Licence to loot?

[Mjolnirbear]

Building an Eberron campaign. They are trainees of the Clifftop Adventurers Guild. At level 5 they'll become full licenced members.

Which thought caused me to pause. Licenced to do what, exactly?

My first thought was loot. Since it's CAG and not Deathsgate, it's logical to have rules around looting (never loot the purse that pays you). But when I thought about how to write up when you'd be allowed to legally loot something it became a list of 'times it's ok to basically steal' . Like if a client was demonstrably wronged by someone and you were hired to fix it.

I could licence them as Inquisitives, but it's an Adventurer's Guild, not Inquisitive's Guild. Same problem with bodyguards or mercenaries.

Anyone have any bright ideas?

[Lunali]

First to come to mind would be licensed to claim themselves as adventurer's guild members in social situations or getting the ability to start selecting their own quests.

[Draken]

My guess would be:

- Lower prices on travelling supplies.
- Access to safehouses maintained by the guild in areas far from civilization.
- The occasional backing and legal support in case you find yourself at odds with another group or authority. But don't push it.

You are probably not actually looking much at "looting rules" as the group really doesn't appear to be about handing out letters of marque and equivalents.

It's not that being a member legally allows you to do anything. As an world in an early industrial age, Eberron doesn't have a massive body of legislation. Membership benefits would be more centered around what the guild will do for you in exchange for your continued membership fees.

[RazorChain]

Building an Eberron campaign. They are trainees of the Clifftop Adventurers Guild. At level 5 they'll become full licenced members.

Which thought caused me to pause. Licenced to do what, exactly?

My first thought was loot. Since it's CAG and not Deathsgate, it's logical to have rules around looting (never loot the purse that pays you). But when I thought about how to write up when you'd be allowed to legally loot something it became a list of 'times it's ok to basically steal' . Like if a client was demonstrably wronged by someone and you were hired to fix it.

I could licence them as Inquisitives, but it's an Adventurer's Guild, not Inquisitive's Guild. Same problem with bodyguards or mercenaries.

Anyone have any bright ideas?


Looting is not stealing!!!! It's the spoils of war that you take from your vanquised enemy!!!

[Mordaedil]

There's like a billion isekai mangas that can give you ideas on this, but basically an adventurer guild would have a ranking system and distribute quests from sponsors of the guild to people who have proven themselves, where the highest ranking guild members mostly take requests from kings and royalty, and lower ranking ones pick berries in fields or subjugate wolves and goblins in hopes of advancing. The guild can help with things like finding far-away requests, spreading of rumors, taking in furs and making sure certain artifacts are returned to their rightful owner.

Basically they are meant to hand-wave a lot of bull**** away, but sometimes internal politics start to enter the picture and complicate matters, especially when players get ambushed by jealous higher ranking members (known as newbie squashing) and come face to face with people simply interested in ranks for the pay they get instead of actually helping people. They might take a tithe in terms of loot, but you could also simply reflavor it as them taking it off the players hands for a fair pricing.


Looting is not stealing!!!! It's the spoils of war that you take from your vanquised enemy!!!
If that helps you sleep at night, but disturbing a corpse and taking its belongings is still disturbing a corpse and taking its belongings.

[JackPhoenix]

Selling stuff looted from Xen'drik is illegal in Breland, and lot of stuff found on Khorvaire is legally property of the crown. Unless you have a permit, you'll face harsh fines and the possibility of forfeiting the loot if you get caught. Sharn serves as gateway to Xen'drik in a way, so most goods travel through there.

The guilds offer help to adventurers... not only legal, but also informations, guides, access to equipment merchants, and various useful contacts. Wealthy patrons likely won't deal with people they've never heard off, but the guilds serves as middlemen who make sure both parties are legit.


Snip

Ah, yes, the Japanese obsession with ranking everything. That's not really a thing in Eberron.

[JeenLeen]

Licenced to do what, exactly?

My first thought was loot. Since it's CAG and not Deathsgate, it's logical to have rules around looting (never loot the purse that pays you). But when I thought about how to write up when you'd be allowed to legally loot something it became a list of 'times it's ok to basically steal' . Like if a client was demonstrably wronged by someone and you were hired to fix it.

I could licence them as Inquisitives, but it's an Adventurer's Guild, not Inquisitive's Guild. Same problem with bodyguards or mercenaries.

Anyone have any bright ideas?

The license could be to loot, but only authorized in the Guild's eyes and those the Guild has influence on. That is, the Guild has the power and influence to enforce (at least locally) that these people have the right, during their jobs, to take what they find or what they find on those who resist them.

And I could see an Adventurer's Guild incorporating what might normally be the domain of another Guild. I don't know the setting well, but I reckon it'd be fairly common to hire bodyguards from an Adventurer's Guild. The Adventurer's Guild might even have an alliance with other local Guilds; I could see it having members who are co-members in the Thieves' Guild, and they have an understanding about how to handle things to not cause a bloody feud but let their members work.

[Laserlight]

If that helps you sleep at night, but disturbing a corpse and taking its belongings is still disturbing a corpse and taking its belongings.

Her: (appalled) "How do you sleep at night?"
Me: "Like someone who just covered his mortgage payments for the next five months."

[Wub]

An adventuring license would prolly come with rules that the adventurers must adhere to in order to sell goods they find on an expedition.
Things like:

Making sure the artifacts they bring back aren't cursed or hilariously dangerous for all involved.
Not murdering literally everybody they meet.
uh...not poaching sites/artifacts from other adventurers?

That's all I got. Basically, the licenses should (attempt to) regulate the adventurers so they don't do anything too boneheaded on their journey to nick everything not nailed down.

[Knaight]

Generally the ways guilds tended to operate was enforced monopolies, charging access to be involved with those monopolies, and a lot of institution level behavior in terms of political involvement, which does include some quality standards.

So, what monopolies can the adventurer's guild have? Loot. Anyone can take loot; there's no real way to police that, though certain high profile items might be best avoided. If you want to actually sell it in town though? Take it up with the adventurer's guild, or try to pass it off as new stuff that you totally made and didn't loot, and hope that a) anyone actually believes that or considers it an allowable pretext and b) you don't get artisan guilds of various sorts taking an interest in this unlicensed "manufacture and sale" of substandard goods.

As for the license, the thing about guilds is that there's always an aspect of not pissing off the guild too much. They may not restrict what you can loot formally, but if you make them look bad you'd better hope throwing you under the bus isn't their best interest.

[Mjolnirbear]

Huh. You can obtain a permit to sell 'archaeological finds' in Sharn. Maybe that's what I'll licence. Loot with no known living owner. That works, thanks.

[DeTess]

I'd consider an adventurer's license more like a certificate of competence. If you're a licensed adventurer then your license stands as proof that you can handle problems, and will not run away with your downpayment. People would be unlikely to hire someone without the license, and some states might forbid people without guild documentation from adventuring altogether.