Retainer action points

[Simon Molendinarius]

So quick question. Your house rules contradict each other. Please let us know which is the correct ruling.

According to the NPC ghoul creation rules, a retainer gets action points equal to their level. This is also what I have been told verbally by several people.
https://buffaloavalon.rpg-board.net/t10-npc-ghouls

According to the rules for downtime activities, however, it says that retainers start with 4 action points, plus one for each level they have and one for each point of the Seneschal ability their dominator has.
https://buffaloavalon.rpg-board.net/t15-downtime-and-reports

I have been using the more conservative rule, and would like to know if I have been doing this wrong. I truly cannot imagine how anyone could use so many action points as offered by the other ruling, but if those actions are available I would like to take advantage of them. This is a fairly major difference, as the liberal version of this rule offers a minimum of 500% more action point than the other rules.

[Simon Molendinarius]

I think that leaving ghouls with a starting 5 action points would be totally cool if you used an influence system in which it costs more action points to extend your influence further from your base. That would allow our influences to interact and actually give us something to use all those action points on.
That seems really complex though, and will require a lot of careful attention from the influence ST.

[Brother Dominic]

I had been interpreting the "gets action points equal to their level" as gets (extra) action points equal to their level, as in they get the base 4 + the ones they get equal to their level + your sensechal ability. This has not been getting flagged as too many actions for my retainer by the STs

[Simon Molendinarius]

I would like ST clarification. I recognize that people have been doing it both ways, and perhaps the STs are not on the same page. This is as much for them as for me.
Since the NPC retainer rules were posted prior to the downtime action rules, I do not think it logical to assume that a sentence that simply says they get action points equal to their level means anything other than that. There is no mention of a base, nor does it say they get extra action point for their level. This is confusing and should be edited regardless of the ruling for future players.

[Brother Dominic]

That's all fair. I just wanted to be clear that DT reports following the more liberal interpretation have been going through without objection.

[Simon Molendinarius]

Yeah, that's why I bring this up. I had a conversation with someone and it came to light we were doing it differently. But this would not be the first time an ST staff has had different rulings depending on who you talk to, so I wanted to bring this up.
The same thing happened with being able to pool influences with your retainers. I was told explicitly that you could not and so for several months was working with only personal influence. It then came to light that other players were already pooling their influences with retainers. This was due to a misunderstanding on the part of those players, but they were allowed to do so anyway and the rules were changed to accommodate them, I asume because retconing so much would have been impossible. So these misunderstandings happen all the time, and I just want to make sure the field is level for everyone and that the staff is all on the same page, especially since there are so many changes these last few months.

[Giric]

Okay, so here is how the changes occurred. Obviously I am not an st, but this was the seeming logic as it happened.

Ghouls had 1 action point per level.

THEN it was put in that to travel safely you needed to spend an action point, and there was thought that traveling farther in the domain could cost more than 1.

With that in mind, ghouls were given a few more action points to account for traveling and miscellaneous tasks they do for you. Also because they can be up during the day. Seneschal was tied in to make the ability more useful.

So the most recent ruling is that they have the 4+lvl+seneschal.

[Simon Molendinarius]

I have not been appraised of the need to spend action points to travel safely. What does that mean? Does Transportation influence have a value if action points allow you to travel safely?

As a note, I have never been charge action points for safe travel. I frequently use influence to ensure my travels are safe, but that is something separate. My retainers travel all the time and have never had to spend a point for the actual travel, only for the activities they engage in while traveling.

[Simon Molendinarius]

Just did a search for the word travel and the only post that came up is the following.
https://buffaloavalon.rpg-board.net/t96-travel-speed-communications-and-influence?highlight=travel

There is no mention of action points for traveling. If this rule has been made it has not been posted here.

[Giric]

That actually is a common problem I have found, where pages are changed and the original content is lost. If you end up reading this kable, it really frustrates me.

However, yes. Traveling as a vampire, or anyone else, isn't necessarily safe. If there is a hazard for some reason, that isn't specifically targeting you, then spending an action point allows you to avoid it. Like if bandits come out in large numbers or something.

This will not protect you from things specifically targeting you, such as if you got on the bad side of some lupines. Transportation influence will do that however if you use enough of it.

Since, as you said, it isn't posted on the boards, it would be really great for the STs to comment on both of these points: Retainer actions and travel.

[Simon Molendinarius]

It would be really great if the STs reviewed all their house rules and edited everything so we have a fresh and concise list of rulings. I know a bunch of things are on Facebook but never made it here and vice versa.
There have been drastic changes to many rules even since the game started, and other clarifications that have been made verbally but not updated on the boards. I just brought in a new player and the process of going through all the house rules was daunting to say the least.

[Sigfried Le Danois]

"1 Action point to move through the domain, there is no limit to the number of times you may move once you have spent the action point to do so, meaning you may travel from Scarborough to York, then to Durham, then to Hull with only one action point. Going outside of the domain for any reason requires more than one action point, and will be handled on a case by case basis with the ST staff. "


Pulled directly form the downtime actions and reports section which also has the higher action counts for ghouls.i would not trust a search function. As you can see they never use the world Travel, so it would not come up in a search.

When this first came out it was pointed out that it vaguely invalidates transportation one, especially considering transpo 1 also uses an action point (since it is an influence, and it takes an action point to do an influence action). I believe they specified that transpo 1 was better then this, and that this was more a generic catch all cost.

[Simon Molendinarius]

Fair enough.  I still stand by my general assessment that the house rules could use revision for organization and content purposes.

[Sigfried Le Danois]

I don't deny that.

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