The current Wealth rules don't really work. Mea culpa. I completely forgot that most people will only actualy play about three or four times a year
Wealth
A character with the Wealth skill gets an income of 30 Hx per rank in every game their Player attends. For reasons of game balance, if a player has more than one character with Wealth they may only collect income for one of them. This increase in income now replaces the reductions in armour repair costs. However see the new Lands skill, below.
Wealth may be invested in the usual manner - ten times your current income, plus 6XP elevates you to the new rank of Being Quite Well Off.
Please Note these rules apply only to the Wealth skill, not to Day Jobs, Night Jobs or the income from the Surgeon skill.
Noble and Merchant Advancement
Since gaining wealth is now a damned site easier, gaining levels of Noble becomes a damned site too easy (alternating "wealth/family name" allowing you to get to high levels at low cost). Nobles may now advance only by imporving their family name or position. This also stops Nobles having to be such mercenary sods.
It is possible for a multiclassed Noble/Merchant to wind up with two levels of Wealth, and level 1 merchant. Wealth is, at present, defined as a 5 rank skill, making it functionally impossible for anybody who starts out with Wealth 2 to gain Level 5 Merchant. I suggest that the simplest fix for this problem is to make Wealth a 10-rank skill, limited by one's ranks in Merchant and Noble. (After all, the Duke Christofori almost certainly has an income of more than 150Hx)
Finally, the new Lands skill below provides a new way to get Level 1 Noble. You can either marry into it, or acquire a rank of Land
Lands
At the moment, Nobles are supposed to have lands, but there's no way of modelling it within the system. Of course you could assume that all lands are held by NPCs, but where's the fun in that? Hence, the new skill:
Lands (6XP Maximum 5 Ranks) [Noble]
You have lands. The actual area of this land varies, but it can be assumed to be somewhere between 20 and 50 acres, depending on what's actually on it. In addition to being able to say "I've got lands don'chaknow" this skill gives you some other perks. It provides no income - most of what comes out of a land goes back into it. It does however, provide some other perks. Every rank of Land allows you to pick a Useful Resource from the list below.
- Blacksmith: You do not need to pay for repairs to standard or substandard armour.
- Master Blacksmith: You do not need to pay for repairs to superior armour.
- Weaver: You do not need to pay for repairs to steelsilk armour.
- Fletcher: At the start of every FLRP, you get 10 free arrows, these must be phys-repped.
- Toll Road: This grants you an income of 30HX. This is not a rank of Wealth and is collected only on adventures in which you play.
- Temple: You have a temple (you should probably specify to which deity or deities). This gives you access to a priest with level 3 Rites.
- Major Trade Route: Control of a Major Trade Route entitles you to claim a level of Merchant.
- Sinister Sorcerer: There is a sinister sorcerer who dwells on your lands, and dabbles in Alchemy. He or she will provide you with one free potion per adventure, in return for your good graces.