Re: Buying & increasing (follower abilities and) keywords

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 20:07:04 +0100

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 11:54:49AM -0600, Mike Holmes wrote:
> >From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
>
> >If there happens to be any downtime, which is far from being a given.
> >But I get the gist, and yes, this could clearly be generalised somewhat
> >again. Not sure I'm wild about this, as it seems to lead to the
> >somewhat curious disjunct where the player is responsible (entirely) for
> >raising his followers' "ordinary" ability, and the GM (entirely) for
> >their keywords.
>
> But this is just like what happens to PCs. The player can raise their
> "ordinary" abilities, and only the GM can raise the keywords (the player can
> suggest what keyword was employed most, and I'd assume can do the same thing
> with the follower though given only one keyword, that's a tad moot).

It's a possible consequence of the 'Advanced Experience from downtime' interpretation/adaptation, it's not really a feature of 'normal' PC advancement. And it's 'expected and normal' that a PC will increase the abilities within a given keyword in play, whereas doing so with a follower greatly increases their descriptive complexity, since they're now no longer completely captured by 4 numbers.  

> >It'd make more conceptual sense to me to have them both
> >'jointly managed' in some sense that I will entirely fail to make
> >precise. (Nominate and confirm, perhaps, for you US constitution fans,
> >or some sort of 'mixed initiative' approach.)
>
> I get your point. I just don't want Followers to either become albatrosses
> taking up PC potence, or fall behind in effectiveness to the point of
> uselessness.

Well, naturally. My instinct and impression is that (my) players could do with some incentive to spend points on followers at all wrt the HQ baseline, but obviously experiences may differ. (I couldn't claim my own is exactly extensive either, partly due to being deliberately fuzzy about the mid-game switch from HW to HQ over such matters.) Some sort of 'discounted' keyword increase rate would encourage follower advancement, without 'forcing' it in the direction of descriptionlengthening  or extreme specialisation.  

> >A wider question is, how are HPs to be used in making/proposing changes
> >not just to a given character, but his 'environment'.
>
> Interesting question. Maybe a new thread?

I feel that observing too much thread-discipline on this list would almost set a bad precedent. ;-)