Your Call as the GM - a survey of sorts...

[tanniynim]

You still haven't defined exactly what these characters are.

Fine. He/You want RAW? Take a look at "Characters:"
1) pg 31 "Buy advantageous Associated NPCs as Allies...The GM's word is final in all cases. The GM is free to forbid an Associated NPC that he feels would be disruptive, unbalanced, or inappropriate."
2) pg 33 "When you select exotic or supernatural advantages, you must also choose an in-game justification for those abilities.

So, what are his justification and back story for those Allies? Do I like it? No? Sorry, you can't have that advantage. Please Insert Coin and Try Again.

Here's the rules specifically from Characters' Allies entry to remember:
1) "For a group of more than five identical and interchangeable allies that share a single character sheet..." -These Allies should be exactly the same. The GM ONLY is free to change that BASED ON THE CONCEPT AND BACKSTORY
2) (From Special Abilities): "...your Ally requires an Unusual Background..." -The GM determines the price of Unusual Background. Make sure to include this in the Allies' base cost if it's very weird.
3) "The GM decides how the Ally evolves...[in play as your point total increases] " - Just because they start one way doesn't mean they'll stay that way.
4) Summonable - Does he have summonable? If not, how to the Allies arrive?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Michele

Well yes, that would work, for instance, with a small private mercenary company and the PC as the captain.
But here, the point seems to be casting huge ceremonial spells. Not as easy to manage, especially if the Pc wants to be able to cast them at a moment's notice.

Are you kidding? That's even easier to manage: if they're a mercenary company, the PC has to pay them. That takes money, which the Ally advantage doesn't provide. This is why the relationship between the PC and his ally(s) needs to be defined.

Friends don't wait on you hand and foot 18 hours a day, but they don't need paying and they may be willing to go into dangerous situations for you.

Employees can be PAID to work 18 hour days for you, no vacations, no time off, into the mouth of hell - but that's REALLY expensive, and the more of a jerk employer you are, the more expensive it is and the more you teeter on the edge of someone going rogue and sabotaging your operation or just swiping something expensive and buggering off. Or stabbing you in the back while you sleep after you sent his best friend to die on a fools errand.

The employees above aren't Minions, because there you need keep them fed, clothed, sheltered, and WELL PAYED in proportion to how badly you treat them, whereas a Minion will keep serving you if you starve it to death.

You can get incorporeal spirit Minions. They're much more expensive, leaving you much less points to be a spellcaster or anything else with.

Small dungeon delve campaigns may not be ruined by the player showing up with his small-army-of-candle-holders NPCs, because he's only paying them to be candle holders - that job may require you to stand on your feet all day, but you don't have to deal with customers, handle technical forms, lift heavy objects, be out in the elements, or be creative or even significantly skilled. Dragging people that take a job like that (25 point NPCs) out into a dungeon environment, even when there's a hundred of them, generally counts as abuse.

And you'll run out of allies really quickly, and not earn any CP for the adventure, because even a dungeon with just Kobolds in it will be a meat grinder of death for 25 point NPCs (traps! AUGH!)

And then you don't get that massive point investment back, because you've earned yourself a justified reputation as an evil wizard.

Oh, you paid for a hundred 100 point Minion men-at-arms as your candle holders? How many points do you have left, again? How are you feeding them, or how are they getting food to feed themselves? How are you transporting them to the dungeon? How are you equipping them?

On 150 points, the "army of candleholders ruins everything" plan tends to collapse in a heap.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by obatron

Why "screw" with the player rather than just say no if you don't want to allow it?

The issue here isn't the GM "screwing" with the player at all, but the player trying to "screw" with the rules and/or the GM. It's objectively wrong under the rules to treat Allies as a straight points-for-powers trade with no strings attached. Allies are cheap because they come with a raft of explicit drawbacks:

• Created as NPCs by the GM, not by the player, and subject to whatever conditions the GM imposes on all NPCs (and probably PCs) in the campaign: starting money, cost of living, playable races, available traits, etc.
• Not always agreeable to your suggestions; they will disagree with you at times, even refuse to cooperate.
• Occasionally cause problems, up to and including starting fights and being imprisoned.
• Deny you bonus points in game sessions where you betray or endanger them, even if the root cause is ultimately their fault.
• Leave you, costing you the points spent on Allies, if you continue to betray or endanger them.

All of this is paraphrased from the Basic Set. There are ways around every one of these drawbacks: taking the Minion and Summonable enhancements, asking the GM to dedicate some of the Allies' points to Independent Income, going with sufficiently few Allies that you can sensibly micromanage them all, or simply going with a sufficiently low frequency of appearance that the Allies won't always be in your hair. However, the onus is on the player to know the rules and respect them. If you want Allies as the source of magical energy, there are rules for that: Familiars. These do cost more, though.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Are you kidding? That's even easier to manage: if they're a mercenary company, the PC has to pay them. That takes money, which the Ally advantage doesn't provide.

Very true. Evidently, if they are "Allies" and not "paid employees", this means that a significant bond between them and their captain has developed during those long campaigns. "Perhaps [they] fought side by side in a long war"? (I'm quoting the Advantage description here). They may very well be their captain's company _and also_ Allies.
Of course they have to be paid - not necessarily directly by the captain, though. They will certainly expect the captain to look after their interests (which is something Allies do), but that means for the captain to find a contract, an employer who will pay both him and them. _That employer_ is the guy to which the footmen are just "mercenaries" - not to their captain.

Note that this works for a while. Then... peace! We're out of a job! Who's going to pay the 100 men? What will the PC say when his sergeant-at-arms suggests some free-lance pillaging?

No disagreement as to your remarks about the "army of candle-holders", a nice definition BTW.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by Kromm

If you want Allies as the source of magical energy, there are rules for that: Familiars. These do cost more, though.

Energy Reserve, indeed. However, "they cost more" is not a good reason for a munchkin to consider them. Ceremonial Magic bypasses this nicely as it isn't a special power. You just need specialized allies.

Originally Posted by Bruno

You can get incorporeal spirit Minions. They're much more expensive, leaving you much less points to be a spellcaster or anything else with.

Really? I would think that you can build some ST 2, DX 6, IQ 6 insubstantial mute doesn't-eat ally on 0 points. That's enough to hold the proverbial insubstantial candle. There probably is some budget left to give them useful abilities like Warp (to PC only) and a Mindlink (to PC only), to avoid paying for Summonable.

The only question is whether the GM _wants_ to build allies like that ...

Regards
Ts

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I'm afraid you are mistaken. Allies are NPCs like any others. They pay points for their abilities, and they pay cash for their gear and cost of living. You can build them all with Independent Income, but that's not a given . . . and if you do that, they'll have fewer points free for other useful abilities. They can certainly hold down jobs, but that's only plausible if they're Allies in their spare time – say, on a 6 or less or a 9 or less. Once you get up to 12 or less and 15 or less appearance, when are they working at these jobs? They're basically at the PC's side 75% and 95% of the time!

Of course, the PC only needs to find money to pay for cost of living if the NPC can't/really shouldn't have to (and being an ally goes a long way towards the NPC fending for himself). A 15- ally of an adventurer who adventurers maybe a week out of every month won't need board from the PC. On the other hand, Independent Income/Allies as alternate abilities is always tasty and easy to justify (especially with undiscriminated hordes of underlings working for you)!

GM note: co-adventurers share each-others Disadvantages MUCH more than they share each-others Advantages. It is *easy* for a point-positive "Ally" to be an effective disadvantage. Don't screw over your players. I would strongly suggest having the player stat up the Ally, with the constraint that he need to use templates (avoids single-trick ponies) and save maybe 10 points/10 points worth of the disadvantage budget for GM-customization. If you feel you need more than that, the Ally should probably have been nixed from the get-go.

[rlbeaver]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The issue here isn't the GM "screwing" with the player at all, but the player trying to "screw" with the rules and/or the GM.

Sorry, I was responding to something I failed to quote...

Originally Posted by hal

I like the way you think, in looking for ways to screw the player using the rules if the player decides to adhere to the rules in designing his character and demanding that he be permitted to have 100 allies.

...and there were a comments between my typing time and your responses. I of course bow to your position. ;)

I guess I was thinking more of just say no rather than get into "...oh yeah? Well, this rule applies! Oh Yeah,then I can do this by this rule! Oh yeah...well then you're screwed by this rule!..."

[hal]

Army of Candle Holders indeed! (I'll have to steal that phrase to be sure!)

A little background on all of this...

Initially, GURPS MAGIC had this little escape clause about how you couldn't just take anyone off the street, pay them to participate in a ceremonial spell casting, and expect that they would fill in handily for use as a member of the Army of Candle Holders. By the time GURPS 4e comes out, and more explicitely, GURPS MAGIC for 4e, people begin to assume that they can just round up a village of individuals, engage in ceremonial spell casting, and that is that. But now, lets look at this from another perspective.

What if the Allies were not built to be available on a roll of a 15 or less, but instead, were built to be available on a 6 or less? The point cost for something of this nature drops down to 12 character points. As such, the player could specify (for example) "These allies are all members of a village - hand picked to participate in ceremonial spell casting that while benefitting the mage in question, also benefits the villagers as well."

Now we're looking at a whole different ball of wax. The player specifies that they are ONLY available for spell castings for 2 hours a day (or 1/12th of a day). As this is less than the 9.6% chance of success on 3d6, the player is hoping that they will by definition, always be available for that 100% availability for those 2 hours only. This relieves the player of needing to maintain the incomes of his army of candle holders, and it still gets him what he wants - a power reserve for his spell castings.

Note that this is NOT 100% within the rules as written, but because there is nothing rules as written to match this set of circumstances, he's counting on the GM improvising and adapting the rules as written to cover it.

The Money quote as far as I'm concerned here, is this:

Originally Posted by Kromm

Allies are cheap because they come with a raft of explicit drawbacks:

• Created as NPCs by the GM, not by the player, and subject to whatever conditions the GM imposes on all NPCs (and probably PCs) in the campaign: starting money, cost of living, playable races, available traits, etc.
• Not always agreeable to your suggestions; they will disagree with you at times, even refuse to cooperate.
• Occasionally cause problems, up to and including starting fights and being imprisoned.
• Deny you bonus points in game sessions where you betray or endanger them, even if the root cause is ultimately their fault.
• Leave you, costing you the points spent on Allies, if you continue to betray or endanger them.

Pay particular attention to "Not always agreeable to your suggestions; they will disagree with you at times, even refuse to cooperate."

Note that this brings us back to the very thing players try to get around from GURPS MAGIC where ceremonial magic is concerned - finding willing participants for the spell casting, and who won't deduct 5 fatigue from the casting of the spell because they actively oppose the spell's success.

Such opposition to the spell's success could stem from something simple as "I'm mad at him, and I hope he fails" rather than not wanting the spell itself to fail.

Ah well. This thread has been fun, and I look forward to reading more once I get back and can read it at leisure. :)

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by hal

Note that this is NOT 100% within the rules as written, but because there is nothing rules as written to match this set of circumstances, he's counting on the GM improvising and adapting the rules as written to cover it.

Then he's out of luck, because the frequency of appearance rules are quite explicit that you roll once per adventure. In this case, I might be generous and let you roll once per ceremony you wanted done.

On the other hand, I'd certainly be willing to consider giving you an extra break for Accessible (only while in this village) or (only at a particular time of day), but those aren't part of the frequency of appearance rolls, they're separate limitations, which may or may not come out to be a better deal pointwise.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Ts_

Really? I would think that you can build some ST 2, DX 6, IQ 6 insubstantial mute doesn't-eat ally on 0 points.

You're the GM. Why would you do that?

I'm emphasizing this, because you really seemed to have missed this - the player does not design his allies. The player gets input into the conversation, but he gets to dictate NOTHING. On the other hand, he can reject what the GM offers as well.

Player says "I want an army of insubstantial spirits to give me FP." the GM says "In my campaign, spirits have a 150 point racial package." Player says "Give them ST 1, DX 1, HT 1, and just enough IQ to hold candles for me." GM says "The closest I can offer to that in units of 100 is the ghosts of mice, but the ghosts of mice have HT 10, IQ 3 and DX 12, and can't participate in the ritual."