Repository navigation
Followers
Hirelings, initiates, a crew, an animal companion, a summoned thing: everyone who follows your character lives on the Followers tab of your sheet, each on their own card. This page covers the cards, ordering followers around, and what happens when they're hurt. Your GM portrays them, and two buttons on each card are for the GM's side: They balk and Use up their resources.
- Create a follower at the bottom of the tab makes a new one from scratch. When a move or possession of yours brings a particular follower, a button for it sits beside that one (Pim's sheet reads Add Good dog). Closing Create a follower part way asks before throwing away what you've written.
- Some moves and possessions bring followers with them (a Marshal's crew, a Blessed's initiates, a Ranger's companion). They're added when you take the move.
- Drag an NPC or a monster onto your sheet and the system offers to turn it into your follower, with the stats it needs.
- An arcanum that lets you summon something (Manifest) adds the summoned follower here, asking the picks from the card's back first. If an older follower is missing picks, a Finish prompt lets you complete it, or Remind me later.
Each card shows the follower's HP, Instinct, Cost, tags, gear, moves and Readiness, plus:
- Loyalty pips. Click a pip to set it.
- Pay cost (Strengthen Your Bond). Pay their cost and, if you haven't done so recently, they hold +1 Loyalty, up to 3. If you already paid since the last End of Session, the button tells you the book wants a significant scene "on camera" first.
- Spend Loyalty, when a move or the GM calls for it.
- Tags with an explanation on hover, and Add a tag… to give them a new one.
- Outfit, to pack their gear for an expedition.
- Debility (p.243), when they're weakened, dazed or miserable.
Did you know?
- Each card's sections fold like an accordion: opening one closes the others. Hold
Shift,CtrlorCmdwhile clicking to keep several open at once.- The magnifying glass beside Followers filters the cards by name (
Escclears it).- The small portrait on a card opens bigger when clicked, with the same framing and Tokenizer buttons as your own portrait.
- Drag a follower's card onto the map to put their token there. Drags that start on a button or a box don't count, so you can still click those normally.
Click Order on a card (or around their token in a fight) to open Order Followers. Mark each of their tags as helping, getting in the way, or neither, and the bonus is worked out as you go. Advantage and disadvantage have their own switches. You roll the move for them.
In a fight, followers get Clash, Let Fly, Defend and Order around their token; see Fights (for Players).
Followers never act on their own. When the GM decides one won't do as they're told (Book I, p.466), the GM, or you on the GM's word, clicks They balk on the card. A window asks why (Scared, Overwhelmed, Unreasonable order or Against their nature) and, optionally, what the order was. A card goes to chat with three answers:
- Spend 1 Loyalty: the follower does it anyway.
- Persuade them: rolls the leader's Persuade (vs. NPCs).
- Let it drop: they don't do it.
Only the leader's owner can answer, or the GM while none of that character's owners is logged in. The answer posts as its own card, and deleting that answer card reopens the question.
When the GM makes the move "Use up their resources" (Book I, p.182) on a follower, click Use up their resources on the card. It lists only what that follower has to lose:
- 1 Loyalty, while they hold any;
- Uses of Supplies (a crew), taken from a part-used ◇ before a full one;
- Ammo, one step: low, then all out (a follower who uses ammo);
- A piece of their gear, which is unticked rather than struck off, so it can be packed again.
Type how it shows if you like ("a strap snaps and the waterskin is gone"). The change is logged under the move's name, and a card tells the table what was lost.
A crew or group follower is one card for many people. Its card adds:
- steppers to add or remove members, and Name this member to name each one;
- shared HP, with a reset;
- Restock supplies (a crew only).
When members fall, they're struck off the roster (a group keeps at least two).
- With the party. Mark which followers are with the party. At Make Camp, they're the ones who need feeding, and fed followers regain half their max HP when the camp settles. See Camp, Journeys and Group Moves.
- Recover and Convalesce. Both moves can include your followers: tick who Recovers with you (1 use of supplies each) or who rests with you back to full HP.
- Handing over. You can give a follower to another player's character. A GM must be online to make the change.
- Lend it your strength. A Ranger with Beast-Bonded can lose 1d6 HP to heal their animal companion by as much.
At 0 HP a follower's fate is in the GM's hands (Book I p.469). A window opens on the GM's screen to pick Dead, Death's Door or Dying; closing it means the blow wasn't lethal. Death's Door is rolled by the follower's player from the chat card. A crew or group member who dies is struck off that roster.
Two moves stay the player's:
- Loyal to the End (the Ranger's animal companion) replaces the GM's pick and opens on the player's screen.
- Sir, Permission to Die, Sir: when the GM picks Dead, the player's window opens first, so you can spend 1 of their Loyalty to keep them alive (at 0 HP and out of the action), or let them go and mark XP.
With no GM online, the player picks the fate.