Pathfinder 1E Henchmen and merceneries

[Blackwarder]

Hi guys!

So my group wants to start a PF campaign and I want to play a dude who hire other dudes to do his bidding, are there any rules in PF for doing this?

Warder

 

[Wycen]

In the equipment section of the Core book you'll find:

Hireling, trained 3 sp per day
Hireling, untrained 1 sp per day

and

Spellcasting Caster level × spell level × 10 gp

So, there aren't any formal rules about hiring another band of adventurers. I myself wanted to do this about a month ago but the DM wasn't keen on this, though he did point out some options, none of which I liked.

The numbers listed above I have always assumed were for hiring NPC's like carpenters, butlers, or a couple guards to walk around the neighborhood. Sending them off to possibly die messy deaths in a dungeon seems like it would be worth a lot more. And are you really going to pay a spell caster by the spell? How are you going to keep track? Will a greedy sneaky bastard cast that 0 level cantrip over and over again to milk you out of money?

I like the idea, but I think talking to your DM is the best route.

 

[Squirrel Dude]

Leadership Feat

 

[Friend of the Dork]

Yeah if you want someone you can take on adventure the Henchman from Leadership feat is the only good alternative. Hiring soldiers or guards generally give you professionals that will do standard work - guarding a home, a caravan etc, NOT go down into a scary dungeon. If you want someone that mad you need to hire adventurers, which are expensive (generally wants an equal share or a high sum of GP).

The hireling prices are simplified and represent carpenters and porters, but you can use prices in other d20 products such as D&D. They are cheap, but mercenaries generally want a part of the loot, and are expected to fight enemies appropriate to them - such as bandits, other soldiers or a roving band of orcs. Even so they may flee in combat or desert altogether depending on the level of danger and how they're treated. If you hire 10 mercs and half of them die in the first battle then the rest will probably find an employer that won't lead them all to being killed. If however they fight appropriate enemies, have an inspiring leader, and access to cleric healing, they are much more likely to stay loyal.

In any case the DM might think it a cheap move or not want to be harassed by the extra paperwork and management in combat, and simply ban using hirelings in combat on a general basis. Some even reduce XP gain or share that with them - which will probably quickly make the players ditch them

 

[Celebrim]

Hi guys!

So my group wants to start a PF campaign and I want to play a dude who hire other dudes to do his bidding, are there any rules in PF for doing this?

Warder

So, really, the easiest answer is , "No."

There are guidelines, but that's not the same thing. It's very difficult to treat setting tropes as 'rules', because its generally understood in any D&D heritage game that the DM controls the settings. Therefore, the availability and cost of minions is generally the sole domain of the DM, as would be his approach to addressing rules silent issues like, "Who gets to call for the NPC hireling?" Some tables will let you call for your hirelings, some won't, and some will let you call some of the time but allow the DM to veto.

In general, D&D and its heirs assume the PC's use an 'Indiana Jones' approach rather than the 'Bellock' approach of hiring a bunch of laborers or an army. Some DM's get touchy about PC's going 'Bellock' either because of the additional rules/adjudication burden involved in playing out dozens or ultimately hundreds of NPC's, or because they feel it plays against the heroic type (normally, in fantasy, only bad guys use minions).

Moreover, if you do go 'Bellock', because the game doesn't assume this approach by default, you'll typically find that the rules are poorly thought out and generally silent on exactly what happens.

Personally, as a PC I only pull out my 'Bellock' toolset when I know the GM is going to be metagaming against me and the game has gone antagonistic by design. For example, if the game is 'Tomb of Horrors', feel free to hire a few hundreds porters, sappers, engineers, and mercenaries and dig the whole darn place up, build scaffolding everywhere, fill anything dangerous with sand, and generally avoid ever even stepping in the tomb. Provided the DM doesn't 'cheat' by inventing new consequences to thwart you, and provided you have good people management skills, and provided you can handle the occasional wandering encounter, Ascerak's tomb is trivially defeated in this manner. Indeed, you can treat almost the whole tomb as loot, carting off the artwork, the doors, the better more valuable stonework, and whatever else you want (though you might want to permentently slay the few demons charged with tomb repair if you do so).

But in general, you are really asking for trouble otherwise and you better really talk the idea over with your GM before settling on a 'mastermind' type character as a PC.

 

[Blackwarder]

I've been playing D&D for 20 years and played through every thing from OD&D and rules cyclopedia through 2e, 3e and 4e. I don't really agree with the Indiana Jones comment, in my experience earlier editions either expected you to use hirelings or simply gave you the tools for using them, only in 3e does using henchmen and hirelings got droped to the more action packed swat team style of play.

I've taken a look at the leadership feat and all I can say is meh, but having played two sessions of PF I can clearly see that adding several characters to the game will drastically slow down the game play so I'm sadly dropping the idea.

Thanks for all the replies!

Warder

 

[Celebrim]

I've been playing D&D for 20 years and played through every thing from OD&D and rules cyclopedia through 2e, 3e and 4e. I don't really agree with the Indiana Jones comment, in my experience earlier editions either expected you to use hirelings or simply gave you the tools for using them, only in 3e does using henchmen and hirelings got droped to the more action packed swat team style of play.

Well, I've been playing D&D for 30 years and I'll have to quibble with that. While every edition gives you the basic outline on hiring hirelings, and 1e certainly has an expectation built in that players will hire a certain amount of torchbearers, men-at-arms, henchmen and porters in practice it varied greatly from table to table. While 1e is written with the expectation of hirelings, in also very carefully ensures that hirelings are never really going to be much more than 1st level at most and by RAW NPC's can't get levels. While you can hire a small army, in practice this army isn't every effective by the time you can hire it and mostly exists as a sort of mark of prestige. At most tables, you therefore only saw men-at-arms, torchbearers, gaurd dogs and the like at the lower levels as a temporary expedient measure, and then these became less important over time.

Note however even in the 1e example of play, the party has no henchmen, hirelings, or other NPCs with them. The expectation isn't in fact strong, as can be proved by several comments in the DMG.

Nothing really prevents 3e from playing the same way except player/table expectations.

I've taken a look at the leadership feat and all I can say is meh...

Leadership is actually a broken feat. I don't allow it my game because its basically a no brainer if you do, and leads with powergaming to a drastically different game where everyone is playing basically two characters. It's a lot of things, but it's not 'meh' (unless Pathfinder has greatly revised it from 3e).

 

[ggeilman]

I have allowed leadership in smaller parties when an essential role has been missing in a party, but in larger parties I generally don't. I have always used NPC's to fill in at times when needed but gangs of hirelings generally not.

 

[Blackwarder]

Well, I've been playing D&D for 30 years and I'll have to quibble with that. While every edition gives you the basic outline on hiring hirelings, and 1e certainly has an expectation built in that players will hire a certain amount of torchbearers, men-at-arms, henchmen and porters in practice it varied greatly from table to table. While 1e is written with the expectation of hirelings, in also very carefully ensures that hirelings are never really going to be much more than 1st level at most and by RAW NPC's can't get levels. While you can hire a small army, in practice this army isn't every effective by the time you can hire it and mostly exists as a sort of mark of prestige. At most tables, you therefore only saw men-at-arms, torchbearers, gaurd dogs and the like at the lower levels as a temporary expedient measure, and then these became less important over time.

Note however even in the 1e example of play, the party has no henchmen, hirelings, or other NPCs with them. The expectation isn't in fact strong, as can be proved by several comments in the DMG.

Nothing really prevents 3e from playing the same way except player/table expectations.



Leadership is actually a broken feat. I don't allow it my game because its basically a no brainer if you do, and leads with powergaming to a drastically different game where everyone is playing basically two characters. It's a lot of things, but it's not 'meh' (unless Pathfinder has greatly revised it from 3e).

I don't know about 1e, it's the one edition I didn't played, went straight to 2e from rules cyclopedia but in both campaigns in OD&D and 2e we used a lot of henchmen.

I've said that the leadership feat is meh simply because it doesn't do what I want to do, which is have a small army by my side, but after playing a bit of PF it's fairly obvious that it will be a nightmare in terms of table management and the lack of rules on how to rais and maintain followers really put it all on the DM...

Warder