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Old 10-17-2017, 05:40 AM   #1
Whitelaughter
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Default Status>6 for humans

There is a limit to how high celestials, being outsiders, can climb in human society. But humans should not have that restriction; also, a powerful mortal position can allow a human to contribute usefully to a campaign - frex if the other PCs have Roles as police, a human might be the police chief, if they are medics the human could run or even own the local hospital.

Status 7 would require appropriate skills at 7 - which humans can effectively do, by buying appropriate specializations (CPG p25). Depending on the campaign, appropriate examples would include Mayor, Magistrate, Diplomat, University Vice Chancellor, Military base Commander, CEO: anyone who is a local authority.

Status higher than 7 would be limited to mortals with an Ethereal Servant with the Wealth Affinity. Note that a perfectly ordinary mortal can dream such a Servant into existence; with a sufficiently lucky roll, they don't even need the Dreaming skill! Billionaires saying "Think Big" or "If you can dream it you can do it" would all have such a Servant. A single roll can create a 3 Force Figment; something strong enough to acquire the Wealth Affinity, if only by undergoing initiation (CPG p46). There would be no real limit to this: assume though that each extra level of Status is adding an extra 50 million dollars, and constant use will barely be keeping up with the most powerful billionaires.

I compared the Elemental groups in EPG to the sources of wealth of the Forbes 500: the internet is a major source of wealth, reflected by Ethereals with the Tech and Information strands. Other complementary cases are:

Emotion & Sense: the Media
Society: the royal families
Structures and Terrain: Mining

Some special cases would be Elon Musks' Ethereal having Astronomical Concepts (space and solar power), while the Mars family's Servant might have Hunger as a secondary Affinity.

There're some major Elemental groups that currently would have *no* major players - life, struggle, weather. 'The Hunt' from Struggle has probably been deliberately dealt with, given the bans on hunting for furs, ivory, whale oil etc. The great rural barons haven't gone, they've merely be upstaged - wealth that would have put them at the top of the tree a century ago simply isn't as important now.

That brings up the final point - Status should slip over time. As a general rule, being rich gives you access to techie toys some 5 years before everyone else, so assuming that a level of Status is effectively lost every 5 years, but that all Status levels get +1 to what's available at the same time, would cover this nicely.
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