Henchmen and Hirelings

[Xyanthon]

I was just curious as to what degree if any that henchmen and hirelings play in your games? It seems that when I was younger and played 1e, that these characters were intrinsic fixtures in the game world. It was really cool to get up around mid levels and have your own entourage of helpers and specialists that would accompany you on your journeys or stay behind and work on research or man your stronghold. It seems that has changed quite a bit and it is expected that PCs will do all of the dungeon crawling and whatnot without the assistance of hirelings and henchmen. I have to say that in the last AE campaign we played in, since we didn’t have enough people in RL to fill in all the party roles, we wound up having some NPCs come along and flesh out the party, but the feel was not the same. It just seems to me that the game is structured in such a way that these types of characters do not really play much of a role.

Anyhow I am just looking to assuage my curiosity. If you do play 1e, 2e, 3.x, C7C or whatever and utilize henchmen and hirelings as an important part of your campaign I think it would be interesting to hear how and in what capacity (i.e. Like extensions of the PCs like the old days, troupe style like Ars Magica, etc).

 

[Pants]

In one of my older 3e games, the PC's all got 'strongholds' of some sort. Actually, the druid got a small cabin in a grove, the mage got a small mansion, and the dwarf built an underground mansion. Each place was stocked with hirelings. The mage had his understudy, the druid had his helper, plus the animals, and the dwarf had his entourage of guards, servants, and captains (he owned a merchant company).

Still, they never went on adventures with the PC's, most were simply too low-level to be anything other than a hindrance. And by that time, the PC's were mostly teleporting to their destinations.

 

[MerricB]

We never used henchmen/hirelings in any of my 1E/2E games.

In my first 3E campaign, at one stage we had five PCs and four cohorts. That was fun.

Since then, I've occasionally had a PC in my campaign with a cohort, but it doesn't happen that often. For one thing, we generally have 6 players (+1 DM) in my groups, so the group doesn't need the numbers.

Cheers!

 

[shilsen]

If I use henchmen or hirelings, they invariably die horribly. If I roll randomly among 7 PCs and one henchman, the henchman will invariably be the one taking the hit. The fact that henchmen don't get action pts may be a big part of it. I let PCs use action pts to survive a killing blow/effect, and without them, I'd have had 20 deaths so far in the 39 sessions of my campaign.