also, remember to squeeze every drop of blood out of your compromises. Lost the duel to convince the Hammer Lord to swear fealty? Get him to agree to support you in one firefight. Get him to agree not to support anyone else either, as long as you’re alive.
Then turn around and tell the Anvil Lord that you’ve got the Hammer at your back and he’d better kneel before you nuke more than just the old warehouse across the way from his palace.
I think you should also get some other playercharacter or NPC to be your grizzled and old mentor… that is just too much fun roleplaying wise to pass up on it.
Wow, I was about to ask this exact question, this thread saves me the job.
In my case it is for a very young NPC Forged Lord, who is not a FoN. His Regent is a Vaylen FoN, although not hullled (yet).
Since I think that the boy will be pulled around a lot in the political struggle I was going to burn him up. I imagine he will often be the auidence in a DoW in court.
I think that simply taking the Born to Rule lifepath and nothing else would be best. As a group we can agree that he is the figurehead ruler without a trait to back it up. Taking any more lifepaths seems to make him too old for the boy king role. Is there a better way to create this?
Also, are there any advised traits or lifepaths that a regent ruling in the boy’s stead should have?