I have just finished reading Lure of Power and it is an excellent publication:

1. Social combat is great and the action cards for it are also extremely well done, as are the talents as well.

2. Details on the nobility of Ubersreik and the power struggles there. The chance for high level play in the political situation there really excites me.

3. The shame and noble rank are well thought out. However why don't any of the specialist dwarven careers count for noble rank, especially 'thane'?

4. The retainers are also fun, but the moneyman retainer may need a houserule. If you do not limit the amount of money that the moneyman retainer can oversee, the amount of money that can be gained per year through compound interest is horrendous. This particularly applies to Merchant characters who should have around 300GC in money or trade goods to start with. With 200GC a moneyman can turn that into 1400 GC in a year with compound interest, or 660GC if limited to managing only 200GC. I would suggest limiting each moneyman retainer to managing either 100GC or 200GC. If you want to have more of your money managed that way, you have to go out and try and recruit more moneyman retainers.

My only slight negative was that the career ability cards I found to be a little uninspiring. Also The Noble Lord card I think must be missing a prerequisie of at least nobility 1 or 2.

Thoroughly recommend this publication, the best that FFG have done for a while.

No, that's perfectly realistic for the moneyman to do that. Of course it will cause the collapse of the entire world banking system and the peasants will "volunteer" to bail it out and their hovels couldn't be sold for the two chickens they paid for the sod..but really at least he won't got to jail On a serious side of course, yes a house rule is needed. I'd limit it to a max of 7% of only invested amounts and consider there to be a significant chance of a total loss (roll the purple!). As there wouldn't be "insurance" like there was in the early dutch days, the PC is on his own.

As for thane, they have Noble listed in their traits.

jh

ragnar63 said:

Many of the noble careers allow for dwarves, and (as Emirikol mentioned, Thane is noble).

ragnar63 said:

I was thinking this myself. 5% per week is around 260% interest yearly (that's not even counting the compounding).

I think they had to balance having a realistic rate of return vs something that is usable in play since most people don't run games that span years of time. They went with game-friendly.

I think changing it to 1% would be a good middle-ground.

If you are only investing the minimum 20GC at 1% you would get 20SP per week which wouldn't even pay for the moneymans wages of 40SP per week. It would need to be 3% to make it viable. I just think that a moneyman should be limited on the amount of money they can control individually, to between 100 and 200 GC, so eliminating the problem of compound interest at least.

Doc, the Weasel said: