Allies
Every character has an Allies rating — a number from 0 to 5 that measures their stable access to people who will act for them. Not customers. Not informants. Accomplices. It is not a roster. It is not a list of named retainers. It is the standing a character carries when they need a body next to theirs in a hard moment, and they already know who will show up.
A League officer with Allies 1 does not command a private army. She has a section corporal who served under her on a bad deployment and would walk into a wall for her on the strength of it. A Confederate freelancer with Allies 1 does not have rank or chain of command. He has a wingman who has flown drunk with him through a Republic blockade and would do it again sober. Same number. Same loyalty. Different fiction.
That is the whole point. Allies tells you how many people will act when a character calls. The character's life tells you who answers and what they will do.
The difference between an ally and someone hired off the street is loyalty. Money buys hands. Allies buys hands that stay on the job when the money runs out, when the work goes bad, or when the character cannot tell them why yet.
Allies is one of three Social Power pillars, alongside Resources and Contacts. All three use the same engine.
Only player characters and named Adversaries carry an Allies rating. Grunts and minor NPCs do not need one.
The Tiers
A character's Allies rating is picked at character creation and sits on the sheet alongside their other Social Power ratings. There is no XP cost. It is not bought up like a skill. It moves through play.
| Rating | Tier | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Solo | You have no reliable outside help. |
| 1 | Minor Ally | You can reach out to a minor ally for small favors, local help, or a safe introduction. |
| 2 | Useful Friends | You can reliably get help from a capable person or small circle who can handle ordinary risks. |
| 3 | Trusted Allies | You have a few people with real skill, status, or resources who will take meaningful risks for you. |
| 4 | Powerful Allies | You have the allegiance of a major individual, elite team, or faction cell with serious reach, willing to take mortal risk for you. |
| 5 | Patron Group | You are owed help from a major power bloc — an institution, a noble house, a syndicate, a military command, an elite group. |
The tiers describe loyalty and availability, not raw headcount. A noble with three sworn retainers sits at the same tier as a pirate captain with seven crew who would mutiny if she ever stopped flying. They differ on style and discipline. They reach into the same shelf when the work goes bad.
Spending Allies
Anything at or below a character's Allies rating is routine. No roll, no fuss. An Allies 2 character has a crewmate cover them on a meet, asks a friend to handle a logistics piece, calls a comrade to take a watch shift. It happens because that is what allies do.
Basic competence in a character's own scene is included at every tier — even an Allies 0 character can fight their own fight, work their own angle, and hire people for a job who will do exactly what they were paid for. Being solo is being solo; it is not having every NPC turn on you. Allies only constrains reaching for committed help.
Anything above the rating is possible — but it costs more than asking. The GM names a Cost, and the help arrives.
This is the Costly Success principle applied to loyalty rather than to a roll.
When a character calls for help above their Allies rating, the GM names a Cost. The character pays it; the help is theirs. Costs can include:
- Ally Hurt — physical, professional, or reputational injury. They paid for the help in a way you'll see.
- Ally Exposed — their involvement is known to people who'll act on it.
- They Call In — they come through. Now they need a big one back, soon.
- They Do It Their Way — the job gets done, but not how you'd have done it. You live with the result.
- Reduced Allies — the rating drops by 1 until earned back through play. Not available at Allies 0; pick a different Cost, or call the ask too far.
- Cross-Pillar — reduce Resources or Contacts by 1 instead. Hazard pay, supporting their family, fronting their costs; or feeding them intel they need to act.
Costs scale with the ask. One step over the rating is a single Cost. Two steps is heavier — two stacked, or one the player will feel.
The GM also has the option of saying no. An Allies 0 character does not raise a company of loyal soldiers by stacking Costs. They have to earn it. The recruitment becomes the campaign.
Suggested Ranges
Allies at character creation should fit the fiction the player wants to play. The table below offers ranges, not fixed values — a freelancer can run a crew, a noble can be the family's lone disappointment with no one to call. The range describes what the role usually means in terms of loyal backing.
| Occupation Type | Examples | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Drifters and freelancers | Freelancer, Mercenary, Entertainer, Scout | 0–2 |
| Criminal life | Pirate, Privateer, Smuggler, Fixer, Bounty Hunter | 1–5 |
| Trained professionals | Marine, Security, Medic, Engineer, Mechanic, Pilot | 0–2 |
| Position and access | Officer, Captain, Diplomat, Merchant | 1–4 |
| Privileged | Noble | 1–4 |
The Allies table favors any role that is leadership or community. Captains and officers stand at the head of a chain of people who follow them. Cartel underbosses, pirate captains, and faction-bound fixers sit on pyramids of loyalty. A drifter, by definition, has not stayed anywhere long enough to build one — but a drifter who has been the good kind of drifter for ten years can sit at 2 or even 3, because the people they helped along the way remember.
A character's background matters more here than in any other pillar. A character who came up in a unit that took heavy losses together carries those bonds for life. A character who came up alone and stayed alone may sit at 0 even at the end of a long career.
Venlyn needs three armed bodies on a rooftop tonight — not contractors, not security guards. People who will not think twice when the shooting starts. Her Allies is 3. The ask is a 4.
The ask is one step above Venlyn's rating, so the GM names a Cost: They Call In. Venlyn pulls in a Diplomatic Corps colleague who runs close protection out of the same embassy, and two of his people. They take the post. They do the work. The next time the colleague needs a discreet pair of eyes in the diplomatic gallery — and he will, soon — Venlyn is the eyes. She does not get to ask why.
Two acts later the favor lands. The colleague is using her to watch a meeting she has very specific opinions about, and no is not on the table.
Priya wants a hundred loyal engineers and dockworkers to walk off the job at the Tannhauser orbital yard the same night, in solidarity with her sabotage of the prototype reactor. Her Allies is 1. The ask is a 5.
The GM does not offer a Cost. The GM says: you cannot make that call. You can organize them — over months, on the docks, in the bars, in the chapels, building a coalition one shift at a time. You can find the existing organizer and earn her trust. You can wait for the working conditions to do the work for you and be ready when they do. Pick a lane.
That is the next arc.
Mission-End Adjustment
Allies is not bought up with XP. It drifts as the fiction drifts.
At the end of every mission, the GM and the table consider whether the character's network of loyalty has actually shifted. Did they recruit someone — earn it, not hire it? Did they get someone killed? Did they take care of an ally in a hard moment, or fail to? Did they reconcile with a former rival? If the fiction moved the needle, the rating moves with it.
- Most missions move Allies 0 or 1 step in either direction. The default is no change.
- Bigger swings are allowed when the fiction earns them — a captain finally proving herself to a crew that was skeptical of her, an officer getting her unit killed, a wedding, a funeral, a defection, a betrayal. The table can move the rating two or more steps when the story supports it.
- There is no hard cap on a single shift. A character who earns the loyalty of a whole crew in one season has earned it.
Movement down works the same way. An Allies 4 mercenary captain who buries half her unit on a single bad contract does not lose one tier per mission until the math is clean. She lost what she lost.
Players can pursue Allies actively as a personal project during Downtime — recruiting, mending fences, taking care of crew, supporting an ally through their own crisis. A Standard scope (target 3–5) fits most Allies work. The payoff lands at mission's end.
XP buys capability. Allies is not capability — it is position, the same as Resources and Contacts. A character with high Allies is not better at their job; they are better-trusted by the people whose help they need.
Letting Allies drift with the fiction keeps the rule honest. A character who got loyal because the story made them loyal feels supported. A character who lost their people because the story took them feels the loss. If Allies cost XP, the loss could never land. That is the opposite of what this mechanic is for.
GM Guidance
Allies is the table's volume knob for how alone the characters are in the world. Some campaigns want a small crew against a hostile sky — every loss permanent, every recruit hard-won. Some campaigns want characters embedded in larger networks of friends and comrades. Same mechanic, different volume.
The rest of this section is for the GM specifically.
A Low Allies Rating Is Not a Penalty
The character with Allies 0 is the lone wolf, the drifter, the burned ex-spy, the captain who lost her ship and her crew on the same day. They are not waiting to be issued companions. The story of how they find people, or whether they find people, is part of what is on the table.
Hirelings still work. Money buys hands. The rule is asking the table to feel the difference between a hand bought and a person who came when called.
Treating low Allies as a deficit to be patched is how this rule goes wrong. Treat it as a hook to be pulled.
Loyalty Is the Currency
You cannot buy an Ally. You can earn one. You can inherit one. You can be one, and have someone owe you back. Money is in the Resources column. When a player calls in an Ally and the spend reads like a payroll transaction — "I pay them" — push back. Make them name the person. Make the loyalty visible. Allies that read as Resources are using the wrong pillar.
Allies Have Their Own Agendas
Same point as Contacts, sharper here. An ally is not a tool. They have a life that proceeds whether or not the character is calling. They have things they want. They have things they fear. The Costs above are mechanical handles on that fact. The fiction is the engine.
When an ally helps, narrate why they helped today. Sometimes it is love. Sometimes it is a debt being worked off. Sometimes it is because the ally needs the character for something coming up and is investing. Sometimes it is just because they were there and they always show up. Why they came is part of the spend.
"No, but Here's How You'd Earn Them" Beats Stacked Costs
Same as Resources and Contacts. An Allies 2 ask for an Allies 3 favor: name a Cost, move on. An Allies 1 ask for an Allies 5 movement of people: stop, and turn it into a campaign. A Cost is a small wound the character carries. A mission is a story the table tells together. The second is almost always better gameplay.
Hired Hands Are Flavor
A character hiring contractors for a job does not change their Allies. A captain paying her crew their share at the end of a mission does not bump a rating. Treat the day-to-day economics of working with people as fiction — Allies tracks a character's standing in the loyalty of others, not the headcount on the current job. If a relationship is large enough to actually shift standing — a contractor who becomes part of the crew, an enemy turned friend, a comrade lost — handle it as a Mission-End Adjustment rather than a one-time transfer.