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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011164" data-attributes="member: 172">Noble's HandbookThe Noble's Handook is part of Green Ronin's Master Class series adding new core classes to the game, with supporting material. The book is written by Rodney Thompson, contributor to the Star Wars and Stargate SG-1 RPG lines and webmaster of the Star Wars RPG network website.A First LookThe Noble's Handook is a 64-page prefect-bound softcover book priced at $14.95.The cover has a color illustration by James Ryman depicting a man in rich garb flanked by two women in dresses on some sort of balcony.The interior is black-and-white, and illustrated by Toren "Macbin" Atkinson, Storn Cook, Britt Martin, Richard Pace, and Caleb Cleveland. The art was generally detailed and well done, though I must admit when I saw the "female" mind flayer noble in all too human garb.There were more that the usual number of editing and typesetting gaffes for a Green Ronin product, such as (on the same page) a heading without the proper font ran into the end of a prior paragraph, and a reference to a page "@@".A Deeper LookThe central edifice of this book is, of course, the noble PC class. The class is a more PC style take on the aristocrat class. Like that class, the noble has moderate BAB progression, but for some reason, the author has chose to give the class a good reflex save. I'm not sure of the logic behind this decision. Some nobles might be nimble, but I certainly don't see any special training that would suggest this as a rule.The main departure from the aristocrat NPC class is the array of class abilities that it receives. The class abilities the noble receives are related to their training, influence, and leadership abilities.Influence is probably the most central campaign relevant ability of the noble. Influence checks allow the noble to receive a variety of boons by means of influence checks. The check is based on a modifier the character receives as part of the ability. DCs are called out for a number of possible results the noble can bring about, but some of them seem beyond the ability of a noble to get with the listed influence bonuses, and it does not seem like feats can make up the difference.The breeding ability gives the player a chance to fine tune the character by specifying what sort of special training the character receives as part of their upbringing. This can include such things as a bonus to diplomacy, bonus languages, or a small selection of low level spells. Not a bad idea, but the choices seem a little plain. Anyone using this could borrow some selection from AEG's courtier abilities.In addition to the core class, there are a number of prestige classes presented that are appropriate to characters in positions of influence, though to be fair, not all of these are exclusive to (or even optimum for) members of the noble class. This is probably not all in all a bad thing; I could easily see a canny rogue rising to the position of a master diplomat in the right sort of campaign.The prestige classes are commander (a military leader type), master diplomat, impersonator, lord knight, and mastermind.The supplemental rules include many new character options. The section on skills are mostly limited to defining new uses for existing skills in the context of noble society, such as using bluff to incite suspicion or forgery to forge notes associated with beauracracy. Though these do shine a light on specific aspects of gentle society and give you guidelines that you might consider ahead of time, to be fair many of these uses seem obvious to me and few of the uses stand out as things I couldn't easily navigate on my own.The new feats are related to the noble's unique perspective, such as discreet reputation (which makes it more difficult to use knowledge checks to identify the character.) Many of these are just what you would expect. The more outlanding and interesting sorts of feats are the instill feats. These feats require you to have the leadership feat, and instead of directly benefitting the character, adds bonuses (such as skill bonuses or proficiencies) to the character's followers.On major rules variant introduced in the book is the dueling rules. The duelling rules use the normal combat rules with two major departures. The first is that a number of special maneuvers with special effects are available. Second, an implicit part of the maneuver rules is that they are handled with opposed rolls using the character's attack modifier. If you think about it, this is fundamentally similar to the grappling mechanic and is a safe enough way to add this mechanic to the game as any, but there is no mechanic such as the attack of opportunity associated with grappling to match it to the normal combat mechanic.The equipment chapter is brief. The mundane equipment section includes mainly highly visible staples of stories involving aristocray: caots of arms and carraiges, portaits and signet rings. A similarly brief listing of magic items also is aimed at pertinent magic items, or items exploiting new rules listed herein (such as the dueling weapon quality, which is a boon in a duel situation using the dueling rules herein.)The fourth chapter, Roleplaynig the Noble, is actually quite sizeable. It presents advice and ideas in a number of areas of roleplaying nobles. Contents include discussions of different dramatic personality types for nobles, common campaign roles for nobles, nobility as applied to different character types, as well as a shorted GM-targeted section discussing handling followers and monstrous nobles.The fifth and sixth chapters cover noble houses (providing rules for noble houses and sample houses, respectively.) This is possibly the most promising rules addition. It rates noble houses by strength, and provides game pertinent benefits to the noble house and its followers as the house progresses in power. For example, at very levels, the house acheives titles, grooms their followers (giving them bonus skill focus feats), and so forth.While this is an interesting way to model the power of the house, I still have some reservations with it. The third edition rules made wealth a more explicit part of character power, which made powerful characters like nobles more difficult to model. This model addresses this by making character level part of the model, but is that sufficient? Tales about aristocracy revolve around losing and gaining power, and attaching power gains to a schedule seems a bit dry to me. At certain levels, the character simply receives a manor. This is not too much unlike wealth progression in the standard game, but at least there, characters earn their expected wealth, with the possibility of varying with respect to the expected scale, and the threat of loss or failure is still everpresent.That being the case, it seems to me that much like the way that dueling parallels an existing mechanic, the house strength system could parallel the wealth system by granting "influence points" that might be gained much like wealth, very conditionally. I could go on about what such a system would look like and how it would balance with the system, but that would rather be beside the point. Suffice it to say, though on the surface, the noble house system seems like it has some intriguing aspects, I would have reservations about using it to represent nobility in my game.ConclusionsThe Noble's Handbook tackles a tough problem in the d20 system fantasy metasetting: the issue of how to model the power of nobles. Though the book shows great promise and the base class it presents is fundamentally sound, it seems to me that the book doesn't totally navigate some of the stickier issues. Though the mechanics are basically sound, and the class is certainly usable, the GM may be forced to make some adjustments or deal with a system that doles out some perks of nobility on a schedule, which could fly in the face of some more interesting campaign developments.Overall grade: C+ -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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