Homebrew Campaign: Mercenary Company - Player Introduction

Your company has a long and storied history or always completing the contract—even if it’s not in the way expected. You’ve served many masters, across many worlds—if the annals are to be believed. 

All that has taken you to this moment. Your characters are the lead officers of your company. You are currently under contract to defend the city of Vraugate from a clan of ice giant reavers. What contract will you take next? What will come from the rumblings of war with the powerful, self styled She Who Sees Beyond and the falling empire? Will you serve good or evil—is there even a difference anymore? This is for you to decide.

Create the Story You Want

Players will have a heavy role in helping drive this campaign. It will be a complete sandbox, offering possibilities and adventure hooks, but ultimately it will be up to the players to follow them.

Players might get into the conflict referenced above, but could go in any number of other directions like capturing a ship and becoming pirates with their troops, or investigating the mysterious ancient origins of their company by traveling across the planes to places like the Hells and the Abyss, or even to the Heavens, or the Inner planes of elemental fire, water, air, and earth. The universe is yours to explore in an epic of your own creation.

Some Assembly Required

Players will help create their own mercenary company, creating a group name and a symbol for their banner alongside their own characters.

This campaign will use the organization rules from MCDM’s Kingdoms & Warfare supplement for 5e to simulate commanding a mercenary regiment. Kingdoms & Warfare uses a system called Intrigue to model conflict between the player organization and an opposing faction, ultimately culminating in Warfare battles. While not in intrigue you can use your organization to perform certain tasks (within reason!) However, you can only recruit new military units or improve your existing ones during intrigue. The defense of Vraugate mentioned above will serve as a tutorial on the warfare system. We will learn intrigue through play. It may seem complicated at first, but you will eventually master it, just like you have your characters.

Players may pick from the various organization types and subtypes available in the supplement, but we will reskin the organization as a mercenary company with different flavor depending upon the mechanics you choose. Every character must have a title from those available from their organization, but one must also take this custom title in place of one of the organization titles:

Company Annalist. The long tradition of keepIng the records of your company has come down to you. You gain proficiency in the History and Religion skills. If you already have proficiency in one or both then you gain expertise in the respective skill. Your studies of the lore of the company also grant you advantage on History and Religion Checks that regard the company’s history. The annals are held in a massive chest, to which you hold the only key, carried on an iron chain around your neck. The chest is guarded by the most elite veterans of your company. On your belt you carry the current annals, which is a book connected by a larger iron chain to your belt. It never leaves your person until it is full and joins the larger collection, upon which you begin writing in a new book.

The Current Annals. This book contains your and recent annalist’s writings. The book is a mundane item, but contains great significance for the company. You should give your life before losing it or the other annals. While you maintain the book you may inspire your companions with a story from the company’s past, granting you and each of your companions one use of Inspiration each. Additionally, you can inspire one of the units you command in a warfare battle, granting them one extra attack on their first activation. These abilities can only be used again after you take an extended rest (one week conducting no other downtime activity other than recording recent events and studying the annals), and they may not be used more than once a month. Should you ever lose the annals your troops have disadvantage on all attacks during warfare battles until the annals are retrieved. If they are destroyed your company is broken and you lose all your units. You must undertake a great quest to restart the annals and the company in a new form.

Junior Officers

We will also use retainers from MCDM’s Strongholds & Followers. The GM will provide a list of all the retainer types. Each character will get to choose two retainers, giving them names and a brief background. Your two retainers are the junior officers of the mercenary company under your command. You may pick one to accompany the party on quests or in combat (this is to make managing them reasonable and not unbalance the game). You may roleplay interactions with your retainers and send them to complete other tasks for you. For instance, you might order a retainer to take some of your troops and guard a place or position. Or you might dispatch one to obtain supplies for your company or to do research at a library or temple. Another might be a healer that can render aid to you as senior officers after a mission. Another might be your spymaster, providing you reports. 

Retainers also serve as backup characters. Each corresponds to a specific character class from the Player’s Handbook, so your retainer can become a replacement character should you so choose. If you want a custom retainer of another character type then coordinate with the GM to design an appropriate retainer together that can represent that character archetype in a balance manner.

Your Characters 

The most important element of this campaign are your characters—their motivations, secrets, and connections are what will drive the story of this campaign. 

We will build characters to start play at fifth level. All character options from the default list are approved. Regardless of what character you create consider the following guidance and themes that should guide you as you craft them and help tie them into the campaign:

• Everyone who joins your company leaves their old name behind and takes on a nickname. Create a name and a nickname for your character. Then consider if any of your companions are so close that you have shared your real name with them. 
• You have been in many battles together. You are veterans who have come up in the company together. Come up with some war stories that connect your characters—perhaps someone saved your life or soul! Or maybe you saved them and they decided to join the company.
• Consider why you left your old life to join the company. Were you running away from your old life? Were you leaving painful loss behind? Or did you just want adventure?
• Make up an NPC connected with your past before the company and write down one line describing them and your connection.
• Create a personal goal or quest for your character and share it with the GM (you can decide whether to keep it a secret from other players or left them know). It should be general enough that the GM can work with you to modify it if necessary and fit it into the story. Completing this goal or quest will earn you both a free feat (subject to GM approval) and the equivalent of a deadly encounter’s worth of XP for your party.

Mechanics & Miscellany

Here are a last few things to keep in mind:

• We will use XP-based leveling. 
• Because we are starting at higher level, characters will have 500 gp plus 1d10 x 25 gp, one uncommon magic item, and normal starting equipment for your class and background. They can spend the gold on additional mundane equipment during character creation.
• We will use my modified exhaustion rules.
• We will use enhanced healing rules: All healing spells and potions double the type of die used. Additionally, if you use a potion during combat you may expend a full action to get max healing, while using a bonus action requires a die roll, using the doubled dice mentioned above.
• We will use the rules from Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle7 for long distance travel. The GM may modify encounters due to the presence of your army. Monster encounters may occur while you are riding or exploring ahead of your main force (it’s not very cool if you come across a monster and instead of getting to defeat it and gain experience your troops charge in and stab it to death—while having a few of them get killed or crushed!) Additionally, traveling through some areas will be easier with an army, while traveling in certain environments might be impossible with a large force.
• Your army may be used for some tasks like clearing out dungeons—but keep in mind that even if such checks are successful there may be negative consequences. You could loose a unit even if your troops successfully clear a dungeon, or have your organization stats permanently decreased due to the strain of the operation.
• We will use a modified version of the “Last Stand” rule from page 125 of Cubicle7’s Broken Weave supplement. This rule in essence allows a character who is critically injured and doing death saves to elect to die after taking a final turn with certain buffs to their actions. This allows them to sacrifice themselves in combat for their comrades while expending their most powerful abilities.