Hereditary Rule in D&D

[Username17]

OK, for a long time I was with everyone else wondering how anyone could hope to have some sort of crazy "hereditary rule" scheme in Dungeons and Dragons. Then the DMG 2 came out, and explained everything:

Of course the rulers of any province are characters with PC classes. The social framework is essentially Feudal, so you own the land as far as you have a reasonable chance of whupping the sweet ass of anyone on that land. So if an Ogre comes walking through town, you can either personally kill it - or the Ogre takes over and your aristocratic ass starts running in the opposite direction. Only levelled characters, therefore, can be the local authorities.

So the whole concept of the "Aristocrat Lord" is a joke, that can't even happen. But how does a Mage Lord pass anythig on to his son? When his son is a 1st level character, he can't defend his lands and they'll just be taken away from him. The answer is the Apprentice Feat!

See, the Magelord takes the Mentor feat, and when he marries some hot princess and has a child, his child becomes his apprentice. Thereafter, his son doesn't adventure or any of that crazy crap, he stays around the house getting taught how to rule the country as a Magelord - and in the process he goes up levels. He can just keep doing this until he hits 5th level, at which point he can qualify to become one of his father's (or mother's) cohorts and continues to acrue XP.

So when the mage king hands off his kingdom to his son, he's passing it on to a son who was a 5th level Wizard with equipment that surpassed his level-standard before he even reached majority.

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In short, the reason why the duke's son is going to be the duke someday is because he has a much safer way of becoming a high level character than adventurers have. He probably doesn't have to go questing for XP until he hits like 10th level -and even then he can do so as a war leader rather than as a mine sweeper in a dungeon complex.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

Of course, around 10th level you can have al the power you ever need anyway, because that's when the game takes off.

[Crissa]

A new reason for castles! Castles give XP not just to adventurers who raid them - they're bases which grow XP like mold in a petri dish!

[Username17]

1148503089[/unixtime]]A new reason for castles! Castles give XP not just to adventurers who raid them - they're bases which grow XP like mold in a petri dish!

It's more like a farm. You have to go back there and pull weeds from time to time, and then you have extra XP lying around to hold you through the winter.

-Username17

[Crissa]

It's like growing bacteria in a petri dish? Sometimes mold comes along and spoils the party?

-Crissa

[erik]

I kept trying to figure out what this had to do with inheritance rule structures (as in rules referring to other rules, referring to other rules, etc.), and was getting terribly confused. I am far too tired to be awake. Thank goodness I don't have to work my 12 hour shift tonight.

[Book]

I hope the DMG 2, Stronghold Builders Guide (3.0), and Powers of Faerun (a related sourcebook of recent) are all in synch with each other concerning this kind of stuff.

That being high level play where players want to build kingdoms, play politics, run guilds, etc.