When adventurers hire adventurers

It has come to pass in the sandbox game I am playing in that I want to do things that the rest of my party isn't interested in. Further, there is something of a play style difference that means off screen stuff is likely to happen more with my character than the rest of the party.

It dawned on me today that while I was planning to play an NPC next session while my PC was busy behind the scenes, I could play this idea out further and hire adventurers to do things I want done. Specifically explore a location in this example.

Has anyone done this before? I see a few ways of handling it, either through troupe style play or simply running seperate sessions with other players/characters. And simple story mode depending on the danger level. Being a sandbox I don't know first hand if I'd need experienced adventurers or novice, which makes things interesting.

I think separate sessions may be your best bet. You could look into the West Marches for some ideas. More people playing out different areas their characters want to explore could be pretty interesting and a great way to help solve this problem.

Yes, have done this in the past. the cause was that none of my players could meet all at this same time, so had the make a number of NPC that could be picked up and played at any given time. Each member, party of an adventures guild, with a "signed contract". They were paid in shares and bonuses. Players, would select the adventure and hire the party then run the whole team or part of it, if more than one player that night.

The point was to build the guild.

Some of my rules:
Levels = shares, level 1 to 4 would be a one share paid member, 5 to 7 = 2 shares, 8 to 11 = 3 shares
The guild always got 30 shares, (divided by my players), the backer is last to be paid.
Players would have a selection of adventures, the players would back these with their shares. Some were bust.

How it worked...player comes in and selects an adventure, he has X amount of gold, he decides how much he wants to put into the adventure. He then builds his team, knowing he is going to have to pay his employees at least one share, he has to commit up front an amount of gold to cover that, cost of adventure. Run the adventure, bring back the gold, divide into shares. IF the backers 15 shares did not equal the amount the player put away for it, he lost some money. He will still get part of the 30 shares from the guild.

What made this interesting is that players start coming up with ways to make money...body parts of monsters, art objects, etc.

Never had this happen before but if it did i would first direct towards something like HOV said above.

If they didnt want to get that detailed I would tell the player that step 1 is to try to scout the area at least a little, or hire scouts. After all if you hire a party thats too low level and they get wiped out then that money's down the drain. But higher level parties cost more, so you probably dont want too much overkill.

Then I would RP out the hiring process and make a couple of level checks for the average level of the hired party versus the ECL of the dungeon. With each win for the party clearing a major challenge area and each win for the dungeon killing a party member. Maybe have the party take penalties to further rolls after each loss.

And then just quickly roll that out to see if the hirelings get the job done or get wiped or retreat.

Separate sessions may be your best bet. And it may be a bit more fulfilling too. You could roleplay the hiring of mercenaries, gathering info on what you'll find on your trek and so much more!

The Arms and Equipment Guide for D&D talks about hiring mercenaries, what they expect in pay, and how they react to different dangers.

I think I agree that separate sessions are a good idea, but for a few reasons I doubt will work. First, it requires more scheduling and work for the DM, unless someone else takes over during this sidetrek. Second, it would require different players AND different characters. I know how hard it is to set aside your character to run some other lower level character that is going to get treasure your primary or favorite character could be getting.

In my case, we had just escaped a trap which sent us to the fairy realm. We spent 4 or 5 rounds there before reversing the situation and when we got back to the prime material plane discovered 4 months had passed. And then we discovered someone was impersonating at least 1 party member.

So in between sessions I told the DM I wasn't sure how much cloak and dagger stuff the other players were interested in and that maybe I should play an NPC while my PC went off and did stealthy things. He said there would be stuff happening before we got started.

Well, that worked well up until story time expired and some of them wanted to kick the door in. I went along with things as part of the herd. We kicked in the door, which exploded in our face and of course the bad guy got away - at least I believe he did if he wasn't already gone.

Anyway, I want to do too many things, some of which the other players don't seem to be interested in. So hiring other adventurers seemed like a cool way to handle it.

From talking to the DM, he's willing to work with me, using Leadership, which I already have, but my plans are much bigger than a cohort and followers.