Re: Follower abilities

From: ian_hammond_cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 16:51:26 -0000

>I don't like this much, either. It prevents a follower from filling
in a hole in the character's conception, which was a major point of followers in the first place.<

Early on it we definitely saw followers this way, and we encouraged players to add followers to round out character conception and allow them the chnace to participate in all kinds of contest. At low starting ability levels this worked fine, and we really liked the opportunity to participate in a wide vareity of contests it brought.

Then we hit the snag described: If a player spends all his points on one skill he raises all the abilities encapsualted in his followers for free. If I have Speak With Authority 5W2, my bodyguard gives me all the abilites of Warrior 17W and Initiate of Orlanth 13W. It costs 1HP for me to raise all of these abilities. As play progressed and HP were spent, followers were soon percieved to be unbalancing.

If your character conception is not broad enough I would now either say, change it, or take an ally. Or, run two characters.

>You could also make use of the Relationship: (Follower) ability.<
Which, by making supporting characters, who use their abilities as actors, allies we effectively do.

>The Narrator also might be more attentive toward followers: not
allowing a starting character to have more than one or two,<

Even one follower becomes unbalancing because they are a package of skills that are free to raise. It is not the number of them, but the mechanic of allowing you to use their abilities that I have the problem with.

>When a follower dies, they get replaced with another "starter
follower" and have to be built up (perhaps at an accelerated rate).<

As suggested my plan was to begin treating allies this way. Allies are frozen at moment of creation (+/- 2 for beginning characters; otherwise the stats they appeared with), but can be raised with HP.

I suppose that we could just treat all supporting characters this way, stating that suporting characters abilities are fixed and do not automatically improve. It is another fix, but we would have to agree to drop existing characters followers back to this level.Its the automatic advancement that seems to cause the problem.

It is just our ruling. I'm not calling for a change to the rules, just explaining how we got round, what was, for our desired style of play, a problem.

Ian Cooper