Re-pricing Allies

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I think there's a difference between Ally in-character behaviour causing problems (which I think is what the rules refer to) vs Allies doing disloyal things like leaking documents, which I think they shouldn't do unless they are Unwilling. Otherwise the Unwilling mod loses impact.

Information leaks are not necessarily the product of any deliberate intent. If someone uses Sex Appeal or Carousing on one's faithful aide, he may very well accidentally let something slip.

[SuedodeuS]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Leaking information != disloyal. Allies are as vulnerable as anyone to accidentally letting something slip or (more likely) being casually interrogated by someone who knows how to coax info out of a mark subtly.

Indeed! Literature and cinema are both full of situations where an otherwise-loyal ally thoughtlessly lets spill some crucial bit of information, thereby accidentally endangering the protagonist(s).

As GM, you can also spring some somewhat-unexpected aspects of the Allies onto the characters (note that the GM, not the player, designs the Ally). The Noble Dead Saga is a book series that does this with some frequency. Chap is a vampire-hunting, shockingly intelligent dog/wolf Ally of one of the main characters. He has a habit of getting the main characters into minor trouble from stealing food and upsetting vendors, and more seriously he makes it a habit to manipulate them in various subtle ways into doing things they otherwise wouldn't have. Wynn is a scholar who starts helping them from Book 2 on. Although initially meek, she turns out to be rather strong-willed and causes the characters to do things differently from how they would have preferred. She also has a penchant for getting into trouble (arguably a Dependent), and she has stronger morals/humanity than they do - namely, she tends to interfere from time to time with their work (killing undeads) when the targets aren't really evil.

So, let's say a mage character has a meatshield Ally. Said meatshield might have a habit of engaging in social faux pas, might lose his coin purse from time to time, or might spill information when he's at the bar. Maybe he has a slight drinking and/or gambling problem (Leesil, from Noble Dead again, suffers from the first, but his gambling is arguably advantageous). On the other side, let's say there's a fighter character who has a more-scholarly Ally. Said scholar might take a moral high ground, insisting those who attempt surrender be allowed to do so. When the character captures the BBEG's left-hand man and tries to force information out of him, the scholar may well object to any barbaric means. Always keep in mind that an Ally is his own person and won't always agree with the characters' methods and plans.


As for price, RPK makes an excellent point. An Ally isn't that different from having a friend with a variable schedule that can only make it to the game every so often (an Always On Ally is like said friend if he can just about always make it to the game). It really shouldn't cost a lot - particularly when you consider that if your friend's character dies, he can probably make up a new one, whereas if the Ally dies, that's the end (this is less of a concern in settings where resurrection is available and at least somewhat convenient).

[Kromm]

Allies are priced the way they're priced largely for reasons given already. To spell it out: How many points do you pay for all the other actively played PCs as your PC's de facto small-a allies? Zero . . . nada. Whereas a capital-A Ally costs you points. The difference? The capital-A Ally is played by the GM – a situation not very different from another PC played by a player. Well, except that you've paid points for a guaranteed good reaction, which is something that a fellow player might not give you. Then again, the GM could be a jerk, too.

All told, Allies are incredible on paper but marginal within the social dynamics of the average gaming group. So they have a marginal cost, and scale in power to your PC for the same reason that a GM will usually give all the PCs the same points to start with. The cost of course goes up once you slap on +50% for Minion and ×4 cost for a frequency of Constantly, which is about the best you can do within the rules to ensure loyalty and accessibility.

[Edges]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for the advantage to be changed. I use it as is but control it carefully. But I do still think it's the most under priced advantage.

The Rev has astutely related it to having another player. I have thought about it in this way too. But in my experience, it's quite different. As the Rev points out, Allies are loyal by default. PCs, not so much. Sure, plenty of games run on the assumption that the PCs will always be working together, but not all. Even those in which they intend to work together, differing opinions can result in wasted resources or even conflict (less so than with an Ally, in most cases). In terms of accomplishing character goals, other PCs have more potential for liability (as well as more potential for benefit). Also, it's your Ally. Another PC could ally themselves with your character, or the whole group, just the other characters, get into his/her own thing, or whatever. But when you pay for an Ally, he's there to help you. It wouldn't be fair to the guy who spent the points to have the Ally treat the whole party as any other PC would. Of course, I'd prefer another friend at the table over an Ally. But I'm not sure my character would.

As for hiring help, there's three points that may be good to add. First, the benefit of loyalty is not trivial. It's priceless. Second, it's presumed that you know the Ally fairly well. Finding out that the hireling is a coward at the wrong moment isn't so good. And third, it costs a lot to hire people for adventures. A full time bodyguard is expensive. Not to mention a posse of supers. I don't see how an equivalent amount of points could be spent in extra starting wealth or Independent Income to hire such people.

As for the Ally being a liability, sure. That's one way I keep the advantage from being abused. He can let info slip or be targeted by your enemy just like anybody in the party. But if he's consistently getting into trouble that you have to get him out of, them you should use the mechanic for buying him as both an Ally and Dependent with applicable frequencies of appearance. This makes him even cheaper.

[Brandy]

I don't think that the pricing breaks down at all, really, for an ally that is a traditional "just another character" ally. Where problems creep in, IMO, is where Allies behave more like gadgets than characters. Things like a Mecha "ally" that you can get in and drive, or a bunch of mindless summonable skeletons. Both of those things seem to me to give more bang for the buck than they cost.

(RPKs house rules address the first problem very well FWIW.)

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Lord Herman

Hi,

My players and I have been discussing the value of the Ally advantage. One of them wants an ally in our ~175-pt game, but he feels it is underpriced to the point of being cheesy.

Emphasis mine. The fact that the player is the one who's worried that this could be abusive almost certainly means that it won't be.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Bookman

Things like a Mecha "ally" that you can get in and drive

We're doing this in my current game, and it hasn't seemed to cause problems yet.

[Edges]

Show me a character*, and I can make it more powerful (i.e. more capable of fulfilling general adventuring goals) by taking some points from another trait and putting them into Allies. I would not make this claim with any other trait. IMO, Allies is the trait par excellence.

Compare Allies to Contact. My players have often asked to upgrade a Contact to an Ally in the course of play and then been surprised to discover that it's actually worth less points as an Ally. "You mean I could have saved points by having this guy with me on the adventure?!" It's true, in the field, he's in harms way and he may require your assistance for time to time. But he's there! How many points would it be to have a very reliable Contact with as many skills as a Contact Group that could be contacted 100+ times per day?

It's not a problem for me because I don't play with munchkins very often. And as I said, I use the RAW in this case. I'm just sayin'.

*I can think of possible characters for whom this would not be true (one with a debilitating case of Loner and no means of long distance communication for example). But I would say this is true for at least 99% of characters.

[Refplace]

besides the other player arguments for pricing Allies you have additional advantages.
Duplication, Altered Time Rate and Compartmentalized Mind all come to mind.
Less versatility unless you also have morph but odds are much more power and certainly more control.
All of those also scale with the charecter.

[RedMattis]

When one of the PCs had a twin with powerful telekinetic abilities it resulted more in her overshadowing him than anything else. ...also, given her personality she was typically the one bossing him around, or trying to sell him her occasionally quite nutty plans.

Even with Minion!Allies you get is still the like of a little vampire fledgling panicking and killing a gunman in a tense situation, getting into an awkward mess when a guy starts hitting on her, failing to feign innocence when a detective shows up, getting kidnapped and mindraped by a magician...
Your cute little bare-bone intelligence skeleton runs into trouble when you need to leave it somewhere and someone notices it since it can't explain itself. Not to mention failing to take note of a obvious looking trap. Of course it will also be troublesome when the Druid gets intimidated and pushed around by the commander of an army, which both his minion!wolf and the necromancer's skeletons reads as an attack and respond by biting, cutting and throwing spears at assaulter...

If the Ally is just a spare bag of points, then yes, it would be a bit more problematic, but in practice that is hardly ever the case. I have never had trouble with Allies.
I don't allow Battlesuit!Allies and the kind though. Buy that as an Ally AI and Signature Gear or advantages with gadget limitations in my games. ;)