Question: Can you please clarify your position on the Legend rating of Followers? We are having a discrepancy in how you have it written within your House Rules. Are you stating that if a Scion has 5 or more Followers each Follower is 4 Legend behind the Scion, or that Followers 1 & 2 are 2 Legend behind; 3 & 4 are 3 Legend behind, and 5 or more Followers are 4 Legend behind? Thanks for the assistance.
Wow. I made a very confused face for a second there while I was trying to figure out what on earth your second option was even talking about. I get it now, but it sounds like a very convoluted, weird reading of our house rule.
If you have one or two Followers, they're two Legend behind you. Rick Nolan has one Follower, his bodyguard Bruno. Rick is Legend 2 and Bruno is Legend 0, a normal mortal. When Rick becomes Legend 2, Bruno will become Legend 1.
If you have three or four Followers, they're three Legend behind you. Ixion has four mechanical centaur Followers. Ixion is Legend 7 and the centaurs are all Legend 4.
If you have five or more Followers, they're four Legend behind you. Folkwardr has five glowing giant Followers. Folkwardr is Legend 10 and the giants are all Legend 6.
Groups of Followers are always the same Legend; it would be a huge pain in the ass to try to deal with them as a group if they were at different levels of power, and I don't know why anyone would want to do so. The entire point of putting different groups of Followers are at different levels of Legend is to keep them balanced against one another, so that smaller numbers of Followers are more powerful in order to be as useful as larger groups. If a group of five followers had some members as powerful as the group of two, it would still be more powerful just by virtue of having more members, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid.
We want Scions to be able to take the number of Followers that is most appropriate for them without having to feel like taking more is always better; therefore, larger groups of Followers should be individually weaker so that their advantage in numbers is balanced out. A Scion with five samurai should be getting approximately the same usefulness out of her Followers as a Scion with a single bodyguard, so the scaling Follower Legend rating rule is there to ensure that taking multiple followers doesn't always result in your points being worth more.
Separate Follower Birthrights that are not in a group together, however, don't have to be counted as a single group. If you have two Followers who are twin ninjas, and a separate Birthright that is two Followers who are political advisers, both sets of Followers will be two Legend behind you, not three.
Hopefully that's all clear, but ask away if anything's still confusing.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis question arose because of the discrepancy between the rules as written,which lists followers in groups of five, and your own excellent set of house rules. The issue being that as written a starting Scion hero with 3 Legend could begin the game with 5 Tengu Followers who are also Legend 3 creatures. There are also no listed rules for scaling followers of lesser numbers (the Minotaur being the only follower I know that costs 4+ points for less than 5 followers). What do you do in your own game to resolve this issue, i.e. how does one choose less followers of greater power?
As usual the White Wolf rules look cool, but lack internal consistency. Additionaly, what does your group do when a PC ascends from Heroic level to Demigod status? Do followers increase other stats along with their Legend? Thanks for any input you can provide.
Sincerely,
Jim
Yeah, the original Follower rules were definitely lacking, so I feel your pain. Here's what we do:
DeleteIf a player wants fewer than five Followers (which we've had a lot - Sangria has a single Follower in her son Chicahua, for example - that doesn't matter to the dot rating of the Birthright. The dots are there to measure how powerful it is, so a single five-dot Follower should be roughly equivalent to a group of five five-dot Followers. Talk to the player, see approximately what they're thinking about doing or using the Followers for, and give them powers that make sense; just remember to make smaller numbers of Followers a little more powerful than large ones to keep both possibilities balanced. The dots measure how powerful the Follower Birthright is; how many creatures it comprises is totally up to the player.
The Legend rating rules are intended to help with that - so a Legend 4 Scion with a three-dot Follower Birthright that is only one creature has a single Legend 2 creature that's moderately powerful, and one who has a three-dot Follower Birthright that is several creatures probably has a crack troop of mortals that roughly equal what the single Legend 2 Follower might have been able to do.
And then they all go up in Legend along with their Scion, which brings us to your other question. :) Followers actually gain new powers and stats every time a Scion goes up in Legend, not just at the Demigod/God jumps (though we may buff them a little more than usual at those times, since it's a momentous occasion). When the Scion goes up in Legend, the Follower does, too, so they gain a few new powers and abilities or just become a little better, stat-wise.
Basically, we have little mini-character-sheets for Followers that we can update for the player when their Followers increase in strength (there's an example of one in this old post here). It's a little bit of a pain for a Storyteller, but they don't go up in Legend all that often, so it's really more of a fun side project that you get to reward PCs with whenever they clear the next-Legend hurdle.
Nice and kudos on the response time. Luckily we've recently traded the GM hat from myself to the original questioner so it's his problem, mwuahaha. One final question, does your group ever start at Demigod or God level and if so how do you handle the bonus point work around that allows a Demigod to purchase more Legend at this point? From what I've read here on the site you cover Legend advancement as a story device/reward but presumably the Scions in your game may start at least at Legend 4 as written in the book. Feel free to correct me if my supposition is incorrect. Back to the question, if you start at the second or third tier of the game can a player begin with a higher than Legend 5 for Demigods, etc? Again thanks for any insights you can provide.
ReplyDeleteJim
Heh, you caught me just when I woke up, so I was just starting to check out comments. :)
DeleteLegend is never buyable in our games, period, with XP or BP. It's something you need to get through being awesome, not through spending points, and that goes for character creation as much as in the game itself.
When we start a game, since we don't allow Legend to be bought with XP or BP, we just give the players the Legend rating they'll be starting at; generally for Hero chronicles they either all start at Legend 2 or at Legend 3 rather than having variation. We don't often start games at Demigod, but the time we did, we started everyone at Legend 5. If Legend ratings diverge later because some players are really hitting it out of the park faster than others, that's fine, but there's really no reason to ever have PCs start at different Legend ratings.
So, it's basically Conservation of Ninjitsu - a single ninja is a deadly threat, an army of ninjas are simple mooks to be mowed down by the hero at his leisure. ;)
ReplyDeleteOnce again, where would Scion be without you guys?
Cheers!