Thinking Ahead To Next Fall

It's becoming apparent that the semester has drawn to a close without allowing enough time for me to get to any of the major "set piece" battles I intended to do in the Domains at War system in the current Green Pass fantasy campaign. There were actually a couple of possible outcomes (based on how players acquired and responded to information), but none of them will be ready by this weekend, and I'm not even sure who will show up this close to final exams.

So I'm thinking ahead to next fall. Currently, after discussions with club president Peter Cowles, it sounds as if we're planning to split off our activity into a third night (Thursday), with distinct activities each night: RPG sessions on Thursday, anime movies on Friday, and board games on Saturday. There's a part of me that likes the idea of clearing Saturday for board games, since it presents some possibility of letting me try some historical battles (ship battles using miniatures, or my impossible dream scenario of a huge WW2 campaign).

However, this segregation of activities probably will present a deathblow to the idea of an integrated RPG-and-wargame campaign of the sort I want to run. My guess is that this is true not just because the nights will attract different player types, but also because the RPG night is going to be dominated by Pathfinder players, and doing another PFRPG campaign is the path of least resistance.

At the moment, I'm anticipating reverting the Green Pass campaign back to the kind of "simulated" campaign I was doing with Walley last fall. Players will no longer be tracking strategic level production or doing the associated paperwork (which caused confusion for a number of players), but just doing occasional battles using point-buys and pregenerated characters. I'll continue to draw scenarios and personae dramatis  (the various lords and heroes generated by this spring's players) from the campaign documents I've developed, so that they'll extend the existing history. I can probably still run the anticipated finale battle I had planned at some point, with the scenario being arranged around some private roleplaying sessions I've been doing at home with my wife in the capital city of Durnovar. The RPG content I had planned (including a beautifully lethal and massive crypt complex stuffed with ghouls in Balewood!) is probably going to be orphaned.

On question I've had for a while is whether there's any way to integrate other campaigns into my own. I've tried to describe the campaign setting of Proxima as a crossover-friendly (and slightly "gonzo") world where refugees from other magical worlds (including a thinly-fictionalized Earth) can rub shoulders with one another. The TARDIS spell from a couple weeks ago was one example of how to rationalize a crossover mechanic as an in-character domain-level action.

A more difficult question is how to convert characters in a post-3.0 system (d20 OGL, or Pathfinder) into the pre-3.0 system of ACKS. The substantial buffs to abilities, feats, skills, and special class perks would make any character from a post 3.0 world function at the equivalent of 3-4 levels higher than an equivalent classic-era character. Many abilities in one system simply have no equivalent in the other. One of the major complications with the development of the 3.0 era (and 4.0, for that matter!) was the complete eradication of back-compatibility. This is especially galling for someone like me, with a huge library of plug-and-run modules from the 80s (a few of which I've borrowed to flesh out Proxima!), but virtually no content for modern game systems. One of the appealing features of running ACKS has been its strong emphasis on compatibility with 80s-era gaming that feels comfortable and familiar to me.

In any event, I'd very much like to have everyone in the current campaign send me a full list of all their heroes, castles, and lands (with associated statistics), so that I can keep running the world in a way that integrates player-generated content with the stuff I've been creating on the DM side of things (the various villains, dungeons, and chaotic-aligned realms). I'm hoping that even if the RPG night runs a Pathfinder campaign, we can still find ways to overlap some of our activities, and I can develop more of my intended history using point-buy battles using some of the existing heroes as generals and commanders.

Firefly Board Game: First Impressions

Due to the holiday (and my general feeling of being overwhelmed by work and children) there was no official MEK OP event this weekend, although some members were talking about meeting at our FLGS, Three Suns Unlimited. Instead, I stayed home and played some two-person Firefly with my wife.

Firefly is a pseudo-RPG with a strong thematic tie-in to the short-lived TV show of the same name. You control the crew of a tramp freighter which cruises around a small map with a localized star cluster, looking for shipping jobs and performing acts of petty crime on the side. You can upgrade your ships, hire crew, and equip them with new gear. There's no "leveling mechanic", but otherwise it's all standard RPG fare with the standard dice-rolling skill tests, here using a d6. Run quests, get money, buy more loot.

The game has the standard strengths and weaknesses of other games of its type. It does a superb job of matching the feel of the original show, which is an impressive feat given that the show lasted for barely half a season. Virtually every bit of dialogue has been mined for some kind of event card or character profile. Any extra who appeared for 7 seconds is probably in this game on a mercenary card somewhere.

There are a few nice mechanics here. Every time you complete a quest ("job"), you have to make an extra pay-out to your crew. This motivates you to run jobs with the smallest crew possible, and forces you to keep looking for harder jobs to pay your growing crew. The game creates a strong sense of self-pacing, even aside from the incentive of competing with another player.

The most original mechanic is a couple of hostile ships representing the Alliance (law-and-order, trying to catch smugglers and criminals) and the Reavers (psycho space marauders who just want to kill everyone). The two ships move based on decks of cards that you're forced to draw as you move your own ships. Eventually each deck has a card that will teleport one or another of the ships directly onto you, causing lots of nasty effects. This creates an unpredictable timer that tends to go off right as you're about to execute some brilliantly devised scheme, rendering it all for naught.

Whether you like or dislike this kind of random mechanic, it certainly is a faithful representation of the thematic source material. By the end of the game, you'll really feel like a harried freighter captain, abused from all sides by demanding underworld figures and constantly on the run from the law.

There are a number of mechanics missing from the game that I would rather enjoy seeing included. The map is always fixed, and playing every game on the same fixed map starts to feel repetitive. (This is one of the reasons I'd like to design a random-map game of my own, if I ever find the time!) There are underutilized game concepts that feel like they might be vestigial bits of some earlier design of the game: ships have a printed "purchase cost", despite being all identical and coming for free at the start of the game, and the "stash" cargo storage area on your ship is literally referenced by only a single card in the entire game.

The level of randomness in the game is high. Sometimes the dice will reward someone for using an ill-conceived strategy, but punish someone else for playing cautiously. Screaming at bad die roll results or ill-timed event cards is an expected outcome of play.

The production standards for the game are uniformly high. Everything is beautiful, down to the money, and the game sells at a fairly impressive price point below $50. If you have any interest in the old show, it's highly recommended as a nostalgia trip.

ACKS Example: Merchant Ship

The rules for trade arbitrage in ACKS are potentially quite detailed and offer a lot of room to add flavor to an expedition. For passive trading to make a steady profit, there are default estimates of the average profit per month for any ship or caravan. But I want to see how well the detailed system matched up with these default values. So here's an example of the trade arbitrage system in action.

Master Leonhard is a 1st level mage aboard the Wyvern's Spur, a large sailing ship. He's been given responsibility for running a trade route between the docks of Straddleport (a Class II market in Elysion) and the capital city of Durnovar (a Class I market in Winlend). His ship can carry an impressive 30,000 stone of cargo, which amounts to hundreds of "loads" of different cargo. (A load is typically 10 to 100 stones in weight.)

First, let's look at the demand modifiers in the region. These are generated randomly for each market, based on its local environment and other properties. Positive numbers indicate that a good is in high demand and more expensive (sell it here!), and negative numbers indicate that a good is already well supplied and less expensive (buy it here!) The first column is for Durnovar (Class I), and the second is for Straddleport (Class II). The third column, which we don't need, is the Class III market in Green Pass at the military depot of Centerpost.

Generally, a spread in demand creates a reliable profit. At Straddleport, we'd like to buy grain, pottery, precious metals, or ivory, since all of these have a relative spread of at least -2 vs Durnovar. Anything else might turn a profit, but it would be a matter of luck. In Durnovar -- planning ahead for the return trip -- it would be better to buy common wood, salt, hides, spices, or semiprecious stones. The Wyvern's Spur is a peaceful sort of ship with 140 structural hit points, so it will pay 140/10 = 14 gp as a mooring fee every time it stops in harbor.

First we need to figure out how many local Straddleport merchants will sell to Leonhard. We pay a toll of 1d10+10 = 16 gp to enter the market, and discover 2d4+1 = 5 merchants willing to sell goods. Each of them will have 4d6 loads of some single type of merchandise. We can either let them suggest a good to sell to us (probably something they are itching to unload), or we can try to look for a particular type of good. The former gives a random result. The latter approach requires a reaction roll with a 9+ target (or 12+ for rare goods, anything after "mounts" on the list).

Let's see what happens with a random selection. Checking for the type of goods available (a d100 roll) gives 84  (mounts), 1 (grain), 98 (rare goods), 9 (wood), and 38 (hides). A second check for the type of rare good gives 51 (ivory). That's a very nice result, since ivory has a -3 spread and is a costly commodity. The other three are less appealing, since they are in low demand at Durnovar and will probably command lower prices there.

Let's check the grain merchant first. He's offering 4d6 = 13 loads of grain, each weighing 80 stone. The base cost of a load would be 10 gp, but it's modified by (4d4-2)*10% = 80%, so each load costs 8 gp. That's 104 gp to load 1040 stone of grain cargo.

Next let's check the ivory merchant. He's offering 14 loads of ivory, each weighing 8 stones (mammoth tusks are heavy!) The base cost would be 800 gp, but this is modified by (4d4-1)*10% = 80%, or 640 gp each. So it will put us out 8960 gp to buy all 14 loads, which will weigh 112 stone. We can see the massive difference between luxury cargo (expensive and light) and common cargo (cheap and heavy). All the good profit is in the latter.

We still have plenty of room left on our ship, so let's look for passengers and third party contracts. There are 2d4 = 6 passengers expressing an interest. One of them wants to reach a distant city 2400 miles away (this occurs with a check of 19+ on 1d20), probably somewhere near exotic Chukchi in the Beringian isles. This can be lucrative for a ship going that way anyway (he'd potentially pay to charter the whole ship, for up to 3000 gp!), but here it's going to ruin my attempt to use this as an example. The other 5 are going our way.

Each of them will need to pass a 2d6 reaction roll to trust our crew. With a target of 9+, it turns out that none of them regard us as seaworthy. With a higher CHA score, this would be a different story.

Now we look for shipping contracts. There are 2d4+1= 4 contracts available, each for 4d6 loads. The average weight of a load is 70 stone, and for this many loads, it's simplest to just assume they all average out. So there are four contacts available for 8, 9, 15, and 11 loads each, or a total of 43 loads. This will weigh 3010 stone. If we travel about 500 miles (Durnovar is a bit farther than this, actually, but that's a good first estimate), then the value of all the contracts will be 3010/10 = 301 gp. This doesn't require any selling or customs tax at the other end, it's just straight profit.

The ship now contains 3010+1040+112 stone. There's another 200 stone needed for a merchant representative to take care of the shipping contracts. That's a total of 4362 stone, out of a full capacity of 30,000 stone! That leaves a lot of empty space. You can see that there might be some appeal in just carrying around extra cargo in search of a good price. (I guess in ACKS, perishable goods are magically warded against spoilage -- or at least there's no rule giving them an expiration date!)

For now, let's just take the current cargo and set off. The route to Durnovar is around 500-700 miles away. With 144 miles per day of sail movement, this is going to take less than a week, probably more like 4-5 days. Let's just call it a week for simplicity, and to allow for a few days of bad weather.

Arriving in Durnovar costs another 14 gp for mooring, and a 1d6+15 = 21 gp toll. Now we start trying to sell. There are 2d6+2 = 11 merchants here. Do any of them want to buy our ivory? That requires a 12+ on a reaction roll, alas. Even with the +2 demand modifier, that's still hard to get. After rolling 11 times, I get nothing better than an 8, which occurs 4 times. That's good enough to unload the grain (+1 demand, to hit the 9+ target for common goods), at least. So I can sell the 13 loads of grain. Each merchant will buy 6d8 loads, which means they will easily purchase all my grain. Unfortunately, the prevailing price of 4d4+1 is only 80% of the base price, or 8 gp. That's what I paid for the stuff! After a local customs duty of 2d10% = 10%, I'd be selling the loads for a net of 13*8*0.9 = 93.6 gp, a loss of 10 gp. Oh well, I might as well unload the grain before it attracts rats. The price has only a 10% chance per month to change, so there's no sense waiting for that. Unloading it costs another 5 gp for labor.

At least I can collect on the shipping contracts, to pick up a 301 gp check to cover my various fees and the cost of feeding my crew. Otherwise, this trade mission isn't shaping up well.

The bottom line is that I desperately need a character with a CHA or proficiency bonus to make this work. Buying and selling specific luxury goods requires a reaction roll, and that's where all the money in arbitrage is.

At the very least, I can now pick up some additional shipping contracts and head back to Straddleport. Maybe I can talk my high CHA character (Halward the gnomish trickster) into coming along, and then try again!

A bit of good news: A Class I market has better contracts than a Class II market. I can roll 2d6+2 for contracts, resulting in 8. I pass the reaction roll (9+ on 2d6) for 5 of them. Each of them has 6d8 loads, for a total of 22+24+18+18+21 = 103 loads. That will provide 7210 stone of cargo, and earn me 721 gp on delivery. All of them are "going my way".

The same check applies for passengers. There are 2d4+1 = 5 passengers here, and one of them passes the reaction roll. He's also going my way, and will pay 20 gp for the trip. That's another 200 stone of cargo.

 The return trip takes another week of travel, and so, after 2 months, I've completed a full round trip.

Total revenue:  301+94+721+20 = 1136 gp (after customs duty)
Total expenses: 2x14+2x5+14+21 = 75 gp
Crew wages: 2x6x17+2x2x25+2x100 = 504 gp

Net profit: 557 gp
Profit per month: 278.5 gp
Experience: This compares against a xp threshold of 25 gp, so Master Leonhard earns 253.5 xp per month, or 507 gp.

Moral: The estimated profit in the table on page 145 probably assumes that most reaction rolls are successful. With a low CHA characters, this isn't a good assumption. I recommend that instead of just using the default value (of 2600 gp, for a large ship), you roll five 2d6 reaction attempts. For each failure, reduce your monthly profit by 20%. For a character with no bonuses, this will typically yield only about 1 success, for a monthly profit of 520 gp. (Which is still better than I could manage, alas.)

MEK OP Game Night: Isigwold Incursion

Last night's group: Reba playing the gnomes (with Ruthy as a paladin lieutenant), Zac as the elves, and Peter as the giants.

March 14, Caudex Annales 71 AUP

At initial set-up

In response to reports of a small beastman encampment in the Isigwold to the north of the Viadunian Road, three divisions of indigenous natives under the command of local heroes launched a preemptive reconnaissance in force into the forest lands. Scouts reported a small assortment of goblins led by wolfriders. Seeking to set up an ambush for the goblins, a detached group of 10 elven light cavalry sallied forth to picket them in order to entice forward into the foothills. The goblin scouts made no prior contact with either group (aside from one captured as a prisoner!), and rode off at once in enthusiastic pursuit.

The wizard Xangold deployed a wall of smoke to conceal both the storm giants (on the left flank) and the archers (on the right flank), and for the initial round of combat, only the archers fired. Expecting to discover a wizard and the hidden archers, the goblins advanced resolutely into the center of the gorge, smashing apart the unfortunate cavalry and making contact with sturdier gnomish ranks. During the light exchange the smokescreen was pulled back just far enough to shield only the giants, allowing them to wait until the goblins had arrayed themselves into neat lines below the cliff wall. At that point a sequence of three lightning bolts cut through their ranks, shocking them into disorganization and general retreat. A second round of hurled boulders from the giants were sufficient to rout the battlefield. 

Attention turned to the reports of a force of larger-size humanoids along the Isig Coast near Straddleport... (next week?)

Order of Battle - Isigwold Free States

• Elven Division, 3 platoons: Light Cavalry-r, Bowmen, Longbowmen
• Gnomish Division (Spellbinder Elrohir), 3 platoons: Heavy Infantry #1 and #2 (Sir Collier Rolando), Arbalest Platoon
• Arcane Division (Xangold Spectregrasp): 3 storm giants, 2 giant eagles

"r" denotes routed
"x" denotes destroyed

Entering the ravine

Order of Battle - Isigwold Incursion Force

• 1st Smasher Division (Bugbear Sub-Chieftain Phraal), two units: Bugbear Ribcrunchers-x, Goblin Wolfbrawlers-x
• 1st Shrieker Division (Goblin Chieftain Pixyag), six units: Goblin Gutskewers (Light Infantry) #1-x and #2-x, Goblin Eyebleeders (Bowmen)-x, Goblin Nobnockers (Slingers) #1-x and #2-r (Goblin Sub-Chieftain Boglux)

Spoils

2085 gold pieces (348 gp share for each division's leader)

sword +1, +3 vs undead

potion of healing

Note: Half of this gold is claimed directly by soldiers, and would be used to slowly level them up to veteran status if they were human (demi-human races begin already as veterans, so they don't benefit but still take their share). The other half is divided equally between each divisional commander, creating a share of 348 gp for each division.

Experience

For treasure: 1 xp per gp (that is, 348 xp per division) awarded to each division to split between the commander and any of its lieutenants and heroes (you can decide how to divide this among your heroes, if you have more than one of them present)

For leadership: 1575 xp to each division commander

Note: The campaign rules indicate that you should pay 15 gp per week to supply an infantry platoon in the field, or 60 gp to supply a cavalry platoon. (Storm giants cost 48 per week each.) Marching to and from the battlefield should take most of the month (4 weeks), so you can assume that amounts to 60 gp per infantry platoon and 240 gp per cavalry platoon, and 192 per giant. This will roughly cancel out with the small amount of gold claimed from the battle, so you can probably just ignore both the gold and the supply costs if you want, and just assign the experience.

I think the elves should get the sword, since they took more of the risk and the other commanders were both spellcasters. But you can decide that among yourselves if you like.

This is just the campaign equivalent of a nuisance random encounter. If you want serious treasure, find a stronghold and conquer it!

State Of The Realms: March 71 A.U.P.

A short review of recent events:

• Investigators in the Green Pass region have found evidence of a gathering of rival beastman factions to explore the haunted moors north of Balewood Keep in search of something.
• Goblin operations were disrupted, but several other organizations seem to be competing with them.
• Tomb robbers are plundering some of the moor's ruins as well, but act nervous about the area.
• Orcs are planning some kind of concentrated assault force. They were found in close proximity to the goblins, suggesting they may be coordinated with one another, despite different objectives
• The region north of Green Pass is inhabited by a relatively friendly wizard, as well as some rather unfriendly gorgons and troglodytes.

Possible objectives in this region would include:

• Discovering whatever the goblins are after, and getting to it first.
• Continuing to search other areas around Balewood, to see who else is being attracted by the same rumors (another adventuring group was driven off by a more professional group of hobgoblins in the same month!)
• Locating the gathering place of the orc(?) army, and discerning its objectives in time to stop it.
• Cleaning out monster lairs around Green Pass for magical treasure.

Meanwhile, the following incursions into the lands of Elysion have been reported by scouts:

• The Isig Coast (the area surrounding Straddleport): A medium (platoon-scale BR 5d6) force of giant beastmen has been spotted 144 miles from the populated outskirts of Straddleport. It is not marching, but gathering in the field to await future reinforcement. This force will disrupt travel and trade between Straddleport and the inland regions along the River Isigflod for as long as it is present. Spies could be dispatched to investigate it while it camps.

• Isigwold (the home region of current player domains except Xangold's Tower): A medium (platoon-scale BR 5d6) force of normal beastmen has been spotted about 120 miles from the domain of Tallibrick Sheerclift. If not interdicted, it could arrive within two weeks. Scouts might be able to gather more information as the army approaches, or spies could be dispatched to investigate it while it camps.

A Magical Spell For Fantastical Travels In Time And Space

Because Leomund's Tiny Hut + Astral Projection + Quest = TARDIS

This idea is inspired by the depictions of travel between worlds in Lewis' Narnia and Perelandra books, Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series, and various old TV shows like Quantum Leap and Voyagers -- I mean, aside from the totally obvious acronym reference. It's a way to toss yourself into the timestream and pop out in another world at just the right moment to have a fabulous adventure, guided by the unpredictable predilections of God/time/fate/whatever.

Trans-Astral Remote Deployment Initiation Spell
Divine Ritual 6
Range: Touch
Duration: Until completion of quest
Target: 1 large container (chest, armoire, wardrobe, coffin, etc)
Saving Throw: N/A

This ritual takes an ordinary piece of furniture and converts it into a capsule with the ability to travel through the astral plane, a region of interdimensional space that connects different worlds. The enchantment results in the interior of the capsule growing large enough to comfortably house a dozen or so occupants and their belongings, although they will need to enter carefully one at a time. The interior is a large octagonal room with a control station in the center that has a single lever or switch with only two settings. Throwing the switch will result in the entire object (and its occupants) moving through the astral plane to some unpredictable location on a new world, or travel through time to a different era in the same world, or even both at once. It will typically arrive at an inconspicuous location like an alley or warehouse where it will look out of place, although investing in a quality lock and key for the capsule is still advised!

The location in space and time is selected by whatever deity, power or intelligence is responsible for answering the priest's prayers. Generally the intent of transport is to arrive in a situation that requires external assistance for the resolution of some imminent crisis. The exact nature of the crisis will require local investigation. Once it is adequately resolved, the switch may be reversed to permit the capsule's return. The passage of time will be synchronized in both worlds for as long as the spell is in effect.

Voyagers in an astral capsule are affected by the equivalent of a limited tongues spell for the duration of the adventure which augments their language with an equal number of locally equivalent languages; for example, if they speak can orcish in their own world, they'll gain the common language of orcs in the new one. A crystal ball may be mounted on top of the control station, allowing the occupants to view the region outside the capsule. A matched crystal ball placed in the room where the ritual was originally completed will allow communication between the voyagers and their home world (including sound, if the ball is enchanted with clairaudience). Communication between worlds is otherwise impossible.

While traveling between worlds, an astral capsule produces a wheezing, groaning noise reminiscent of the drawing of a resinous bow across a set of dissonant piano strings.

Adding Mooks To Gold Box Games

I'm a strong believer in the thematic usefulness of an unbalanced adventuring party in RPGs. That is, I think every party should have both junior members (Merry and Pippin) and senior members (Aragorn and Gandalf) with substantial power differentials. This is contrary to the design of most modern games (tabletop or computer), but it solves a range of design problems:

• It provides some weaker characters who need to be protected by the stronger ones, which feels heroic (or if that's not your style, a group of hapless meatshields you can sacrifice to escape, which feels ruthless!)
• It helps to differentiate characters from one another by seniority, to give them more personality
• It contributes to verisimilitude in the sense that it's how any real-world teams would work, with weaker and stronger contributors
• Most importantly, it provides weaker characters who can be injured or die to create a sense of genuine peril and malice, but without risking a total party kill situation

The old Gold Box game Pool of Radiance was unique in allowing you to add low level generic henchman to your party who would actually fight for you (unlike the ones in the Might and Magic series). But later games in the series removed this option. I'm convinced that it's still there hiding somewhere in the code, though. Let's try to use a hex editor to find it! Then we can create custom mooks for the other Gold Box games. This is a critical element of my new project to create a hybrid tabletop/electronic RPG option to allow solo play in my own campaign, so that characters can be moved back and forth into CRPG modules to have their adventures.

I'm using the Gold Box Companion, a nice freeware hex editor by Jhirvonen. It's pretty experimental in that no one really knows much about the internal memory allocation structure of these old games, but with a little experimentation it's usually possible to spot some effects. The GBC has already located (and provided a nice front-end interface for) the bytes that control things like stats, levels, spells, and saving throws. I think I can use this interface to totally overwrite the usual classes and define my own class advancement tables for experience, levels, spell slot availability, thief skills, and throws, so I can implement some custom classes that will be leveled "by hand". (Alas, the spells themselves are hardcoded.)

But we need to find something totally unknown-- the location of the bytes that define hired henchmen, and distinguish them from player characters. The only one actually labeled in the interface is the AI switch, which is near the end of the memory block and controls whether a character is under human control or uses "quickfight" instead.

Let's open a saved game and inspect the characters. First, use the checkboxes in the lower left to screen out all known bytes of data, and also anything boring set to "00". Here's the the array of bytes:

After comparing the memory dump of some PCs and NPCs, there are three sequences that stand out:

The two sequences in red and the third one in blue are always present for every hireling, but never present for any player character. One of them must be it!

The block in blue is clearly controlling the treasure shares claimed by the NPCs after combat ("Warrior takes and hides his shares"). In this example, we can see that the code "5A" tells us that the character will claim a choice of magical items (greedy!) and also a full 5 shares of treasure! If we wanted to make him less greedy, we could change the 5A to a 23 (no magical items claimed), and reduce the shares to 01.

The block in red starts with a "04", which is actually present for player characters as well. It's always equal to the level of the character (the highest level, for multiclass characters). The "FF" bytes don't seem to do anything but might be special flags for some game events, perhaps telling when characters will be removed from the party by certain plot twists.

The most important place to look is that "A5" in the lower line. It determines what type of hireling or NPC you have in your party. In this case, it's identifying this as a "curate" NPC, a fourth-level priest. It seems to be shared by all NPCs that behave the same way, so I think it's specific to an AI behavior pattern or scripting response. Whatever it is, setting it to anything but "00" will tell your computer this character is a mook.

To test this, take one of your regular characters (where this block is "00") and change it to "A5" or anything else. Now you don't have a party of 5 PCs, but a party of 4 PCs and a mook! So you can add another PC to your party! This effectively allows your party to break the six character cap on PCs. You can even change the flag back to "00" when you're done adding more PCs, and run with an oversized group of eight player characters instead. Or you can demote this character permanently to an NPC by setting all the other flags (the "FF" and treasure ones) and turning on the AI switch. Your choice.

Does this code still exist in other Gold Box series games? I haven't found it in all of them yet, but here's where you can find it in the sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds. Below I'm zooming the new location in the (slightly larger) Azure Bonds memory block:

You can see that the "max-level indicator" of "06" in the top line has been shifted over by one column to make room for something new, but the bottom row is still the same format and now has a "B2" in it. This is the code for the two plot NPCs, Alias and Dragonbait. But I think you could easily change it to anything else, if you wanted to avoid having your hirelings removed from the party by plot events. (Or maybe the "4D" is controlling that, I'm not sure.) The important thing is that it be non-zero, I think, so the game knows this is not a player character. Unfortunately, I have no idea if the "treasure shares" code is still present, or where its storage bytes are located. But maybe by this level, surviving henchmen have become more loyal!

I haven't checked this to see if this ad hoc editing causes any additional weirdness during play; if it does, I'll update the post. For now, it looks like I can continue using henchmen in Azure Bonds, and maybe other sequels as well.