Honor and Reputation

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Jyrdan Fairblade
Unkbartig
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Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 7:00 am

Honor and Reputation

Post by Jyrdan Fairblade »

For my upcoming campaign, I’m planning on using a reputation system based on the old Oriental Adventures Honor system, but rejiggered to be more about social standing than family and honor. It’s also based on a system of etiquette, that while it has its tricky points, doesn’t get in the way of swording orcs and looting treasure chests.

Anyone do anything like this before? Am I asking for trouble as the PCs just ignore the whole thing?

serleran
Mogrl
Posts: 14094
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:00 am

Re: Honor and Reputation

Post by serleran »

Renown

Renown is a measure of a character’s fame (or infamy) within the Atlantean World. It should only be used in situations where there is a reasonable expectation of knowledge about the character’s deeds and actions, such as whenever the character is in their home city or dealing with locals. All characters begin with a Renown rating of 0 – they have yet to accomplish much. This will rise and fall over time, the minimum being 0 and the maximum that of 20. Various actions affect this, as does being in an environment where the character is unknown, disliked, or outlawed. It functions somewhat like an attribute, with no adjustments to any checks / abilities until the “attribute” reaches a score of 12, and then there is a +1 bonus awarded for each 2 additional, as noted below:

Renown ... Bonus
Under 12 ... --
13-14 ... +1
15-16 ... +2
17-18 ... +3
19-20 ... +4

This bonus can be used in place of a Charisma modifier when dealing with a social interaction check for those who are more famous than they are charismatic, or it can be used to affect an additional person on a one-to-one bonus for those who happen to be both famous and likeable. The Castle Keeper has final arbitration of these effects.

As a character gains a higher renown, they attract a certain type of individual seeking to prove they’re better, tougher, smarter… whatever the case. This will always happen once per month and may happen more frequently as desired. For characters who would prefer to keep a low profile (assassin, spy, necromancer, etc) Renown is a sort of “fear” in that the higher it is, the more hushed people are when speaking about the character but it can still be used to garner benefits as above, only it won’t be because people like the character. These types of characters can also usually demand higher payments and get them because they have such a great reputation.

Anyway, there are many ways to increase and decrease Renown. When the character is far afield and in locales where no one knows the character, they are considered as having 0 Renown – after all, they’re starting from scratch. Whenever XP are given, the Castle Keeper should award Renown as well, most adventures earning between 1 and 3 points, but some especially heroic or valiant task, such as taking down an age 12 dragon or a level 15 necromancer might be worth 10 or more Renown… it really just depends. It must be noted that, as a character has a high Renown, it becomes harder to keep impressing people; they come to expect great (or terrible) actions.


[Edit]

I'm going to copy this to the general rules so you can get more responses, as well.

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