Bastards

>>52922078
My poor bastards don't know their pappies and my rich bastards don't live

There is a good in my campaign that is revered as the good of war, and "The Father of Bastards".

>>52922078
In the last setting I GMed for bastards are considered easy work fodder mostly. There is less and less food each year so a fully grown bastard is pretty useful. If you happen to have one right after a famine though most people would respond badly.

Nobility wise it's seen as a way to hedge your bets most of the time and given the current effective head of the religion is named Gottfried the chaste and happens to have something around two hundred bastard children. Which he blatantly shows off there isn't too many religious role models to not have one.

> Are they allowed to participate normally in society?

Depends on the society and how rich their parents are. Most people won't care though.

>Are they entitled to any of the inheritance that the legitimate heirs will get?

This is all on their father here. As long as he claimed them legally they would. Otherwise they wouldn't get shit.

>Do they stray towards villainy or heroism?

They are neutral figures mostly.

> Do your players ever play as one?

One PC I remember did play as a bastard daughter of one of the local middle managers of the top religion there. Her dad was a bastard but tended to throw his political power around to help her out as long as she didn't do anything too stupid. Which she did more then once.

>>52922078
>bastards
you know, thats not exactly a polite term these days. its considered more appropriate to say

"illegitimate children"

but your on 4chan, so whatever. not like you really wanted a discussion or anything.

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>>52922635
Anon, you're on 4chan, where people get called faggot and nigger all the time, and you're complaining about the word bastard, which is historically what illegitimate children used to be called.

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>>52922635
*tips dice tower*

>>52922078
Well, in the matriarchal societies, being a bastard isn't really as much of a thing. We all know who your mother was, and that's what's important, so just keep on keeping on.

There are also communal societies that place less of an emphasis on pair-bonding, so, again, being a bastard isn't really something that registers as a thing.

In patriarchal pair-bonding societies, though, the tendency is towards status similar to a favored servant or slave. In some cases, it might be viable to adopt one into the family, but it's going to depend on circumstance.

>Do they stray towards villainy or heroism?
While one's socioeconomic place might be determined by birth, alignment leanings are not.

>>52922078
>How does your setting handle bastards?
Their trueborn half-sisters want to sex them and it makes them uncomfortable.

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>>52923089
Well, they are only half-siblings...

>>52922078
They can be legitimized, but on the other side they're considered an inconvenience and seen as evidence of a serious lapse in both judgement and/or fidelity at best, and dangerous at worst. Dangerous when they crop up among dynasties and such, as they can lead to complications in succession.

Often though, they're accepted on some level. When they appear among nobles they tend to get swept under the run, fostered off to distant relatives and end up in"second son" organizations like certain knightly orders or the officer corps of the Army. They also have a tendency to take their education and training out on the adventuring path to earn their own name and fortune. Rarely are they truly accepted by their family.

>>52922078

Bastards are a natural threat to carefully arranged dynastic and inheritance systems.

>>52922078
>How does your setting handle bastards?
They start with 50% less money but 25% more XP.

Depends on the culture and social standing of the parents. In most places, a noble's bastard is likely to be raised by foster parents and then given a mid-rank officer's position in the military, with the expectation that they don't raise any fuzz about their heritage. The nobles can acknowledge and legitimize their bastards instead, but doing so is somewhat frowned upon. Peasant bastards vary more from case to case.

In one culture, children born out of wedlock are taken by monasteries to be raised either as clergy or church soldiers. In another, there is no such thing as a bastard because there is no such thing as marriage or longterm monogamy.