>Sounds a good idea to only include named followers when
>augmenting/adding AP's.
Just to be clear, they only get their own rating to benefit you if they're named, and thus *have* AP to add or lend. Otherwise they remain essentially unstatted. If they don't have a name in my game, then they're part of a unit that the character may have a relationship with like "Mercenary Company Owes Him 5W" or, the unit itself is a follower with abilities like "Stout Members 5W2".
>What about if a player has a couple of his
>own followers and then an additional half dozen warriors loaned them
>for a particular session. Perhaps they have been given temporary
>leadership of a squad of troops? What affect would these 'temporary'
>troops have when caluclating combat results?
If the player only has a relationship with the unit, then he can only get augments from it, either by using the augment off the abilty straight, if approporiate, or by using it to roll on the community support table. This means, no AP adding or lending, and that the unit is only peripherially involved in whatever fights the character gets in (wathching his back, engaging other foes to cancel multiple opponent penalities, etc)
If the unit is a follower, then the character can add AP equal to some ability of the unit like "Numbers of Footmen 5W." Using that, the unit "survives" or is defeated based on those AP. Meaning that a unit that's "injured" takes a penalty to its "Numbers of Footmen" ability for the next battle. If they're "dying" it doesn't mean that they're all dead, just that perhaps some are, some are likely wounded, and they're so beat up as a unit that they refuse to fight at all.
Basically, use the rules exactly as written, but just remember that a unit can be a described as a single entity in terms of the character employing it. This makes large scale battles simple and fun. The character who leads the unit rolls his leadership relationship before the battle, to see what kind of support he gets from the unit that he has the relationship to (it's posible too to have an even higher level of abstraction for the units as followers, but it's an unneccessary complication). AP total is the character's Mass Combat Strategy or something like that. Then he adds the unit's community support to his tactics and communication die rolls, etc, throughout the battle each round. This is great because it abstracts the events out to a PC-centric POV, and makes the success or failure of the battle still largely the responsibility of the generals leading the armies.
Mike
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