String parsing with # and the like is your only option then. That’s not going to be any sort of efficient, but if you’re only doing it occasionally (i.e. not madly looping over it), it should be fine.
I’d still recommend the array method though. If you’re adverse to lots of typing you can precompute the create list, with another language or script. Actually, you could even do this in CS if you wanted:
*create follower_stat_1 "name"
*create follower_stat_2 "hp"
*create follower_stat_3 "armour"
*create follower_stat_4 "weapon"
*comment how many stats above?
*temp stat_count 4
*comment how many followers?
*temp char_count 10
*temp char 0
*temp stat 0
*label char_loop
*set char + 1
*if char <= char_count
*label stat_loop
*set stat + 1
*if stat <= stat_count
*comment only way to print * commands:
*temp str "*create follower_${follower_stat[stat]}_${char}"
${str}
*line_break
*goto stat_loop
*set stat 0
*goto char_loop
Just copy and paste the result of that into your game’s startup.txt. You’ll need to tweak it if you want to reference stats by a name and not a numerical id though (homework task! ;)).