If he is dependent on adventurers and mistreats one, his dependency becomes a problem.
That depends on how he's dependent on them.
Technically he is dependent on peasants as well, yet no one ever had any problem with mistreating them (until they revolted, that is - then it could get messy).
If adventurers are dime a dozen (which is typically the case if you want your usual adventure-marts around), are basically murderhobos (which they are, at least until late stages of their careers, which very few reach - most either die, change profession to something cozier and less risky - after taking an arrow to the knee, typically - or wisely retire with whatever they have scrounged up), and you only allow them wandering around because they can be handy at times and/or regulating/culling them would be too much of a hassle/hard to accomplish (kind of like rats of cockroaches).
And if you are an actual knight or something there is a lot of strings attached and loyalty is among them.
Or why can't you be wrongfully accused of something as generic mechanics instead of carefully scripted plot-hook?
Generic gameplay mechanics tend to get dull in most storycentric RPGs and most RPGs are storycentric.
Storycentric is neither the only nor necessarily the best way to make a cRPG.
Sure, you may make a PS:T if you do it horribly right, but even then any C&C you'll have will be limited, making the game replayable maybe around
7 4 times, require disproportional development effort, and generally won't be very robust.
Even if you do make a storycentric game, you can benefit from handling a lot of stuff systemically and faction/reputation system is one of the biggies here - one of the most obvious candidates.
And if characters in a position of power are allowed to use various methods to deal with people they dislike, and allowed to start disliking people for various things, then you have generic mechanics that is robust, demands limited effort to implement pretty much arbitrary number of "noble gets pissed off" variants, and isn't a singular quest hook that's easily avoided and can be looked up in a wiki.
Robbers are almost always scaled to your level and have a dialogue choice to give over your valuables for larping purposes.
Well, this is one of the areas where you unfortunately need to make concessions - getting surprise quarrel in the face and then having your corpse picked clean of valuables wouldn't make much of interesting gameplay, so it's only as much of an option as it can be mitigated by player's behaviour - vigilance, preparation, caution, etc.
The "y u no" meme needs to go away forever. This isn't 4chan ffs.
Night Goat , Y U NO APPRECIATE MEMES?
Anyway, maybe the reason the lord doesn't demand your magical artifact has something to do with the fact that you just killed dozens of people by yourself. RPG protagonists are blatantly superhuman, and the noble's greed probably doesn't override his will to live.
And this shit needs to go as well.
Besides, if the protagonist is supposed to be this powerful, any noble should scurry the fuck away the moment you set foot in their castle.
To take what is not yours is a deadly sin and dishonourable act by medieval standards.
Like it ever fucking stopped someone in a position of power.
And you, as an elite warrior, are a member of the most privileged class in medieval society, so...
If by "elite warrior" you mean "murderhobo" and by "most privileged class" you mean "not really".
And even if you grow in power and privilege, it's not like you're safe from plots of other privileged fucks, and unlike theirs your position and powerbase isn't as well cemented.
Not openly, but "Time to be generous and donate the thing I want to me, your rightful lord liege" was pretty common.
Hell, the lord might even want to pay you off (and fairly too), it's just that you wouldn't really have any way to decline without serious consequences.
Middle Ages, Dark Ages, and Antiquity all have one thing in common: human flaws. Sure, some lords were completely noble (lul @ that noun becoming an adjective), but many loved to exercise their authority to better themselves, materially and not. There's an endless example of Kings who shat all over individual aristocrats, while maintaining favor with the others. Like in just about every social structure in the modern world, what you really had was a continuous and complex struggle of wills, a kind of endless tug-of-war between the people who had any power, with everyone else getting perenially fucked.
Walking into a local noble's palace, insulting him, shitting on his carpet and finding yourself hunted by the military and officially outlawed on the next day would be much more fun than just walking out without consequence.
Or have the noble destroy your reputation among his peers. Good luck finding employment with other nobles when they know you like shitting on their carpets while flinging insults at them, their wives and their lineage.
Also, when you find archaeological treasures even in the modern day, either the state or the owner of whatever piece of land you found it on will come and say "Hey, that belongs to me because it was buried in MY land so of course it's mine not yours. Hand it over. The law is on my side." You might get paid a reward but the item isn't yours by right.
This. And losing some sweet, unique item of power VS pretty much losing ability to go about your business with any degree of openness and legitimacy in a good chunk of the gameworld (both permanently) would make for some sweet C&C - massive impact on gameplay without requirements for massive scripting (because it would pretty much be handled by crime system).
Damned Registrations ,
I think a good cRPG should take a little from column A, a little from column B.
On one hand sheer numbers, especially combined with coordination, discipline and use of ranged weapons should be able to fuck even the most skilled combatant, and even the most powerful wizard should die like any other man if stabbed in the throat.
On the other, in a setting where a powerful mage can literally fart demons and high level warriors can do retardedly heroic shit too, nobles should either be no slouches thmselves or have trusted/well paid people who are perfectly capable of doing the same (backed up by the aforementioned armies of mooks, just to be sure).
In any case, powers that be should be able to fuck player up, else they wouldn't be in the position of power.
