RE: Digest Number 1379

From: Nicolas Hughes <nicolas.hughes_at_...>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 11:26:07 -0000

Message: 12
   Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 07:40:24 -0000
   From: "Jane Williams" <janewilliams20_at_...>
Subject: Followers (was Re: Where's the traffic?)

• In HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com, "Roderick and Ellen Robertson" <rjremr_at_s...> wrote:
  >
  > > My question is about followers vs narrator characters in combat.
  I
  > > recently had a situation where my players Heroes were leading a
  group of
  > > narrator characters in combat (see "Seven Samurai"). Should
  Heroes be
  > > allowed to employ these types of narrator character alongside
  whom they
  > > are fighting in the same way they could actual retainers and
  sidekicks?
  > > I mean as a source of augments or APs?
  

> So if you have a Lunar officer with various leadership abilities
and 50 rank
> & file in his unit, he doesn't get all 50 as "followers". But if he
has
> "Follower: Bodyguard" then he gets to use the Bodyguard's "follower
> abilities".

>I seem to remember the way we've done this sort of thing in the past
>is to base the contest on the hero's leadership abiltiies, not his
>(her, in this case) combat ones. So being able to "use" all these
>random strangers is precisely what's being tested. How the abilities
>and numbers of the friendly cannon fodder were compared with those of
>the enemy cannon fodder I'm not sure: I assume they were relevant in
>some way.

I seem to have missed that discussion but it occurs to me that the community support tables give everything you need for this. Use appropriate leadership abilities against the resistance in the table to try to gain the level of support you are after. If your oratory is brilliant and you stoke up the fires of passion to the point where they are suicidally fanatic then you get total support, if willing to fight and take the risks associated then extraordinary support, if they hang back a bit and try to avoid getting hurt then its only moderate support.

You then treat the peasants as an ordinary horde and as they get whittled down the support bonus drops accordingly. Disciplined units of infantry are a slightly different case, they should have bonuses added onto themselves for disciplined formation fighting but that is more appropriate to a set of tabletop wargame rules than your average Heroquest game.

--
Nic



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