E. Caracterización regional
3. Región de Cuyo
As your fame spreads, you may attract followers. These followers may travel and adventure with the Heroes. Followers could be crew on a ship, or soldiers on a campaign.
They don’t necessarily have to follow the Heroes everywhere, and some careers (for example, assassin) aren’t conducive to attracting followers. Priests are likely to gain followers, but their followers are unlikely to want to venture much beyond their temple boundaries.
Of course, anyone that attracts too many followers might be seen as a threat – a noble or even the king might be concerned about a large number of mercenaries in the vicinity, for example.
Followers are best handled through role-play. The Hero’s appeal and careers will be things to consider when determining their followers’ actions. In general, the players should have control over their followers, who should only be given relatively mundane tasks. The GM will handle the NPCs by narration. The GM will determine the effect of the tasks given to the followers.
Example: the Heroes make a landing in their damaged galley. There are roughly fifty oarsman plus the Heroes on the ship. The Heroes command the crew to make camp, repair the ship, hunt, procure water, and scout the area. Dice rolls may be made by the players to accomplish these tasks. Beware – you don’t want to roadblock the players over mundane tasks. The die rolls may just represent varying levels of success.
The GM narrates what the followers accomplished: “The crew sets up camp, with tents and fires etc. They fell a tree and will complete repairs by morning on the ship. The hunters were successful and return with several island goats and full water skins. Your scouts return with tales of a stone ruin in a secluded valley to the northwest.” The players should be discouraged from using followers for tasks that they should do themselves. Heroes are supposed to lead and take the risks. If they use followers as ‘meat shields’, they will not gain advancement points. Followers will also abandon the party, if they think the Heroes are unfair.
Followers are a good opportunity to have would- be Heroes in reserve. If a Hero dies during an adventure, a player can make up another character. They have been with the party all along, as
followers, and now have come to the forefront as a Hero in their own right. This allows the player to keep playing the adventure seamlessly. This can also be a chance for the player to have a couple of Heroes made up, and rotate them on separate adventures. This is not meant to suggest that the player play several characters at the same time, but
to play one and have the other ones serve as rabble followers (for now).
You can use 1 AP to attract 10 rabble followers (each with 1 lifeblood). You can use 1 AP for a single tough NPC follower (who you create according to the rules for tough NPCs).
Followers are people specifically attracted to you that will do broadly what is expected of them in normal circumstances. Followers will handle everyday tasks, such as setting up camp, procuring supplies or scouting. They will fight if specifically taken on for that purpose. If expected to do something beyond their normal duties, a Task Roll might be required, using appeal and any appropriate career. If any are killed, in time you will attract more rabble to take their place. This does not apply to tough NPCs – if killed, they remain killed.
Followers are different to a unit of soldiers your character is given to command in a battle, or to your congregation if a priest, or your audience if an entertainer or gladiator. These people do not follow you – they are only “yours” fleetingly, and then they return to their homes, their families, their masters, or their king. Followers are different. As long as they are treated well, they are yours to lead.
Non-Player Characters
NPCs come in three types:4 Rabble
4 Toughs
4 Villains
These are described in more detail in the following sections, but typical ranges of statistics for NPCs are shown in the table below.
Rabble
Rabble are the ordinary unnamed masses – innkeepers, traders, beggars, journeymen, urchins and acolytes. They are the crowds in the marketplace, the audience in the arena, the horde of barbarian raiders ransacking the region, the ordinary soldiers in an army.
They are often poorly armed and armoured, and individually pose no threat whatsoever to the Heroes. En masse, they can be much more of a problem though.
Rabble have 0 in attributes and in their combat abilities. The more experienced will have a career at rank 1. Although some might be described as wearing armour and bearing weapons, they are so poor in comparison to the Heroes that this makes little or no difference to their chances of survival. They have 1 to 3 lifeblood, which means more or less any hit takes them out of the fight. Singly, they use a d3 for damage (irrespective of the weapons they are actually using, and do only 1 point of damage if unarmed).
If they are magicians, they are called students and they have 1 point of Arcane Power. If they are priests or druids, they are called acolytes and one in every six of them will have a Fate Point.
Hordes: rabble can attack as a horde if there is room for them to attack the Hero at the same time. In that case, the horde attacks as one, but receive +1 to their combined Attack Roll for each rabble attacking, so +2 if there are 2, +3 if there are 3 and so on. Circumstances and weapons used will dictate how many are able to attack at the same time. If they manage to hit, they roll d6L for damage, as a group (they do not inflict damage individually). Large groups of rabble in combat with each other are broadly unimportant because the story is about Heroes, not about ordinary folks. If you do have a situation where rabble are fighting against rabble, simply determine which side has the highest number and allow them to cause d6L damage to their opponents – the rabble with the lowest numbers will cause d3 damage to their enemy in one combat round. Don’t even bother with an Attack Roll.
Example: 10 rabble bandits attack the Hero’s 7 rabble followers, whilst he is clashing swords with the bandit leader. The GM rolls d6L and gets a 3 and a 2, so the bandits kill 2 of the followers. The player rolls a d3 and gets a 1, so his followers kill 1 of the bandits. They’re just about hanging on, but they need the Hero to defeat the bandit leader and then lead them to victory!
NPC Type Attributes Combat
Careers Lifeblood
Damage
Special Rules
Rabble
0 0 0–1 1–3 1 or d3 (armed) HordeToughs
0–2 0–2 2 5–8 by weaponToughs
Sometimes you will require some NPCs that are better than rabble but that you don’t wish to make into full villains. These might be sergeants of the city watch, temple guards, or mercenaries and adventurers – a cut above the ordinary foot soldiers, but will never aspire to the heights of the true Heroes. Generally, these characters can be created by spending a few points on attributes, combat abilities, and careers. Give them say 6 lifeblood (plus their strength) and you’re good to go. Here are a few ready-made generic toughs: