If you desire a particularly apprentice, squire, or assistant who is more loyal to you than regular wages you may attempt to recruit such a follower as a downtime action.
You may freely determine the type of follower which you wish to recruit. You may assign attributes, background, class, level, etc as desired. A more skilled and talented character will take longer to find and recruit, however. The more able you desire a follower to be the fewer individuals can meet those qualifications and the more likely the individuals that do exist have their own successful careers. Another consideration which modifies the duration required to find a desired follower is your lifestyle during the search. Those with higher class lifestyles have more free time to devote to the search and can rely on other sets of eyes to bring them information about prospective candidates. Further, at a higher lifestyle you can more easily tailor your recruitment to a prospective follower's interests.
Once you have determined the base attributes desired for the follower calculate their point value as for a PC. This is the base number of days of searching that will be required to attract this individual as a level 1 follower. Like a PC, you may spend no more than 27 points on attributes, though you do not need to spend that many points.
If you wish to recruit a follower at a higher level than first, multiply the base number of days as determined by their stats by the appropriate value from the level table below. This is the number of days required. You may not recruit a follower of greater than half your level, nor may you recruit a follower of higher than level 10. Further, the higher a potential follower's level the more base talent has been required. A follower must meet the minimum total value of their stats listed in the chart.
After you determine the base duration of your search, multiply it by the lifestyle you are maintaining during this time from the following chart. If your lifestyle fluctuates, instead keep your progress in "base days" ( and divide the number of days at a given lifestyle by the multiplier to determine how much progress you make during a given period.
Once you have spent the total number of downtime days on this activity you have successfully found your follower and recruited them to your service or the service of your cause. New followers gained in this manner are loyal to the individual who recruited them, not the party. They will travel with the character who recruited them, adventuring and fighting alongside the party, or they may be sent to perform other activities at the character's behest. However, such NPCs have their own desires and goals and will leave or betray the character if mistreated or if the goals they joined the character are not being advanced to their satisfaction. If you are using the loyalty system the NPC has an initial loyalty of 10 and their maximum loyalty is determined by the Charisma of the individual who recruited them, not the entire party.
The NPC receives an equal share of experience for combats they participate in. Their portion of treasure is determined by their relationship with their sponsor. However, if they lack their own income, either through a portion of treasure from adventuring or freedom to pursue downtime activities it will fall to their recruiter to support them or they will ultimately leave to support themselves.
If a group wishes to recruit a follower they can split up the days of searching. Maximum level of the follower is the lowest of the character's participating, each character contributes downtime progress based on their own level of lifestyle, and the maximum loyalty is determined by the highest Charisma of the group.
I've found that the best way for players to get followers has nothing to do with mechanics. It has nothing to do with DM planning either. The players find an NPC who genuinely clicks and has reason to decide to follow them, maybe a character stumbled upon as random filler in a town or a hireling that they develop a relationship with. In my games there have been a number of times that such sidekicks have just happened naturally. Examples of ways they have, or could, develop include most of the usual suspects. Orphans off the street that the players have initially found to run errands cheaply and realized they could make a significant difference for, junior members of the same order that they encountered on business once or twice and decided to befriend and mentor, or someone whose entire life had been destroyed and the party saved them from death so they quite literally had nowhere else to turn. Regardless, the key feature is something clicking between the NPC and the PC.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to manage that. Like any emergent feature it's a wonder when it happens, and something you can angle to set the stage for, but it's not something you can force.
On the other hand, sometimes as a player or DM you want to start getting followers onto the scene. The beginnings of the army you'll lead to overthrow the evil empire or conquer the wilds, the foundation of the order you want to create as your tool to greater power or a legacy to the people, or just a way of taking more bodies with you into a dungeon to protect your back and lets you hold ground you've already cleared even if they don't take significant risks. AD&D built this (clumsily) into the martial classes and 3.5 made it into the Leadership feat (which wasn't less clumsy, just more open). Like many things with downtime, or really anything outside tactical combat, 4e didn't even bother. 5e gives lip service to the concept of followers on pages 92-94 of the DMG, and a little more on pg 127 where groups of followers come with strongholds, but that's almost entirely management of those locations once they exist... and not terribly developed even so.
At the high end it's around 4 years of searching. Given that you're looking for someone with adventurer level stats, substantial power, and probably their own level of fame who will come hold your lance, that's quite generous. If you're clearly affluent you can drop that as low as about a single year... which is still generous.
While I generally try to shy away from the whole Accountants and Actuaries feel of "big math," when a player decides they want something specific from a background or downtime action, like a follower, I don't feel bad about making them go through a few calculator steps. We're not talking GURPS Vehicles design (for those familiar with that old gaming calculus textbook), but punching things into a calculator or polishing off the old longhand multiplication and division isn't beyond the realm of reason for a special downtime activity that will provide an ongoing benefit. I would never consider this level of complexity for a system during an adventure, and would probably express annoyance rather than helpfulness at a player who tried to do this during a session at all, rather than before or after.
An edited version of this downtime activity is now available at the DM'S Guild.
You may freely determine the type of follower which you wish to recruit. You may assign attributes, background, class, level, etc as desired. A more skilled and talented character will take longer to find and recruit, however. The more able you desire a follower to be the fewer individuals can meet those qualifications and the more likely the individuals that do exist have their own successful careers. Another consideration which modifies the duration required to find a desired follower is your lifestyle during the search. Those with higher class lifestyles have more free time to devote to the search and can rely on other sets of eyes to bring them information about prospective candidates. Further, at a higher lifestyle you can more easily tailor your recruitment to a prospective follower's interests.
Once you have determined the base attributes desired for the follower calculate their point value as for a PC. This is the base number of days of searching that will be required to attract this individual as a level 1 follower. Like a PC, you may spend no more than 27 points on attributes, though you do not need to spend that many points.
If you wish to recruit a follower at a higher level than first, multiply the base number of days as determined by their stats by the appropriate value from the level table below. This is the number of days required. You may not recruit a follower of greater than half your level, nor may you recruit a follower of higher than level 10. Further, the higher a potential follower's level the more base talent has been required. A follower must meet the minimum total value of their stats listed in the chart.
Level
|
Additional Days
|
Minimum AttributeValue
|
2
|
x2
|
1
|
3
|
x5
|
3
|
4
|
x9
|
5
|
5
|
x14
|
10
|
6
|
x20
|
15
|
7
|
x27
|
19
|
8
|
x35
|
22
|
9
|
x44
|
24
|
10
|
x54
|
25
|
After you determine the base duration of your search, multiply it by the lifestyle you are maintaining during this time from the following chart. If your lifestyle fluctuates, instead keep your progress in "base days" ( and divide the number of days at a given lifestyle by the multiplier to determine how much progress you make during a given period.
Lifestyle
|
Multiplier
|
Wretched
|
x10
|
Squalid
|
x5
|
Poor
|
x2
|
Moderate
|
x1
|
Comfortable
|
x1
|
Wealthy
|
x½
|
Aristocratic
|
x¼
|
Once you have spent the total number of downtime days on this activity you have successfully found your follower and recruited them to your service or the service of your cause. New followers gained in this manner are loyal to the individual who recruited them, not the party. They will travel with the character who recruited them, adventuring and fighting alongside the party, or they may be sent to perform other activities at the character's behest. However, such NPCs have their own desires and goals and will leave or betray the character if mistreated or if the goals they joined the character are not being advanced to their satisfaction. If you are using the loyalty system the NPC has an initial loyalty of 10 and their maximum loyalty is determined by the Charisma of the individual who recruited them, not the entire party.
The NPC receives an equal share of experience for combats they participate in. Their portion of treasure is determined by their relationship with their sponsor. However, if they lack their own income, either through a portion of treasure from adventuring or freedom to pursue downtime activities it will fall to their recruiter to support them or they will ultimately leave to support themselves.
If a group wishes to recruit a follower they can split up the days of searching. Maximum level of the follower is the lowest of the character's participating, each character contributes downtime progress based on their own level of lifestyle, and the maximum loyalty is determined by the highest Charisma of the group.
~~*~~
Unfortunately, there's no real way to manage that. Like any emergent feature it's a wonder when it happens, and something you can angle to set the stage for, but it's not something you can force.
On the other hand, sometimes as a player or DM you want to start getting followers onto the scene. The beginnings of the army you'll lead to overthrow the evil empire or conquer the wilds, the foundation of the order you want to create as your tool to greater power or a legacy to the people, or just a way of taking more bodies with you into a dungeon to protect your back and lets you hold ground you've already cleared even if they don't take significant risks. AD&D built this (clumsily) into the martial classes and 3.5 made it into the Leadership feat (which wasn't less clumsy, just more open). Like many things with downtime, or really anything outside tactical combat, 4e didn't even bother. 5e gives lip service to the concept of followers on pages 92-94 of the DMG, and a little more on pg 127 where groups of followers come with strongholds, but that's almost entirely management of those locations once they exist... and not terribly developed even so.
At the high end it's around 4 years of searching. Given that you're looking for someone with adventurer level stats, substantial power, and probably their own level of fame who will come hold your lance, that's quite generous. If you're clearly affluent you can drop that as low as about a single year... which is still generous.
While I generally try to shy away from the whole Accountants and Actuaries feel of "big math," when a player decides they want something specific from a background or downtime action, like a follower, I don't feel bad about making them go through a few calculator steps. We're not talking GURPS Vehicles design (for those familiar with that old gaming calculus textbook), but punching things into a calculator or polishing off the old longhand multiplication and division isn't beyond the realm of reason for a special downtime activity that will provide an ongoing benefit. I would never consider this level of complexity for a system during an adventure, and would probably express annoyance rather than helpfulness at a player who tried to do this during a session at all, rather than before or after.
An edited version of this downtime activity is now available at the DM'S Guild.
No comments:
Post a Comment