How come people are so hesitant to play as nobles? There's almost never more than a single noble in any given party...

>having a distinct and diverse party is retarded
It is a completely fine desire.
I like the aesthetic of some homogeneity in the groups myself, but come on, why are you reacting so extreme?

To be noble is to have an advantage over your fellow teammates, to be recognized not by your actions but by your status, stuff like that.
It's kinda weird when you have family that commands armies and you're out there fucking around with a motley crew and dirtying up your precious noble hands.

probably the same reason you tend to have only one Paladin

questions on societal expectations and the fact you only really need one to fill a quota.

>dirtying up your precious noble hands
Why is this a stereotype? Aren't most mythological heroes of noble birth? Didn't knights almost purely consist of nobles?

Basically this. How can you justify being a noble, but not have access to all the privileges that entails? Hence you pretty much have to put some edge in the backstory to explain why you are noble, but not Noble anymore. Also an even bigger point, it's hard to justify a Noble going out and living a hard and dangerous life of adventure without resorting to the tired trope of 'I always wanted to adventure' and make it seem genuine. Adventuring usually has you hoping to attain what these people just start with.

I guess people think nobles aren't your stereotype adventurer.

In my experience, mages and paladins rp'ers tend to be noble. Elves and surprisingly Dwarves.

Why are you treating every noble kid as the only one that family will ever have?

F I R E E M B L E M

And in TGs?

A combination of what said and the fact that its easier to integrate characters who are nobodies, you dont have to pretend you know anyone

I think you're confusing "noble" with "royal."

People of noble birth never need to do anything close to farm work in their entire lives.

Depends on what the status really entails. I'm particularly fond of being a "low" noble or from a knight like caste, where your whole family has higher-than typical assets at their disposal, and you have more opportunities levied at you, but you're still expected to have an actual duty or role to play. It gives certain characters realistic backgrounding to justify some things that just require more practice to train it, tends to invariably make you less snobby than a high-up royalty-type, and gives to inbuilt assumed goals depending on what your family did.

For example, I had something like this in a setting where certain families were just EXPECTED to send their children off the the church to be paladins for a number of years, and they were effectively a house of "knights" because of this. It leads to cool character arcs about embracing or rebelling against family and code, etc, etc.

A common trend among shity GMs is motivating players through vengeance, meaning the more they have the more they are going to lose.
Meanwhile, plebian PC's actually demand some creativity from GM to get the story moving

They did before the middle ages.

Nobles go through education and physical training. Knights go on to murder lots of people in battles, or get killed themselves. All a farmer has to do is dig up the ground a few times per year and sit on his ass watching that shit grow.

It helps to think of D&D peasants as more like the English peasants of the early 1900's. They're a product of a society where mass manufacturing (in this case through the auspices of magic) makes everything cheaper and more readily available even to the poor and downtrodden, and where a noble title gives you legal benefits but not nearly to the level they did a couple hundred years previous.

At least, that's the only way I can mentally reconcile it.

But all of the characters in my Greyhawk campaign are nobles.
Except the svirfneblin druid. He's just weird.

I know bringing up D&D specifically is opening a can of worms but in its case it's because the only specific thing being a noble gives you is EITHER a ring that makes rich people treat you nicely or three shitty followers that will specifically not follow you to the dangerous places where you need them most. Unless your GM is willing to let you make your background matter it's basically just a situational charisma booster and there are better backgrounds with better boons.

Because we're coming for you, you bourgeoisie scum!

One of the player in my groups loves playing nobles. We don't play D&D. An inherent part of character creation for our system/setting is randomly determining how high up you are in the setting's nobility.

When he rolled up a king's nephew, he was fucking insufferable. Every other word out of his mouth was a command we 'had to' follow, and the DM didn't have the balls to play out the kind of pressure, expectations and responsibilities that would usually rest on the nobility's shoulders.

This and many other threads like it can be answered with: Modern fantasy writers are retarded and ignorant of medieval hit

The odds of being nobility were really fucking low for all of history. Even taking into account that adventurers are exceptional individuals, having multiple nobles in the same party would be very rare.

Furthermore, the kind of player that ALWAYS plays nobility tends to be the kind of power-tripping asshole that cannot stand anything negative ever happening to their character. Also most prone to "Bob 2, cousin of Bob"-syndrome when their characters die (after hours of sputtering, complaining and argueing).

1, Social status is not handled by the core rules, and even if so, you have to waste a class level on becoming a Noble. Alternatively, you spend a Background on it, which again brings little mechanically admitted benefits as one user already pointed out.

2, Making a decent murderhobo game is already a strain on most GMs. If you tell them to add social dymamics, then they'll just give up. Additionally, roleplaying murderhobos is more than enough challenge for most players.

>American pop culture tends to understandably favor underdog style characters.
Understandably?

>The odds of being nobility were really fucking low for all of history.
Something like 6 to 10% of all the population in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were nobles ("Szlachta"), about a million of them at any given time.

>Even taking into account that adventurers are exceptional individuals, having multiple nobles in the same party would be very rare.
I'd like to see your math for this actually, exceptional individual factor included.

Nobles, especially if they are rich, tend to either congregate to show off or do things that are (hopefully) more lucrative and involve less risk of bodily harm than adventuring.

This said "4th scion of a duke/baron throwing in his lot with adventurers to strike it rich/famous because he has zero chance to inherit the title/riches" is a common enough background.

The difference between American and European sensibilities in genre fiction is a little bit more complex than that. Because while American protagonists tend to come from very simple backgrounds the stories also seem to have a huge placed in the system surrounding the heroes. What they must overcome is rarely a broken or corrupt government, and in the cases where it is, that evil government is always just temporary, easily replaced by the the fair and just government we're told is the status quo. Compare this to European protagonists which are more often of noble birth or at least belong to the upper classes of society but the stories that they act in are much more anarchic in their philosophy. Rather than being allowed to go from nothing to something because of a fair system that rewards them for their merits rather than birth, these heroes instead have to destroy, or are at the very least constantly opposed by, a seemingly inherently broken and corrupt system.

Interesting that American stories, from the so-called land of freedom and capitalism, have the more statist message.

Yeah, note how the best one is the one where you're playing the leader of a mercenary band instead of a fucking prince

Probably because they come from a less oppressive state. That's why the SJW's have gained the ground they have, because Americans don;t face many real social ills, so the youth LARP as revolutionaries fighting what are ultimately minor or even completely imaginary problems.

Politics are fucking boring

>itt people don't know the difference between the king and a noble

>What they must overcome is rarely a broken or corrupt government, and in the cases where it is, that evil government is always just temporary, easily replaced by the the fair and just government we're told is the status quo.
The fuck are you on about? Does the "Evil dark lord who's ruled his evil realm for 1000 years" not count as a government, or does it not count as "American" when they're ripping off Tolkien (even though they nearly always are)?

In the case of Tolkien Melkor's and Sauron's influence has been so great that their defeat means the end of all magic in the world, and the implication is that soon after the end of the book even the descendants of Aragorn had become petty mortal kings that squabbled with each other over land and wealth.

>Even taking into account that adventurers are exceptional individuals, having multiple nobles in the same party would be very rare.
That'd be true assuming adventuring parties are brought together at random (which, admittedly, is frequently how it's depicted) but the chances of a given group containing multiple nobles goes up when you consider that nobles usually prefer to associate with other nobles over commoners. It may be that groups consisting entirely of nobles (or entirely excepting some lower-class retainers) would be more common than groups with one noble and a majority of commoners.

The odds of being an adventurer was pretty much fucking zero for all of history.

Nobles have far too many advantages. It's basically chosing easymode.

Playing a noble actually takes hard work and responsibility which the majority of modern day millennial players are allergic to.

>play noble
>have servants
>boss them around, polish armor, carry luggage into inn, cook, set up tents, etc
>GM says I spend too much time interacting with servants
>stop and everything's fine for the GM

>play noble
>travel the world
>test my skills
>dabble in philosophy and alchemy
>retire with a harem of exotic slave-wives you gathered in your travels, as benefits the son of a Sultan
>get murdered in my sleep by one of my brothers a few days after my father dies
Well, it was a good life.

>How come people are so hesitant to play as privileged twats?

Peasant pride worldwide

No, it's the one where you're playing the prince in exile trying to reclaim his homeland after his parents are killed and his sister is kidnapped by the dude that now controls his homeland.

He was probably just trying to get you to stop indulging in your lolidom ojou-sama magical realm in his game.

For me, there's a trio of reasons. One is past players I was in groups with who used nobility as a part of their characters were about 50/50 on if they were going to play along with the narrative of an adventuring party or if they were going to try and shoehorn nobility shenanigans where half the party would have no skills or stakes into every facet of the campiagn and/or try to claim some noble right to lead when the players themselves had no mental capacity to do so, so it's left a bad taste in my mouth, even if it might help explain how your character might have received training as a wizard/sorcerer/knight. Second is the fact that, outside of intrigue games, I don't much care for playing the angle of some sort of lower-class noble or bastard trying to seek influence or fame; like I don't mind if it's properly done by someone else and I get to watch their rise or fall, but for me personally, I prefer being a full-blown outsider who has to experience the world of upper-class life as the game progresses to learn about it if we're going to have some sort of interaction with aristocracy. Third is just that, as an American, I've been raised on the Frontier Theory and of common men and women leaving behind shit lives and taming the wilderness, ssssoooo going out into the wilderness seems more a populist rather than aristocratic notion, even if the aristocracy might sponsor adventurers and claim their victories in their own name.

Of course, that's just a lot of personal biases - there's nothing inherently wrong with playing nobility in an adventuring company, whether they be third sons or bastardborn, it's just a perfect game assumes perfect players, and perfect players aren't far and few between in this hobby.

Star Wars d20 had a designated noble class; it’s essentially a buff tower, high-CHA face character, and bard-sans-instrument all in one.
It can be fluffed in a lot of ways; coming from the upper class or coming from a crime family, having useful connections (that can be introduced through talents) or being disgraced and alone, being idle nobility or being a dominating and/or inspiring personality, etc.
They’re also best suited to prestige classing into classes like crime lord or officer.

I found that this has changed dramatically ever since GOT came out.

>Not marrying your horse to achieve immortality.

>Aristocrats
>Not playing as a soviet
The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of the aristocracy! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We'll saw the foundation of big business in half, even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people's will crashing through the windows of the king's' house of servitude!

Speak for yourselves. Nobles are awesome to play as.
Your title alone can open you doors otherwise closed off to others, and people actually listen to you.
Not to mention, it helps the party as well. Do you have players wanting to be Orcs or Drow, but you don't want to break suspension of disbelief by people not killing them on sight? Have your nobleman throw in a word for them, and people will at least tolerate them.
The only better background is the Inquisitor

>>What? Well, of course some of us will be more equal than others, but at least... um... Hey, Svetna, just why is this better for the common man, again?

Ah, so you’re retarded.

>Questioning the will of the soviets
Into the Gulag it goes

>Nobles have far too many advantages.
But that's not necessarily true. Nobles can be poor, nobles can be obscure.

>Hey, Svetna, just why is this better for the common man, again?

If common man joins the party early and plays his cards right he can lord over what is left of the enemies of the people and the other suckers while living in luxury

Revolution is an oportunity, something common man doesn’t have otherwise.

>If common man joins the party early and plays his cards right he can lord over what is left of the enemies of the people and the other suckers while living in luxury
Right. I remember, now. It's not oppression if we're the ones doing it.
Viva la revolucion!

No, it is opression I ma fully aware of that.

If the choice is beween being shited on and be the do doing the shiting, I choose shiting.

Truth.

Most people don't *want* to play chaotic neutral characters.

Sorry, I tend to play as a noble.
And various non-noble characters of mine have reached (or faked) that status through campaings.

>If the choice is beween being shited on and be the do doing the shiting, I choose [cowardice]
Fixed your typo, bro

Idk just haven't felt like it. None of my character ideas have been nobles yet. I'm not actively avoiding it or anything, I've just come up with ideas other than nobility.

>nobility

Ability to climb the social ladder.

Democracy was a mistake.

A true communist knows that there is no social ladder. All are equal.

I think you need some reeducation, "comrade".

Most bohemians and revolutionary movements don't necessarily want to abolish the ladder. They want to refine it under their own ideals.

This is what people who have never worked a 9-to-5 believe.

>Where is your union now, fucktard?

Got a noble in our current party. He didn't start with any more money or gear than anyone else really, but he would throw his money around as if he did and one of the other poorfag adventurers slept on his couch. DM gave him a bit of clout in social interactions where he is known and a fancy house where we started, but he doesn't get much else. I still think he is doing it right as a player, though.

I had a problem back when I designed a noble in 3.5 because I felt like I needed to take a level of a literal NPC class to do it (unless starting at level 1 and able to take traits for the big gold boost). 5th does a nice thing with the backgrounds that basically makes half a level of NPC built into every character so that's cool, but the noble still only starts with like 10 more gold on average.

Personally I just seem attracted to making gutter scum who found a way out, or pirates and mercenaries or something along those lines. Even went so far as to make a paladin that lived in sewers to hunt monsters there. The one time I made someone well off I had them start off in debt, though their home burned down shortly after so it didn't matter much.

>A true communist know there's no ladder.

>What is class warfare.

Being a noble tends to have too many strings attached unless you've got some serious strings or quantifiers attached.

Personally my favorite noble origin story is that the PC is the weirdo youngest sibling the parents couldn't marry off who they just gave a purse with some cash and packed them a bag of the essentials and shoved them out the door in hopes they'd get themselves killed (preferably in a way that doesn't reflect back on the family) or at least come back when they've calmed down.

Its more fun to start from nothing, especially if you play a lot. This is like human psychology 101

That's where we dress up real fancy-like before we fight, of course.

Why would someone of noble birth be tromping around in a dungeon full of deadly traps and adventurer-eating monsters when they could be lounging around and fucking expensive prostitutes while being fed grapes by moderately-priced prostitutes?

>Why would someone of noble birth be tromping around in a dungeon full of deadly traps and adventurer-eating monsters
BECAUSE IT IS THEIR FUCKING JOB!
> they could be lounging around and fucking expensive prostitutes while being fed grapes by moderately-priced prostitutes
That is their reward for putting their lives on the line
-Remember! Nobility started off as the realms de-facto military force. For the longest part, they were the only ones to receive proper combat training.
It wasnt until the the Age of Enlightenment that they forsook their warrior roots.

>All a farmer has to do is dig up the ground a few times per year and sit on his ass watching that shit grow.

Except when your Lord decides that he wants to give his neighbour a good kicking for the 6th time this year. Then you're strapping on a rusty bucket for a helm and a sharpened stick for a spear and being told to hold then line against a cavalry charge.

Being a peasant sucks. You do all the hard work in the fields and all the dying in the wars.

For glory, magical items, and riches. Literally the same reasons anyone else would.

Dude, don't respond to that. It's retard posting at its worst. "I'm sure if pressed into a corner he'd try to claim "Hah hah you fell 4 my baitz lol xd", but he's just a privileged, middle class nitwit who thinks that having to dip the fries in the grease without dipping his hand in with them counts as mentally complex and physically grueling labor.

Because my players only had a 1.6% chance of rolling it for their starting career.

WFRP is shit.

3.1744%, you roll twice and take the one you prefer.

Honestly, I actively dissuaded people from playing them. Mostly due to having a pair of powergamers who only wanted it for the monetary gains and bitched if anything bad happened to their perceived safety nets. Family can't float them anymore money because they're being muscled out due to boundary wars? Nope, changing characters because reasons. Didn't want to help their family WIN the war, no sir, had to go and be autisticly "the strongest". It was retarded and made me stop wanting to DM.

This. Your best armed and armored men were noble men, not peasants.

At least in GURPS, it's quite expensive to be a Noble. Wealth, Status, Law Immunity, Law Enforcement Power etc.
You could go the "runaway noble son" but it gets old real quick .

This attitude toward nobility is a result of generations of muh class war bullshit vilifying the upper class as decadent degenerates.

implying they are not. Maybe their forefathers but their sons had it easy the entire life.

here's why I don't

>DM pitches premise of game "going to x place in DMs new setting"
>oh cool I'll give the DM an easy way to involve my character by giving them family ties to the nobility from x region
>we never go there
>we never go anywhere near there
>DM never intended to have us go there
>DM doesn't bother to tell me as I force him to flesh out his shitty setting so my character will make sense
>end up wandering around a random peninsula for ~10 sessions with a character who has no reason to be there

that's the worst example but it's in my experience pointless to try and involve yourself in the structure of the DM's world unless they are explicitly open to it

>play exclusively noble characters (as long as DM allows to do so)
>always Lawful-something
>constantly feel superiority over the rest of the plebs you happen to be travelling with.