Trying to build an NPC who is Castellan of the nearest Royal Castle to the Covenant.
He's a knight but he's a royal employee. He doesn't have title to the land or the offices. He's a local Big Cheese... But is he a Landed Knight in the meaning of the term in the game?
I'm currently searching through LORDS OF MEN for answers. Can anyone point me to some?
I dont think you are gonna find anything of use in Lords of men.
As far as I can tell "landed knight" is not actually a game term. I believe that you have gotten the virtues "Knight" and "Landed Noble" mixed together, and coincidentally that combination of virtues is a good guess at how to describe your character.
Lords of men do refer to "landed knights" as a social class, namely knights who hold land. But the books does not ascribe any special rules to being a landed knight, other than to say that the virtues "Knight" and "Landed noble" are an appropriate combination of virtues of people who want to play a character who is a landed knight.
The virtue "Knight" makes it so that the character is a knight, which just means that the character has been knighted by someone, and that confers some social expectations and privileges.
The virtue "Landed noble" means that a character hold the right to land from someone else higher in the system.
Given that the character that you describe is explicitly a knight then I would say that the virtue "Knight" is pretty appropriate.
The royal employee part you could simulate in some different ways, the most obvious is to say that it is about equivalent to holding the land oneself as a "Landed noble", since the character, as far as I can tell, administers the land. For me that would be close enough.
You could also go with some other combination of virtues, you could go for "Wealthy" to simulate that the character has money not normally available to a knight, but "Wealthy" doesnt actually make the character all that much richer, it just means that they have to work less in order to have the same amount of money.
You could decide that the combination of "Temporal influence" and "Protection" are a better fit. "Temporal influence" to simulate the greater power afforded to such a character, and "Protection" since the character can presumably rely on their patron for protection.
I hope this helps you out.
It helps a bit.
The problem is that as an office holder he doesn't get the full benefit or profit of holding the land. He's going in with a list of instructions from the King (well, actually the Regency Council) that say: "Fix the damage done to the castle and town in the recent conflict. Makes sure all fees, rents and taxes are collected. Keep an eye on the obnoxious noble at the other end of the valley." His own profit is not referred to and we can assume that if he starts to skim before fixing the castle and town he will be In Trouble.
No medieval King expects his servants to work for free: he's entitled to a fair bit of graft. But he has other problems.
The fellow at the other end of the valley is a real landed noble, all be it not one the Regency Council looks on with favour.
So, I think to start the campaign he has the Virtues Knight, Temporal Influence, Protection (The High Sheriff). Later on he may fall or may achieve Wealth and other traits.
I see... That is a difficult thing to describe perfectly in terms of virtues and flaws. I would still probably go with "Landed noble" and then add an appropriate flaw to describe that caveats that you describe. That is assuming I would bother to set virtues and flaws to this character. I would probably just write down what you just posted on the back of whatever serves as his character sheet and that would be enough for me. Probably with a bulletpoint-list of the things he can and cannot do as a consequence of his social standing. I find that such lists are generally more useful since the purpose of his virtues and flaws here seems to be to find out the answers to the following questions: what can he do? What can't he do that people might expect him to be able to? what happens if he is challenged? How can he be challenged? How can he help/hinder the PC's? etc.
I dont usually bother with the virtues and flaws for NPC's unless I have a good reason to. It seems to me like this character does not really need to balance out against your PC's in terms of virtues and flaws, so in the end it will probably matter little whether or not you found a good combination of flaws and virtues.
I'm using Metacreator to keep track of both PCs and NPCs so a full description is needed.
If he wasn't going to recurr as a character then I wouldn't bother: they would be scribbled on a piece of paper. But this is intended to be a major NPC who lasts for years and perhaps decades. I need to make him consistent if not totally detailed.
Usual caveat. Your game play it your way, however, I think you are doing a bit of an overthink.
You know exactly what you want. Pick some feats that are close. If they aren't perfect, whatever. To balance meta creator chuck in a few -1 personality flaws, all sorted.
I havent used metacreater, so I dont know this, but do you have to balance the virtues and flaws in metacreator?
It seems to me that there is not good reason why NPC's must be balanced so it is kind of a serious flaw if they need to be balanced from the start.
Since there character is going to be a recurring character there is more reason to keep him balanced.
No. It tells you that there's a problem, but you can ignore it completely.
As you should, with an NPC.
Exactly.
Barely.
Unless he goes around swinging his sword, I think "Gentleman" would be ideal to represent this. It is only minor, entails being noble without ruling anything and still having to serve your higher born relatives (in this case, the regency). Add to that protection, temporal influence and some kind of flaw like "favors" which represent having to work for the court. And finish off with a personality and physical flaw, to even things out.