Henchmen and Goons

When most of us think of overcoming challenges in an RPG, we tend to focus on our personal characters (or our party of characters), and what things they are capable of doing themselves. And while that makes total sense for tales of heroic fantasy, where our characters are the fulcrum on which the universe turns, not all games operate this way either thematically, or mechanically.

And if you're going to step into the World or Chronicles of Darkness setting, I'd like to remind folks of a basic fact; numbers always win.

Working Around Organizational Blocks

As I mentioned back in The Pettiest Thing I Ever Did To Justify 3 Dots of The Fame Merit, a lot of my experience with both the World and Chronicles of Darkness comes from an organized LARP setting. And because these organizations tend to make changes to the rules so they function on a broader scale, I got used to experimenting with strategies and styles that just weren't my natural, go-to solutions to problems.

So let me tell you a brief story of how I discovered the power of henchmen.

Many years ago the organization I was playing with had started a fresh chronicle, and because of that they were instituting a bunch of new rules players and Storytellers alike would be expected to follow. One of those rules which rubbed me the wrong way was that there would be a universal damage cap of 5. No character, no matter how powerful, no matter what was on their sheets, and no matter what series of events transpired, could be dealt more than 5 levels of damage with a single attack.

For those not familiar with this part of the game, the base number of health levels for a character to have is 7, though it's possible to start with as few as 6, or as many as 7 or 8 depending on how you spend your points. And while it is generally very difficult to injure a character badly enough that they go from full health to mostly (or even completely) dead, it was still possible. It would have taken an extraordinary amount of luck, but if the dice (or cards, in the case of LARP) were right, dangerous situations could turn deadly very quickly.

By instituting this damage cap where no single attack could do more than 5 levels of damage to someone, I'm certain the idea was to reduce the possibility of players losing their characters unexpectedly. Particularly in an organization that had more than a few stories of unfair fights where newer players had gotten their characters killed due to questionable circumstances. However, it also made it feel like those who wanted to play combat-oriented characters were being punished, discouraged from bringing their A game to the table.

However, that damage cap only applied to a single attack. And while there were ways to get an additional attack on your turn, there was actually a much smarter strategy one could use; NPCs.

The More Triggers, The Better

Under these new rules, it was no longer feasible for a single character, no matter how skilled, powerful, or badass to take on groups of enemies by themselves. And if you went up against a group, it was very likely you were going to come out on the bad end of that encounter.

The solution, of course, was to be the one who showed up with a goon squad of your own to take care of the problem.

Both the World and Chronicles of Darkness games give players the option to recruit all kinds of NPCs to their side. When you purchase the Retainer merit, it gives you an NPC directly under your control, and the bigger the dot value of this merit, the more skilled or powerful that NPC is. Not only that, but most games give you the option to stack templates onto mortal characters, such as through changelings swearing oaths with mortals, with vampires giving living people some of their blood to make them ghouls, and so on, and so forth. When you combine that with the ability to give gear and items to your NPCs, you have the ability to build your own squad of highly-dangerous individuals.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there are other merits you can use to drag even more people onto your side of the fight. There are Allies you can take that could bring everyone from gangsters to police officers (and perhaps both) to your aid. There's the Staff merit you can delegate extra tasks to, and there's the ever-popular Resources merit you can use to just straight-up put NPCs on the payroll for aid during particular times.

It's like I mentioned in my article Soft Power, and Winning in The World of Darkness a while back, this sort of strategy takes the player character out of the spotlight. Instead of being on the front lines of a plot, they become the general in the command tent, sending the troops out to deal with a plot... or the spider in the middle of their web, pulling the strings from the shadows. And even if this isn't the strategy used for dealing with big plots, such as large supernatural threats, this strategy can be surprisingly potent when it comes to finding information, keeping other NPCs protected, securing in-game locations like gathering places and safehouses, and a slew of other important things.

So while this might not be your go-to strategy for a game, it is an option that can have a surprising impact on the chronicle as it unfolds. Also, for those wondering about the impact and danger mere mortals can have when faced with the supernatural, check out Discussions of Darkness, Episode 23: The Danger of Mortals and The Importance of The Masquerade, and don't forget to subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel while you're at it!

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