I may develop paths for aristocrats. I'm thinking of these:
1. Martial Path
2. Scholarly Path
3. Ne'er-do-well path
4. Diplomat path
Each path would have a different set of skills and varied BAB, HD and feats. Just a thought right now.
Thanks for the links, they were interesting. Am putting my class onto a nice format for presentation, but it was very much a 3.5 conversion, with rudimentary changes to pathfinder (ie skill changes). Am atm "Pathfinderising" it, and your suggestions (paths) reflect very much what I'd debated. So atm I'm working on that.
One thing I like about Ravenloft is that a lot of the realms have a strong focus on aristocracy, and so there's a lot of info. The relevance is that in many realms (e.g. Borca) nobility is literally about money. In Borca your position in the army or aristocracy literally depends on how much money your family pays the royalty (e.g. 100 gp = knight, 1000 gp = count) and so your family might be Barons one year and Knights another. I like the idea that many merchants buy their way into nobility via arranged marriages. So way I see it aristocrat class should cover:
1) Royalty
2) Nobles with rich family backgrounds
3) Nobles from struggling families that are noble in name, but not financially
4) Wealthy merchant families that act like nobles or buy/marry their way into it.
5) Non-nobles that have titles, e.g. Mayors, Burgomasters, Senechals and other non-nobility or non-landed titles.
In my old Forgotten Realms game a player was an aristocrat from a family that was discredited when his father was (falsely) charged for treason and executed. The player had to struggle to pretend he was rich (when he was the poorest player) and try to find a way to clear the family name. My aristocrat/swashbuckler player in Ravenloft comes from a once-noble Mordentish family that was once wealthy and noble, but now is noble and nearly bankrupt. It makes for interesting tales.
So I'm trying to incorporate that versatility, along with noble traditions (e.g. the old tradition to have three sons - 1st son joining the military, the 2nd running the family estates and the 3rd joining the clergy) and your idea on paths works well for that.
Gimme time, hopefully we'll like the results
