So in my group I have a player who is really excited about his character, a dwarven prince. He has some cool ideas and Beliefs. He also got a TON of rps from the prince LP. The only thing is that he didn’t buy a single piece of property. Instead, he bought dwarven mail (I know it counts as property). My question here is would a dwarven prince not have a prince’s hold? Should I force him to buy one? It seems to me that a prince wouldn’t be caught dead without one, but he also took the adventurer LP. His concept is a dwarven prince who’s clan was slain by a rival clan and now he’s out for vengeance and he’s going to exact it with his family heirloom axe.
What should I do? His concept suggests his hold would have been taken from him when his clan was slain, but does that mean I should let him buy dwarven mail (which he wouldn’t be able to afford without sacrificing a bunch of other stuff - he has 260 rps)? The dwarven mail is 100 rps and the hold is 105 rps, leaving him with 55 rps if I made him buy the hold. But that seems like a waste to buy the hold when he doesn’t actually possess it at the moment.
A prince without a Hold sounds very shameful. It will probably result in an infamous reputation or trait. This could make moving around Dwarf Circles that much harder.
Then, restoring his reputation by actually establishing a new hold makes for excellent gameplay.
Who is the relationship? Prince of the other clan?
I think his Resources-generating affiliation and reputation should be changed and possibly broken up. A “gang or crew” option would be good, and then sink the other points into an infamous reputation with Dwarves instead and maybe an affiliation with Dwarven outcasts/adventurers instead.
To raise the red flag: you should know that this is one of the most abusive/powerful 5 LP builds in the game. It’s a great build, don’t get me wrong, but it makes him very powerful from the outset.
If he must be a mail-wearing prince, I’d drop Adventurer. Don’t pre-game that part of his life. His adventuring begins now.
And if he insists on the mail and lack of property, I’d set him up with some very tough opponents from the start. Everyone would want the mail of a landless dwarven prince. He’s an easy mark. No one to back him up.
Orcs, trolls, dragons…they’ll all drop in to say hello.
There are all kinds of reasons that a Prince might not actually have a hold (succession stymied, another heir apparent, wandering diplomat). As long as he has made other choices that support this fact, I don’t see why it should be a problem. If he wants to trade upon the fact that he is a Prince or is living off of others as a guest, he should likely spend enough on Affiliation/Reputation to reflect that. Do the rp choices support the character? Or, is it that their rp choices do not reflect their character decisions?