RP cost of designating an heir to a domain

[X-DM Jon]

Land's Choice has a tendency to lean towards what has already been prepared. However, the opposite has also known to happen.
 And Land's Choice is no protection against possible pretenders.

[X-Bellam & BC/TB (Bobby)]

Thus far, we haven't had a history of vassalages within a single temple the way the larger nations do.  Maybe that's something the larger temples might actually want to consider changing?  Lord knows, I'm sure some of you would love to hand off some of the Bless Lands work you have to do to a lower-ranked vassal.  Maybe you could kill a couple birds with one stone.

[X-ETN/Maire Cwyllmie (Libor)]

Thus far, we haven't had a history of vassalages within a single temple the way the larger nations do.  Maybe that's something the larger temples might actually want to consider changing?  Lord knows, I'm sure some of you would love to hand off some of the Bless Lands work you have to do to a lower-ranked vassal.  Maybe you could kill a couple birds with one stone.

There can't be vassalage within single temple. Creating vassal would mean to split the temple and create new one (and then bond it with vassalage). Actually, I have contemplated setting the Miearan branch of ETN as vassal. I think I could live with the loss of GB (and gain of few RP). However,  effort required to arrange such affair (starting with finding suitable vassal regent) was too much for me. I still have few things that I HAVE to do, but was forced to postpone.

[X-CJS/Ruormad Coumain (Tristan)]

Thus far, we haven't had a history of vassalages within a single temple the way the larger nations do.  Maybe that's something the larger temples might actually want to consider changing?  Lord knows, I'm sure some of you would love to hand off some of the Bless Lands work you have to do to a lower-ranked vassal.  Maybe you could kill a couple birds with one stone.

A lower ranked vassal able to handle some of the Bless Lands is still a high level character thanks to the multiple feats required to cast realm magic. Which may be one of the reasons that we haven't seen much of it.

It also makes sense in a larger temple to have a vassal take over the see of an Archbishop and run it in there own right. Gives them a chance to prove their abilities to the temple as a whole, it could also set up a tradition where the Archbishop of Soandso is the heir apparent.

[X-Bellam & BC/TB (Bobby)]

Yes, Libor, that's what I'm talking about.  For the larger temples, I'm asking if there might be benefits to breaking out smaller regional sections under vassals.  Conceptually, it's still one 'temple' - still the Western Imperial Temple, for instance - and all still answerable to its high priest, but with lower-ranked priests handling the day-to-day affairs in those regions.  Osoerde is 'one kingdom', but it's composed of multiple landed domains.  A temple could also be 'one temple' while consisting of multiple domains.  There's a gold loss, but also a reduction of personal responsibility by the overall ruler.

For many temple domains, I'm sure reducing their personal load isn't of massive importance compared to trying to manage vassals instead of ruling absolutely, but in particular I'm wondering if being able to make Bless Land spells the responsibility of lesser Vassal priests might do a number of things: reduce the high priest's actions used up each season preparing them; allow more provinces to be blessed, increasing the amount of GB and/or RP the temple could bring it by its agreements with secular rulers; allow the temples to sway rulers to their faith by PROMISING more blessings than other temples could manage; and provide more and stronger assistants to the high priest for dealing with opposing temples and creatures of the Shadow, since having vassals would mean having more actions to wield against opponents.  Plus, vassals tend to be higher level and competence than mere AA's, which can be valuable during adventures and other 'excitement'.  As long as your under-priests are trustworthy, which SURELY they are (    ), dividing up responsibility through vassalage could potentially be a boon to temple regents.  It's not 'the way things are done' right now, but is that worth changing?


Tristan: True, finding a sufficiently powerful priest to act as a vassal would be one of the steps involved, and a limiting factor the landed regents don't have to put up with.  Probably is, as you say, one reason it happens less.  But I do like the idea of using this as a way of testing and training an heir.  Plus, having more realm casters is always nice ANYWAYS, eh?

[X-ETN/Maire Cwyllmie (Libor)]

Yes, Libor, that's what I'm talking about.  For the larger temples, I'm asking if there might be benefits to breaking out smaller regional sections under vassals.  Conceptually, it's still one 'temple' - still the Western Imperial Temple, for instance - and all still answerable to its high priest, but with lower-ranked priests handling the day-to-day affairs in those regions.  Osoerde is 'one kingdom', but it's composed of multiple landed domains.

That is just the way we name it. We could use the name 'Osoerde' for only those provinces under Osoer's control and call the rest dependent states or satellites of Osoerde. Other way round, we could call WIT and CJS and other WIT's vassals the 'Traditionalist Temple' an say that 'conceptually' it is still one temple

There is a reason for this difference in naming conventions od course. Because the liege-vassal relations between landed regents are quite different from those between temples. Landed liege controls his vassals through law holdings in their provinces and through military force (financed partly from those law holdings and from vassals' tributes). Temple liege doesn't have such tools. So liege-vassal relations between temples are more loose by necessity. If the vassal temple decides to say goodbye to its liege, then there is actually very little the liege temple can do about it.

[X-CJS/Ruormad Coumain (Tristan)]

That is just the way we name it. We could use the name 'Osoerde' for only those provinces under Osoer's control and call the rest dependent states or satellites of Osoerde. Other way round, we could call WIT and CJS and other WIT's vassals the 'Traditionalist Temple' an say that 'conceptually' it is still one temple

There is a reason for this difference in naming conventions od course. Because the liege-vassal relations between landed regents are quite different from those between temples. Landed liege controls his vassals through law holdings in their provinces and through military force (financed partly from those law holdings and from vassals' tributes). Temple liege doesn't have such tools. So liege-vassal relations between temples are more loose by necessity. If the vassal temple decides to say goodbye to its liege, then there is actually very little the liege temple can do about it.

Naming conventions still have a lot of force though. For the sake of an example lets say that I've gotten my Archbishop of Alamie trained up so he can cast realm spells and I've spun off my Northern Alamie holding so that he can cast the Shadow Ward every turn.

If he decides to refuse vassalage he's basically trying to split the temple in name, it'd start a a civil war within the CJS.

Even if I haven't split the holdings off so they answer to me (in game terms) and my Archbishop of Alamie decides to split off it'd still start a civil war within the CJS.

With a lot of things for ROE, and in fact strategic simulations in general it is more often the perception that matters just as much (and in some cases more than) as the reality.

If the perception that the holdings of the CJS Archbishop of Alamie are part of the CJS then as far as most people are concerned they are part of the CJS. It is only for the purpose of game mechanics that there would be any seperation.

On the other hand if the perception is that the holdings of the CJS Archbishop of Alamie are seperate from the CJS then they might as well be another church.

So for temple regents with vassals under their umbrella the challenge would be in maintaining the perception that you are one group, rather than multiple groups under the one umbrella.

[X-Haelyn's Aegis/RK (Andy)]

My 2 pence.

The more 'authority' your heir has, the more chance they have of unopposed succession - they are the 'natural choice'.  So I could for example designate them over 2 holdings, 20, or all of them, they'd still be the front runner to inherit the rest through the land's choice if nobody else had any designation, but the odds of opposition, or having low initial stability would increase as the amount of RP spent on designation reduced, with only full payment guaranteeing a smooth succession (as much as anything is ever guaranteed).

Alternatively I could designate multiple people with greater or lesser amounts of the domain, to reduce the cost of wastage if any of them die - but at the same time increasing the risk of contested succession or fragmentation.

Those are bog-standard political risks and rewards to be traded off, the cost is harsh but in practice I'd expect that a realm with high stability and a 'clear natural heir' can afford to be less cautious and simply trust to the will of the gods, whereas a realm in turmoil with no clear successor would need to take the time and effort to formally designate, bend arms, etc to have a reasonable chance of an orderly takeover.  A lot probably depends on how strongly identified th eleader is with the organisation - if the leader is known to have a council of powerful advisors then they are automatically looked to as heirs, if the leader takes a lawnmower approach to management succession then there will be trouble.


I see no reason for temple's not to have vassalage or sub-domains, I take it as a given that HA includes Monastic orders, faiths dedicated to gods other than Haelyn, etc - HA itself is simply the core organisation and the political will behind the wider organisation - much as a guild is actually a vast network of smaller guilds not just one type of trade.

You do get the risk of split by assigning vassals - the OIT once controlled all the empire and it has since fragmented multiple times until only a core of 'true believers' still clinging to the centre - but equally you get more actions, RP, etc - it is a risk:reward trade off no different to any other holding type.

In thematic terms it makes perfect sense to give different areas of the church operational responsibility, particularly if they are geographically distinct where the leadership is probably fairly theoretical anyway.

In mechanic terms, the real cost to splitting off vassal domains for a temple holding would not so much be GB (many minor holdings are barely more than break even, particularly when you factor in pandering to local ego's) or RP (like most temples I'm way past collection saturation and would be looking to increase RP income through vassalage) but the increased cost of the ubiquitous BTHL where splitting off a L1 holding adds 1 RP to the cost of each province casting. 

If I could stack vassal temple levels for BTHL purposes if I carved out sub-holdings then I'd seriously consider doing so, but if I wind up hemorrhaging RP through increased spend for BTHL then the vassalage RP is amortised and the benefit of the split-off becomes fairly minimal while the costs & risk remain significant.

[X-CJS/Ruormad Coumain (Tristan)]

Those are bog-standard political risks and rewards to be traded off, the cost is harsh but in practice I'd expect that a realm with high stability and a 'clear natural heir' can afford to be less cautious and simply trust to the will of the gods, whereas a realm in turmoil with no clear successor would need to take the time and effort to formally designate, bend arms, etc to have a reasonable chance of an orderly takeover.  A lot probably depends on how strongly identified th eleader is with the organisation - if the leader is known to have a council of powerful advisors then they are automatically looked to as heirs, if the leader takes a lawnmower approach to management succession then there will be trouble.

I'd hazard a guess that realms with high stability and a clear natural heir have probably gotten that way by having a designated heir. The stability hits for anything else can be rather painful to deal with.

In mechanic terms, the real cost to splitting off vassal domains for a temple holding would not so much be GB (many minor holdings are barely more than break even, particularly when you factor in pandering to local ego's) or RP (like most temples I'm way past collection saturation and would be looking to increase RP income through vassalage) but the increased cost of the ubiquitous BTHL where splitting off a L1 holding adds 1 RP to the cost of each province casting.

If I could stack vassal temple levels for BTHL purposes if I carved out sub-holdings then I'd seriously consider doing so, but if I wind up hemorrhaging RP through increased spend for BTHL then the vassalage RP is amortised and the benefit of the split-off becomes fairly minimal while the costs & risk remain significant.

Spin off the entire holding in a province (i.e. the vassal gets 2 levels from the 2 you have rather 1 of 2) and then have the vassal maintain a ley link (1 RP per turn from them) as a condition of the vassalage. You can then cast the spell using the vassals network as though it was your own.

Or train up the vassal to the point where they can cast spells in their own right, maybe recruit a new AA, someone young with a reasonable BS and then have them spend every action they get as your aide learning from how you do things (i.e. training actions).

[X-Haelyn's Aegis/RK (Andy)]

Cause and effect on stability is somewhat confused I think - weakness in one area leads to loss of trust/corruption which leads to weakness elsewhere, and vice versa.  Some realms (nobles) absolutely need an heir politically and so would lose stability if their was no heir, other domains probably expect rather different succession (smoke signals from the vatican, guild member votes, etc) and so might actually get less stable if an heir was foisted on them - presumably why the RP spend is so high is the need to overcome any such resistance.

Training up an heir to cast realm spells is nigh on impossible, they'd either cost a year's income to be bought pre-loaded or require vast numbers of adventure actions and probably die horribly, futilely, and the turn before you finally figured out what you really needed them for if bought fresh. 

I'm not sure that ley links work all that well for temples, the problem isn't casting BTHL - it's just L1 - it is casting it cheaply, and co-operation between temples to avoid RP spikes does not come easily. 

[X-DM Jon]

Training up an heir to cast realm spells is nigh on impossible, they'd either cost a year's income to be bought pre-loaded or require vast numbers of adventure actions and probably die horribly, futilely, and the turn before you finally figured out what you really needed them for if bought fresh. 

 Temples usually don't choose heirs unable to cast realm spells, there are always a couple of medium level clerics able to cast realm spells available to take on the mantle of leadership. And temples usually have an easier time hiring clerics as aa's.