What can the Retainers granted by the Noble/Knight background actually *do*?

[thorr-kan]

From the background: "You have the service of three retainers loyal to your family. These retainers can be attendants or messengers, and one might be a majordomo. Your retainers are commoners who can perform mundane tasks for you, but they do not fight for you, will not follow you into obviously dangerous areas (such as dungeons), and will leave if they are frequently endangered or abused."

A knight specifically gets a squire, a groom, and an attendant.

Obviously, these are not meant to be meat shields, hirelings, or henchman. But they should be *something.* Maybe take a commoner stat block for each and customize it a little? Take the knight as an example.

The squire gets an Attack, with the understanding that you're not placing him in any *real* danger. When dungeoneering, leave him behind to protect the camp.

The groom gets proficiency in Animal Handling. He can help care for pets, familiars, animal companions, etc.

The attendant gets proficiency in Medicine and maybe Herbalism. He can use a healing kit, but not brew potions.

(I'm brainstorming the fairy retainers for a fairy knight based on this thread:
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?629907-Fairy-swarmkeeper-3-feylock-3-lets-you-play-a-ton-of-fairies-How-do-you-build-it)

[Sethv007]

I recently started up a Bard and took Noble/Knight for the background. I talked to the DM about using them as my tour manager, roadie, and instrument tech. Still from a noble house but playing it as a black sheep running away from home to be a rockstar.
They can’t do much but I thought about a few things that could be useful.
They quadruple your carrying capacity. That’s a bunch more pockets for stuff if the DM cares about encumbrance.
They can run basic errands for you. Say you need a sage on the other side of town to give some advisement. You don’t want to split the party but want to get word to him of the needed help. Send my manager! I can be out adventuring while my people handle paperwork.
In the right circumstance they can create a diversion. Say you’re trying to lose a tail, send them one way, party or elements of it go in another, to meet up somewhere else later. Or fact finding in a town or tavern for that matter.
If you’re playing with any sort of followers/henchmen rules, it gives you a chance to flesh these characters out from first level. Then when followers come on line they just need equipment from stuff they were carrying for you anyway.
None of this is profound but it was flavorful stuff that I liked.

[Damon_Tor]

"What do you think, Percy? The nine?" The kight holds out his gauntleted hand to to his squire as the minotaur charges their position.

"Aye ser, the nine." With a weary sigh Percival P Pentagar III reaches into the familiar Bag of Holding, the care of which has become his sole burden. He draws from it a greatsword, glowing slightly, and hands it to his Lord. He should have been a knight long ago. All his brothers were knights already.

"Good lad." the knight remarks as he takes a practice swing with the enchanted weapon, the minotaur howling and frothing as he storms closer.

"Ser, I'm thirty-six."

"Yes, yes. Now watch this." The knight swings the hammer in devatating arc, catching the minotaur in the neck as it approaches, cutting its head clean from its shoulders. The head flies gracefully into air, tumbling, spilling blood and spittle as the creature's body falls limp to the ground. The knight and his squire watch with anticipation and boredom respectively as the head climbs higher, drifting westward as its caught by a gentile breeze, sailing down into a patch of brambles.

"Damn the slice!" the knight swears, handing his sword back to the squire. Percy sighs again and wipes the gore from the blade before returning it to the bag. "Come Percy, we've a head to find!"

[Sigreid]

Talked with one of my players about this a couple of days ago. As DM I stated that if you treat them right they could evolve into sidekicks.

[ff7hero]

"What do you think, Percy? The nine?" The kight holds out his gauntleted hand to to his squire as the minotaur charges their position.

"Aye ser, the nine." With a weary sigh Percival P Pentagar III reaches into the familiar Bag of Holding, the care of which has become his sole burden. He draws from it a greatsword, glowing slightly, and hands it to his Lord. He should have been a knight long ago. All his brothers were knights already.

"Good lad." the knight remarks as he takes a practice swing with the enchanted weapon, the minotaur howling and frothing as he storms closer.

"Ser, I'm thirty-six."

"Yes, yes. Now watch this." The knight swings the hammer in devatating arc, catching the minotaur in the neck as it approaches, cutting its head clean from its shoulders. The head flies gracefully into air, tumbling, spilling blood and spittle as the creature's body falls limp to the ground. The knight and his squire watch with anticipation and boredom respectively as the head climbs higher, drifting westward as its caught by a gentile breeze, sailing down into a patch of brambles.

"Damn the slice!" the knight swears, handing his sword back to the squire. Percy sighs again and wipes the gore from the blade before returning it to the bag. "Come Percy, we've a head to find!"

I loved this. Even the inexplicable shape-shifting nature of "the nine."

[thorr-kan]

Good characterizations. They're *DEFINITELY* a roleplaying opportunity.

The sidekicks suggestion is golden. It's not where I'd want them to go *for this character concept* but it's a really good idea I hadn't even considered.

Sethv007, good mechanical advice.

[Ogun]

Animal friends for a druid?
I am working on a dankwood goblin spore druid.
Dankwood goblins can communicate with beasts that are Small or less in size.
I'm thinking I could have other 0 CR mobs instead.
A trio of vultures, a group of rats, a pack of hyenas?
Actually scratch the hyenas, they stand down lions, too powerful.
3 well trained pack goats that could take care of themselves and the ones I buy?
A pack of semi-feral dogs that hang out because the eating is good?
Maybe myconoids, because mushrooms?
Giant bumble bees, wasps or carrion flies, the size of pigeons?
You get the idea.
Nothing that could let the character fly, or aid the PC in combat, just a "guaranteed source" of animal friends.
Like a Disney princesses little animal buddies, but creepier.
Add animal friendship,the optional druid familiar and also summoning spells for more fun.

[NecessaryWeevil]

@Ogun omg I wish I'd thought of this for my Druid.

[Catullus64]

Other ideas (some of which could be relevant to a PC without the martial abilities implied by the background):

A minstrel or other such poet to eulogize the knight's deeds and make him more popular.
A falconer or houndmaster with some specialty animals.
A tutor with extensive knowledge of history and languages.
A specialist cook to provide good meals.
A veteran warrior, too old to be of much use in fighting, but possessed of much tactical wisdom.
A steward who handles much of the knight's supply needs, maybe swinging them discounts due to local trade contacts.
A spy who doesn't travel with the knight, but is embedded in the household of a rival family.
A barber surgeon for cosmetic and medical needs.
A priest to give spiritual advice, read omens, and perform sacrifices on the knight's behalf.

[Tanarii]

The Retainers variant is a pain in the ass for a DM. Background features are supposed to have in game effect when they come up, but limited. Players inevitably want a strong mechanical effect from Retainers, far beyond "mundane tasks and messengers, or a majordomo". Because (with some justification) they feel that they're not getting any benefit beyond a couple of silver a day in savings otherwise.

Discovery can be similar, but there are still plenty of players that will accept it's purely an adventure driver, but you'll still get some that want it to be some kind of "secret that lets me add cleric spells to my class list" or the like.

[JackPhoenix]

A player of a high-Charisma female elf in my game uses the feature, but renamed it "simps".

[Bigmouth]

Putting twists on this background really makes me so much more interested in taking it! Animal companions you chat with is hilarious to me.

A ranger with the Primal Companion...but also 3 other Primal Companions that are not as fierce as your beast? Like, perhaps your Primal shows up as a Tiger, and the retainers all look like cubs, bumbling around like idiots. But still capable of carrying a scroll across town or whatever.

[Jervis]

Hot swapping weapons between turns. https://youtu.be/uIBSUm7OtPE

[Martin Greywolf]

A knight specifically gets a squire, a groom, and an attendant.

This is a pretty good example to chew on.

First thing that jumps out at me is that this isn't a late medieval knight's retainers, that would be three squires, or a personal squire, a vassal knight and vassal knight's squire. These are Victorian gentleman's staff, the guys he takes with him when he travels light.

Now, for what they do - there were societal expectations on this sort of thing. A groom will groom you and others (maybe give advantage for party face), an attendant will be doing minor bothersome tasks, squire will assist you in combat with minor tasks (reloading, fetching you a new shield). But.

That also comes with social obligations, and it's this that people tend to forget. If you are a knight, it is your duty to protect people in your employ. Sure, you may be friendly enough with that groom that he would be willing to pick up a crossbow do defend you, but if that sort of thing happens too often, people will talk (frnakly, if going for full realism, people will talk if you are frineds with common classes, but let's not get quite that historically accurate). About how you are an incompetent coward who lets his grooms do his fighting for him. Most knights would keep the groom and the attendant away from fighting if at all possible, merely to save face, and only resort to having them take part in fights as a last resort.

Similar things apply to social side of things. If your attendant has buckets of charisma, you still can't let him negotiate for you with the mayor, because that's... pretty much an insult, and will be seen as such.

The squire is a bit different, however. Squires are supposed to be knights in training, at that means more usefulness out of them (frankly, they should have a full combat stat block), but also more obligations. You're supposed to teach them and almost raise them as your own children, and not letting them get killed in a fight is a part of it, but you also should let them get some combat experience. This should, frankly, at least mildly stress your PC out.

tl;dr They should do quite a lot, but their existence should be an obligation, as well as an advantage. You can take this apporach and tweak it as needed for different social circumstances of your campaign.

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

Considering they explicitly won't fight or go into dangerous areas, and leave if endangered, the obligation is already taken care of by RAW.
The squire (Noble) has full combat statblock... it just sucks, at CR 1/8 (and hilariously, comes with more expensive armor than whetever the knight can get from starting equipment or starting money).
And unless you're a centaur, the groom won't groom you, it's there to care of your horse (the one you don't get to start with either). The "attendant" (actually described as servant, not attendant) is an armor polisher. Both use Commoners stat blocks, so you don't have to worry about them having "buckets of charisma".

[JakOfAllTirades]

I had a PC who wanted a Bard who was just like Liberace. By which he meant the character looked, acted, spoke and dressed like Liberace.

He took the Noble background so he could have three burly Dwarves as Retainers to carry around his instrument: a full sized harpsichord.

Those were some very grumpy retainers. And his character was hilarious.

[thorr-kan]

Some more excellent suggestions and examples!


This is a pretty good example to chew on.

<SNIP!>

tl;dr They should do quite a lot, but their existence should be an obligation, as well as an advantage. You can take this apporach and tweak it as needed for different social circumstances of your campaign.
BUT...if they're family retainers, especially old family of retainers for an old family, a certain familiarity will be expected. Good "help" has earned a place with the family, after all...(cf Bujold's Vorkosigan series, "true" Vor and their Armsmen, especially Roic, Pym, and Bothari). On the gripping hand, it's there's still a distance. Roleplaying gold.

Depending on the retainer, *you* doing the negotiating could be considered gauche! That's what I have my man, Ostentatious X, my solicitor, for! Again, depends on the circumstances. Knowing who and when to do what, more roleplaying gold.

Darn-tootin' straight there's obligations as well as benefits. That's why they stay behind and guard the camp with some dungeon delves.

[Telok]

Novice DM or DM who decides they don't want to deal with extra npcs after a session or two: They never even exist or get killed off as soon as the DM doesn't want to rp them.

Other DMs: They die in an ambush to AoE or arrows from behind or they get targeted because you made an enemy that isn't a total "hold the idiot ball beause plot/story". That way they die because, well, cr 1/8 and you can't protect them from attacks.

Basically I've never seen them last through the 2nd session, even if the DM explicitly OKed the background whrn thr player brought it up.

[Xetheral]

Depending on the retainer, *you* doing the negotiating could be considered gauche! That's what I have my man, Ostentatious X, my solicitor, for! Again, depends on the circumstances. Knowing who and when to do what, more roleplaying gold.

Why have just one solicitor when you can use all three retainers and travel with your own legal team? They can negotiate all the minutiae of the party's adventuring contracts, and their very existence should terrify local politicians into honoring those contracts in full.

[Vampyre_Lord]

i dont play often, but the one time i did and had this background, i basically used them for errands in the city while i was out adventuring. if i had to wait for a message from some NPC, they could have it delivered to my retainers and the would know how to respond or what to do with that information, and act on it if it was minor enough. one of them was also my back-up character in case i died.

[Yakk]

Depends, does your party have a necromancer?

[Sigreid]

Also worth mentioning that they can carry supplies, haul water, dig ditches and trenches, move rocks, look after horses, probably drive carts, help carry treasure out once the dungeon is clear, carry messages, keep their eyes open in a city, clean and look after your house, polish your armor, do your laundry, cook, the list goes on. The only thing they patently won't do for you is fight or take risks.

[Anonymouswizard]

Discovery can be similar, but there are still plenty of players that will accept it's purely an adventure driver, but you'll still get some that want it to be some kind of "secret that lets me add cleric spells to my class list" or the like.

And here I was thinking it was meant to be 'I have discovered the secret to eternal life' or the much sought after solution to the kingdom's economic crisis: a method for turning gold into lead.


Why have just one solicitor when you can use all three retainers and travel with your own legal team? They can negotiate all the minutiae of the party's adventuring contracts, and their very existence should terrify local politicians into honoring those contracts in full.

And travel without a valet/lady's maid? My good sir, we are not barbarians, I refuse to tell the king we've slain the dragon without being properly dressed

But yeah, it's mostly supposed to be people who do boring mundane tasks and can maybe take care of the horses while you're in the dungeon. A valet, a cook, a scribe, an errand boy, a model so you can practice your portraiture during rests, if you have a home base some might not travel with you but provide useful services at home. To help the GM I suggest letting the other players each play one of your servants in addition to their normal character.

And yes, the bard who uses retainers to lug [insert large instrument here] around a dungeon is a classic.

[Sigreid]

The Retainers variant is a pain in the ass for a DM. Background features are supposed to have in game effect when they come up, but limited. Players inevitably want a strong mechanical effect from Retainers, far beyond "mundane tasks and messengers, or a majordomo". Because (with some justification) they feel that they're not getting any benefit beyond a couple of silver a day in savings otherwise.

Discovery can be similar, but there are still plenty of players that will accept it's purely an adventure driver, but you'll still get some that want it to be some kind of "secret that lets me add cleric spells to my class list" or the like.

I told a player just last week that if he took hermit he was going to have the deadpool discovery and be the only person in existence that was aware he was a character in a game.

[Vampyre_Lord]

I told a player just last week that if he took hermit he was going to have the deadpool discovery and be the only person in existence that was aware he was a character in a game.

oh heck yes!

[Anonymouswizard]

Please, real role players use Unknown Armies to play a character who gets magic powers from believing they're in a game.

Most of the time they've misidentified the system.

[Leon]

Possibly a lot, the ones in the game i was in were almost always forgotten till one of us who didn't have them brought them up. In the end they were useful to go send word to a Manticore that the time was now and we needed its help

[Temperjoke]

While I haven't played one yet, I have contemplated a Fiend-pact Warlock Noble, whose retainers are fiends in disguise who's contract explicitly limits their actions and requires them to remain in disguise (since fiends return to the hells when killed on the material plane), with one's job being the general servant (sets up camp, manages the fire, cares for horses/carts), one who's job is the majordomo (handles correspondence such as with the noble's family, does the general supply shopping, manages the money for the noble, maintains contacts), and one who's the chambermaid (sees to the nobles personal needs like basic mending, cleaning, cooking, etc.).

[Sigreid]

While I haven't played one yet, I have contemplated a Fiend-pact Warlock Noble, whose retainers are fiends in disguise who's contract explicitly limits their actions and requires them to remain in disguise (since fiends return to the hells when killed on the material plane), with one's job being the general servant (sets up camp, manages the fire, cares for horses/carts), one who's job is the majordomo (handles correspondence such as with the noble's family, does the general supply shopping, manages the money for the noble, maintains contacts), and one who's the chambermaid (sees to the nobles personal needs like basic mending, cleaning, cooking, etc.).

A fun twist on this is that they aren't fiends, they're the damned souls of his parents and his brother. Bound to serve but that doesn't mean they can't be embarrassing family. :D

[Temperjoke]

A fun twist on this is that they aren't fiends, they're the damned souls of his parents and his brother. Bound to serve but that doesn't mean they can't be embarrassing family. :D

That would be interesting since I had considered "personal needs" a bit more all encompassing than I listed. :P I also tend to not make my characters be orphans. :P

[JackPhoenix]

That would be interesting since I had considered "personal needs" a bit more all encompassing than I listed. :P I also tend to not make my characters be orphans. :P

But he wouldn't be an orphan, his parents are *right there*.

[Sigreid]

That would be interesting since I had considered "personal needs" a bit more all encompassing than I listed. :P I also tend to not make my characters be orphans. :P

Well, you did say fiendish so the personal needs angle isn't necessarily off the table...

[greenstone]

On expedition they put up your tent, lay out your bedclothes, chop your firewood, make your dinner, do the dishes, clean your clothes.

They guard your possessions from theft *sideways glace at party troublemaker*.

In town they book your room at the inn, they sell your stuff, they take messages to local nobles, they announce you when you enter the room.

As for mechanical benefit, they come with some domain expertise. Your groom will accompany you to the horse market and advise you on the quality of the horses for sale. Your majordomo will quickly get all the goss on local nobility. When your attendant buys clothing, you know it will be quality gear.