To begin, allies are optional. Your character can be balanced in accordance with just its abilities and inventory or with those plus the allies. Allies can be categorized into those that are battle-capable and those that are not. Those that are capable of combat to any relevant degree are balanced in such a way that the combined efforts of those allies and the main characters to which they belong are equivalent to a char with no allies. This means that, if you create your char to be properly balanced for a Lv1 adventurer, then go add some battle-capable allies, some nerfs will be in order to compensate. In order to avoid confusion, it is recommended that, when posting abilities and inventory before allies, you inform a mod or admin that you will be adding allies, so we should not approve your current posts yet. We want to examine the whole package. It is plenty sufficient to just drop a message in the Seinvocc Discord.
Allies are defined as secondary characters/sub-characters, be they sentient or semisentient, that typically travel/fight/work with a character. Pets (not including pokémon, pikmin, or chao), servants, clones, androids, whatever; as long as they're with your character, they're your character's allies. This does not mean that you post the details of everyone who walks with you at some point! Other characters are to never be included in the Allies section. For instance, in their first thread on this site, Laola and the General agreed to walk together for a while. Neither of them put each other in their Allies section, because neither of them is attached to the other; they are each their own characters.
If you have a pet fennec fox that travels with you, describe it in your Allies post. If its stats and parameters are just ordinary for a fennec fox, just say that it is statistically normal. If it is abnormal, you can give full details, as you did for yourself in your ability list, or you can say that it is statistically average with exceptions, telling us what the exceptions are. If you have, say, an ability that turns your fox into a fireball that you throw, then turns it back to normal on your shoulder, ask yourself the following: Is the spell mine or the pet's? If it is an action that you take, consuming your time/resources, dealing damage based on your MAG, it is yours. If it is yours, put it in your ability list, even if it is specifically only compatible with this pet.
You do not need to detail every possession of every individual, every personality and backstory, et cetera of a crew. They do need ability lists, if they have abilities, and you do need to detail any special equipment. The stats and parameters may or may not be included on the following criteria: If they are a sort of maintenance crew that will not be relevant in combat under any circumstance whatsoever, they are exempt. That is, if they are attacked and are forced to defend themselves with whatever weapons they can get their hands on, that's fine, but if they have any abilities, special equipment, or even half-decent stats with which to fight, they're combat-ready. If they would ever be involved in a battle, even if it seems unlikely, they must have their stats and parameters. For example, if you own an airship and employ a crew of 50 individuals to maintain it, 10 of which are guards that will defend the ship if attacked, you need to explicitly tell us that you have 40 people employed for maintenance that are not combat-capable and give full details (abilities with stats and parameters, plus inventory) for the 10 that are.
Do not include their possessions at home unless you honestly feel that some such info is relevant. Do include their available equipment. If you own a stock of equipment for them, such as an armory full of weapons on your airship that your ten guards have access to, that should be denoted in your inventory along with the airship, though you may mention it in the allies. If the stock of items is actually in the possession of an ally, e.g. three of your guards hold subspace inventory systems that they access to arm their party, you should just list it here, not in your inventory. The rule of thumb is that you should base your decision of where to post shared items according to possession, not ownership.
Having a battle-ready ally and just saying that it won't participate in battle is insufficient; there must be a valid reason for it. Yes, you may honestly refrain from writing that your allies come to your aide, but does it make sense? Let's say that you have some Lv6 ally that tags along with your Lv1 character. If your char is seriously in over its head, why wouldn't the dudebro help? Is it just because you're metagaming it from doing so? That's dumb. Come up with a real explanation.
Your allies' money is another matter. They can't just be extra sources of income or sustenance. You have three options:
- Your allies have no starting money. They don't need it; they rely on you to manage the party's funds.
- Your starting money is split among your party. It does not need to be split evenly. As long as the total is $300 to begin, you're fine.
- They have their own funds, which you don't need to keep track of, but they are their own individuals with their own expenses and no reason to share with you any more than you share with them. Going on the airship crew example, this would be the typical option. When you pay them, you write off the expense, and that's it. How they spend their money is not something that you need to write out in your money thread at any time. They don't buy things for you or feed you; you're responsible for yourself.
It can be acceptable to have a temporary exception. You have to talk it over with an admin beforehand. Laola, for example, had some Lv4 allies that were responsible for ensuring that she didn't get maimed or killed on her first transition between communities, but nothing else. As planned, they did not assist in combat at all except to throw Laola out of an area that would have killed her. As soon as she reached Meidkuad Castle, with her adventure just getting started, they left the party. You can have a similar setup if you clear it with an admin beforehand so that it's clear and there is no room for abuse.
Finally, if you're wondering what to do for a more Ice Climbers (as seen in Super Smash Bros games)-type setup, where you have multiple units that are really a single char, but no one is evidently dominant, you can just write them together as a unit in the bio, abilities, and inventory, with no need for the allies section unless there is yet another entity as a sub-char to them.