What If They Die or Gain Experience?

When followers die, they are replaced by whatever means brought them to the temple in the first place. A new local will volunteer his service, or the church hierarchy will send a replacement, or the god will inspire a new NPC to volunteer his service.

It's all right for followers to gain in experience. A soldier who defends his temple from attackers can be expected to gain experience points; a follower who accompanies his priest on adventures can, too.

Only followers who have been given individual names and personalities should gain in experience. An anonymous first-level fighter guard can be expected to remain so; but a named character could rise through levels and become guard-lieutenant, guard-captain, personal bodyguard to the priest, etc.

Named followers gain experience at normal rates based on what they do in their adventures. The only limits placed on all this personal growth are these: No follower can be higher than three experience levels below the level of the priest; and the levels of all followers of a specific temple or church cannot add up to more than 100.

If a group of followers becomes so experienced that it adds up to more than 100 levels, the DM can take steps to reduce the number of levels. For instance, a senior guard-captain may leave the temple when offered captaincy of a guard-unit in another temple (one closer to his family, one more prestigious, etc.). He'd be replaced by a captain of lower level, thus adjusting the available experience levels downward.

Whenever a follower dies or leaves, he is replaced by a follower who was at the experience level the original character held when he first became a follower.

For instance, let us say that a temple starts with a third-level wizard who acts as the priest's advisor. Through adventuring, this wizard rises to sixth level, and then is killed in an adventure. He will be replaced by a third-level wizard.

If a guard-captain rises from second to sixth level in the course of adventuring, and then leaves for service elsewhere, he'll be replaced by a second-level fighter. This doesn't mean that the new fighter is the guard-captain. The priest may prefer for some other follower, who is higher than second-level, to be the new guard-captain. But the replacement character always arrives at the experience level the original character held when he first became a follower.

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