Rules of the Game

I am using quite a lot of "house rules" in this game, because I want to make it detailed and involved. Some of them are adapted from the Birthright Netbook (though many are modified). This page discusses these rules in greater detail. You should read this carefully, and I recommend that you save this webpage for future reference. "I haven't read the rules page" won't be accepted as a valid excuse. Alot of these ideas where taken from other Birthright PBeM games.

Blood Abilities

The following blood abilities have special uses in the game:

• Battlewise, major (greatly aids in battle if character leads the army)
• Bloodmark, minor (affects success of diplomacy with NPCs)
• Charm Aura, great (greatly affects success of diplomacy with NPCs)
• Courage, minor (always affects army units)
• Divine Aura, major (greatly affects success of diplomacy with NPCs)
• Divine Wrath, major (aids in battle if character participates)
• Elemental Control, great (aids in battle if character participates)
• Major Regeneration, great (always survives death in battle)
• Persuasion, major (affects success of diplomacy with NPCs)
• Regeneration, great (has a 50% chance to survive if dies in battle)
• Travel, great (has a 50% chance to escape a lost battle or imprisonment, unless killed)

Domain Turn and Action Submission

This game is run one turn at a time. There will be a deadline for submitting your actions, displayed prominently on the main page. All turns must be submitted by that date, midnight, your time; late turns may be accepted at the DM's whim, but will not be able to affect any other domains. To submit turns, use this turn submission form. When submitting each turn, rename the RTF file to the form of YourDomainName#.rtf (where # is the number of the turn for which you are submitting). If you must leave for some personal business, let me know in advance and I will run your domain for you. If you don't send me any turn submissions for three consecutive turns, without informing me in advance, your domain will revert to NPC status.

To submit a turn, fill out the turn submission form and send it to my e-mail address. I will resolve the actions and at the start of the next turn mail you your updated domain sheet (which will include the income for the new turn).

Court Costs
Court level will not affect the success of diplomacy with PC regents, obviously (unless they decide to take your court into account). Therefore, the court level will affect the success roll of the following actions: Create, Investiture, and Rule. Actions involving sources will not depend on court level though. Additionally, the base costs of the Decree actions will change depending on your court. The exact modifiers are listed below:

Court level cannot be set higher than 10 GB.

Initiative: Initiative is determined by rolling 1d100. Regent can choose to delay their actions until later in the round, so that they go last (or second-to-last, etc. as described in the rulebook p.40). They cannot choose specific placement however.

Realms and Realm Actions: actions involving holdings can be performed either on any/all holdings of the same type found in several provinces that belong to the same realm (e.g. all temples in Diemed), or on any/all holdings of any type within a single province (e.g. all holdings in Avanil). Note that 'realm' as defined in this game is a colelction of provinces which have law holdings in them belonging to the same regent (i.e. provinces with law holdings belonging to Duke Gavin Teal comprise the realm of Ghoere, even if there may be others' law holdings in those provinces; thus a single province can be part of more than one realm). Note that lieutenants cannot perform realm actions, only domain actions (this is in fact an official rule from the BR rulebook - see page 57).

Character Actions: On the other hand, if a lieutenant is not used for a domain action on any given round, he may perform a character action (such as Research) without using the one free lieutenant action per turn. Any/all lieutenants not performing a domain action can be assigned to a character action every round. No extra RPs can be added to such actions, either. Lieutenants also cannot hire other lieutenants.

Critical Failures and Successes: A roll of 1 on any action is an automatic failure, regardless of spent RPs. Additionally, if the roll is 1 and 10 or more points below the required success number, the result is a critical failure, with some minor bad thing related to the action happening to the regent's domain. On the other hand, a roll of 20 is an automatic success, and if it is also 10 or more points above the required success number, the result will be especially good, with a small bonus gained.

Supporting and Opposing: Actions that can be supported or opposed by certain regents have this fact mentioned in their descriptions below. Additionally, only such regents can spend additional RPs supporting or opposing the action. Thus, a source holder cannot affect another regent ruling a temple, so he cannot spend RPs on it, either. For most actions, the regent attempting them can support himself with additional RPs.

Class Bonuses: Some character classes receive bonuses to their actions as follows:
Fighter: Declare War once/turn as a free action.
Paladin: Declare War or Agitate once/turn as a free action, but usable only against direct religious enemies.
Ranger: Special Ranger Espionage once/turn as a free action.
Priest: Agitate once/turn as a free action.
Thief: Espionage once/turn as a free action.
Guilder: +1 to success roll with the actions Contest Guild, Create Guild, Espionage, Rule Guild, Trade Route.

Income

Each class receives regency from holdings as specified below:

Law: Fighters Receive 2 RP/level, everyone else except wizards 1 RP/level.
Temple: Priests and Paladins Receive 1 RP/level.
Guild: Guilders, Thieves and Rangers Receive 1 RP/level, Bards Receive ½ RP/level.
Source: Wizards Receive 1 RP/level.
Provinces: Everyone Recieves 1 RP/level.
Trade Routes: Guilders and Thieves recieve 1 RP

Gold Bars are received as follows:

Warfare

Running Battles
I will likely use some sort of system quicker than warcards to resolve battles. However, you should still specify your battle plans and such, as these will certainly affect the outcome.

Castle Assaults
Artillerists (or equivalent units) are required for castle assaults. If a castle is successfully assaulted, it loses 1d4 levels (possibly being destroyed) and is captured by the attacker.

Spotting and Identifying
Spotting enemy units (an ability of skirmisher units) allows to determine the presence and number of enemy units in an adjacent province, as well as a rough estimate of the proportion of mounted units within the enemy army. Enemy units in a regent's own provinces are automatically spotted by him, regardless of his own forces.
Identifying enemy units (such as the result of Espionage action and Scry realm spell) allows to determine the exact composition of the enemy army in a province. If the regent has a non-source holding or units in a province, enemy forces moving into it are automatically identified.

Occupation and Pillaging
Pillaging will bring GB equal to severe taxation doubled. The pillaging regent may opt to reduce one law holding in the province by 1 level at the same time.
Occupying the province also gives the option to occupy any/all unfortified non-secret holdings in it. Occupied holdings drop to level zero immediately. The occupying regent can also opt to invest the occupied holdings (requiring separate payments and success rolls, though they can be combined into a single Investiture action).

Prisoners
Units surrounded in battle or ridden down by cavalry can be taken captive. Of course a regent may give orders to take no prisoners. Prisoners may be returned through negotiation, but must be either re-equipped by their regent (for half the muster cost) or disbanded. If a regent ignores offers to ransom his own units taken prisoner, the loyalty in his provinces may suffer. Alternately, the capturing regent may convert prisoners to slave units at no cost (if he condones that sort of thing). Prisoners must be guarded by military units (one unit is enough to guard any number of prisoners); if unguarded, they have a chance to escape.

Port Blockades
A port province (level 4+) can be blockaded. At least as many ships are needed as the province's level. Ships without missile capabilities cannot blockade. A blockade stops all traffic into and out of the port. Anyone wishing to pass must either get permission or fight. River blockades are discussed below under Terrain.

Repairing Ships
To fully repair damaged ships, the gold bar cost is the ship's build cost divided by the number of hits that the ship has (at full strength), per hit taken (these costs are listed on the Units page). This takes a slightly modified build action, so you repair 1d6 GBs worth per turn and requires the use of a port (this does count as a ship being built). Repaired units may not be used in the action round that they are repaired.

Terrain and Trade

The following table indicated the various terrains, their maximum province level, movement cost, terrain type for trade routes, and the base road cost.

* High mountains can be entered by units (spending all their movement points), but they must leave to the same province from which they came, i.e. high mountains cannot be crossed.
** A river takes all movement points to cross, unless there is a bridge (road) going across.

Rivers, coasts, lakes, and oases modify the normal maximum level of the province. These modifiers are cumulative (thus a desert province with a river and an oasis can have a maximum level of 8).
Roads halve the movement cost of terrain. They can be built into high mountain provinces, but not across them.

Rivers
Rivers can only be sailed by ships with a hull or 2 or less.

Trade Routes
When creating trade routes, they must connect either different terrain types or different cultures. Terrain types such as Forested Hills count as both types for the purpose of trade routes. Thus, you could create a trade route from Hills to Forested Hills, as well as from Light Forest to those same Forested Hills.

Secret Holdings

Certain holdings are classified as "secret societies". This means that they cannot be destroyed by military occupation, only through contests. Secret holdings can be discovered with a successful Espionage action, but only one at a time, and only for the regent performing Espionage (though he can reveal the information to others). Secret holdings are marked on the holding pages in italic font.

1. Secret holdings are not subject to law claims.
2. Trade routes established from secret guilds are considered smuggling operations and cannot be shut down by decree or taxed, but can be contested.
3. All source holdings are also automatically considered secret holdings, though trade routes established from level 7+ sources are considered normal.

Resources

Some provinces may hold resources that can be developed with Develop Resource action. The exact resources and the methods of developing them are presented below.

1. Unless noted otherwise, all benefits from resources apply only to the province they are in.
2. Development of Common Metals & Minerals and Precious Substances may harm the magical source of a province.
3. The reduction of mustering costs is calculated from the total cost of units mustered in a single action. Thus, with timber, a single archer would still cost 2 GB to muster, but mustering 4 archers would cost only 6 GB (75% of 8 GB).
4. Development of resources can be prevented by any law regent if he has a law holding in the province equal to or greater than the developing holding. If the province ruler does not have such law holding, then he cannot prevent resource development until he does. Moving troops with appropriate orders into the province will also prevent resource development.
5. Once a resource is developed, its utilization can be stopped by a Decree action from any law holder who fulfills the requirements in point 4 above.
6. Resources cannot be developed as a realm action - you have to develop one at a time.
7. It is impossible to create trade routes between provinces which share the exact same resource (not resource group). Thus you could not create a TR between two gold provinces, but you could create one between a gold and a silver province.
8. The Grain resource has two special conditions: the province containing it can only send trade routes to provinces of level 4 or higher, and if transported by land the trade route can only go to adjacent provinces.

Realm Spells

All realm spells from the basic rulebook, Book of Magecraft, and Book of Spellcraft are available, unless stated otherwise below. Spells from the BR Netbook may be available at the DM's option - contact me before researching them. I have made a few modifications for realm spells, as outlined below:

• Alchemy (wizard): the ratio of exchange is improved to 1 GB for 3 RP.
• Deactivate Ley Line (wizard): the success chance is affected by character level difference and by the difference in source levels (the source used for this spell vs. the most powerful source on the ley line). If the roll is successful, the line will be deactivated for a number of rounds equal to the difference between the needed result and the actual result (for example, if the success chance is 6+ and the roll is 14, the line is deactivated for 8 rounds). If the roll is exactly the roll needed to succeed, the line is permanently destroyed.
• Deplete Mebhaighl (wizard): the duration of the spell is 4 actions.
• Dispel Realm Magic (wizard): has a success roll of 10+. It is modified by the difference between the source levels used to cast the original spell and the Dispel (all this in the manner of the regular Dispel Magic spell). Both wizards can then bid RPs to modify the roll further.
  The defensive version of the spell is similarly altered, but the defending wizard must decide beforehand how many RP are invested in the defense. He can't add more RP later, but the RP he placed initially will be used every time the defense is triggered, until the spell ends.
• Feign Destruction (wizard): There are some unclear matters about this spell. I think that they should be clarified:
  * The affected area cannot be raided, looted or pillaged (it is impossible to find valuable goods).
  * Only the defenders can initiate combat. If there is no native army present, no combat can take affect (native soldiers can simply remain under the illusion and will not be attacked, because they will appear as handicapped, diseased or otherwise incapacitated).
  * The contest action will not work, nor will the investiture (it is impossible to estimate the assets that are to be transferred).
  * However, the affected provinces and all holdings withing produce no income, as the rulers' officials cannot locate any money or resources to be collected.
• Mass Destruction (wizard): the number of units that can be destroyed is 5. The commander of the affected army makes a saving throw (per BoM) for each unit affected. If the save fails, the unit is destroyed, and if successful the unit is merely hit. The cost is only 4 RP per unit.
• Poison Source (wizard): the duration is 10 rounds.
• Protect Source (wizard): the focused RP will be more powerful, every 2 counting as 3 for purposes of the success roll.
• Royal Facade (wizard): this spell will create a fortification if cast upon a regent's palace. For a landed regent's palace it will create or improve a castle, for a non-landed regent's palace it will create a fortification in the same province. The level will be 1 per 15 GB worth of the affected building (thus if the spell is cast on a 30 GB palace of the landed regent, the province would gain 2 castle levels).
• Subversion (wizard): if the enforced action has a GB and RP cost, the regent whose the asset is must pay these costs. However, if there is a success chance, both the regent and the casting wizard can bid RP to affect the success chance.
• Summoning (wizard): this spells summons 5 monster units, with the following stats: move 2, melee 4, defense 5, morale 3, hits 3.
• Sunder Ley Line (wizard): it costs 10 RP, 5 GB and requires a source of 5.
• Warding (wizard): this spell does not affect river traffic unless the river is wholly within the warded province. It does block sea trade routes if they are attached to a warded province. NO troops can pass through a warding under any circumstances - the casting wizard can only lead individuals through, not armies. Additionally, all holdings in the warded province produce no income or regency, but still require maintenance.
• Dispel Realm Magic, Protection from Realm Magic (priest): these spells are moved to the All sphere. These spells are also modified in the manner of wizard's Dispel Realm Magic spell described above.
• Maintain Armies, Population Growth (priest): these spells are not available.
• Holy War (priest): this spell allows the priest to muster any troops without the landed regent's permission (any non-standard temple troops are still counted against the maximum number of troops available per turn).