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

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by alx_152

It might be nice to have 100 allies, but if you need to pay everything for them, you better be filthy rich. Also the PC has to be prepared for the social and economic burdens of having 100 allies.

Indeed!

These Allies have no job at all beyond "being the Allies of Joe PC 95.4% of the time." This means that Joe PC is, at minimum, stuck paying the monthly cost of living for 100 people. If the GM is a pushover and lets them all be Status -2 bums, then that's $10,000/month; it rises to $60,000/month for typical Status 0 people. Joe PC is also responsible for replacing their equipment; paying their bridge, ferry, and gate tolls; bailing them out when they get drunk and disorderly; and so on. In a typical TL3 fantasy campaign, he'll literally need Filthy Rich just to pay his Allies' way, and he'll get practically nothing else out of that Wealth. Not paying these costs is an option . . . but that would definitely count as "betraying or unnecessarily endangering" your Allies, and hand the GM carte blanche to have the group up and leave.

Originally Posted by Michele

One more point nobody has mentioned AFAICT: the "rules as written" mention that Allies can land the PC in trouble occasionally. They can pick a fight, insult a nobleman etc. And the PC should try and help them.

If the PC doesn't spend money, spells and efforts to heal the brawlers and get the harasser out of jail, then he will be ignoring them - which is damn close to betraying/endangering unneccessarily.

This is what I was getting at with the "drunk and disorderly" bit. Allies can be 100% loyal without being 100% flawless as people. Indeed, showing total loyalty to an adventurer means they're flawed almost by definition, as they're setting aside common sense to follow a charismatic leader into danger. What else would they set aside common sense to do?

Originally Posted by Michele

Remember, a roll of 15 means the members of the Ally Group are almost always present in the life of the PC - and conversely that the PC will have to be present almost always in the Allies' lives.

Yep. I'd figure that even if something dumb only happens on a critical failure of some sort, a 17-18 is a 1.9% chance, so in a group of 100, there will be around two screwups per game session in which the PC must intervene. This could be fun for a one-on-one campaign, but probably not in a group, which brings us to the next point . . .

Originally Posted by Michele

Fine, but there is the issue of the fun the _other players_ in the group should get.

This is absolutely true. The "social contract" in a gaming group, were it written up, would have GM-player clauses and player-player clauses. If every player but one votes "nay" to a trait, then that trait is off-limits as surely as if the GM had vetoed it.

Originally Posted by Ronnke

If having 100 allies following the PC around would "break" my campaign as I had planned it then I simply would not allow the advantage.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Players really should consult with their GMs and ask for their help in what they're trying to do while making characters instead of going off on their own and attempting to come back with a fait accompli.

And this gets at the GM-player clauses in the contract. There's no special reason to allow 100 Allies for 36 points if you wouldn't, say, allow Science! at IQ+1 [36] or Energy Reserve 12 [36] or Large Piercing Attack 6d [36]. In any campaign, there will be some traits that are affordable, easily described, relatively unambiguous . . . and utterly inappropriate. Even if the other players have no problem with Joe PC having 100 Allies, the GM is welcome to declare that he does. I can think of few common adventure genres where it's standard for the hero to have 100 personal assistants spooking around. Genre-inappropriateness is absolutely fair and reasonable grounds on which to reject any character concept.