On being Feared

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, let's look at the effect of assuming that a Feared character's hirelings are analogous to slaves, draftees, or spouses in forced marriages.

If he hired them and pays them, why would they be?

Slaves, draftees and spouses in forced marriages have suffered a violation of their personal rights, which effectively deprives them of personal liberty, and the character to whom they owe the Loyalty score they roll for either was complicit in that violation or benefits from it.

It makes no sense to punish a character for buying a 15 point Advantage by having hirelings regard him as having committed a serious offence against them even if he has never treated them as anything but valued employees.

Just because a character belongs to a power elite in the world that can do terrible things to those who offend them doesn't mean that a character who didn't take any Disadvantages having to do with negative Reputation (or reputation, in the form of other Disadvantages) should suffer what effectively anounts to lesser Loyalty from his hirelings.

Belonging to the to the retinue of a feared inquisitor or necromancer is probably regarded as a positive thing by many servants, men-at-arms, familiars, torturers or embalmers. Maybe not Ubho Tal the Utterly Terrible (Reputation -4 as a horrible defiler of both the living and dead to go with his Social Regard (Feared) 3), but certainly any necromancer who has only positive Reaction modifiers and doesn't mistreat his staff.

Social Regard (Feared) costs the same per level as Charisma. Making it different in some ways is fine, but making it overall worse is bad game design.