When in a social conflict, do you always compare the character’s Precedence vs the Monstrous Precedence, or do you look up where the character falls on the Monstrous Precedence chart?
In an example with a 1st-level Magician or Sorcerer class vs a Goblin Chieftain, does the Magician/Sorcerer have Precedence 5 in the eyes of the goblin since “High priests and sorcerers” have Precedence 5 in that scheme?
Along those same lines, when a 1st-level Mage (Precedence 0) tries to convince a Goblin Chieftain, would the chieftain have Precedence 3 as a Clan Chief (and therefore the convince be impossible), or would the Goblin Chief still be zero because goblins have Precedence 0?
A 3rd level Sorcerer with Binder would have Precedence 2 for binding, right? +1 from 3rd level and +1 from level benefit.
Under Sacrifices Must Be Made, can anyone do the Ritualist test or must it be the summoner (e.g. could the Theurge conduct the ritual)?
Monstrous Precedence is only for denizens “who fall outside the human, elven and dwarven hegemony” (as per page 176 of the Scholar’s Guide). PCs use Precedence, not Monstrous Precedence. A goblin high sorcerer would have Precedence 5. A human sorcerer would not.
The goblin chief would have Precedence 3. They don’t have to listen to some no-name, snot-nosed whelp of an adventurer. Get yourself some finery to make yourself look important, though, and you could try to engage the goblin chief in a Convince Crowd conflict in front of the clan.
Yes, barring something like finery or the Visage of the Lord of Victory invocation.
As written it’s whoever did the summoning, but I would have no problem with another character performing the sacrifice. The summoner strikes the bargain; it doesn’t really matter who fulfills it. Note also that any character can learn and use the Summoning skill. Sorcerers just get certain perks.
So the Monstrous Precedence chart helps when creating or modifying new monsters to see what the Precedence should be, right?
Another way of saying it is that “Precedence is Precedence.” So you are always comparing apples to apples–it’s just that the monstrous scheme helps you map out the equivalencies.
So High Queen Astrid could convince a dragon, right?
For monsters with “Precedence --” (e.g, Disturbed Spirit), is that treated as zero in regards to all conflicts?
Interesting. There’s quite a few monsters with the --. I always thought the – meant subject to change or defined by some other context. And that particular Disturbed Spirit had a higher precedence because of its particular circumstances.
If I recall correctly, my intent was to obviate Precedence for monster who would never be involved in social conflicts. But I had to backtrack a bit later when we added precedence to summoning. And then I probably just made a few mistakes during the changes.
I have found this Precedence idea quite interesting at first, but unusual in its implementation.
It seemed liked it was a hierarchy that the PCs mapped onto somehow and that there were two examples “Civilised” and “Monstrous”. The use of “for” seemed to suggest that this framework was used when dealing with monsters (do monsters deal with themselves in any part of the game that we use?). The words about monsters not caring about your titles suggested that your hard won honours didn’t matter.
The commentary in this thread indicates that they do, in fact, matter.
I think that part of this is an idea that (civilised) Precedence is the real Precedence and everything has to relate to it. If the interesting idea of culturally specific Precedence is to work then I think the Precedence stat on PC sheets needs to become Precedence Bonus or Reputation which is added to whatever base value the culturally-specific Precedence framework grants a character. The bonuses from classes and spells are all either permanent, temporary, or situational bonuses.
The downside of this is that more thought needs to be given by all players about what these frameworks look like and how they reflect the society they are abstracting.
I don’t personally see this as a downside myself though!