I tried to search for this, but no luck. Is it possible to use Circles to find more than one character with a single roll? And if so, what would the modifier to the Ob be? I have a player whose character is a mercenary captain and he’s looking to recruit some more soldiers for his company. As a job he set himself up as a fechtmeister and stated he wanted to talk up life as a merc in his company in the hopes of recruiting some of his pupils. I set this up as a linked test, Persuasion then Circles once he’s actually ready to try to recruit. He made the Persuasion check, but I’m not entirely sure how to handle the Circles check. One check for each recruit? That seems tedious. One check for the group, maybe graduated to see how many he gets? Is there such a thing as a graduated Circles test? Any advice?
I’d have you circle up a sergeant with a few men under him.
When we want to do similar, we Circles up a Commander/Lieutenant/Sergeant. This person comes with his own group of soldiers - that’s included in the roll at no extra cost. The rank of the Circled one will decide how many soldiers come along.
BUT, maybe the best method is that you have him roll Oratory* and convince a large group of soldiers to join all at once. Set the Ob = to average Will (probably 3), plus add any modifiers that might make it harder (unlucky reputation? past defeats? etc). No Circles test necessary, unless he then wants to fill in particular positions with particular people (like a famous siege engineer, or spy master, or powerful sorcerer).
*Oratory is for crowds. Persuasion is for individuals.
Thanks for the ideas. He hasn’t opened Oratory yet, so it might be best for him to Circle up a sergeant and try to Persuade him one-on-one.
Circles could work, but it strikes me as not quite the right approach here. He’s not trying to find people, except maybe as pupils. Acquiring pupils feels more like Circles to me, really, but it could easily be under an applicable work skills (hey, to succeed as a trainer you gotta have people to train). Then he’s not trying to locate appropriate recruits, he’s trying to recruit the people he already knows.
Can you explain the rationale for Persuasion into Circles? An intent of persuading students that the mercenary life is a good one and that they should join up with a task of Persuasion seems perfect to me. Maybe Oratory if he makes a big speech to a crowd about how great his company is. I don’t see the need to expand to more than one roll. You can, of course, but then what is the first roll accomplishing? What’s the intent of the first Persuasion before Circles?
I set it up as linked test, so the Persuasion test will give a bonus to his eventual Circles test. I split it because he said his intent was to convince them to join when he needed them, but he didn’t want to actually recruit them yet because he didn’t want to have to feed them and pay them yet.
Another way to do it, without a linked test:
Circles for a worthy sergeant/quartermaster/&c. (use the relevant social class / occupation modifiers, but don’t add a disposition modifier – that’s what the next roll is gonna cover)
Persuasion/Haggling/&c. to convince him to join up with you
Either the sergeant comes with his own guys or he recruits them after you recruit him – in your case, probably the latter, since you’re suggesting you want the soldiers to show up later anyway
(Not saying my way is better. Just offering options.)
For reference, here’s an account of a session that was pretty much all about doing this:
http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/showthread.php?9963-BW-THAC0-Buys-a-City-Raises-an-Army