How do you designate the chief of your family?
I oppose this, after some thought. We should encourage players to do other things with their wealth, like creating guilds, religions, personal armies, giving away gold to poor knights, placing large bounties on people who cross them, performing family investments daily, building recruiting centers and warehouses and banner-makers.
The character should choosed by the player, and can only be switched if that one dies.
Creating guilds or religions, personal armies, all of this aren't encoraged by the players themselves. Of course that, if you are a Duke, or a Lord of a land on the main route of the realm, you can suppose that some nobles will want to be part of your guild, but if you are the lord of the land on the extreme northen border of the continent, visited by other nobles only to clean up rogue, will be a failed investiment. Plus, the memory that to found a new religion is a sure path to stepdown serves to stop the desire of the majority of players. And, to end, the founding of personal armies without permition is something that should be not encouraged, of course, if you don't want a realm with 15 armies of tow-three nobles, and fines on the founders.
The bounties, to me, is something, at last, worthless, only because the character will not die - will be away from the game for a few days, only. This means not so much, as if he is youg, will receive full hours after the turning, and, if he is old, will receive the minimum.
Family investiments, also, is something that depends of luck: sometimes, you'll receive less than the money spent, and creating things depends of your region.
All of this low the desire to spend the money.
Items can still be dropped in battle. Add in a random chance of 0% items being accidentally discarded by your servants if needed. That way, you have an incentive not to let it drop to 0%, but 0% items aren't forever lost and you can ask advies to find it back for you if you messed up and really want it back.
Indeed. I must say, I liked the idea of using the family gold in something more than investiments. I don't remember nothing that uses the family wealth than this, move your family home or visit your aunt without money, or ask for some support. You can ask why, I'll say that because you can do this based only in some type of characters (new ones and heroes), and, sometimes, your investiments do not worth the price, in gold or honour.
