While discussing the Labor Point rules, I noticed that while having fewer assistants than their Leadership score will decrease the amount of Labor Points gained by a Guild Master, but having assistants has no positive impact on a character's Labor Point totals (and Leadership doesn't contribute to this calculation); they only impact the Workshop Total. This means that getting better at Leadership inexplicably makes a Master worse at effectively managing their workers. That doesn't seem quite right to me. The Workshop Total does impact the character's (Craft) Reputation, but that impact is indirect and doesn't really impact the Labor Points total unless you play through stories that reward Labor Points.
Was there a cut rule that would have increased a craftsman's labor point total based on the Leadership score (hence the penalty for unused assistants) or something?
Part of the problem is that labor points are relative. I need a certain number of labor points to sustain my business, and from there can invest them into expanding my business, and the number of required labor points does not increase with the business. So having more assistants should allow you to produce more, but should also increase your expenses to maintain the shop.
You may, however, not eon p. 68 that the number of good produced per season is dependent solely on the character's craft ability, not labor points. From this perspective you could add together the craft abilities of all your assistants to increase your overall production, without needing to impact labor points.
I get that labor points are relative. But without changing anything else about the shop, gaining a level in leadership will decrease your labor points until you recruit an additional assistant. Leadership somehow makes you less efficient at running smaller workshops.
Based on the example of Klaus's workshop, I'm currently thinking I would houserule it to be:
Anyone running their own workshop professionally needs at least Craft / 2 assistants (even non-Guild members), regardless of their Leadership score
Unsure if you would Craft/2 up or down, both in my houserule and in the original rules for generating guild members
Having fewer assistants imposes a 3 penalty to the master's labor points/season for each missing assistant, as the master must personally step in to cover for missing workers instead of having that time free
Maybe alternatively allow masters to operate as if their craft ability was lower instead of taking the penalty?
I see where it looks that way, until you consider the question- what are labor points?
Workshop total determines what you actually produce, and while labor points do correlate to income it is also specific that they cannot be easily converted. Labor points are a combination of social and economic benefit from running the business. They are also calculated seasonally, which means you have an entire season to get your new assistant. I can easily see where someone providing lower levels of employment than they are capable in medieval or mythic Europe might see a decrease in the social benefits they derive from their business.
That makes some sense in the long run if we're using my proposed houserules and the output of your workshop is being closely monitored (because you'd start producing goods faster), or if your Leadership score was something people could pick up with granularity, but otherwise I'm not sure how people are finding out that you aren't providing as much employment as you could be in the first place. The quality and quantity of your goods didn't change, and magi presumably aren't reading your mind to see if you could be doing more.
How are social costs normally imposed? Rumor, innuendo, supposition. Customers go from commenting that:
"Joe Bob seems to have more work than he can handle, he should get some more help."
"I don't know, he seems to have about all the help he can manage"
to
"Joe Bob seems to have more work than he can handle, he should get some more help."
"Yeah."
When his improved ability means he has fewer challenges with managing existing employees.