Warband Management

Chapters

The Grand Campaign is divided up into large turns called 'Chapters'. Each Chapter structures the course of the game, allowing for the easy tracking of time, resource income and expenditure as well as tracking events and encounters. Each Chapter is divided into phases, which are covered below. You go through each phase from top to bottom, but you are aware of the information from phases you haven't yet reached- so for example, you can't make firm decisions about encounters before you decide your Acquisitions, but you can base your Acquisitions around the information you can see from those encounters.

Resource Review

This phase lists all of your resources and the condition they are in. There aren't any decisions to be made here, but it serves as an important element of bookkeeping.

  • Special Cards. Special Cards provide advantages to the Warband, and are gained through good play and success. Success Cards are stockpiled, and expended on use. You may use as many as you want, at any point in the Chapter except during encounters. The Special Cards are listed below.
    • Cameraderie. The Cameraderie card may be expended to pay for all the wages of the Warband's Henchmen for free.
    • Elite Henchman. Certain Henchman types are marked as 'Elite' and may not be recruited unless you expend an Elite Henchman card first. You may only recruit one Henchman per card use. You still have to find the Henchman and pay hiring wages.
    • Legend. You can expend a Legend card to permanently increase a single Hero's Fate Point pool by one.
    • Training. The Training Card may be expended to provide a single point of Experience. This point is then spent on buying a talent for a certain class of Henchman. All Henchmen of that type in your Warband, including ones you hire in the future, gain that talent. For example, you can use the Experience point to purchase the Sound Archer talent for all Empire Huntsmen; all Empire Huntsmen from now on will permanently increase their Ranged score by 1.
  • Crowns. This lists the party's Crowns. It's divided into two parts: the party treasury and the party's Permanent Wealth level.
    • The Warband treasury is simply all the Crowns left over from last chapter. Every Warband starts with a treasury of 150 crowns at the start of the first chapter. The Warband Treasury is spent to acquire Henchmen and can also be spent to buy equipment for Heroes.
    • The Warband's Permanent Wealth is a reflection of the Warband's passive income from odd jobs, selling sundries, etc. At the start of each chapter, you add a sum of Crowns equal to the Permanent Wealth to your Treasury. Every Warband begins with 10 Permanent Wealth.
  • Warband Roster. This lists the Warband's members, divided into Heroes and Henchmen.
  • Armory. This lists all the weapons and armour owned collectively by the party.
  • Location. This lists where the Warband currently is.

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Henchman Management

In this phase, you manage your Henchmen. This phase deals with paying Henchman's wages, hiring (or firing) Henchmen, and using any Experience generated by the Training card to buy talents for Henchmen.

Henchmen are the underlings, the 'generic' soldiers of the Warband who lack the skills and intangible markers of greatness that Heroes do. Henchmen do not gain experience like Heroes do. They have no Fate Points. And finally, they come with a set of equipment which may not be changed- if any part of this equipment is lost or damaged, they replace it at the start of the next chapter.

Paying Wages
Each Henchman must be paid a set of wages at the start of each Chapter. This is subtracted from the Treasury.

If you do not have the money to pay wages, then the Henchman becomes 'Unpaid'. Unpaid Henchmen take an -X penalty to their Willpower tests, where X is the number of Chapters they've gone without being paid. If this penalty becomes equal to their Willpower, they leave the Warband. Being paid erases this penalty.

If your Treasury has money, you must pay Henchman wages for it first. If you choose to not pay Henchman wages despite being able to, they will instantly leave.

Alternatively, you can use the Cameraderie card to pay everyone's wages for free.

Hiring Henchmen
If you want to, you can try to hire new Henchmen to fill out your ranks. This is done identically to acquiring new Equipment:
Firstly, you must do a Location Test to find a Henchman of the type you want. This is an Insight or Fellowship test, with a success meaning a successful finding. Any of the Heroes may do these tests. The test is modified by the Henchman's Availability.

  • Common Henchmen are easily found anywhere. You automatically pass the test.
  • Uncommon Henchmen are harder to find and require a flat test.
  • Rare Henchmen are very hard to find and apply a -2 penalty to the test.
  • Ultra-Rare Henchmen are almost impossible to find; they apply a -4 penalty to the test.
  • Unique Henchmen cannot be hired through normal means.

Availability is modified by the Warband's Location, too; Empire soldiers are easy to find in the Empire, but less so in Tilea as an example.

Once you have found a Henchman, you may then pay a hiring fee for the Henchman (which is typically equal to five times the Henchman's chapter wage). The money to hire Henchmen comes from the Treasury. Henchmen do not have to be paid wages in the same chapter that they're hired.

You may make a number of attempts to hire new Henchmen equal to the Leader's Fellowship or Insight per chapter.

The number of Henchmen you have depends on your Warband type and the number of Heroes you have. Furthermore, certain classes of Henchmen are limited in how many you can have in your Warband at once.

Training Henchmen
You can train Henchmen using the 'Training' special card. Expending the card produces 1 XP. You may then select a class of Henchman in your Warband and spend that XP. From now on, all Henchmen of that class, including ones hired in the future, gain that talent. The Talents may not be Band Talents. Common Henchmen may only be trained in Tier 1 talents, but Elite Henchmen may be trained in Tier 1 and 2 talents. They may be talents enabled by culture.

Acquisitions

In this phase, you acquire new equipment and invest in the Warband's finances.

Acquiring Equipment
During this stage, every Hero can use their own gc or, with permission, the Warband's gc to purchase new equipment. These are known as 'Acquisitions'. Warbands are often on the move and rarely have the luxury of loitering around marketplaces, and so the number of acquisitions they can make per turn are limited: each Hero may make up to their Insight scores' worth of Acquisition attempts per chapter.

Full rules for purchasing equipment may be found here: Equipment The basics will be replicated here:

All equipment has a gc ('gold crowns') amount, and buying this item costs that much gc. However there's more to buying items than spending money- some items are less common and need to be found.

You purchase equipment during the Acquisitions Phase of the Campaign Cycle. Firstly, you have to make a Location Test, which may either be Insight or Fellowship as you like. This test is modified by an item's Availability:

  • Common Items are easily found anywhere. You automatically pass the test.
  • Uncommon Items are harder to find and require a flat test.
  • Rare Items are very hard to find and apply a -2 penalty to the test.
  • Ultra-Rare Items are almost impossible to find; they apply a -4 penalty to the test.
  • Unique items cannot be acquired off a market and must be found through other means.

Location Tests are commonly modified by the location of the Warband, too: being in Marienburg, centre of commerce, offers a greater chance of finding items than, say, a small burned out Bretonnian village where no one reads. A failed Location Test means the time is wasted and the acquisition attempt is wasted as well.

Once you have found an item, you may then pay the gc to buy it. If for some silly reason you've gone looking for an item but don't have the money, you can reveal its location to an ally, but if it is not bought this Cycle, the test must be repeated later.

Selling Equipment
You can sell equipment, too. You get 50% of their buying price back, rounded down, and this does not take up any acquisitions.

Investment
If the Warband has money left over after wages and acquisitions, it may invest its money into the Warband's ongoing finances. For every 10 gc spend in this way, the Warband's Permanent Wealth increases by 1 gc.

Events

Events are special incidents that occur during an Chapter, and range from small scale situations- for example, a fight amongst the party's aides risks creating long-term resentment- to large ones- for example, decisions that might impact a whole city or nation.

  • Each event comes with a description of the situation, and the players must then come up with their own solutions, which they can query to the GM as to whether or not they'll work. Some example solutions may be presented.
  • After a solution is agreed on, it is enacted and the result is given then and there.

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Encounters

Encounters are the meat of the Chapter, and represent the Warband engaging in something- often violent combat, but sometimes a non-violent investigation or a social engagement. Thus encounters are divided into two types:

  • Combat Encounters, which are violent confrontations with hostile parties. Their names are marked in red.
  • Non-Combat Encounters, which rely on skill and player cleverness over combat ability. Their names are marked in green.

Propositions use the Encounters rules listed here.

The Warband may be offered multiple Encounters per Chapter. Regardless of how many, each member of the Warband may only participate in one Encounter per Chapter, plus another for every Fate Point they have. Thus Henchmen may only pick one.
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Conclusion

In this final phase, any special tests that should occur at the end of the Chapter are made. Then we take stock of everything and repaste the Resource Review, now with all the changes from the other phases updated. With that done, the Chapter ends.

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Logs

Not a phase in and of itself. Here we keep an ongoing log of all XP gains, Special Cards, Hires and Acquisitions from Chapter to Chapter.
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