This post, and rules change, is heavily inspired by comments by Douglas Cole. His comment was that knights - with Born War Leader - should be better at recruiting hirelings - than the cleric, whose IQ beats the knight's Born War Leader-improved Leadership skill. I was immediately swayed by this, but I didn't love the rough proposed suggestion of making BWL or Leadership work better. I think the issue is that IQ is too broadly effective.
Here is my proposed solution.
This is a change to Where Did You Find This Guy?, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen, p. 29.
The base roll for finding a henchmen is IQ-3, instead of IQ. Skill rolls are unmodified.
As a secondary note, Loyalty rolls are made based on the hiring character. To quote DF15, p. 30:
"Make a reaction roll when a hireling first signs up. Apply
the usual reaction modifiers of the hirer, who may be a PC or
an NPC companion, and record the result. This number is
effectively a new stat for hirelings: Loyalty."
So if the cleric (IQ 14) or wizard (IQ 15) goes out and hires a squire or killer, the roll for Loyalty is 3d6 plus or minus the net reaction modifier of the cleric or wizard. If the Knight (IQ 10) with Born War Leader 2 hires the same squire or killer, the roll gains a +2 for Born War Leader. Who they nominally are commanded by or working for doesn't matter, the actual hiring character matters.
Notes:
Why didn't I just do this when I wrote it? Well, I actually didn't write that section, that I recall. I believe it was purely Sean Punch, and it draws on GURPS Basic Set.
With this change and clarification, it should be clear that the best person for the job will almost always be the template closest to the specialty.
You can always keep the base IQ roll, give a bonus to Loyalty for higher skill - each level above IQ is worth +1. So a knight with Born War Leader 2, IQ 10, and Leadership-13 has a net +3 (+1 for Leadership at IQ+1, +2 for BWL 2, not double-counting BWL) on Loyalty. Compare that with a cleric with IQ 14 gaining a Loyalty bonus of +0. Or do both.
For Felltower, I chose to go with the IQ penalty, but I'm open to persuasion - and yes, I do roll Loyalty whenever danger arises or there is a need for some roll for bravery or loyalty. I just like the idea that specialists - and yes, Merchant works across the board - do better finding people than someone who is just intelligent.
I like it, but I'm going to go with IQ-4 or Skill, which ever is better, and the Leadership bonus as a Loyalty bonus (so skilled Leadership types who aren't BWL can also command loyalty). Applicable skills (off the cuff) Area Knowledge (where do the local day jobbers hang out), Carousing (tavern surfing for help), Merchant, Savoir Faire (for members of specialty social orgs), Streetwise.
ReplyDeleteWhy -4, the above skills default to -4 and -5, and I like to go a bit lenient. Also, if they're looking for specific flavours of help, they'll be getting extra penalties anyway.
Why allow a skill other than Leadership (or why not allow Leadership) to find help? I don't like focusing things into one particular niche. Sure, sure any Face worth their salty grin will have all the relevant skills, //but they've specced for it//, this way you'll tend to need two PCs to go hireling hunting, one to get good search results and one to get good Loyalty.
My original idea was IQ-5 or skill, but I figured that IQ-3 makes the actual DF templates competitive within their own area.
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