I quite liked the whole followers following on at -8 and -12 on their leaders abilities. It actually encouraged players to develop hero bands and maybe not be so good at everything.
If you only dish out 3 or 4 hero points a session things don't get too distorted too fast.
It was "interesting" from a certain perspective to see a character increase his "Misogynist" ability and see all 12 of his followers improve.
Cheers,
Ash
> >>And we used the HW followers rules: they grow as
> you grow. So, add
> >>another 4-6 high level abilities (not always
> available, but even
> >>then...). We shall not do that anymore.
>
> >OK, yeah, that's a big difference there. I like
> that rule in some ways. I
> >wonder if there isn't some way to meet somewhere in
> between.
>
> The chief problem with that Hero Wars rule was that
> it encouraged using all your hero points to up a
> single skill on your character. Your hero's
> followers then automatically rose at the same time.
> So an abusive player would realize that because you
> can use your followers abilities in a contests, this
> was a cheap way of buying a cascade of skill
> increases. So for example I spend all my points on
> Close Combat (Sword and Shield) [Close Combat was a
> broad skill in HW days] and my follower had Debate.
> Every time I raise my Close Combat, his Debate goes
> up too. If I have two or three followers I can
> become good at a whole range of activities very
> cheaply. This tended to lead to very one-dimensional
> characters and to the heroes of players who did not
> follow this approach being eclipsed. "Guys my
> nameless follower is the best amongst us at
> debating".
>
> So it had some issues for us in play.
>
> Ian Cooper
>
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