Esoteric Enterprises - Crews - UPDATED NOVEMBER 15, 2020

UPDATE DECEMBER 7 2020: The latest version of these rules can be found here.

Your hustle has goons, civilians, etc who carry out its day to day operations. Aside from a couple memorable NPCs who might serve as points of contact, they can be sidelined and forgotten about during actual play. The people you care about are your Crew.

When you hit Level 3, you get a Crew. Your Crew has total Hit Dice equal to your Level plus your Contacts score. That might mean one tough NPC, or a handful of lower level goons. It's your choice who you want to recruit.

• You can always recruit Thugs, Drug Pushers, Mobsters, Doctors, Mercenaries, and other mundane humans
• Recruiting magic users and other occult weirdos requires either a Contacts roll or some other connection to the world of wizards and witches
• Recruiting intelligent supernatural beings requires the player to have contact with them or their faction, at the discretion of the DM

Your Crew are paid out of the income from your illegitimate business. The equipment that comes with their NPC stat block is covered by this payment, anything beyond that (weapons, armor, other items) you have to buy for them with your own money.

Members of your Crew can accompany you on adventures. They'll go into the underworld and face danger alongside you. They'll follow orders that aren't suicidal. When your Crew has to test morale (because of hideous injury, scary magic, casualties, etc), you SUBTRACT your Charisma modifier from their morale test instead of adding to it.

EDIT JUNE 23, 2020: You can send your crew to take care of things, ranging from mundane errands to petty crime. You can send them to straighten out difficulties with your Hustles if you don't wan't to or can't do it in person.

EDIT NOVEMBER 15, 2020: When XP is earned during an adventure, player characters who brought NPC crew members along must pay their crew. Not in money, but in earned experience. The cost is 5% of their personal share of the XP for each hit dice of NPC crew they brought on the adventure.

Example: Robert is part of a 5 player dungeoneering gang. The player characters earn a total of 5,000 XP from a dungeon crawl. The XP is split 5 ways between the player characters, giving Robert a share of 1,000. But, Robert also brought his trusty Mob Lieutenant with him. The LT has 5 hit dice, meaning he gets 25% of Robert's share. Robert therefore only gets 750 XP, with the other 250 points going to the LT.

Replacing a Crew member who dies, retires due to injury, or leaves due to poor treatment requires a Contacts roll to find someone you can trust. You can make this roll once a week. If the vacancy was caused by obvious cowardice or incompetence on your party, you get a negative modifier to the test, since nobody wants to work with you again.

EDIT JUNE 23, 2020: When you gain a level or increase your Contacts score, you can either recruit a new crew member, save up for another one, or promote an existing crew member. This obviously depends on the class having an advancement path - a Mobster can become a Mob Lieutenant, a Morlock can become a Crawling Killer, etc.