Does being a noble give any benefit (mechanical or not) in your setting?

does being a noble give any benefit (mechanical or not) in your setting?

How do you reflect nobles being better than everyone else Veeky Forums?

Nobility is a social position with advantages and disadvantages. If you're a noble, it's easier to talk your way into a fancy party, and harder to talk your way into a back room down by the docks. You've got more resources to call on, but more responsibilities to your family and government. Or you could get disinherited and lose both, of course.

I'd say that any setting where being a noble gives you ABSOLUTELY no benefit of value is a poorly-made setting.

Even nowadays, the House of Lords still has social clout, even if they don't have the political clout they once had.

Cont.

I'm actually working on a Noble trait for a game (based much in Adventure Time, so not very realistic) and I want it to reflect mechanically somehow.

Something like "+1 when you act in behalf of your kingdom" or something like that.

Characters are made by combining a heap of traits, so it's also a nice way to difference a Samurai style warrior from a bandit warrior (example: samurai: noble+tough; bandit: clever+tough)

If Nobility has significant mechanical benefits, then they'll be represented mechanically as one or more traits or background bonuses.

Fluffwise, the benefits of nobility will generally counterbalance themselves unless associated with a mechanical benefit as above.

Many game systems have mehanical benefits for a social role like nobility.

Have you tried playing other systems?

While the setting I'm working on only has a few actual nobles, being of high status has it's advantages and disadvantages as well as getting into those positions.

For instance, in the !Asia country the reputation of your name carries major importance. Even if you could do the job people will avoid you if your name is toxic to be associated with which may mean you'll have to rely on someone else to vouch for you. However if you fuck up you ruin their name because they trusted you and you failed them.

This makes business dealings unique between different countries because they want to get to know the gossip and dirt on the people they deal with before they start talking money.

The Noble trait allows a character to roll 4d8x10 starting wealth instead of the usual 3d8x10. This does not apply if the character is accepting an inheritance from a previous character.

>nobles
>being better than everyone else
pick one

Being fair, there is interesting ground to be explored there with noble characters. Even if it isn't real, the idea of Noblesse Oblige, of the burden of nobility and the duty that comes with the status is something I've enjoyed playing quite a few times.

It's interesting to try and build a heroic character on ground that isn't quite what you'd expect. A noble scion who truly believes that they have a right to rule, that the world they walk belongs to them implicitly sounds like a setup for an asshole or a villain, but I had a lot of fun playing it entirely sincerely- That their sense of ownership gave them a deep, driving care and concern for the world and its conditions, as well as a drive to protect and care for the common folk. What sort of Lord or Lady doesn't ensure that their people are able to be happy and productive serfs, after all?

It was especially interesting when they came into conflict with the other kind of noble. Smug, self satisfied and arrogant individuals who embraced the self-importance and privilege that came with their position while denying any sense of duty or obligation to be a good ruler. In quite a few cases it came down to extremely destructive conflicts, sometimes of words and politics, sometimes of war and clashing blades.

Pretty much this.

The noble class objectively has a divine right to rule, because they are descendants of gods and the people those gods chose to directly serve them at the time. They're literally better than everyone else inherently, and it only gets compounded by the fact that they have better education and nourishment than the lesser classes.

It gives one drawback, and one benefit, and one miscellaneous, and a countless number of minor things.

You're a lot more likely to be prioritized as an enemy, or as a target for theft, hunted, and captured.

You're a lot more likely to be ransomed for money instead of killed.

You're expected to behave according to your station.

Otherwise, players will never start as upper nobility, with great wealth, land,and titles, or as royalty unless they're literally disinherited, or their kingdom destroyed or taken over, their family murdered, their wealth stolen, possibly have bounty hunters after them if they reveal who they really are and that get's around, etc.

If nobles have a constant mechanical benefit in your game, you're ROLL playing and not ROLE playing.

A noble should have different contacts and knowledge than a thief. Not "better", not "worse", different. A noble should be aware of different customs. Again, not better or worse, but different.

If your noble always gets a +1 on Fill-in-the-Blank, the dice are playing the character instead of you.

AT's nobility is so fucking dumb.
>Princess ranks higher than king of queen
>Princess is a gender neutral title
>Noble titles are held by whoever or whatever can successfully charm or intimidate the lesser creatures around them into thinking they are nobility
>But also just whoever happens to have a crown and is capable of holding on to it
>Line of succession is nonexistent, kingdoms fall into chaos at the drop of a hat
>Absolute monarchy is not only tolerated, but preferred by the unwashed masses
>kingdoms have been stagnating for literally centuries

What the fuck are you even trying to say?

Not all mechanical systems work that way. As an example, in the system I'm thinking of, you would probably have some combination of Social Regard, Status, possibly Rank, possibly a positive or negative Reputation, Claim to Hospitality, and after that maybe a bit of Wealth and possibly Enemy/Enemy Group and (if you're dad's the king or whatever) possibly Patron. More than likely it would also come with a Duty attached, Sense of Duty if you actually give a shit about the people you are supposed to be looking after, Contact Group with whoever you get information from in your position, Cultural Familiarities, Favors, Languages, etc. Lots of other things to choose from or combine, depending on what kind of "noble" you are, the position you occupy, your relationship to your family and the people, so on and so forth.

Literally like two of those actually have anything to do with dice rolls, and even those are more of a side effect of having the trait than anything. None of these take away the need to roleplay at all; it never simplifies something to a roll or etc. as you are suggesting.

Not all mechanized traits boil down to "+1 to intimidate peasants with threats" or whatever. In my experience, certain *types* of mechanization actually encourage and provide incentives to roleplaying. They also serve as reminders and "channels" for it, even though they don't act like handcuffs per se.

Additionally, if you have a noble in the party who's all about using his social ties, owed favors, position of power, etc. to address in-game problems and also likes having those background choices as viable things to bite him in the ass later, it's great for him to have a fully fleshed-out sheet just like the fighter, or wizard, or whatever.

tl;dr I agree that the *specific type* of mechanization you're talking about would be a detriment to roleplaying, but in my experience lots of games have different mechanics for it that actually prompt and reinforce good roleplaying.

In my campaigns usually anyone who picks the noble background gets easy audiences and advantage on some checks, but ever time they enter a building I roll a d20, on a 1 an assassin tries to murder them

This led to a particularily lethal village where the party was going door to door and out of 10 houses they had a grand total of 7 assassins, it was absolutely hilarious

>not having the nobility be the product of thousands of years of eugenics, Dune-style, so that they literally are physically superior to the common man

The place of nobility has come up an odd amount in a magical girl game I'm in, set in the Nanoha setting.

Before the current rule of the Time Space Administration Bureau the dominant power in dimensional space was Belka, a warring empire of Saint Kings and powerful magical superweapons- For those aware of Ace Combat, the reference is intentional.

The Belkan Empire fell when their homeworld, Old Belka, was destroyed in a cataclysm which shattered their culture and empire and allowed the rise of the TSAB. But the TSAB still shares a lot of links with Belkan culture, with the Saint Church being the largest religion in the TSAB and their homeworld Midchilda having a region designated as the Belkan Self-administered Zone, governed by the Church and with relative autonomy.

From there we've made a lot of extrapolations, but it's mentioned in the series that a lot of Belkan families were focused on self-refinement. The Saint Kings themselves were living magical superweapons, but even lesser knights and nobles developed powerful bloodline magics and signature spellcasting styles that make them extremely dangerous.

Their position in the modern TSAB is a rather confused one. Belka is a fallen empire, and many people blame its fall on the lust for power shown by its people. Although many descendants of Belkan families work for and with the TSAB, it's also true that many of their bloodline magics, being developed in times of war and battle, are no longer suitable in an age where the TSAB acts more as a militarised police force with a strict policy of non-lethality.

One of our PCs in the game is a descendant of old Belkan nobles who fell from grace, and is often caught between doing what the TSAB would consider right and following the ideals and ethos of her forebears, which has created some interesting conflict for her both internal and external.

>after that, if you continued to roll a d20 for my character instead of d%, I would stab you in the fucking mouth.

>nobles regularly get assassinated in this setting
>nobody finds this odd
>somehow nobles still exist in this setting

Everything about what you wrote sounds kind of stupid, no offense.

>Nobles of literallly any rank have a 5% chance of being the target of an assassination attempt at any given time in any given place
Would drop your group after first session.

Why wouldn't a person with better training and the time to use it be better than a person without access to tutors who has to split their time between self-improvement and subsistence?

I like Game of Thrones for this. Jon Snow is better at fighting and speechcraft than the rabble of assorted thugs and criminals that he gets inducted with because he's received actual sword training and education. It's not genetic superiority of the divine right of kings, he's just better for obvious, practical reasons.

this

the fuck is at?

Adventure Time, fuckwit.

You know, the cartoon the OP's pic came from?

>Why wouldn't a person with better training and the time to use it be better than a person without access to tutors who has to split their time between self-improvement and subsistence?

It should, but your question presumes a medieval fantasy setting and the OP's does not.

In a medieval fantasy setting, a noble should have had better chance of proper nutrition as a child, should have a better chance of being literate, should have a better chance of receiving an education, weapons training, etc.

In other settings, those potential advantages are not a given.

+Income from estate
+Bonus to starting capital
+Trained horsemen and swordfighter
+Can access higher social circles
+Can go to university and pay for it with ease

-Requires estate management
-Loss of estate or falling under a certain annual revenue entails losing nobility
-Cannot perform most jobs because it would entail losing nobility
-Engaged in legal battle with other landowners and gentry
-forced to be partisan in civil wars, cannot remain neutral

Fpbp

Pokémon Tabletop Adventures
> Created backgrounds
> "Rich Family" gives a flat income to play with and confortable housing in cities big enough to have an hotel.
> "Famous Trainers Family" allowed the character to begin with 1 pokémon of their choice, except fossils, powerful families, legendaries and shuckle IN ADDITION to starter. Reputation precedes.

The two other backgrounds gives other bonuses.


Fragged Empires
> Resources, Influence and Contacts are mechanics imbeded in the game. A character's build may be required to justify one having such status.

Excellent post.

I swear to god if you're my DM playing the princess......