Followers and Believers (CPrH)

At a certain level, priests receive followers and believers , men and women of the same faith who serve the priests.

To receive their followers and believers, priests must achieve a certain experience level (8th or above, with 9th as the most common level). Soon after (the same experience level or during the next-higher level), the priests must assume the duties of a church leader by building a church or temple (whatever is appropriate to the faith) and ministering over a specific geographic area. At that time, their followers begin showing up, and arrive over a period of several weeks.

What Are They?

Followers and Believers are non-player characters who are supposed to help promote the priest's faith. But what they are in terms of character classes, levels, and duties varies from faith to faith.

The DM decides what character classes the followers belong to (based on the needs and orientations of the player-character priests and the beliefs he promotes).

For example, let us say that the priest serves the God of Strength. The followers are likely to be all Warriors and Priests of the same god.

If the priest serves the God of Mischief, the followers are likely to be primarily Rogues and priests of the same god. There may be some Warriors and Wizards among the followers, men and women who are particular admirers of this god and his attributes as they pertain to combat and magic.

If the priest serves the God of Agriculture, the followers could be Normal Men and Women who don't belong to a specific class, with a few priests of the same god among them.

Now, it could be that the priest player-character is trying to create a specialized order within the more generalized faith. A priest of the God of Everything might want to create a militant order. Though the broad worship of the god includes every subject and attribute possible, this priest is devoted to the god's warrior-aspect. Therefore, with the permission of the elders of his faith (and, by inference, the permission of the DM), all this priest's followers would be warriors and some priests, probably at higher than first level, whose mission is to bring war to the enemy and then religious enlightenment to the conquered.

This sort of thinking is to be encouraged among player-characters. A player who's thinking of creating a specific religious order is thinking in character and within the scope of the campaign rather than just thinking about how to acquire more spells and magical items.

Who Are They, and How Do They Know to Arrive?

The answers to these questions vary from faith to faith. The DM has at least three ways to approach this:

1. The followers are local people who are already worshippers of the priest's god. When they hear that there will be a new priest of that god in their area, they arrive and offer him their services.
2. The followers already belong to another church or temple of the same faith. When the PC announces his intent to build his own temple, his faith's superiors send him followers and believers to help him.
3. The god subtly inspires people from near and far to journey to the new temple and offer their services to the priest.

How Many and How Strong Are They?

As a general rule of thumb, the priest should receive anywhere from 10 to 100 experience levels worth of followers, with the average being around 30. The DM should decide how many levels of followers show up rather than having the priest-character roll a die.

These followers can all be of the same level, or can be of different experience levels. Zero-experience characters (i.e., normal men and women) count as 0-level characters. No follower can be of higher level than three levels below the priest (thus, an 8th-level priest cannot have a follower higher than 5th level).

Here are some examples of arrangements of followers that different types of priests can have. With each arrangement, we're presuming 30 levels' worth of followers.

The priest-leader of a militant order could have 24 first-level fighters, one second-level fighter, and two second-level priests.

The priest-leader dedicated to the common man could have 56 normal men and women, and two first-level priests.

The priest-leader who is part of a bureaucratic hierarchy could have five fifth-level priests and five first-level priests.

The priest-leader of a temple which is supposed to guide, protect, and teach a community could have one fifth-level priest, one second-level priest, three first-level priests, ten first-level warriors, two second-level warriors, and sixteen normal men and women.

The DM can assign even more esoteric followers to a priest. The priest of a woods-god might have nymphs and centaurs among his followers, in which case the HD of the monster corresponds to its level (a 2HD monster corresponds to a second-level character, while a 2d6+2HD monster corresponds to a third-level character).

All these followers constitute priests, warriors, and workers (the normal men and women) belonging to or assigned to the priest's temple or church. Their entire job is serving the temple or church; they are housed, fed, and sometimes paid by the temple or church. They aren't the "flock" or whatever you choose to call the populace of the area the priest is supposed to serve.

How Much Control Does the Priest Have?

The priest's command over these followers varies from faith to faith. A player-character priest cannot assume that he has a tyrant's powers of life and death over this followers and believers. The DM decides what sort of command the priest has over them based on the nature of the campaign's culture and on the dictates of the faith.

In a normal faith, the priest will be able to order his followers to work and effort like any employer (and, in a medieval or fantasy setting, employers have more power over their employees than in contemporary society). He can advise them and (if he chooses) put considerable pressure on them regarding the people they associate with or even marry.

Punishments

When he is displeased with their actions or performances, he can punish them by restricting their activities and movements, applying corporal punishments (beatings which may not reduce them below three-fourths their starting hit points), and assigning them particularly nasty tasks and duties. If their offenses are sufficiently great, he can fire then from service in his church or temple, or even separate them from the faith (as described earlier in this chapter).

Customarily, he cannot incarcerate them for any great length of time (i.e., over a week), seriously injure them (perform any punishments which reduce them below three-fourths their starting hit points), kill them (killing them and restoring them to life is still forbidden), or use harmful magic on them, including magic which denies them free choice.

Spells which are normally forbidden for purposes of punishment or even "guidance" include create light wounds, magical stone, shillelagh, charm person or mammal, enthrall, flame blade, heat metal, produce flame, spiritual hammer, call lightning (except when used to frighten instead of damage), cause blindness or deafness, cause disease, curse, summon insects (except when used to frighten instead of damage), cause serious wounds, poison, produce fire, cause critical wounds, flame strike, insect plague, quest (except when the target willingly undertakes the quest to atone for his misdeeds), spike stones, wall of fire, fire seeds, harm, creeping doom, earthquake, fire storm, wither, energy drain, destruction , or symbol.

Spells like command, entangle, cause fear, hold person , and confusion are permissible, because they last only a short time, or do not change a character's belief about any subject.

However, in evil faiths, the priest may be able to order the execution of followers for anything which displeases him. In particularly bureaucratic faiths, a priest may not be able to assign any punishment without a process of trial and conviction, or without permission from a higher-ranking priest at the faith's main temple or church. The DM will decide whether or not a particular faith has these characteristics... but most don't.

Important Followers

The DM should create many of these followers as fully-developed NPCs, including names, personalities, ability scores, equipment, etc.

When a large group of followers are "identical" in class and level (for example, if you have sixteen Normal Men and Women), one or two should be singled out and fully developed. When followers are already more individual (for instance, if you only have two second-level priests or one fifth-level fighter), such followers should be fully developed.

When possible, it's a good idea to role-play the arrival of such characters within the temple, the better to give the priest PC an idea of what his followers are like.

All of this work will make the temple and its inhabitants more immediate and real to the priest character (and the other player-characters).

What If They Die or Gain Experience?

When followers die, they are replaced by whatever means brought them to the temple in the first place. A new local will volunteer his service, or the church hierarchy will send a replacement, or the god will inspire a new NPC to volunteer his service.

It's all right for followers to gain in experience. A soldier who defends his temple from attackers can be expected to gain experience points; a follower who accompanies his priest on adventures can, too.

Only followers who have been given individual names and personalities should gain in experience. An anonymous first-level fighter guard can be expected to remain so; but a named character could rise through levels and become guard-lieutenant, guard-captain, personal bodyguard to the priest, etc.

Named followers gain experience at normal rates based on what they do in their adventures. The only limits placed on all this personal growth are these: No follower can be higher than three experience levels below the level of the priest; and the levels of all followers of a specific temple or church cannot add up to more than 100.

If a group of followers becomes so experienced that it adds up to more than 100 levels, the DM can take steps to reduce the number of levels. For instance, a senior guard-captain may leave the temple when offered captaincy of a guard-unit in another temple (one closer to his family, one more prestigious, etc.). He'd be replaced by a captain of lower level, thus adjusting the available experience levels downward.

Whenever a follower dies or leaves, he is replaced by a follower who was at the experience level the original character held when he first became a follower.

For instance, let us say that a temple starts with a third-level wizard who acts as the priest's advisor. Through adventuring, this wizard rises to sixth level, and then is killed in an adventure. He will be replaced by a third-level wizard.

If a guard-captain rises from second to sixth level in the course of adventuring, and then leaves for service elsewhere, he'll be replaced by a second-level fighter. This doesn't mean that the new fighter is the guard-captain. The priest may prefer for some other follower, who is higher than second-level, to be the new guard-captain. But the replacement character always arrives at the experience level the original character held when he first became a follower.

What If The Priest-Character Is Scum?

Inevitably, some campaign priests, including some player-character priests, will see their followers as a resource to be exploited and abandoned for the priest's amusement. For example, a priest might seduce and cruelly abandon attractive followers, or might send soldierly followers into certain-death situations in order to enhance his own glory.

If the faith is not an evil one, the priest is not following the dictates of his faith and will eventually suffer for it. The first few followers who perish or feel compelled to leave will be replaced normally. After twenty experience levels' worth of followers have left in this manner, however, the other temples of the faith and the local population will "catch on" and the priest will find replacements slowing.

At that point, the priest will receive one experience level of replacement follower for every two he loses. (This doesn't even count experience levels gained by followers through adventuring. If a second-level guard-captain rises to sixth level and then is wasted in this manner, he'll be replaced by a soldier half his original experience level, i.e. a first-level fighter.)

If the priest loses another twenty levels through neglect or maliciousness, he will receive one experience level of replacement follower for every five he loses. If he loses another ten levels through neglect or maliciousness, he will receive one experience level of replacement follower for every ten he loses. If he loses any more through his misbehavior, they are not replaced.

That isn't the only result of evil behavior. The higher-ranking priests of the faith will launch an investigation, assigning a priest of level equal to the offending priest to his temple to conduct the investigation. If it is this priest's conclusion that the priest has behaved badly, he could find himself punished; he could have his temple taken away and could even lose experience levels (if his god is offended by his misbehavior and decides to punish him).

Also, the other followers and the flock could become disillusioned. Surviving followers could leave or even betray the priest. The local population could gradually cease to attend the priest's church, and seek their spiritual fulfillment elsewhere.

How long does all this take? That's a role-playing consideration. A priest can be corrupt and hide his behavior from the faith and from his following for years. If he does "waste" followers, but does so at a very slow rate, it could be years or decades before the population catches on. If he's overt, and flaunts his corruption or wastes his followers at a more advanced rate, he could find himself in trouble mere weeks or months after first attracting his followers.

However, if the faith is an evil one, such behavior is normal. Wasted followers will be replaced normally. (They are not, however, likely to be loyal followers, and may conspire to eliminate and replace the priest.)