4 mini reviews: Nyambe, Mercenaries, Liber Bestarius, and Lost Tomb of Kruk-Ma Kali

[Tiefling]

Well, despite the superficial resemblances, I always think that D&D style worlds are closer to the Romans, since very few are actually feudal. Rome had a professional army (at least in the later days) and payed mercenaries fairly well.

Possibly. Perhaps the book should have elaborated on this.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm pretty sure that professional soldiers in medieval or ancient times earned money primarily by loot, and were paid little.

Nice reviews, Razuur.

How can you make a claim like that? Medieval and ancient times is a block of time covering thousands of years and hundreds of cultures. Although what you say was sometimes true, just as often it was not.

 

[Tiefling]

What if I said that women were second-class citizens? Over thousands of years and hundreds of cultures, that was nearly always true.

 

[Olive]

Re: Re: 4 mini reviews: Nyambe, Mercenaries, Liber Bestarius, and Lost Tomb of Kruk-Ma Ka

The DMG lists a mercenary's pay rate as 2 sp per day (p 149). Sounds reasonable, right? I thought so, until I looked at p 108 of the PHB. For 2 sp a day, our poor mercenary can afford a single poor-quality meal, and he has to spend every other night sleeping in the street. The mercenary leader is a 2nd-level warrior who costs 6 sp, +3 sp/level above 2nd. That means that a 1st-level fighter who sets aside 10 gp of his starting cash could hire a 3rd-level warrior and 5 1st-level warriors to accompany him for three days. That seemed a bit cheap for me. Furthermore, I wanted the pay rates to fit in with the amount of gold characters have floating around. Table 5-1 in the DMG outlines how much gold a character should have at a given level. If you check it out, you can see that around 10th level characters can start rather easily raising armies to deal with their problems.

Of course, the DMG tables assume that you have to outfit a mercenary with equipment, but that seemed a little silly to me. But then again, at 2 sp per day it would take the average mercenary about 9 months to afford studded leather, a large wooden shield, and a longsword if he did nothing but save up his money and starve. Again, that didn't jive with how I've done things in my campaigns.

ok, sorry fr the long quote.

Now, maybe it seems silly to you thta you are expected to outfit your mercs, but thats the rules. second, d you eat out everynight? do you stay in a hotel everynight? d you think your average mediaeval merc did? not likely. if you live in a house with your extended family, and at at home all the time, 2sp is not that bad...

 

[hong]

I'm pretty sure that professional soldiers in medieval or ancient times earned money primarily by loot, and were paid little.

Aha! So they went into dungeons, killed the monsters, and took their treasure!

(BTW, does anyone have an actual source for that quote? I'm sure it's Ryan Dancey from around the time of 3E's first release, but I can't remember where or when he said it exactly.)

 

[tjasamcarl]

well...

Tiefling is correct...regardless of wide variations in 'cultural' norms, the economic foundations of the pre-modern world actually varied little. Most regions were simply not invested with the quantity of freely-circulating capital to allow for a year-round mercenary market...

 

[tjasamcarl]

Besides..

The hireling rules in the dmg were written with party-scale adventure balance in mind...1st level warriors are simply not worth more than 2sp. Outside of mittigating encumberance effects, they have little use heading into the mid-high level encounters....

 

[Razuur]

Mr Mearls,

Just a quick comment. Actually, I never said your numebrs were wrong, just that it was the only thing I didn't like. They were a little high in my opinion. Just as the DMGs are a little low, in my opinion. I figure them to be somewhere in between. I am quite sure you did your research and had a reason why you placed the numbers there, they just didn't mesh with me, that's all. I didn't sit there ragging on them, and as I said, I was reaching. I just figure them in the middle some where. I figured that with room, food, and equipment costs taken care of by the employer, they would be getting much lower salary rates. Of course all of that stuff is relative.

That said, I have always been impressed with your work. In fact quitisential Rogue is one of my favorite D20 books. As far as I am concerned, it is THE authority on the subject, and what the WOTC book should have been.

Thanks!

Razuur

 

[mearls]

Just a quick comment. Actually, I never said your numebrs were wrong, just that it was the only thing I didn't like. They were a little high in my opinion. Just as the DMGs are a little low, in my opinion. I figure them to be somewhere in between. I am quite sure you did your research and had a reason why you placed the numbers there, they just didn't mesh with me, that's all. I didn't sit there ragging on them, and as I said, I was reaching. I just figure them in the middle some where. I figured that with room, food, and equipment costs taken care of by the employer, they would be getting much lower salary rates. Of course all of that stuff is relative.

Hey man,

I hope I didn't come off as critical or anything. I had just seen a few comments on the pay rates in a couple other reviews and just wanted to offer some thoughts on why I priced them as I did. I definitely didn't feel you were overly critical on anything, I just wanted to give some context for why I did things the way I did. The rules I come up with are just suggestions, and when all's said and done a DM knows much more what's good for his game than I ever could. The way I see it, the more people know about how things came out the way they did, the easier it is for them to modify the rules to fit things into their game.

Anyway, I really like getting feedback on products. The way I see it, the more I can look over things people weren't 100% happy with, the better chance I have of turning out a better product in the future. The comments I read here (and receive via email) are all taken into consideration as I move forward on other projects. I really appreciate your taking the time to offer your thoughts on Mercenaries. Besides, I love talking game design. Trust me, I can completely geek out and talk for hours about why I designed something the way I did. Any chance I get to flap my gums about game design, I'm going to take it (work load permitting!).

Glad you liked the Quintessential Rogue. It was fun to write.