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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5193349" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, I think your first mistake is in thinking that "Any significantly higher level character will never fail in a skill contest with her. Ever."Even if it were true, mechanically, it needn't be true, functionally. It doesn't matter if a higher level character would fail in a skill contest with her, just if a PC comes into direct conflict with her in a skill contest, and, in that case, you can give her whatever you think is appropriate (Rule 0). Give her a a +10 "I'm the Bleedin' Queen" <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/thebasics.htm#circumstanceModifier" target="_blank">circumstance bonus</a>, if you need to justify it. It's still pure DM fiat, but that's what the circumstance bonus is for, and unless you're a pretty hardcore sim player all you need it to do is make basic sense to have fun. Having a massive bonus to a specific skill contest in her home kingdom, or in places her home kingdom is respected, makes sense, and as long as the player feels like it represents some reality (e.g.: you're not just making it high to hose them), fun is had by all. But that's also not true, mechanically. If you are a hardcore sim player, you can giver her skill bonuses that are very significant, even at level 1. It requires a bit of "CharOping", but if you're a hardcore sim player, you're doing that for your big NPC's anyway. Even if she has mere mortal level Charisma and Intelligence (max 11 for most NPCs), skill focus and synergies can drive up her wheeling and dealing to levels that most higher level characters don't bother with. That's something of the simulationist strength of the 3e skill point modeling: you don't increase in skill unless you put points into the skill, so a 20th level character who never felt the need to invest in Diplomacy or Charisma can still have a lower Diplomacy than a 1st level Queen Victoria.A level 1 Diplomacy from a Charisma 11 1st level generic NPC can be as high as +7. Which means that, while Taking 10, she can convince anything that wants to insult her, and make them neutral. She can stop someone who wants to attack her from doing so by rolling a 14 (so a 30% chance of asking the blacksmith to please stop). That's not insignificant by any means. And all of this assumes she is a generic "1st level Queen" right out of the box, not special in any way, and that you want to go crazy with the sim approach (which is not, as I have hopefully shown, required). I think your next mistake is in believing that "She will be totally dominated by those around here. No matter what."Even if she didn't have those massive bonuses she could have above, she'd only need to have relatively high skill bonuses -- higher than most of those around her -- to be seen as a great monarch. Since most people implied by this world have a Diplomacy bonus of exactly 0, having even the +7 that she can have at level 1 is already huge. Because most NPC's are 1st level mooks, without much skill trianing, you don't need to have a high-level character to be significantly skillful in comparison to most NPC's. Now, a 1st-level Queen Victoria wouldn't hold her own against even a low-level PC empath psion (for instance), but that empath psion is not a normal member of society. That character is a character of legend, and so they should essentially trump a generic 1st-level queen out of the box. Yes, a 1st-level Queen Victoria should basically succumb to the first incubus that comes along -- she's friggin' first level, she's not heroic, she's not a big fat deal in the heroic setting of D&D. She's someone the PC's will maybe save, or someone the PC's will maybe have a low-level skill contest with. She's not a heroic figure, because she's level 1. You can have that in 3e. She doesn't need to be 10th level. The easiest way is by DM fiat, the second easiest is by a circumstance bonus (a mechanical DM fiat), and if you want to be sim about it, a Diplomacy bonus of +7 will achieve that. Heck, a Diplomacy of +4 or +3 will probably achieve that. A Diplomacy of +0 could achieve that by luck.That said, I think there's some genre clash going on here. "The most powerful nation on the planet" here in the real world is nothing like "the most powerful nation on the planet" in the heroic fantasy world of D&D. No Queen Victoria here has to worry about psionicists, mind flayers, assassins (the prestige class), sorcerers, bards, umber hulks, incubi, enchanters, or Asmodeus. Any ruler of "the most powerful nation on the planet" in the implied D&D world would certainly be putting up with these things, and more. Thus, the ruler of "the most powerful nation on the planet" has probably had to get her hands dirty more than once on her bloody rise to power, and would be able to bop the local blacksmith down, no problem. Because the ruler of "the most powerful nation on the planet" would be a heroic figure. They would be Queen Maeve. They would've had to slay goblins and kill kobolds, wrestle with demons, out-think angels, and use a brilliant tongue on the giants who wanted to eat her. Now, you can still have an exceptional monarch who hasn't had to deal with any of these things who still rules the most powerful nation on the planet, even if that does stretch credibility a bit, simply because you don't need to be high level to wield non-combat power. However, if you're making someone the ruler of the most powerful nation on the planet in D&D, and in a world rife with monsters and danger, that person has never had to lift a sword to defend herself, you're starting to strain credibility. It's hard to have your cake here and eat it too. Either they are a powerful ruler of a powerful nation in a fantasy world of dragons and doppelgangers, or they are a powerful ruler of a powerful nation in the real world of jerks and arrogance. If the former, it makes sense that they are also powerful in combat. If the latter, you don't need to use D&D to make their stats (though you can still make a damn good 1st level ruler with simple DM fiat OR sim-heavy mechanics, if you wanted). I hope I've demonstrated that you don't have to do any of that in 3e (though you can stat them up if you are a gearhead for stats, you certainly don't have to). In fact, nothing whatsoever stops you from just going Rule 0 on it and saying "this lady has a high Diplomacy score 'cuz I think it makes sense." Which is essentially the same as the only 4e NPC model out there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />3e has a lot of granularity between that and being a statmonkey, but that's always an available option.</blockquote>

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