Exceptional Mount
Since the earliest days of this comic, Fighter and Lumberjack Explosion have been fast friends. But for nearly as long, there’s been a growing tension between the two. There’s only so much casual cruelty you can put up with as a magical, lawful good creature before you’ve got to put your hoof down. Things came to a head when, sick and tired of Fighter’s murderhoboing ways, Lumberjack Explosion donned the cape of a vigilante and dedicated himself to fighting Fighter crime. We may never know how the pair of unlikely friends met, but it’s clear that things have soured since the early days. Even though they started out as adventure bros, Fighter’s constant disregard for his buddy’s feelings has created a rift. This isn’t a sudden shift, but a slow and inexorable decline.The moral of the story? NPCs have feelings too.
If you’ve got followers, minions, or cohorts attached to your character, then you’ve got to recognize that the way you treat them matters. Even if you spent points or feats or other kinds of meta-currency to acquire your companions, they’ve still got personalities attached to their stats. They’re still NPCs, which means that they still represent relationships that you’ve got to manage.
Should one difference of opinions result in a falling out? Absolutely not. Asking your magical rocket horse to suffer the indignity of a common stable is not grounds for reprisal. Dude can deal with roughing it for a night. But over the life of a campaign, if that sort of thing becomes a pattern of behavior, consequences begin to loom.
For me, the best illustration of this principle comes in the person of Wallace Shawn. Or more specifically, in his character from The Princess Bride, the Sicilian criminal mastermind Vizzini. Here’s a guy who mocks and belittles his companions at every chance. He reminds the barbarian that, “You were not hired for your brains, you hippopotamic land mass!” He digs at the Dex fighter’s weaknesses: “When I found you, you were so slobbering drunk, you couldn’t buy brandy!” And after his untimely death by iocane powder, it doesn’t take long for his one-time employees to join forces with his enemy. More telling still, when you’ve got dudes that can reasonably say, “I just work for Vizzini to pay the bills,” you know that you’ve got problems with company morale.
In my own games, the resident bladebound magus serves as a solid example of the principle. He knows that his sentient scimitar has a mind of her own, and he takes pains to please her. If he ignores the weapon’s particular obsession (she wants her bearer to distinguish himself by swashbuckling feats of daring do), he risks a sudden save vs. her ego. In this example, the mechanics are built into the character class: “In cases where a wielder and the black blade come into conflict, like any intelligent item, a black blade can attempt to exert its dominance.” But even outside the world of sentient magical cutlery, the consequences for ignoring or mistreating NPCs can be very real.
So what do you guys think? Does spending a feat on leadership guarantee loyalty? Is there any way a ranger’s companion would question its master? And if you’ve spent the gold to hire hirelings, exactly how far should they go in following your orders? Let’s hear all about your own (dis)loyal companions down in the comments!
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Wow, wow, wow, wait. Did I just hear that correctly? Lumberjack Explosion is Horsepower!? * the sound of an exploding head * * screams of co-workers * *ambulance siren in the distance *
NOTE: The Handbook of Heroes is in no way liable for the Scannersing of its readership.
While loyalty isn’t an issue with familiars, it definitely is difficult to keep them happy, because what do they actually want? This is definitely highlighted in Critical Role, when Caleb gives Frumpkin some food, only for Frumpkin to dislike eating it. When you have people troops, it’s easy to cater for them; but fey animals, or any creature with non-human needs and mindset? That’s a heck of a lot more tricky.
The loyalty of familiars is beyond reproach? That has not been my experience: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/power-corrupts
In the current campaign, the drow bard gained his army through fear. While typically this would simply cause the army to kill him when his back was turned, or even just surprise attack and pump him full of arrows, he was clever in that he used misdirection and lies to make it appear as though he had allies to summon and protect him. He was also quite careful to talk with the other party members and army, to give just enough to the army to stop his allies going tyrant-slayer on him and his army deciding death was better than this. While ruling through benevolence is a much more stable form of leadership, I think that the bard did a good job of ruling through fear in the safest way possible.
If your benefits package includes, “Will not be killed by horrors beyond imagining,” it’s usually a good idea to stick with the company. Kudos to the bard for managing his relationships.
As a DM, I’m experiencing a form of this with regards to players working for factions. Typically, when a PC commands an NPC, they will tell the NPC exactly what to do. However, you can’t do this with PCs, as of course they choose their own paths, and may choose to turn the job down. They may also request aid from the faction as well. So a PC working for an NPC does become a strange relationship, as both are making requests of one another, but neither is actually giving specific instructions or mandatory orders.
(Though it’s possible that this is presumption on my part; when the drow bard was told of what his boss would like done, the bard immediately did as he was asked, in the same manner a PC would of their own minions. So it’s possible that my vision of the PC-boss relationship is not, in fact, the standard)
As we might learn from the opening lines of Anna Karenina, every boss/minions relationship is unhappy in its own special way.
With regards to the awakened animals… usually, awaken is limited to the 1000 gp consumable component, so before casting it a druid must think, “Why would I cast this?”. Same with spells such as hallow and clone. But once wish comes online, ignoring components… the question becomes, “Why WOULDN’T I cast this?”. And getting ultimate arcane powers is likely not good for one’s sanity. So I imagine that some crazed wizard is running around handbook-world, raising random people, consecrating/desecrating ye olde tavern, and awakening whatever he comes across.
That’s an awfully long way to say, “A wizard did it.” 😛
Awaken could also be bypassed entirely by first using a headband of intellect and then using a tome of clear thought to lock the bonus in
My wizard has a beloved mount, a giant jerboa mount (it’s a giant dire rat in stats, reflavored to not have any diseases as he’s a very anti-disease ratfolk). She’s an adorable ball of fluff and practical too!
The issue is, being level 14 at this point, she became… Redundant. Not only does my ratfolk have Overland Flight active 24 hours a day or access to teleportation to avoid long-term travel, but the weakest of spells at our level will demolish her CR1 health pool. Meaning she is, at best, a pack mule mount you park outside a dungeon (which is still a risky thing to do), or a city-only formal mount.
She spends a lot of time in stables or at our HQ in Magnimar, as such. And has started to gain weight due to lack of exercise.
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/014/061/480/large/alena-busygina-rat-mount3.jpg?1562755731
Laurel had this problem with her fighter in our mythic game. We wound up questing for a magic pool to give her horse the half-dragon template and a few bonus hit dice. I suggest something similar. Gaining a full on druid animal companion is a big deal, but at 14th level it shouldn’t be too much of a game-breaker, especially if you devote a lot of your character wealth to the effort.
Ah, Jameson, Jameson. In our old campaign, he was an awakened fish. Our monk tried to keep him as a pet, so he shoved Jameson into his jar. He forgot that his jar is used to teleport things through it, and at that point we were missing the other jar that was the target of the teleport.
We have met Jameson later; and according to our DM, in our current campaign (which is a sequel after we effed up the previous, and Orcus turned everything into death and doom and raining blood and stuff), Jameson is still alive somewhere…
You had a literal awakened animal named Jameson? Yo… Small multiverse I guess.
Leadership definitely doesn’t guarantee loyalty. Heck, it outright calls out penalties (albeit to your number of followers, not cohorts) if you’re a bad leader.
While not related to leadership, I’ve got a story about the party’s bad actions creating a rift between themselves and NPCs:
So the party came across a friendly tribal village while trekking through the frozen north. The tribespeople shared their food and the mystic (a decent-levelled witch) seemed poised to become the first source of spellbook additions that the party’s wizard had seen in months. Then the tribe happily revealed that the food they’d shared was humanoid meat, and invited the PCs to join in their cannibalistic ways.
The wizard turned to the other PCs and spoke in Abyssal, which everyone had learned at some point. He told the more charismatic ones to play it cool and politely decline, since the people weren’t hostile to them and he still wanted to bargain for spells. He then said some exceptionally vulgar things about their culture, right in front of them, on the assumption that Abyssal was the party’s personal secret language and he wouldn’t be understood.
I’m sure you can see where this goes. The tribe’s mystic spoke Abyssal.
Now, he was angry about getting insulted, but knew he’d tricked the PCs into eating human, and so understood why they might be angry. While frustrated and insulted, he was still willing to diplomacize, and said as much. Except the PC wizard then accused him of being a demon worshipper for speaking Abyssal and shouted to the tribe to rise up against him.
Mystic: “I am no demon-worshipper, I have simply studied many languages! What is your excuse, as you clearly speak the tongue of demons as well?”
Wizard: “I’ve studied many languages as well!”
Mystic: “And yet you don’t consider that another may have done the same?”
Wizard: “B-but you foisted your filthy cannibalistic ways upon us!”
Mystic: “We apologized for that! And could you stop insulting is to our faces?”
…As you can imagine, it broke down and devolved into combat. When the PCs saw the tribe’s noncombatants cowering in the shadows and realized that they were kind of the baddies in this situation, they decided to knock the warriors and mystic out nonlethally. They left feeling very awkward about it all, and from that point onwards stopped using Abyssal as a “Say whatever we want on the assumption that nobody can understand us” language.
lol. Love it when the, “Are we the baddies?” moment crops up.
You’d think that gamers could come up with a solution beyond, “It broke down and devolved into combat.” Maybe swallow your pride, apologize fully, and chalk one up to cultural differences. Of course, ours is a combat-cetric hobby. And I guess when all you have is a hammer….
This is a 5e game.
But about 3 sessions in, we’ve picked up an npc fighter of all things. Santa Cravencrest. Battlemaster, but someone that was a bit of a jerk, a bit of a racist, and our party had hired his services.
We did through the course of 80-ish sessions help this npc, and so many others in our actions that during what would have been a party wipe, the npcs came to our aid, buying time enough to drive off the dragon and others.
We though have tried to both respect and cultivate the npcs in our party. From non-humans, to even playing the political game, and helping refugees.
The gm has been a good one on encouraging the good and bad aspects of both in this, and its been great.
You bring up an interesting point: It’s not just about supporting your NPCs as a matter of tactical advantage. The way you interact with them is an opportunity to show off your PC’s personality. Choosing who to like, who to slight, and when to help, can all be interesting choices. And that’s what good games are made of. 🙂
Haven’t you heard of a spell called “Geas”? It may not assure the loyalty of the people at your command, they can resent be dominated and forbidden from disobey you. That is why one of my wizards use as a thereat, nothing keeps the people loyal to you as the looming doom of a “Kill your own family” Geas 😀
As for the Awakened animals, i don’t know who may be in the HBoH in our game, well i will give you a clue: “Sic semper tyrannis” 😉
Also why the change on font? What happened? 🙁
We’ve heard a couple of times now that our standard font is hard to read. Laurel is experimenting. How’d she do?
Terribly, i don’t like it. Too easy to read. Where is the mystery of the comic if i don’t need to devote hours to decipher such an arcane signs as the former font 🙁
Just kidding:P
But while easy to read i like more the former one, with that at least i didn’t have a problem or complain this one… too easy, too un-epic. You know the scroll effect the comic have? The one that make me think that there was smoking goblin ears? That and the font make a lovely parchment effect. Like each comic is a illustration with a little advise inside The Handbook of Heroes, but this new font don’t make that effect. If people complain, well try new fonts but this one, while not bad, isn’t good enough.
Hope my advise help you and you find it use full, cut to Laurel suffering while trying to use another font 😛
Cheers, Schattensturm! We shall continue to iterate.
Try other fonts, one of them must be good enough to read and enjoy as we like 🙂
Huh… I’m not a big fan of this font. It’s not nearly enough of a problem to drive away my readership, but it feels… less epic fantasy adventure than the old one. Then again, “epic fantasy adventure” and “ease of use” are not always strongly correlated.
So uh… Are you absolutely in love with the old font, or do you feel like there might be a happy medium out there?
There’s probably a middle ground. I only have these two fonts to go on, after all, so all I can say is that I prefer one over the other for this context (while also acknowledging that my brain is more used to that font in this context).
In terms of NPC companions…
My Paladin would often subject his steed to physical danger, (Steeds poof rather than dying so the danger wasn’t actually a big deal since he was just a summon away) and dad jokes, but otherwise treated him quite well. Danger and dad jokes just came with being the steed to a PalaDad.
My Wizard had a bat familiar named “Manuel” whom he was as rude to as he was to everyone else, but he also let Manuel hang from his hat, and smoke his spell components so it evened out.
The last party I DM’d had a Giff companion who would occasionally respond to their mistreatment in novel ways. When he caught someone trying to steal his pistol, he decided to give them a grenade, telling them “If I’m not present, pull the pin and it will signal help.” The group didn’t get far enough for anything to come of it.
The party I’m DMing includes a Paladin who is great buddies with his steed, a Chain Warlock who gets up to shenanigans with his Imp, and a Bard who employs a fellow and has a pet owlbear cub. The employed fellow is treated moderately well, and paid quite well. It helps that his last job was testing potions, and the party actually saved him from the monster that ate his last employer and had him chained in the basement. The owlbear cub has been with them since hatching and is well-fed so no issues.
I’m becoming increasingly tempted to mistreat my companions, just to see what happens RP-wise.
In the cursed island shipwreck campaign, the party had the aid of three Level 2 sailors named Steve, Steven and Stephan. (One later was promoted to a Level 5 Fighter to both fill a gap in the party from players moving on and to celebrate his success beating a ghoul to redeath with a torch.) The Alchemist, Wushi, was, pardon the phrase, flavored as a chef, and he pretty consistently used Polypurpose Panacea to make alcohol for the group. As a result, the Steves always stuck closely to him and sided with him in any disputes within the party. (In the campaign’s greatest plot twist, ALL THREE Steves survived the cursed island of zombies, aberrations and mad science.)
In the current campaign I am running, one player has two PCs (to have a full party), one of whom is the other’s slave/manservant/gladiator. The slaveowner is a fairly reasonable master, but everyone at the table keeps joking that the real reason that the slave goes along with this is that when he eventually kills his master and takes all of his stuff, it’ll be nice if the master was rich from adventuring/crafting schemes. Also, as of the end of the last session, the slave has been Charm Person’d by an antagonist who then ran off with them and the person the PCs were supposed to be rescuing, leaving the party with no idea where they are, who took them, why, or even that they have been taken at all. So, not a conscious rebellion, but who knows what will happen while the slave is off hanging out with his “new great friend”? Will he be embarrassed when he rejoins the party or demand a renegotiation of his contract?
Lastly, tangentially related, but the 2e campaign I am a player in has in just the second session had a possibly party-splitting instance of over-escalated “It’s what my character would do” PvP between the Barbarian and my medic Rogue. (Rogue came out on top due to superior movement speed.) For now, these characters deeply dislike each other. Only time will tell if this evolves into an entertaining banter-filled rivalry between two stubborn types or if it tears the party apart to the point of requiring one or more PC replacements.
Wait… Do the NPC Steves get a vote in party decisions? That’s a novel idea! Whoever is nicest to the NPCs de fact wields more power in group decisions.
I don’t recall any formal votes, but when disagreements come up, having four people to the other side’s two people + 1 dinosaur helps add persuasiveness to your case.
As an additional factor, the Alchemist had filled his formula book with an amazing array of useless spells (though Detect Secret Doors actually found something… TWICE!), and kept using his 1st-level slots for Polypurpose Panacea, so the fact that he was literally spending his daily PC resources on making the NPCs like him gave me additional reason as a DM to reward him for doing it.
To answer the question of who is casting Awaken on all these animals…. I would assume Druid? She has to do something with all her money and rather than spending it on the trappings of civilization, I imagine annoying city folk by making their beasts of burden and pets smarter than them would be right up her alley. =P
I’ve never made much assumptions about the loyalty of mechanics granted minions as to me, they’re a creature you the player is meant to roleplay as too. So their relationship should always be whatever you want it to be, but of course that has to make some kind of sense to you too since you have to be able to roleplay it.
As for hirelings, I always assumed their loyalty was more or less as guaranteed to the degree in which matches the money you’re paying for them +/- how they’re treated. So…. basically like any NPC relationship, but with an agreement based on money in exchange for service involved. Well maybe a bit more favorable than the average NPC relationship, since the GM knows making them turn on you without good cause is more likely to be met with ire than usual.
There may be a comic in this somewhere….
I’ve seen it run as a GM-controlled companion. The love-hate relationship with my 5e chain warlock’s imp came out of that GM-controlled setup. It definitely requires a degree of trust between DM and player though!
Man, so we found this war horse, ‘kay?
And he’s super cool, hates goblins with a fiery passion, and he’s super smart AND STRONG too! He’s basically the best horse ever.
We go somewhere and my character is all “Midnight, can you stay here while we go inside to check out this mansion?”
Midnight nods and waits outside for us.
“Midnight, you want this Manticore hide for armor?”
Midnight shakes his head no and backs away from it.
“Okay all the baddies are dead!”
Midnight starts stacking bodies in the corner to tidy up the area.
DM says roll a Knowledge Arcane check to identify him.
Me: “I got Knowledge Local, so Midnight’s just the coolest horse ever!”
Other person in group: “That ain’t no horse!” They roll a nat 1…
DM: “It’s a horse…”
Ok so the betrayal part.
I’m in the stables, talking to my bestest bro horse wingman about this super hot, super smart, teacher, caster elf that I hooked up with and she walks in. I decide to introduce her to Midnight as the coolest and smartest horse ever… AND HE JUST STANDS THERE LIKE A BUMP ON A LOG NOT DOING ANYTHING!
So much betrayal!
Dude… Let Midnight read this comic. He can use Lumberjack Explosion as a good brosmanship role-model:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-05
We treated our magical creature (wyvern) with love and respect (after we threw it’s rider to his death admittedly), we even gave it all the goats it could eat! (ok so maybe we just didn’t secure it properly and it got at the goat-pen) And even after all that it ran off and tattled to the cops! (flew home and a dozen angry shifters tracked it backwards to us)
No gratitude at all I tells ya- I’ll stick with the boring, nonmagical mules.
It’s always tough when you’re dealing with bad-tempered super predators. All dragon-kin have a superiority complex. In that sense, I think it’s better to bring down the intimidation tactics rather than treating your wyverns with kindness. Those brutes only respect strength!
Hmm, Lumberjack Explosion was evil in a past life you say? Trying to atone for past misdeeds you say?
Well he is a black unicorn… is the colour-coding thing a thing in Handbook-World?
Also, I love the implication that he normally gets a room with a bed like everyone else (with the possible exception of the hirelings), but that they are just too small here. Of course he does! No one else sees him as a horse. Imagine the conversations the cleaning staff have:
“One of those adventurers shed all over the sheets!”
“Is that the one who had the room service hay bale and curry-combing? Weird guy.”
lol. They only see Horsepower as a humanoid on account of his incredible disguise. The world knows Lumberjack Explosion as a mild-mannered magical mount.
You also have an NSFW fantasy comic, right? Because it occurs to me that you could do a similar gag with Lumberjack Explosion replaced by one of the female characters, the stable replaced with a bathroom, and the magical talking jackass replaced with a magical talking douchebag.
In the Chinese fantasy novel “Journey to the West” it’s explained early in the story that the group’s horse is actually a shapechanged eastern dragon, but after a certain point the author appears to forget this plot point and the horse is treated as a regular horse for pretty much the rest of the book (and is the only one of the group treated as a beast despite the other principal characters being a talking monkey, a fishman, and a pig monster)
Gotta take campaign notes, even if you’re a near-legendary historical Chinese author.