Reply To: Events

The event for “Spartan” characters is a bit. . . odd. It essentially just acts like a “have you been paying attention?” test. Find a spartan character, they’re looking weak from not having eaten, do you make them eat?

Well you know they’re Spartan, if you’ve checked their traits, so you pick “leave them alone”. Congratulations, nothing happened, and the person used to not eating is soon back on their feet. If you pick “Force them to eat”, boo, you just got a negative penalty, because you forced someone to break their religious / personal rites.

It feels a bit like taking a test rather than an event. Quick question, do you remember if character X has the Spartan trait? You do? Oh, okay.

What I might suggest is using the happiness system and making it so that leaving them alone makes them “happy” for that +resolve but “tired” for -fatigue, whereas forcing them to eat makes them “Disgrunted” for -resolve (no fatigue change, since they’re not worse then usual). Then suddenly it’s a choice. Let someone not eat and watch as they tire out, but at least they’re happy or make them eat and hear them grumble about not keeping up their diet.
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I think one of the Weapon Master events I got is a wee bit strong? While training a Squire, that Squire gained +3 melee defense. Permanently. That’s a free level up! Hell, it’s better than a free level up because my luck is abysmal and I normally only get +2 to stats when I level up. I love the idea that having a weapon master around trickles down to your troops, and I think it’s a brilliant way of marking out how good they are with a sword. It’s just almost “too good” of a bonus, as such.

(Especially because it happened twice to me, somewhat randomly. +6 melee defense? Yeah, I’ll take that. I’ll take that every time)

Compare it to the event in which two archers square off against each other in competition and gain +1 or more ranged attack. In that event you’re trading Ammonition for it, so it feels more fair. I was unlucky in that I used all the ammo I had on hand when the event came up, so two of my archers gained an increase in skill followed by participating in a battle where they had no arrows to shoot.

I laughed.

But that felt fair and reasonable! They had just used all the arrows to practice, getting better, and if I had been more prepared or re-stocked before fighting, my gain would have been a lot. A sword master just giving random troops bonuses is less neat.

So perhaps apply an injury to the character gaining stats when trained by a weapon master? “You leave them to it, and hours later you can still faintly hear the exasperated voice of [XXX the YYY] telling the battle brother to keep his sword arm straight. [XXXX has gained +2 melee defense and an injury from over-training]”. Packages of medical herbs are expensive, after all, and time consuming to use.
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Ration Loss events are bit strange too. I lost 30 rations a few times, but since I always keep as much as possible I didn’t notice and it didn’t affect me at all. It’s also just a single package of rations, since they come in bundles of 25. It’s a bit of a non-thing, because the effect isn’t big enough to matter and you’ll only really notice if you’re wandering the very edge of the map and bad luck strikes.

I think changing it so that ration loss is instead an effect on your troops might work slightly better. “Half way through the evening’s meal, [XXX] spits out an otherwise bland gruel, a bit of rock and half a chewed maggot. With faint horror, you realize your provisions aren’t up to par” Every battle brother gets mildly disgruntled for -5 resolve or so, Spartan characters are unaffected (they don’t eat!) while Gluttonous characters are doubly affected (they ate a lot). Let it fade after a day or so.

Instead of ration loss which is a less than useful metric, it captures the influence it has on your troops which is of supreme importance.
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Finally, Superstitious characters have a chance of becoming Fearful and getting -20 Resolve.

-20 Resolve. That is utterly confounding, and I think far, *far* too much. That’s worse resolve than Deserters! It makes them near useless because the slightest shock will cause them to break and flee. How about making them convinced of their impending doom and instead making them temporarily have the Dastard trait? That way, they start at wavering for a bit of a skill loss but they aren’t *useless* and you can take steps to mitigate it (Hold Out! Perk). It also ties into the trait better, I think, because they’re convinced of their imminent demise and so won’t be confident in a more abstract, superstitious way. They aren’t really “afraid” of the bandits they’re about to face, they’re afraid that killing the bandits will grant 7 years bad luck and cause a plague of black cats to follow them around.

Alternatively, make it Dastard and the one that means they won’t ever be Confident. That’s a net loss of 15 potential skill and defense, which is worse than -20 resolve but also something you can at least control and mitigate by tactics.