Monday, July 19, 2010

Thoughts on Henchmen

I was reading Al Nofi's CIC on StrategyPage today, and saw this ...

"When the Duke of Alba set out from northern Italy for the Netherlands in 1573, his army consisted of about 9,600 troops and nearly 7,000 camp followers."

Could be interesting if every henchmen you wanted to bring on an adventure had 0-2 followers with him - wife, kids, whatever - or perhaps the requirements for strongholds (1 armorer for X troops) were carried over to expeditions as well. In truth, the added annoyance would probably guarantee my players would never use henchmen (or henchman - 10,000 gp in their pockets, and the most they would ever hire was one guy, with a few hit points, who always managed to die within an hour of leaving town ... Gygax help me, I tried).

4 comments:

  1. The K.A.Pendragon game's "4 knights going to tourney = 30 people + 45 horses" is a touchstone of mine.

    IMG starting adventurers may only have a single Sancho Panza NPC for the entire party, but by mid-levels we generally end up with entourages of positively Hackmasterish proportions (apprentices/squires/acolyte/proteges, drinking buddies, heralds, servants, muleskinners, cooks, hangers-on/leeches, etc.)

    Some of the henchies have minor mechanical effects, others are just there for colour and lugging ability.

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  2. a big slice of the followers would have been prostitutes.

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  3. Which would make them only slightly less honorable than your average adventurer ;)

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