A follower with a profession key word gets equipment from that key word. Non-profession key words (cultural or magic) do not include equipment however. I suppose this becomes a "negotiate with your narrator" situation. Presumably most narrators would at least give equipment required by their skills (spear and shield if you have spear and shield combat, for example). In some cases there will be a reasonable equivalent professional key word, based on the cultural or magic key word, or based on the followers role. In other words, a Destor (orlanth adventurous) initiate or someone who was called a bodyguard could be assumed to have a warrior's equipment. Other cases would not be so clear cut (does an Issaries get a mule and trade goods? What equipment does someone with the "Tarsh" keyword, who was hired as a guide, have?) I don't think there is any easy rule of thumb other than looking at equivalence and using common sense—it is just something to think about before the first time the equipment is needed ("we all get on our horses and gallop after them!" "What about your guide, do you leave him behind?" "What, he doesn't have his own horse????")
2. Improving Follower Equipment
In Hero Wars you tended not to worry much about follower equipment, since it didn't affect contests unless they were acting for you or on their own (i.e. the edge of your follower's weapons and armor didn't affect how many AP they gave you, or how well they could augment you). If you did have to think about it, you could look at your wealth rating and figure out how well you could afford to outfit them, based on the rules there.
In Hero Quest, things change. You do have to worry about follower equipment, because you adjust follower abilities by relevant modifiers before figuring how many AP they add, so in equipment influenced situations like combat this can be somewhat significant (two followers with chain mail versus no armor are an additional 6 AP for the hero, not huge, but worth knowing about). This is a significant change, in that in HW you could just cancel off roughly equivalent equipment, but in HW you can't do that unless there is also similar follower equipment and similar numbers of followers.
HQ specifically does not have rules for buying permanent equipment of note with your wealth, insisting that you use hero points to cement anything you wish to add to your hero on a permanent basis. (As an aside, I would use a house rule stating that you can be assumed to have access to the equipment suitable for your role, so if you become a clan war band leader, you will (usually, depending on clan wealth) have metal armor, but that goes with the position as a perk for filling it.)
To upgrade your own equipment generally takes hero points. It seems like having to upgrade all of your follower equipment with hero points could be a little expensive, but on the other hand, as the hero gains power and fortune, it would seem odd if the hero's followers were still using the same scruffy equipment they'd started with back when. I'm not sure if there is any perfect solution, although I' perhaps look at the living standards, and assume that followers are one standard below the hero, and look at typical equipment for someone in that general role at that wealth level, and just rule that they get so equipped. So if you are wealthy, your followers are comfortable, and any of them that would expect to be in danger probably have leather armor, if they didn't already have better. If you want them better equipped than that, spend the hero points.
Any thoughts on rules of thumb to deal with any of this, or house rules that anyone will be using, are appreciated.
--Bryan
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