Perilous Wilds: Hirelings, Hit Points, and the Group tag
Jeremy Strandberg, or anyone who has used the PW follower rules:
Do you assign Hit Points to a follower differently when they have the Group tag?
Like, I can imagine adapting the Grunt Squad rules from Risus, so that Hit Points represent something more like morale until the group scatters (or something). But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t overlooking an obvious or not-so-obvious function of scale and HP for follower groups.
Have you ever used the Group tag to represent an army?
When I use group followers, I assume that each member of the group is still an individual with their own HP.
So a group of able-bodied porters would be made up of, oh let’s say a dozen hardy, labor-wise individuals, each of which has 6 (or maybe 9) HP.
But the HP of the individuals only come into play when an individual comes into focus in the game. Otherwise, I just use it as a guideline for abstraction.
For example, if the PCs (cruel, entitled bastards that they are) force one of those six porters to go first through the trap-laden hallway, and I know that the trap does d10 messy damage, I’ll make them roll that d10 and see whether or not the porter lives (either way, the poor bastard is probably crippled and quite possibly dying).
Or if they have one of the porters hold the door against an orc, I’d roll the orc’s damage vs. the individual porter’s HP to see if the porter survived.
But if the action was more like “an orc berserker wades into the huddled mass of porters,” I’d probably just handle that in the abstract. Maybe I’d have them roll +Quality to Do Their Thing and survive (being hardy puts this within their tags, I think), and use the HP vs. Damage Die as an indicator of just how many of them were murdered or maimed by the berserker.
I think that Jason Lutes, however, tends to consider the HP of a group as a group-level resource. So he’d just roll the orc’s damage and be like “huh, 9 damage vs. 6 HP? guess that orc just splatters those porters all over the place.” I think that’s totally valid, too (though I’d maybe have the orc roll [w]Xd damage, where X is the number of porters?).
As for using groups for armies, I haven’t done it but I’m pretty sure it’d work. You’d likely want to tweak the tags (e.g. add something for cavalry and for different sizes of units, maybe swap out organized for formation or something like that). And maybe reflavor Loyalty as Morale, and reflavor Order Followers as Morale Check. But the underlying structure would, I think, hold up.
Oh, other possibly relevant threads:
plus.google.com – A quick and I think simple question. When a follower has the +group tag, my …
and…
plus.google.com – Hi all. I’ve been away. Great to be back! I wonder if there are those FotF p…
Wonder when Sage and Adam will finish Inglorious, the book on mass combat. Or is that even a thing any more?
I should have known such a simple question would have been addressed before. Thank you so much for the research!
Late to the thread, but I do in fact run group followers the way Jeremy suggests. And I also use the [w]xD damage roll when they take damage.
Jason Lutes: When the group takes damage, do you have some method to determine that one of them is incapacitated? Or do you just extrapolate that entirely from the fictional positioning?
It’s all extrapolated when I do it. Generally if they’re a group they stick together and will suffer together whatever befalls them as a group, but if we’ve established that, say, one of them is separated from the others when the monsters attack, that unfortunate soul might limit the damage sustained.
For us the group tag has meant, fiction-wise, that they almost always act as a single mass. If one or two get singled out as interesting individuals and survive a harrowing adventure, they might become individual followers. But generally speaking, one of the disadvantages among the “strengths and disadvantages that come with greater numbers” is that they are essentially a multi-limbed lump.
> But generally speaking, one of the disadvantages among the “strengths and disadvantages that come with greater numbers” is that they are essentially a multi-limbed lump.
That reminds me of a characterization I read of dungeon fantasy adventurers in general—was it in the Sorcerer rulebook?—as “multi-legged vertebrates”.
Makes me think about a new move: “When you split the party, take your Last Breath unless you are in a place of comfort and safety.” 😉
Jeremy Strandberg, and Jason Lutes: Do you stat up the Ranger’s animal companion as a Follower with Hit Points, damage die, Quality, and tags?
I do! The PDF download of Perilous Wilds include a ranger sheet with the animal companion as a follower (also with moves like Strider and a Safe Place updated to interface with the PW travel moves).
Thanks—I can’t find it in my archive. Do you know the file name?Never mind, I found it! Thanks!
I showed it to the player of our Ranger in Planets Collide, and she likes it a lot better than the default Animal Companion. Looks like we’re going to try it out next session. Thanks again, Jeremy Strandberg!