Upon receiving a commission as a Junior Commandant, a character is expected to maintain her equipment, lodgings, and table at a standard befitting a well-to-do commoner, if not higher (250 silver per week). The officer represents the Company, and the Company must display prosperity.
The officer receives access to an expense account, on the order of 5,000 silver per annum, to cover expenses in the normal course of business. This account may be increased at the order of the Council of Honor, typically when an officer is given responsibility for supplying and quartering any significant number of enlisted members (i.e., actions in the field and wartime).
Following at least a month of general instruction as a Junior Commandant, a character may gain one of the following training options. You may change between these options with a week of downtime; once you have had each option for at least one adventure, you may change between them with a long rest.
- As a bonus action, give a brief, inspiring speech, directed at one Company member, other than yourself, who can hear you within 60 feet. That ally regains hit points equal to 1d4 + the best of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifiers. If your current hit points are less than or equal to half your maximum hit points, you instead heal 2d4 + your ability modifier to the Company member. Once you use this ability, you must complete a long rest before you may do so again.
- When you use the Help action to support a Company member's attack roll or ability check, your ally adds 1d4 to the roll in addition to gaining advantage. You gain the same benefit when a Company member uses the Help action to support you.
- When you and a group of up to twenty other Company members are expending Hit Dice to regain hit points as part of a short rest, any Company member with an unmodified die result less than yours uses your unmodified die result instead, even if the result is greater than they could possibly roll on a Hit Die. If multiple characters in the group have this feature, use only the highest die result.
Commandants must maintain a higher standard of living, on par with wealthy commoners (500 silver per week), have an expense account of 15,000 silver per annum, and (TBD features go here). The Company's clerks of account will be after you if you're spending any substantial portion of that money without obvious need.
Senior Commandants must maintain a still higher standard of living, on par with lesser nobility (1,000 silver per week), have an expense account of 45,000 silver per annum, and (TBD features go here). The Senior Commandant has a full-time clerk of account (included in the costs above).
As the Company's whole income technically goes to the Councilors, they maintain the guildhall as well as their personal needs (5,000 silver per week). They also pay the Company's yearly charter taxes (150,000 silver). They do not have expense accounts, as they are free to spend any money that the Company has, and can take out loans using the Company's properties as collateral (this is common). Each Councilor has a full-time clerk of account and a barrister on retainer (folded into the costs above). They also receive (TBD features go here).
Design Notes
The Upkeep cost for officers is intended to be unpleasant - it's conspicuous consumption, and my players mostly don't want to pay more than 100 silver per week in upkeep. Officer status, and especially the trained feature, sweetens the deal in a big way.
The expense account idea comes from Sepulchrave's Tales of Wyre, which I was reminded of thanks to an old
Blog of Holding post. Thematically, if you're undertaking greater missions and representing the Company, you deserve the financial support of same.
The first training option is, of course, healing word in all but name, and is a nod to the 4e warlord's inspiring word; to address the oddity of shouting at an unconscious character to heal them, this requires that the target can hear you.
- Since this is not powerful or frequent enough to be any team's primary healing, it shouldn't feel mandatory to have an officer on the team.
- The dice double when you're bloodied because front-lines leaders are more inspiring.
- This might be better than the Magic Initiate feat, but it doesn't grant a cantrip (which is usually considered the "main" benefit of that feat), and it's more target-limited than a true healing word.
- This action and the next one both engage with the action economy directly, which does different things to each class and build. A monk, rogue, TWF fighter, or ranger cares deeply about bonus actions, while most barbarians and wizards would scarcely notice if they didn't get bonus actions in the first place. This is why it's important for the third option not to touch the action economy at all.
The second training option is spontaneous guidance/bless, when using the Help action, but could theoretically stack with guidance/bless. This may be a problem for a future draft.
- Once again, it might be better than a feat, but it's fairly situational unless you are a Mastermind (from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide) or otherwise get to use Help as something other than an action.
- One of the things I like about this is that it works in non-combat situations, such as social or obstacle challenges. The officers may have to function as courtiers in some situations.
- It also works when an enlisted member is aiding the officer, because I feel like leader-types should understand that their awesomeness is the result of having lower ranks as a foundation. Also, I don't want to confine the officer to a more passive role.
The third training option comes - and this might seem silly, but it's true - from the fact that I've seen
White Christmas and
Branagh's Henry V a whole lot of times. Major General Waverly and Harry both spend time checking up on the morale and conditions of their soldiers.
Bob: We ate and then he ate. We slept, and then he slept.
Phil: Then he woke up, and nobody slept for the next forty-eight hours.
The King finds, in Act IV Scene 1, that morale is not doing so hot, but he goes through a lot of separate encounters to learn that, and it shows a deep level of sincere care for the well-being of his force that, I think, meets up well enough with what I'm doing here. I don't really expect my players to attempt a St. Crispin's Day speech to address flagging morale, but I won't complain if they try!
It will be quite awhile before I'm directly concerned with the benefits of Commandant and above, so I'm probably going to test-drive what I've thrown out here for awhile.
As a note, I'm not particularly concerned with my players being jerks to one another and pulling rank all the time, to shut one another down. If that happened, the officer would be called to the carpet by the Council to explain his or her actions.
I would love feedback on this, especially from active and former Aurikesh players!
