Followers

Some PCs have the ability to gain followers from a type or focus ability. Depending on the ability, the follower might be a person (such as a bodyguard), a beast (such as a loyal horse or faithful hound), some kind of robot, or even a "monster" such as a zombie.

A follower is someone who you have inspired, asked, created, or otherwise recruited to help you with a variety of endeavors. A follower puts your interests ahead of (or at least on par with) their own. Your follower does not need to be paid, fed, or housed, but you can certainly make such arrangements.

Most of the time, the follower just helps you with whatever actions you're taking, which gives you an asset on the task. For example, if you're trying to climb a wall, they'll help you climb. In combat, you should decide if the follower is helping you attack (giving you an asset on your attacks) or defend (giving you an asset on your dodge tasks).

Instead of helping your tasks, you can have the follower act on their own, such as scouting ahead, guarding a location while you're away, or directly attacking a foe so you can do something else. The GM has information on handling follower actions, including when a creature attacks your follower.

A follower has a level, which determines their health and (if they attack directly) how much damage they inflict in combat. A follower may have modifiers to their level for certain tasks; for example, a scout follower might be level 2 with a level 3 modifier for perception. (A follower can have an inability just like a PC does, but that's uncommon.)

Your follower gets better at things as you advance as a PC: for every two tiers you gain after acquiring the follower, increase the follower's level and its modifier levels by 1. For example, if you gained a scout follower at tier 2 and you advance to tier 4, the scout's level increases to 3 and their perception modifier to 4. Depending on your focus, you might gain an ability that increases your follower's levels even more.

If your follower's level or modification is 5 or higher for a task, them helping you with that task gives you two assets instead of one. For example, if your follower is level 3, but level 5 for climbing, they give you two assets when they help you climb.

If your follower dies, you dismiss them, or you otherwise lose them, and you later gain a replacement, all of the level increases (and other improvements, if any) to your original follower apply to the new follower.