Followers for Upper Level Player Characters

On page 16 of the old Dungeon Masters Guide begins a series of rules for calculating the special followers that player characters collect upon reaching name level.  Because I have a different definition of "follower" [read the wiki page, it's relevant], I call these special followers "Retainers."  And strange as it may seem, I have never adjusted the tables found here for clerics, fighters, rangers, thieves and assassins.  I have used them, though not too often, since I run very long campaigns and once you've gotten to this point with your long-run character, you don't get to roll on these tables again.

Remember as you read this that where the DMG says "followers" in the name-level sense, I will use the word "retainers."

According to the DMG, it is never stated explicitly WHY druids, illusionists, paladins or mages do not get retainers.  On page 32 of the old Players Handbook, there is a section describing the retainers a monk gets upon reaching the 8th level of experience.  There is no explanation for why this section does not appear in the DMG, or for why the retainers gained as described in the DMG needs to be kept "secret" from the players, while those of the monk do not.

The bard has no retainers; the essentially ridiculous rules surrounding the bard (though I saw them played in other campaigns) stipulate that the bard must start as a fighter, leaving that class before the level needed to gain retainers, then become a thief, again leaving that class before the level needed to gain retainers, and THEN become a bard, which is an essentially useless class without any serious special abilities whatsoever.  No mention is made of a bard's "name level" nor of any retainers, except a line that says that bards "are unable to employ henchmen other than druids, fighters or thieves of human, half-eleven [sic], or elven race."  No explanation is given for this particular bit of racism.

Bards obviously deserve to have retainers; no person in a creative industry is ever exempt from taking on students and more than any other group, bards are the most logical class to be in constant contact with OTHER bards.  We have fairs dating back to the 9th century designed specifically so that bards can cluster together with bards.

I am good with druids being isolated characters; except that I fill the druid's roster with a host of "animal friends" that become the druid's retinue.  Paladins deserve the retainers a fighter gets; there's no logic whatsoever for a Paladin to be a "long wolf," since as I pointed out a couple weeks ago, the word means "peer of the realm," which means person of the court, which means lands, castles, the right to collect rents and so on.  How else do we think Paladins pay for their crusading adventures?  Just because Lancelot was broke doesn't mean the other two hundred paladins hanging around Camelot were.

It isn't all about Lancelot.

I'm fine with mages and illusionists getting short shrift.  Both have their heads buried in their laboratories and books, and as scholars neither should know a damned thing about employee management.  But before the reader gets anxious, let me explain that yes, in my game world, a player has to work very, VERY hard to end up without retainers in the long run.

Let's come back around to "followers" as opposed to retainers.  In my game, followers are friends that the players have made through their adventures.  Some are friends right off, others become friends over time.  That is how life works.  My judgment applies in whether or not a follower becomes a friend, based on whether or not I feel the player has treated that NPC fairly, conscientiously, protectively and monetarily.  If the player constantly forgets the individual's name when describing the NPC to me, or forgets to mention said individual when heading off somewhere, or loses parts of the individual's character details, or in any way shows they just don't care about that particular NPC to assure they're safe and considered in day-to-day game matters, then the NPC definitely does not become a follower.

The players often don't notice, but I listen closely every time a player mentions a related NPC, what words the player uses, how long its been since the last time anyone said hello to an NPC they haven't seen in a long time, or visits them, or shares information with them and so on.  I do not tell the players I am listening; and most of the time, I do not point out that the player has just made a serious gaffe of some kind.  I will just now, for the sake of an example: and because just now, there's nothing my online players can do about it.

Recently, the players returned to their new house in Treborg, then headed off to Stavanger, then returned to their house in Treborg, then hurried off back to the dungeon that interests them.  A while ago in the campaign, they hired a farmer/forager/hunter named Valda to look after their house and land while they're out.  And while the players have been diligently feeding Valda out of their stores, because they're required to do so on account of the hireling contract they have, guess how many times any of the players have said anything like, "I say hello to Valda," or "I ask Valda how she's doing?"  Guess how many of them thought to buy something small and useful for Valda from Stavanger while they were there?  Now ... does this make Valda a reliable hireling, or one likely to care as much for her employers as they care for her?

Altogether, I have four levels of friendly characters in my game, apart from the players themselves.  I have hundreds of nasty killer monsters, and of course a lot of humanoids in the civilized areas are dangerous as well, but the players ARE able to create a defensive bulwark of associates, friends and acquaintences, IF they take the time to get to know people and apply themselves to giving as well as constantly showing up to ask questions or buy things.  As another example, some time ago I introduced a girl in Treborg to the party named Monica.  Monica's father is an important person.  Monica spent a little time mooning around after one of the player characters, after helping him recover from damage he'd received many game weeks ago.  Anybody wandering around to say, "Hi Monica" ... ?  You see what I'm saying.

Players aren't required to chat up NPCs.  And a lot of NPCs aren't worth chatting up, what with them being minimally skilled and lacking in resources.  However, there is a tendency, based on the way that D&D has been run for 45 years, to act like lone wolves until the DM gives you retainers that you're allowed to treat like shit.  There is a section in the DMG about loyalty and such, and we will get to that in time, but there isn't a word about that in the "follower section" on pages 16-18.  Basically, you pile enough experience together, you pass a post, and a bunch of dudes show up at your door and say, "Order us around, please."

It's a game and I'm good with that dynamic.  It's only that the retainer thing sort of went away because (a) players didn't know how to handle it; (b) DMs revealingly didn't know how to handle it; and (c) what do we want all these hangers-on for anyway?  "We're LONE WOLVES.  What part of that don't you get?"

Anyway, as I was saying, four levels of friendly character.  I've mentioned three: retainers, followers and hirelings.  The fourth are henchmen.  I've written about these in my game often.  Before continuing on with this thread, let me pause a moment.

It is a cruelty to ask a player to run one character class for ten continuous years of a campaign.  Some like it, but it makes sense that players would want to try other classes out from time to time.  It also makes sense that players would like to try other genders and other races, as well as other combinations of weapons, spells and abilities.  Any good game system must have a means for players to stretch beyond an imposed boundary that limits their experimentation.

We all know that most DMs and groups solve this problem by running campaigns for shorter periods, or no campaigns at all.  Every player gets to try out scores of different characters ... until every character concept is part of a large grey sludge of meaningless nuance.  The problem with this approach is that none of these tried and tested characters ever amount to anything rich and dense as far as character experience or ambition.  Having lots of sexual partners sounds exciting and provocative, but for those who have tried it, only a few years need to pass before realizing that we ... just ... don't ... care about any of these people we're sleeping with.  There isn't time to know them.

Excuse a little life advice, but for those of us in long-term relationships, the old bugaboo about "My gawd, do you want to eat the same flavour of ice cream for the rest of your life" is a bit stupid.  Marriage is about getting to know someone extremely well, but it is also about the two of you getting to know reliable, long-lasting friends, and your children, and their friends, and your children's children, and so on.  Because living a calm, reliable life draws company ... whereas living a frenetic life of chasing other people only breeds drama, resentment, exhaustion and people who don't want to know you much.

Okay, let's set that on a shelf.  The benefit of playing a single character for a long campaign is that you have a lot of memories about that character.  And the benefit of letting the players gain an occasional new player character, a henchman (I still can't get myself around to saying "henchperson," but I'll get there eventually), according to a strict rule, gets around the need to rip down the campaign to give the players a new experience.  Getting to 5th level is a lot easier than getting to name level; and picking a new associate character that is reliably yours, no matter what the DM wants, is an important a step as picking your first character.

Consider:  it takes you 18,000 experience to become a 5th level fighter in the old game.  At that point you get a hench — and because you've already got a fighter, you're free to go for something really different: a mage or a bard, or maybe a thief.  You've got the fighting covered; spells would be nice, or maybe someone to sneak around or a character that knows about plants and animals.  Whatever.  Let's say you take a cleric as your hench.

Your fighter will need 17,000 more experience to be 6th level.  [I know these stats don't mean a fucking thing to you 5e readers, but maybe you could recognize a bit of logic in a structure that actually limited what a player could do until they earned their way].  To reach 4th level, your cleric hench only needs 6,000.  And while that cleric is only going to get half as much experience from treasure as you get, and half as much bonus experience as you get, that character only needs a third as much to go up three levels as you need to go up one.  After awhile, because the cleric hench needs less overall experience than you do, by the time you get up to name level as a fighter, the cleric will be near to reaching name level as a cleric.

That's why it doesn't matter that mages and illusionists don't get retainers.  A mage or an illusionist is bound to take a fighter of some kind upon reaching 5th level, in my game at least.  And that fighter is going to be very nearly 9th about the time the mage and illusionist reach 11th or 10th.  The mage may not get retainers, but the mage's fighter will ... and since the mage and the fighter are both run by the same player, it all works out.

All this way around the barn to get back to this:  the player has the opportunity to get a hench at 5th level and retainers at name level ... but they can obtain hirelings the FIRST DAY of adventuring and they can make friends soon after.  What if the character doesn't want to wait for 5th level or name level?  Should they have to?

I don't think so.  Smart players who are willing to do the work ought to be able to get themselves established in a community long before they get to name level.  A cleric should not have to wait for 9th level to build a church — that argument makes no sense in relation to anything we know about religious organization or missionary work.  There are never enough churches and temples and there are always communities who desperately want one.  Nor should a mage need to wait to build a laboratory, or a thief have to wait to build a gang of thieves.  These measurements established in the old DMG, that players need to wait to gather like friends together, which five-year-olds do without thinking about it, don't wash.  It's called "role-playing," people!  You meet, you share, you show interest, you help them out, they help you out ... hell, Sesame Street taught us this.  "Cooperation!"  A DM should be glad you're not waiting for the so-called "End Game" to build a structure of contacts and associates.

Think about how EASY it is to set up an adventure when the players already have two dozen people whose lives they care about.  Fred — you remember Fred — was walking in the woods yesterday and guess what he saw!  Oh, and Mary wanted a well dug on her property and would you believe it? There was a deep, dark frightening looking hole that appeared when a section of the surface fell in.  Oh, what will we do?  If only we could find some party to investigate that hole, or check out those woods.

But, heck, we can't have that, can we?  I guess it's another game session where we start out at the bar.

I confess.  I've had a damnably hard time selling this idea to players I've had in online campaigns.  Some get it; the present party, Valda and Monica notwithstanding, have done better than everyone else combined.  But there is unquestionably a resistance.  One member of the party has personally met the Crown Prince of Sweden, and gained the prince's respect ... but wants nothing to do with that contact, judging by actions taken.  I've waved other red flags in front of these bulls, but no takers.  This lone wolf thing dies hard.  I'm guessing that mixing in with other people and their problems feels like, oh, responsibility or something.  Or having to put up with the DM's manipulation of the campaign, something that we've all been burned from so hard we dream about fire alarms.

Still, I put the rules in place, I explain the fundamentals and I introduce the NPCs ... and I wait.  I wait to see what the players will do with those toys, if ever they seriously think about picking them up.

Hiring the Ship's Crew

None of this describes hiring a crew, however, or what quality the crew will be.  It can be annoying to go through the process of making up individuals for a ship one by one, trying to figure out how a collection of 20 or 30 people determines what a "green" crew is versus a "poor" one.

So, in the interest of making players happy, I suggest these two tables:

Here I am arguing the principle that the difference between finding a good crew member (or hireling) and a bad crew member is a matter of choice.  Taking a longer period of time to look over prospects, being more diligent in finding people and letting the word spread that there are serious ship-owners looking for good people helps spread the word around, enabling the ship owners a greater variety of possible crew members - and consequently, a higher quality of crew and individuals.  It is recommended that the player roll on the bottom table to find the overall crew's quality . . . and then, as necessary, individual members of the crew can be determined from how long it took to find them.

I am somewhat reticent about there being any chance of finding a hireling with +5 in all personality traits, even with a year of searching.  There's only 1 such person in 46,656.  In my world of 237 million in population, that's only 5,019 persons.  How many of those are ship captains?  Still, we are talking about 36 continuous years of searching in order to ensure odds of finding such an individual and this is a fantasy world - some concessions can be made for party luck and unusual benefit.  As such, even though it defies logic, I'm letting it stand.

I feel the need to point out that individuals of the -5 shell are not the same as the +5 shell.  The shells are arranged (see the previous post) so that a person with traits of +3, +4 and -5 would be in the -5 shell because the minimum trait they possess is -5, and not because all their traits are at -5.

This settles my needs for crew acquisition for the present.  The players have a means of obtaining a particular crew, they have a clear idea of what the individuals might be like, they know what a crew of various levels can accomplish and we have the necessary details for managing the rules I've made for naval warfare so far.  I can now move onto other things.

Hiring Hirelings

Next problem.

I think I've got a fair handle on the effectiveness of crew quality on the turning of ships.  This brings us to the question of how to determine the crew's quality?  How do characters know how qualified their crews are?  It isn't enough to just say that a captain knows what weaknesses and failings the crew might have, because that is provably not true.  Outright mutinies are rare, admittedly, but individual discipline for individual crew disobedience or incompetence is not, nor is it rare that either causes the loss of equipment, time, battles and life.  Often it can be quite innocent: consider the message of this folk song.

At best, we can guess at the quality of a crew and accept that often we have to take those with less than ideal skills/personalities because of circumstances - i.e., not enough of the kind of labour we'd like.

Let's come back around to the database of traits I had proposed last week.  I was screwing around this morning with combinations this morning, starting from a premise that created this table:

Remember from the earlier post, if we set the number 7 on 2d6 as zero, then the best possible result is +5 with boxcars and -5 with snake eyes.  Taking 3d6 to determine our x, y and z axes (regardless of what personality traits those three rolls give us), then we have 46,656 possible combinations that, together, will add up to a number between -15 and 15.  On the table, the numbers show the possible combinations that get a positive or negative result in that range.

It's interesting, but it also means that someone whose first two traits are +4 and +5 can have a trait that's -5 . . . which produces a sum of 4 overall but doesn't make that person a desirable person.  Such a person is potentially capable and cheerful, but they might be intensely dishonest; or they might be a very positive person and be scrupulously honest, yet be hopelessly unqualified at everything.

For the record, I am rethinking the original three traits that I proposed with my first post on this plotting traits' concept.  I think perhaps we can wrap competency and experience together; we can take honesty as a second axis; this then gives room for the person's nature: are they, by and large, positive or negative?  Friendly or taciturn?  Genuinely helpful or self-serving.  A person may easily be completely honest and yet unfriendly; or a person could be very positive and yet profoundly dishonest.  This eliminates the conflicting ideas of a person being experienced and yet unskilled (which happens, but seems 'wrong' at first glance).

What's really wanted are three traits that can't be accounted for in the character's ability stats.  Are intelligent people necessarily capable?  Are charismatic people necessarily friendly?  Are wise people necessarily honest?  I don't think so.  There are familiar associations we make between these things, but it is easy to imagine an educated dishonest person or a hateful, charismatic demagogue, and certainly a smart person who seems to fuck up all the time (personally, I only need a mirror for this last one).

So I reconsidered the organization of the personality traits, to get a better handle on who might hold a given position/role/responsibility in a vocational framework.  Towards this end, I imagined that we might organize these traits as a series of "shells."  The first shell would be occupied by the 1 in 46,656 persons who had +5 on all three axes.  Progressing outwards, each successive shell would include those persons who had a minumum of +4 in each axes, +3 in each, +2 in each and so on (always including those of the smaller shells).  This produced this table:

Note that persons without any negative traits consists of less than 20% of the total population.  This makes it virtually impossible to run any sort of entity without at least a third of your people having negative traits and another third having really bad negative traits - that you have to take on because you can't run a big concern without having to hire a lot of people.  If we consider that 10% of the population being unemployed is a bad thing, from the numbers above we have to consider that more than 10% of the working population are people with a -4 personality in something: either they're incompetent, dishonesty or naturally cruel, vengeful, jealous or greedy (pick the deadly sin).  This is a sobering thought.

We need 30 or 40 sailors to serve aboard our frigate; we don't know the market city where we're hiring our crew because, like most adventurers, we're far from home.  It's a port town and most of the town already has a job.  Those that don't, who are trying to get on as sailors, have probably worked for someone before if they're at least competent enough to know one end of a rope from the other.  Some of those will be looking for work after visiting their poor, dear mother for a month inland, but most of them are going to be people who were turfed when the ship they served aboard reached port.  And now they want to hire on with us.

In the last few posts, I've used the Wooden Ships & Iron Men designations of poor, green and average designations for crew.  It's very important that we don't see "poor" as meaning less experienced or able that "green."  A green crew has an excuse: they haven't shipped out together, not for long anyway, they're young, they haven't had a chance to become experienced.  A poor crew are a bunch of miserable, brooding, unscrupulous malignant and potentially hostile misanthropes, whose miserable speed at turning the ship around has less to do with inability as it does with willful disobedience or apathy.

And these are the sort that will get hired, even if we don't want them.

Thing is, for the interview, they'll trick us into thinking they're merely second-rate and not third-rate hirelings.  We need a table that a) determines how many of these we'll get; b) how likely we'll be able to detect them with our own experience; c) how spells like penetrate disguise or know intent will work in this context; and d) how much will such people of each personality shell will cost.

As yet, I don't have this table.  I'm thinking on it.  I know that morale will figure in the mix . . . and I'm also thinking about practical rules for changing people's personalities and behaviours.

I know that last will seem, well, inappropriate.  But there are some institutions that specialize in making persons see the world in a different light, adapting them to becoming more decent, more reliable, more effective as participants in ventures of every kind.  Some of these institutions fail miserably at it, but it seems to me that evidence of some success means that success is possible.  Therefore, rules ought to exist that will enable us to redirect an individual's cynicism, clumsiness and calumny to make them a more effective hireling.

Morale and Popularity

On Saturday we had a compromising situation arise that inspired me to an on-the-spot elegant solution.  At present, I have a party that is hacking their way through Ternketh Keep, bloody room by bloody room.  On Saturday they found the harpies and exhibited almost incomprehensible luck.  However, by the end of the night one a character's follower, Jafar, had died, being carved to pieces and left with -13 hit points.

Forgive the links - I just want the reader aware of my rules regarding these things.  Sometimes these blog posts look like a Wikipedia page.

The question arose - should the party use death's door to bring back the character that died?  The party's main cleric has the spell and the spell hasn't been cast; but it must be used quickly and as the party is fairly ragged at this point, they're not anxious to use a return to life spell on a non-leveled man-at-arms (for that's all that Jafar was) when one of their 4th lvl+ characters may die in the next room.

However, how should that effect the morale of those present who, having witnessed the use of the spell in the past, recognize that it probably won't be used for them?

It was at this point that I conceived of a different way to look at morale.

To cover what the link says in just a few sentences, I use a system where most followers and hirelings begin with a fairly poor morale.  I calculate this as the number needed to be achieved on 2d6, sort of like a saving throw.  Thus, the higher the number of a character's morale, the lower the character's actual morale (I'm thinking of reversing the roll so that a high number equals a high morale, but that's tricky and I haven't decided yet).  Basically, a 12 morale is very bad (success 1 in 36) while a 2 morale is very good (success automatic).  Usually the best morale that can be achieved is a 3 (better than that is reserved for henchmen.

At the time of his death, Jafar's morale was 8.  To give the morale of a few other characters, Calim's morale was 7, Fehim's was 9, Mazonn's was 9 and Attaman's was 8.

To determine how the rest of the party felt about Jafar's death, I made a morale check, rolling 2d6.  An eight or more would be a success, a seven or less would be a failure.  I judged the roll as a determination of Jafar's popularity, reasoning that a companion with a good morale (3-5) would be much more popular than someone with a bad morale (10 to 12).  This makes sense to me.  Someone with a good morale would be brave, eager, high-spirited and inspiring; someone with a bad morale would be miserable, cowardly, troublesome and therefore unwanted.

If the roll against Jafar's morale failed, then it could be presumed that the party in general didn't feel too much remorse at his death. Not raising him, therefore, could be seen as something understandable: not that they wished him evil, but that it was simply his time.  On the other hand, if Jafar's morale check succeeded, then Calim, Fehim, Mazonn and Attaman might be quite annoyed that the party chose to do nothing for their companion.

In the latter case, it might be reasoned that the party could still choose to say "No."  These are men who are intended to obey, after all, they're followers and hirelings.  However, one logical response could be that each person rebuffed by the party could have their morale raised by 1 point, across the board.  This would reflect the general discontent of the group without their needing to create a resurrection.  A hard decrease in morale like this would hurt a lot, particularly when we consider it is measured against 2d6 (the difference between a morale of 9 vs 10 is devastating).

I ended in rolling under Jafar's morale so that he failed.  It was his time.  The group was okay with him not being raised.

Of course, it did not occur to me afterwards that a die should have been rolled for each individual person; some would be content with Jafar's demise, others would be bitter.  Morales could be adjusted independently.  In future, this is what I will do.  In any case, I have a precedent that will be applied to other situations in the future.

Leadership III

I was going to move on, but it's worthwhile examining these points from Ozymandias, particularly this last:

". . . you'd be taking something the players have right now (complete control over their NPCs in battle) and limiting it unless the fighter characters focus on leadership."

Unquestionably the answer to that last is yes, I would be adding some limitations to the existing system.  I'm not sure what limitations yet, as I'm still formulating the specifics, but it stands to reason that any addition in rules will create limitations where none existed before.  This is why 'rule' relates to a 'boundary.'

However, I wouldn't expect there to be much of an increased limitation.  I've already built in two containment systems on the players' utilization of their hirelings/followers, the aforementioned veto and morale system.  As regards most things in combat, my emphasis in rule-making would be to allow the character with leadership experience to circumvent that containment: to overrule my veto or to improve the hireling/follower's morale and make it less of an issue.

We have to understand, however, that for every hireling/follower that the party acquires, there is an endless parade of NPCs that the players do not control.  Many of these have characteristics that simply prevent any possibility of alliance with the players.  One does not simply convince Captain Ahab to change his mind and suspend his quest in order to ship the party to their desired destination.  Othello is not going to become less jealous after sitting down with a player to have "a good talk."  Becky Sharp will remain hell-bent on improving her social position.  That's just how it is with these people; while not necessarily evil, they are obsessive and therefore strongly resistant to change - and so it goes with most of the population, to a lesser degree, as we all know from any personal exchange we've had with someone who has a personal political axe to grind.

D&D would have it that any good player ought to be able to radically change these circumstances with "really good role-playing" . . . which in turn puts the DM in the position of having to reward players who chatter well with an automatic NPC about-face.  As someone who does argue very well, who goes at it like a pit-bull, I've seen this actually happen perhaps four or five times in my life - this coming from someone who has given it plenty of opportunity to happen.  People are bloody-minded, stubborn, argumentative forces to be reckoned with, as the reader has already discovered having lived long enough to learn how to read.

It is possible, however, to play to what people believe in order to get them to do as we want, without needing to change their minds.  It takes talent, however, to spy the belief system, recognize how to get the chisel underneath the person's defensiveness and distrust, then pry up the person's willingness to help out in just such a way that the person feels good about themselves when it's done.  It is also a talent to recognize that person in a whole room of people who don't possess the sort of belief system we need for just this sort of operation.

This is what a leader does, however.  A leader finds those people who are already predisposed to follow a certain banner, who then waves that banner in front of those people and gets them moving.  Recruitment, therefore, is critical where it comes to building a team that can be briefed, right from the start.

Normally, if I had a player enter a town and try to hire anyone, they'd come up empty.  The player characters are obviously strangers, they talk strange, they wear road-battered clothing, they carry weapons, they're mostly unwashed and they have no references of any kind.  A person would have to be crazy to work for someone like this.  Therefore, most of the time, the only hirelings that players have are a) associates that the background generator has given them; b) characters who they have aided or rescued in some way; and c) characters who happen to be going in the same direction or who have the same goals as the party.  In the case of (b) and (c), it is the players' actions and decisions that makes the difference in those NPCs being willing to hire on and join . . . and I make the decision myself, based on whether or not the players have respected those NPCs.

The leadership skill would circumvent my decision.  In effect, it would say that no matter what the players' actual words or personal treatment of the NPCs, the leadership skill would trump it.  If the player, as my world goes right now, said to an NPC, "You idiot! Do that again and I'll kill you!", I would have the NPC fade.  With the leadership skill however, I must presume that the character's words were much more appropriate, considerate and motivational.  Therefore, the NPC would not fade.

In answer to Ozymandias, then, the ability wouldn't determine that the team would do something right or wrong based on the brief (technically, that would be an expeditionary/tactical consideration).  Rather, it would ensure a greater chance of the Leader meeting and transforming strangers into allies, whom the player would then have the opportunity to run personally, with a greater morale in the face of danger, a greater chance of sacrificing themselves at the player's order (over my veto) and therefore offering a greater resource for the party.

Leadership doesn't make people better in terms of ability, only in terms of their willingness to act.  Once having done so, we would rely upon the expeditionary/tactical ability of the player to pick the right people for the right job, ensuring probable success.  This doesn't make individuals better - but it would allow individuals to work at their greatest efficiency.


P.S.,

I considered for a long time whether or not 'recruitment' ought to be an ability possessed by Leaders or by Trainers.  I settled on Leaders; and as a proof, I offer the present military system in which those people who recruit new soldiers are completely divorced from those who train them.  I see recognizing potential and enabling potential as both different process and mindsets.

Leadership I

Setting war aside, we move onto the next subject in the fighter's repertoire.  For me and for most anyone I've known, there are great problems where it comes to the acquisition and management of non-player characters, both for the player and for the DM.  While the latter has always had to put up with parties that see men-at-arms as little more than cardboard obstacles designed to slow the enemy up for a round or two, players have had to accept an endless parade of conveniently skilled, story-driven hireling backstabbers.  NPCs are foils for both sides.  Where is the trust?

Because even a long term friend and hireling will turncoat on a dime as the DM runs his or her latest Josh Whedon plot line, players on the whole learn to do without them.  Because they're not 'real,' there's nothing to stop us from squeezing out of each NPC all the juice we can get, as far as the DM will allow . . . and since most hireling sacrifices take place underground, far from the eyes of others, it is hard to argue that more can't be obtained with sufficient capital.  It seems the only option the DM has is to have a random hireling bite back . . . but that only results in a total distrust of all hirelings, effectively eliminating the option from the game.

Gygax wasted four pages of the DMG making up interaction rules for henchmen and hirelings - gawd knows if he tried to play those rules himself.  I wasted a couple of months trying to evolve interaction rules for players and everyone else.  Player-NPC interactive mechanics are an unequivocal, unavoidable shit pile.  As I step into it again, the reader can bet I am going to do so carefully.

For a long time, I have been running henchmen as additional, obstensibly fanatic characters whom the players "meet" and then run exactly like typical player characters.  These henchmen appear when the character reaches a certain level, supposedly because the character has gathered a reputation or acted in some way publicly that the henchman has approached, in awe, begging to follow the original player character eternally until death.

Recently, my players have begun hitting name-level, acquiring followers.  These are not henchmen (they have a mind of their own), but they are completely loyal and willing to perform most any action the player asks of them.  During the campaign, the player again runs these people - but I reserve the right to veto any act the player would have them perform.  I hardly ever need to.  Players understand that they're not going to replace these followers easily and for the most part, the followers' entry into combat is more or less designed by the player to keep them alive.

I have a theory that IF the player is allowed to play the NPC (even a hireling or a servant) without the DM interfering, the player is far, far less likely to sacrifice that character - particularly if it is made clear to the player that advancement for the NPC is a possibility.  Even an munchkin gets that a weakling NPC who might someday be a 5th level helper will tend to keep the NPC safe.  I believe that the willingness to sacrifice NPCs willy-nilly begins with the DM insisting on controlling every single action of that character.  By not allowing the player to co-opt the NPC, the DM greatly downgrades the character's worth to the players. Why not burn off those men-at-arms?  We have no power over them anyway.

I challenge any DM reading this to hand over any NPCs running with the party in their present campaign to the party!  Simply give the party all their stats and tell the party, "I'm going to let you manage these guys so that I have more time to run.  Jim, you can run the two bowmen, Janie, go ahead and direct the heavy footman and John, you've got the sapper.  Here are their hit points and stats.  I'll call nix if you have them do anything really stupid but for the most part, they're yours."

I began doing this within a year of running my first games and it has never gone sour.  If the players get too entitled, then I will just have the NPCs fade into the darkness; "You look around and the NPCs have deserted you."  Players are always chattering among themselves anyway, it is easy to argue that for five minutes, no one has so much as mentioned an NPC so it was easy for them to slink away.

I only need to do this, however, with new players fresh to my world, those who have learned bad habits under other DMs.  My players cherish their NPCs because its a harsh, brutal world and they recognize every friend they can get will help keep them alive.  It helps that in eight years of the present campaign (offline), I've never had a hireling or follower go turncoat.  The same is true, I suppose, of the online campaign.  An NPC they meet, who they haven't built an association with, might turn out to be an enemy, but never a friend.  NEVER a friend.

Why ditch that potential story option?  Because it's trite, it's overused, it's arbitrary (oh, so very arbitrary) and it builds bad blood between a DM and a player.  Fuck all that.  There are other plotlines, other stories, other ways to build up tension.  I don't use that cheesy option because I don't need it.

Seriously.  Ditch it.  When your head goes there and you think, "Woah, that will be cool, they'll never see that coming," smack yourself in the face.

Think instead, "Woah, that's me being a fucking turncoat to my players by arbitrarily deciding to be a dick.  Maybe I shouldn't."

Well, that was a digression.  I was talking about henchmen and followers.

Hirelings are people the players buy, who have no particular loyalty to the players' prestige or personas.  Over time, they might develop some.  For my world, I use a very simple system, morale.  The link explains the principle.  On the whole, it lets the players run the hireling and then puts a die roll between having the hireling enter or remain in combat (or any other danger) based upon what sort of experience the hireling has.  Not all hirelings work on a wage principle.  I consider anyone adventuring with the party and getting a share of the treasure to be a hireling (or 'ally').

I keep meaning to write some rules on how much wages/treasure a hireling expects to get but I haven't yet.  Probably have to this winter to support the leadership rules I plan to add to my campaign.

Friends are people who are working with the party but who have not committed themselves to anything.  Friends are not always easy to identify and usually there is a period during which the players aren't sure if such and such is a friend or foe.  Here I can play with loyalties and trust where it comes to interaction, because no agreements have been made, no assurances given.  Any friend might in fact not be a friend, so people freely lie to the party or are believed to have lied because the party knows not to trust anyone who is merely a friend.

Thus, a friend might give the party a gift that turns out to be something else; the party knows this is a possibility because, apart from the gift, there's no proof of any other commitment.  Parties, knowing this (and knowing me), recognize very well that these relationships can go either way.  They are not, therefore, angered or resentful when a 'friend' goes the other way.  Not like they would be if a hireling or a follower did.  There is a line.

Most friends in my world, however, really are friends.  On Saturday, my party met a Wyth; a humanoid creature resembling a razorbacked hog, frightening to look at and blessed with obvious thieving abilities.  These abilities were recognized by the party's 7th level thief (Olie) - so the party was reasonably unsure.  Moreover, the Wyth would not speak, only shake its head or nod.  It ate raw meat from a oiled bag and that seemed disturbing.  Without any sort of surety between them, the Wyth headed off and so did the party.

In a town, the players were told that Wyths are dangerous and that they will follow a party until they can gather together enough of their band to launch an assault.  When the party moved on, descending through a canyon to the plain below, Olie caught glimpses that showed they were being followed.  Olie slipped back, found the Wyth and confronted it, 25 feet apart.  Olie threatened; the Wyth did not speak.  It pulled out a piece of raw meat and offered it to Olie.  Olie refused it.  Olie managed to scare the Wyth away and then returned to the party.

Didn't work.  The Wyth continued to follow.  That night, it approached another player on guard, Maze the cleric, moving to the edge of the firelight.  From that distance, it again offered the meat.  Maze also refused.  When Maze moved to wake up the others in the party, the Wyth disappeared.  The next day, the party descended into the plain and they didn't see the Wyth again.

The worst thing was that the Wyth wouldn't speak; this had the party confused and threatened.  When they reached a city on the plain, they asked again about the Wyth.  Here they were told a different story; that people in the hills don't trust the Wyths but that they're harmless.  And the meat?  Apparently, Wyths won't talk to anyone they haven't shared food with.  It was trying to get the party to eat so they could talk together.

This had a terrific effect on the party, as they realized their distrust had cost them a possible friend.  To this I added by saying, "It had things to tell you."  That went through the party's head like a bomb.  Naturally, they did not see the Wyth again.

Making friends is difficult.

This is where Leadership as a skill comes in.  How to change a stranger to a friend, how to make a friend a hireling (or ally) and how to turn hirelings into followers.  In turn, how to acquire people in a campaign that a player can personally manage or run.  I'll write more on this next.