Hello to everyone,
I may have missed this point, but is there a description somewhere on how to determine the Assets of a House? There are quite a few that are excluded as Personal Assets, mainly from Warfare Assets.
So my question is how to specify what Asets a House has.It feels kind of wrong to just arbitrarily determine those, since otherwise in the Core Rulebook the rules for creating assets are relatively clear. And even if I do determine them, I still have to determine the Quality. Normally it’s 0, but with Soldiers, for example, I can assume that the default is more like 1.
I hope my problem is clear. Of course Dune wants to handle Assets rather loosely, but here it feels like an important part is missing. Because without it, Architect Play and as well as Warfare will be difficult to implement.
The rules that we have in the core book for Houses are fairly loose, you are right.
Modiphius has said that they are making a House book that will be coming out at some point next year.
I expect that will have a lot more detail on what assets Houses have, how they are used and how they can be added to/improved.
Not everything will fit in the core book and Modiphius does have to have interesting things in future books or what is the point of them.
At the moment the best thing to do is look at the size & style of House and make some assumptions based on that.
A Nascent House is likely to have only quality 0 warfare assets (Think of it as a Militia rather than conscripts maybe) unless it’s secondary domain is one of the military ones. At which point it may have Q1 or even Q2, but still only a single asset.
As the House gets larger it gets more assets and the quality rises, though bearing in mind that military Houses will have more/better quality warfare assets.
I’ll do some calculations and put together a crude estimate for a range of Houses assets and the hive mind can always mold it into something useful.
OK, I’ve hammered together something crude that can be used if people are unsure of what to give their House.
Basically each Primary or Secondary Domain gives the listed assets as does the size of House.
Add them all together and you get the core of the House Military. Then add or adjust so it fits the House as you and your players have created. (I.e If your House is renown for it’s pilots add a 'Thopter squadron, etc)
House Guard
- Major/Great House One Quality 3 Battalion (Keyword: House Guard)
- Nascent/Minor House: One Quality 1 Battalion (Keyword: House Guard)
Primary Domains
- Military Domain: One Quality 2 Battalion, One Quality 1 Battalion
- Espionage/Kanly Domain: One Quality 1 Battalion (Keyword: Saboteurs), One Quality 2 Assassin
- Other Domain: One Quality 1 Battalion
Secondary Domain
- Military Domain: One Quality 1 Battalion
- Espionage/Kanly Domain: One Quality 0 Battalion (Keyword: Militia), One Quality 1 Assassin
- Other Domain: One Quality 0 Battalion (Keyword: Militia)
This is balanced so the strongest House of each level is on par with the weakest House of the level above.
I’m sure this can be refined so feel free to make changes or adjust as needed.
Nice, I like this house rules. I think I will use them. So thank you very much!
Yup, we’ve been a little deliberately vague on House assets, as even a minor House has assets all over the place. We’ll bring in more detail when we dive into managing a House later on.
But in the meantime a House can provide pretty much anything a PC wants when working in its service.
However, it is up to the GM how much they are taking advantage of the house’s largesse.
For instance, you need an ornithopter to get to a fremen meeting, the house will provide. You want to then go joyriding in it, not so much.
Its very much like Bond trying to get more gadgets out of Q branch. Its not that they don’t have it, its about whether they will let you use it.
Personal assets the characters have are not just their only equipment, but things they actually own so can do what they like with. If you have your own orntithoper you can go where you like in it.
These assets will also be replaced in lost in the service of the House. Crash the thoper on the way to meet the Fremen, you get a replacement, crash it joyriding over the market and you’ll have to buy your own.
When Houses go to war it gets trickier. But given the ridiculous cost the Guild charges for moving weapons and warships the limit of what you can take is down to what you can afford, not what your House owns. So, if you have 100 tanks, you might only afford to take 10 on a Guild ship given the costs.
So effectively Houses own as much stuff as you like, and the trick is transport.
That is really nice work, thanks very much.
Out of curiosity, was there a reason why the Quality of House Guards jumps from 1 for a Nascent/Minor House, to 3 for a Major/Great one?
A Minor House with a Military Primary Domain would end up with a Battalion which is better than their House Guards.
Basically I wanted to keep the House Guard split simple between Nascent/Minor and Major/Great.
The House Guard were added right at the end as I was trying to balance them and make it so that a Nascent House wouldn’t just have militia if they weren’t Military.
This calculation is rough and it could possibly do with a bit more differentiation between the smaller Houses.
You could give a House Minor a Q2 House Guard if you wanted to make them stand out from the Nascent Houses more.
For the Military House Minors I could see them having it’s best troops in a combat battalion rather than guarding the family though. It is the essence of what makes them a House Minor rather than a Nascent.