How exactly do the Influence rules work? How much Influence do you get initially? Is it 1 or 0? How do you know how much Influence a given NPC has?
That’s not very helpful…
From reading the rules again, I think the GM (they missed the boat with this game; they should have called the GM the “Doommaster”, thanks Seth Skorkowski!) will need to spend some time working out the Influence and hierarchy of any brigand band the PCs might be joining. Which means the GM will need to decide how much Influence the hetman will have, as well as the Influence of any other members of the band. PCs who have newly joined the band will start with 0, meaning they are lowest of the low, probably assigned the most menial of camp tasks, such as cleaning the cooking equipment and the equivalent of burning the feces drums of the latrines (those who have spent time in the Army will know what I mean).
Making a Challenging (D2) Persuade test gives the PC the amount of Influence of the NPC they are building favor with, plus 1 for every Momentum generated, if desired. If directed at the whole band, the amount will be the average of the band’s Influence. Performing great deeds as a member of the band will also garner influence as well.
The amount will depend on the deed. Killing the hetman outright gets the hetman-slayer the hetman’s Influence divided by 2 (they might not be sure of the new hetman just yet.)
It looks like the rest of the rules can work more or less as written, but will require some finagling by the Doommaster…the main thing is the hierarchy of the band needs to be worked out in advance, with the Influence of the hetman and other members of the band decided by GM fiat. I don’t know, maybe this modification will work. I’m not playing Conan at the moment, so maybe someone who is can try it out.
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Well that seems helpful! I have not yet dug into the brigand book but the new characters being played might make it a bit more applicable!
Thinking about it further, I think you could set Influence of NPC hetmans by type:
Nemesis get 10+
Toughened get 5-9
Minions get 0-4
Obviously, whoever has the most Influence runs the band. For example, it is entirely possible for some small bands to have a Toughened NPC as hetman. These might be easy pickings for a PC to take over…while Olgerd or Conan would be much, much more difficult, with Influence possibly being 20+
At some point, I’ll need to write this post up formally. Maybe someone will have use for it…
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