Scandalous Councillor - does anything good ever come of it?

[Garanvir]

So every so often a female relative of my main character (usually his mother) will make a request that I buck tradition and put her on my council in a role other than spymaster (Chancellor and Marshall seem most common)... when this happens there are two choices:
1. give her the position and piss off every adult in my kingdom for 5 years becasue I have a "Scandalous Councillor", or
2. Refuse her in a brusque manner that makes me a complete and total jerk...

Stupidly enough, if you give her the position even the scandalous councillor herself gets the scandalous councillor negetive modifier (although she also gets a bonus that more than cancels it out, but still, c'mon).

So I wonder, is there anything positive that can ever come of creating the sacandalous councilor or is it just the Paradox developer's screwing over the players by giving them a lose/lose choice between having all your vassals in open revolt or else being a total jerk to "your mother"?

And yes, obviously on the primary level it's silly to feel bad about hurting some fictional pixelated character's feelings, but still, if there was a high risk gamble for some equally large reward that woudl be one thing, but if it's just a complete lose/lose situation that's just bad game mechanics...

And near as I can tell tehre's nothing good going to come of this (luckily I have both a large demense and lots of cash on hand so I should survive the imminent near total revolt, but it seems an entire generation of vassals is going to die in the dungeons)

Note I don't have every piece of DLC (just Old Gods and Sons of Abraham), but if the decision requires DLC to get a possible positive result, the entire decision chain should have been restricted to teh relevent DLC, not put the basic decision in vanilla with just the negative results.

[X-the Unknown]

I always deny her, my "wife" does it all the time. Women aren't that special in CKII so you can tell them to goto heck and take the negative whatever for how long. I still get the stuff even with her in the negative; have 7 children now and there's plenty of time to have more :)

[Garanvir]

I get that from a pure game mechanics meta point of view there's no reason not to refuse tehm and that is what I usually do.

But the way it's setup, there is no option to refuse them gently...

If you turn them down, you do so by playing the complete close minded misogynistic jerkass...

Which as I mention, yeah it probably is silly to feel bad about being a jerk to some fictional pixelated character in a computer game, but silly or not, it still doesn't feel that good...

But if you give in and give her the position you are almost certainly setting up a massive revolt, in teh worst case scenario wrecking your game...

Which is why I ask if there anything positive that come out of it, some in game reward for taking the high risk action...

Becasue if the only reason to do it is just to avoid feeling bad for being a bit of a jerk, however briefly that may last.. well that is a really jerkass move on the part of the Paradox developers.

[Malvastor]

Huh. I get this occasionally, but I've actually never had it from a relative. For me it's always a random courtier or someone like that. And they're typically skilled enough to make the opinion malus worth it, at least as long as I'm not already staving off revolts.

[Random]

once you get a few points in tolerance and female rights laws, they become some of your best councilors.

most of the time I find they are significantly better than my existing councilmen in that position (likely a trigger to have them even appear) and they come preloaded with a favor for you that you can generally use as the deciding vote to change a law to restrict council powers (as you should have a couple of loyalists anyways).

I very rarely turn them down, and only do so when their skill level is less than 20 or my existing councilmen is basically the same thing within 2-3 skill points of them.

If a scandalous council member is what breaks your empire, you have much bigger administrative problems.

[Garanvir]

So what you are saying is that it has benefits if you have the DLC that overhauls the Council system...

But if you don't have that particular DLC (which I don't), then you get the event trigger except with nothing but negative reults.

I admit in my annoyance I may have exaggerated the negative consequences of the penalty (all it took to break up the multitudes of factions was a little judicious bribery). And maybe many or even most thnk my calling forcing the player to give a jerkass response (if they want to avoid the penalty) a negative consequence is a gross exaggeration as well.

But still the basic complaint remains... forcing a choice on the player that has no positive outcomes is a jerk move by Paradox... if the only possible positive outcomes are part of optional content then the event itself should only trigger if the player has the needed optional content installed.

[Inquisitioner]

Originally posted by Garanvir:

So what you are saying is that it has benefits if you have the DLC that overhauls the Council system...

But if you don't have that particular DLC (which I don't), then you get the event trigger except with nothing but negative reults.

I admit in my annoyance I may have exaggerated the negative consequences of the penalty (all it took to break up the multitudes of factions was a little judicious bribery). And maybe many or even most thnk my calling forcing the player to give a jerkass response (if they want to avoid the penalty) a negative consequence is a gross exaggeration as well.

But still the basic complaint remains... forcing a choice on the player that has no positive outcomes is a jerk move by Paradox... if the only possible positive outcomes are part of optional content then the event itself should only trigger if the player has the needed optional content installed.

Pretty much. Conclave is garbage that you should avoid in my humble opinion.

It seems downright dumb to universally accept or deny it as its always situational. The modifier can be a real pain if it comes at a bad time. But the only benefit is, if they're good, getting a useful Councillor that's loyal. But if you're smart and play without conclave you're not a slave to favors so you can always find a better one without tanking it. And most of the time I've encountered it the person in question had terrible stats - as in worse than my current one by a long shot.

Then it's less of being a jerk and more like saying "No, we need some level of meritocracy around here. I won't appoint them just because they're your friend."

But to confirm, the times I have tried it I've never really noticed any reward for going with it. A funny note story though with CK2+, some ugly middle-eastern woman (she had the ugly trait and relating nickname) force joined my council during a regency as part of the "Scandalous Councillor" even chain. Then when I came of age joined the tournament and came in first place and always beat up all my knights afterwards too. Great marshal, hahaha.