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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Battlecry! / Followers

Roleplaying Followers

Source Battlecry! pg. 77
When your character gains a follower, work with your GM to decide who will roleplay the follower. It could be you, the GM, or even another player at the table. It could also be one of the players most of the time, with the GM taking over when they want the follower to convey information that the players haven’t yet discovered.

When creating a follower, just as when creating a PC, it’s valuable to consider what their history is and how they have come to join the group. In a follower’s case, why they have chosen to accompany you is particularly important, as this reason helps define the nature of their relationship with you and the rest of the party. Consider working with your GM to establish what your follower’s short-, medium-, and long-term goals are, and how they like to spend their downtime. All these factors help determine what the follower does when they aren’t taking direct orders from you and can serve as seeds for the GM to use the follower to introduce new information or exciting adventure hooks to the party.

In general, followers respect you and get along decently with the rest of the PCs, but they may develop friendships or rivalries with other PCs based on events during the campaign. Followers have their own opinions and express them, but they should generally not take the spotlight from the PCs. This means that followers typically don’t take the lead in social encounters or participate heavily in decision-making.

Though followers are committed to working with the PCs and will never betray them under ordinary circumstances, they are people with their own agency. A follower who is dissatisfied with their circumstances due to poor working conditions or mistreatment might eventually leave to find other employment. If a player repeatedly loses followers in this way, the GM should consider working with that player to retrain out of the captain archetype.