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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickstergod" data-source="post: 2061817" data-attributes="member: 10825">Not quite; in D&D-land, all the rulers will have exceedingly high Diplomacy modifiers. And if all you focus on are things like that, you don't even have to be in the double digits, level-wise, to be spectacular at it. The person who has the most powerful allies will rule. Any high-level wizard who relies on bullying people around with his might won't have many powerful allies; it's almost guaranteed they'll all be lower level. The person who can do it with social grace and finesse, however, has no such limitations. The guy who can convince others to the rightness of his cause, the strength of his character, and his ability to lead effectively (which only relies on personal physical might only in the most primitive of societies, usually) will be the one who winds up ruling. If you have a high-level cleric, wizard and fighter (or whatever), all of whom want to rule and all of whom focus on their ability to kill, then one mid-level aristocrat who wants to rule, and has focused on just that, then it will be the aristocrat who ends up ruling, as he'll be the most capable of making an ally of two of the three high-level characters or simply turning them on one another. Sure, he might not be able to get anything past the wizard, who can just read his thoughts, but the wizard won't have the ability to convince the other two as to what the aristocrat's up to as the aristocrat will. Yeah, the cleric might be able to tell that the aristocrat is lying about something, but the aristocrat will also have the best ability at saying one thing while meaning another that still comes out as an essentially honest statement. As for the fighter, well, he has nothing. He can just kill the aristocrat, but then, level isn't readily decipherable anyway, so the aristocrat can likely make himself seem more of a threat than any of the others. And when it comes to the high-level characters that don't want to lead? Again, the mid-level, socially focused aristocrat wins out again. Of course, the level 20 aristocrat focused fulling on leading will be better at all of this than the level 10 one, but in general, I think anyone who takes up a position of leadership won't exactly be all that high level, anyway. There's less a need to be and fewer circumstances where major improvement would come about. High level characters should be rare, anyway. And, again, if any two classes really throw a chink into all of this, it's the Bard and the Rogue. But even then, they're unlikely to be built as a PC would be. So, to reiterate: The person who rules isn't the one who's most personally powerful, but the one who can make the most powerful allies. There's a minor level requirement on this, but it's usually not going to be higher than 6 or so.</blockquote>

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