On 0-Level Retainers

Among those servants that a PC might employ, it’s possible that he finds a likely lad of 0th level, takes a shine to him, and adds him as a retainer. Such an event should be rare, but possible. 

In such a case, the new retainer may attain level one by earning 100 XP and training for a week. We assume that such training as is available has been going on thwence, or else such a hireling would not show the aptitude necessary to catch the PC’s eye. 

The new first-level human retainer will have a class as determined by the following table; of course, dwarfs and hobbits will enter into their natural class. 

If the PC is:

Fighter 

• Fighter 1-60
• Cleric 61-90
• Wizard 91-100

Cleric

• Fighter 01-40
• Cleric 41-70
• Wizard 71-00

Magic-User

• Fighter 01-40
• Cleric 41-50
• Wizard 51-00

Dwarf

• Fighter 01-85
• Cleric 86-00

Elf

• Fighter 01-40
• Cleric 41-50
• Wizard 51-90
• Forester 91-00

Hobbit 

• Fighter 01-70
• Cleric 71-90
• Wizard 91-00

If the player abuses this rule to raise his minions to a level and then demote them, these minions will begin to desert him and he will have found his reputation has diminished. He will find he has a hard time finding followers of anything but the most cursory type. 

Fun At Level One

If you are a player in the Cyfandil campaign setting, please do not read this post. It will spoil some of your fun.

EXACTLY like the actual fantasy Middle Ages. Ex-Act-Ly.

For Session One of the Cyfandil campaign, we will bring all our starting characters to town for a festival. It will be the festival closest to the time of the year in the real world - perhaps May Day or Midsummers Day?

There will be some festival games. Here, the characters can get a boost to their starting stats. I will explain that increasing stats this way is quite unusual and that there will be only a few chances to make such changes as we go forward.

How it works is that each PC who wishes may enter as many of these games as his player wishes him to enter. Each game costs 1 GP to enter. The winner gets 10 GP and a permanent +1 to the relevant stat. 

• Lift Huge Rocks: Str (half day)
• Bible Trivia: Int (half day)
• Scavenger Hunt: Wis (all day)
• Darts Tournament: Dex (half day)
• Bobbing for Apples: Con (half day)
• Talent Show: Cha (this one also takes all day) 

In any case, the total number of entrants will be 10 - we will say there are unnamed NPCs who fill out the slate if there are fewer than 10 PC characters. 

There are two different ways I could adjudicate this. 

First way is: We all make roll-under stat checks. People who make their roll get to go to the next round until there is only one winner.

• This is good because it models high stat = better chance to win without making it autowin. This includes characters with these stats as Prime Requisites.
• If I do it this way, all the NPCs will have 11 in the relevant stat.   

Second way is: We all roll d20 and add the stat modifier. High roll wins. Ties go to a playoff. 

• This is good because it gives people with a crappy stat a better chance to boost it. 

I may do Str Int and Wis the first way and Dex Con and Cha the second way. Just to mix things up.

Then the players can have their characters hire their henchmen or try their luck in the dungeon without help. 

Now I need to find an introductory one-page dungeon to put right underneath town.

EDIT: found it

Leveling Up

With a Bullpen of characters to play and a regular calendar of weeks and days, we can afford to expand the leveling up process beyond simply changing numbers on our sheets. Therefore we will use the following leveling up rules for our Cyfandil campaign. 

When a character meets the minimum XP requirements for attaining the next level of experience, he may seek out a mentor for training. Such training takes 1 week and 100 GP to rise to level 2, 2 weeks and 200 GP to rise to level three, and so on. The mentor so acquired must be at least the same level as the character wishes to attain. 

The time for training must be uninterrupted except for Sundays, which are a day of rest. Of course anticlerics may train on Sundays but must rest between Friday dusk and Saturday dusk.

The character may seek out an NPC or a higher-level PC, but in the latter case, all time and money must be paid and neither character may participate in other activities at the same time. 

On matching mentors to apprentices:

Fighting-men can train with dwarfs, elfs or other fighting-men. 
Clerics can only train with clerics; anticlerics with anticlerics. 
Magic-users can train with elves or magic-users. 
Dwarfs can train with dwarfs or fighting-men. 
Hobbits can train with hobbits or fighting-men. 
Elfs can train with elfs, or they can take training from both a fighting-man and a wizard. In the latter case, time and money costs apply separately to each patron, effectively doubling the character’s burden. 

PCs training lower-level characters: 

By the same token, a PC may take on an apprentice to train. The cost and time strictures are the same as above, but the master only collects a profit of half the total spent (and the attendant XP,) the rest of which goes to expenses. 

A master may only train up to two apprentices at the same time.  Clerics and anticlerics may only train one apprentice at a time.  

Note that a character does not need to use the same trainer for every level. He may switch freely from one to another for training successive levels. 

Note also that Lawful types will normally refuse to train Chaotics (but PCs can choose to do so.)

Once a character has been trained, then we can change the numbers on his sheet. The player rolls new hit dice and makes other level-based changes, such as the magic-user rolling for a new spell. 

Rolling hit dice:

At each new level, the player rolls all listed hit dice, totals them, and adds the constitution modifier for each one so rolled. 

If this amount is less than or equal to the current number of hit points, add one to that total. 

If this amount exceeds the current number of hit points, use this new total instead of the old one. 

In this way, the character will gain at least one hit point per level, and possibly many more. A high-level character will trend toward max hit points per die (but will rarely reach it.)