Cost of hirelings?

[deathvango]

Hi,

I'm currently running a campaign where my players managed to successfully steal a small sailing ship and are soon going to be searching for a crew to help man it if they manage to lose the fleet currently after them.

So now that you know the bare-bones background of what is going on in the world, on to my questions.

a) Are their any defined rules as to how much hireling/services cost?

b) If not, what would be a fair price to pay per day? (the players are currently around level 2 with the appropriate amount of gold they would normally have)

The crew would not have any real combat potential, I plan on just making them minions for combat purposes, their main purpose is just helping to maintain the ship effectively. So they wouldn't leech experience from the players and would mostly be available for role-play purposes and ship vs. ship sequences, if any of that would make an impact on the cost.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Their prices are in a Dragon Magazine, and I believe Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. Their prices varied depending on level and skillset, which means if you're statting these guys up, you have to put work into h ow much they cost.

Beware: enemies that use AoE attacks will slaughter minions like flies. Also, they take up conceptual and actual space on the battlefield.

 

[Celebrim]

what would be a fair price to pay per day?

Most D&D games have a gold piece standard, that is to say, most anything you would buy is priced in gold pieces. I'm not that familiar with 4e, but from what I do know, it continues to use the standard D&D gold based pricing.

In that case, a common unskilled laborer demands wages of about 1 g.p. per day. A skilled laborer - such as an experienced sailor - demands wages of about 2 g.p. per day. Skilled laborers with specialized skills, education, or rare skills will generally be able to fetch about 3 g.p. per day. Skilled laborers in a managerial role or of a high or aristocratic station will generally fetch about 4-5 g.p. per day. As a general rule, it's not unreasonable to expect an employee to demand a wage of at least 1 g.p. per level that they have - although 4e messes this up somewhat with minions, elites, and so forth.

I'm not sure what you count as a 'small sailing ship', so I can't tell you exactly what division you are likely to have between skilled and unskilled.

My PC's are currently aboard the Corvette 'Valiant', which is a ship rigged sailing vessel that is 110' long and has a crew of 105. That crew breaks down as follows:

24 marines: 2 coins per day
1 Sergeant of Arms: 3 coins per day
15 unskilled sailors: 1 coin per day
45 able bodied sailors: 2 coins per day
15 petty officers: 3 coins per day
1 Ensign: Essentially an apprenticeship, he doesn't draw pay
1 Midshipman: 2 coins per day (also basically an apprentice, albeit a skilled one)
2 officers: 4 coins per day
1 captain: 5 coins per day

Total: 216 coins per day.

Note, in my game everything is priced in silver and gold is rare and valuable treasure, but the general idea of coins = daily wages has historical merit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, the costs were on the order of a few GP per day, 15 IIRC for a level 1 hireling. Technically hirelings can exist all the way up to level 30, but they are all minions and its hard to think of a reason to want a level 30 cabin boy (or really how such a thing could exist). Some hirelings, like 'able crew', have a 3x cost multiplier, so they would be 45gp/day each!!!! Frankly I thought those numbers were rather steeply inflated as a nice merchant ship could easily require 5 crew, meaning you'd be spending 225gp/day just to pay them. Given that journeys can last weeks and the ship itself is expensive enough already, and hirelings don't really fight -much- it seems steep.

In fact I believe I assumed that the costs were more like 15gp/month. The cost IS assumed to include all other expenses, food, clothing, equipment, etc, so at this rate it seems fair. Henchmen can also be acquired, they demand 1/5 of the value of an item of the same level as the henchman, presumably this fee is per adventure, but that detail seems to have been omitted.

 

[Celebrim]

a nice merchant ship could easily require 5 crew

Even an open decked fishing vessel could require 5 crew. Keep in mind that the boat is on the ocean 24 hours a day, and so requires the crew to work in shifts, that modern navigational aids and modern safety features are unknown, and that sails have to be furled and unfurled by hand - no motors. A merchant ship meant for traversing the deep ocean would more likely have a crew of at least 25.

Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria was only 62 feet long and weighed just 100 tons, but had a crew of 40. It was nonetheless a comparatively large merchant vessel of its day. His two smaller ships, at 58 feet long and 60 tons, had crews of 26.

In fact I believe I assumed that the costs were more like 15gp/month.

That number seems far more realistic to me than 15/day, along with its assumption that skilled labor is 3 times that. It's a bit under my estimate of 30/60 coins per month, but 15/45 is at least in the right ballpark.

Keep in mind that D&D has long had some confusion regarding pricing for hirelings based on a bit of incoherence Gygax introduced in 1e. Gygax priced the PC economy in gold pieces. Everything of interest to PCs was priced in gold pieces, and treasure was allocated in gold piece units. Anything the PCs might want to buy that was useful in a dungeon was valued according to its use in a dungeon. This was largely a gamist convention to allow big piles of treasure while maintaining game balance. However, Gygax was also an amateur historian and well acquainted with real world medieval economics. So anything he considered largely outside the area of PC utility in a dungeon - food, livestock, taxes, wages for low skill labor, etc. - was priced in more realistic silver piece prices.

This incoherence was largely not addressed by latter writers, and its probably not until 4e that you see any real recognition of it and uniform costs for both labor and goods. If 4e really did price labor at 15gp a day, it's probably because 4e is trying to dissuade adventurers from hiring large armies and the like.

SIDE NOTE: It should be of little surprise to anyone reading this, that the scene that most annoys me in the otherwise fun movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' is when they sail a 32 gun frigate meant to be crewed by 280 from Port Royal to Tortuga with a 'prize crew' of just 2. In fact, at least 20 would have been required just to manage the ship for even a short period. It's for me worse than Indiana Jones hanging on the periscope.

 

[LostSoul]

The way I looked at hirelings when my hack was still identifiable as 4E was like this:

A Level 1 Encounter = 1 Level 1 Treasure Parcel = 5 Level 1 NPCs
So each Level 1 NPC = 1/5th of a Level 1 Treasure Parcel (14 GP I believe)
Minions = 1/4 that value (35 SP).

Since they don't fight every day, I made the pay period 1 week. Hazard pay (if they're going into a very dangerous situation, not just guarding or whatever) was higher - x4 or x5.

They also took XP from the PCs - they "ate up" 1/10th (or something) of their XP value in any combat, which you took from the top off of what the PCs would get.

I'm not sure how well it scales - 7 Level 1 NPCs cost you 98 GP but they're a Level 2 Encounter worth of XP, and a Level 2 Treasure Parcel is 125 GP or something like that.

If I was running 4E now I might do something differently. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] probably have some good ideas.

 

[pemerton]

In my 4e game hirelings have mostly been colour. Here are some of the examples I remember, and how they were handled mechanically.

As part of the transition from heroic to paragon tier, the dwarven fighter/cleric got an entourage of dwarven warriors. Most got killed not long after when behemoth-riding hobgoblins assaulted the village where they were staying, but one survived ("Gutboy Barrelhouse") who served as the character's herald. In certain circumstances this gave the character, who otherwise had no CHA or Diplomacy bonus, a +2 to Diplomacy checks (eg when Gutboy announced his entrance into the patriarch's presence). As best I recall I didn't charge this against the treasure parcel budget, as it was a pretty small benefit for an 11th level character. And last time he was seen Gutboy had been left behind by the PCs with one of their Baskets of Endless Provisions (a 4th level item, I think) so he ended up costing more than he would have been worth in any event!

As far as his durability was concerned, I didn't even both implementing minion mechanics. I ruled that if the bad guys actually spent an action to attack him he would go down, and if he was in an AoE attack the player got to roll a saving throw to see if he survived. This came up once, and Gutboy got lucky.

Around mid-paragon the invoker/wizard in the party established a temple in the town the PCs were using as a base, and also made it the centre of tax collection in its district of the town. This played out as a skill challenge. Part of the challenge involved recruiting muscle to act as tax collectors (and the player already knew who he wanted to recruit, namely thugs whom the PC had first met working for an enemy NPC). There are rules in the DMG 2 for using money to gain bonuses in a skill challenge (10% of the gp value of a magic item of the level of the challenge) and so this is what I used to set recruitment fees. Since then we've assumed that the revenue from tax collection pays their salaries.

At low epic tier the PCs were in a drow hold (module P2, appropriately levelled up) and they made friends with a squadron of drow soldiers following a successful skill challenge. The soldiers came with them on one assault, and served as artillery support with their hand crossbows. I treated this as a minor action by the drow PC who had recruited them to deliver a low-damage AoE attack. From memory I didn't charge this against the treasure budget, but just treated it as a temporary benefit from succeeding in the skill challenge. It was clear to the players that drow weren't going to hang around as a permanent armed force accompanying the PCs.

A couple of levels ago (around 25th or 26th) the invoker/wizard PC tamed a giant frosthawk that was the mount of an enemy eldritch giant. The mount proved very useful in that particular combat, and has been used once or twice since, mostly as a transport aid. I treated is as equivalent to a 26th level item out of the treasure budget, because unlike the drow (i) it is hanging around and (ii) it had a much bigger mechanical effect, giving the PCs a powerful at-will fly capability.

 

[deathvango]

Thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate it. A lot was said which I will definitely take into account.

I'm not sure what you count as a 'small sailing ship', so I can't tell you exactly what division you are likely to have between skilled and unskilled.

-Celebrim

The ship the player's captured was a Bermuda sloop(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_sloop), which would normally have a crew of between 50-70 to have everything in working order.

I like the distinction of surrounding the currency with the use of silver pieces rather than gold pieces when referring to wages and situations such as that. I'll probably do it that way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even an open decked fishing vessel could require 5 crew. Keep in mind that the boat is on the ocean 24 hours a day, and so requires the crew to work in shifts, that modern navigational aids and modern safety features are unknown, and that sails have to be furled and unfurled by hand - no motors. A merchant ship meant for traversing the deep ocean would more likely have a crew of at least 25.

Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria was only 62 feet long and weighed just 100 tons, but had a crew of 40. It was nonetheless a comparatively large merchant vessel of its day. His two smaller ships, at 58 feet long and 60 tons, had crews of 26.

I believe your typical 100 ton square-rigged 2nd Century Roman merchant ship has a crew of around 5 hands, plus whoever is in charge and possibly some sort of supercargo. These numbers are HIGHLY variable though depending on the nature of the trip, expected danger levels, etc. Vessels in the 100-200 ton merchant class rarely, if ever, exceeded about 25 crew. A ship-rigged sloop of around 200 tons can be handled in a pinch by about 5 crew, older designs with simpler rigging could get away with proportionately less. In any case, its quite possible you'd have a crew of 25, 50, or even 150 if the ship is going on a long voyage of exploration into dangerous seas.

That number seems far more realistic to me than 15/day, along with its assumption that skilled labor is 3 times that. It's a bit under my estimate of 30/60 coins per month, but 15/45 is at least in the right ballpark.

Keep in mind that D&D has long had some confusion regarding pricing for hirelings based on a bit of incoherence Gygax introduced in 1e. Gygax priced the PC economy in gold pieces. Everything of interest to PCs was priced in gold pieces, and treasure was allocated in gold piece units. Anything the PCs might want to buy that was useful in a dungeon was valued according to its use in a dungeon. This was largely a gamist convention to allow big piles of treasure while maintaining game balance. However, Gygax was also an amateur historian and well acquainted with real world medieval economics. So anything he considered largely outside the area of PC utility in a dungeon - food, livestock, taxes, wages for low skill labor, etc. - was priced in more realistic silver piece prices.

This incoherence was largely not addressed by latter writers, and its probably not until 4e that you see any real recognition of it and uniform costs for both labor and goods. If 4e really did price labor at 15gp a day, it's probably because 4e is trying to dissuade adventurers from hiring large armies and the like.

Eh, I think Gary's explanation was always that there was a highly inflated 'adventurer economy' that operated in the presence of PCs so they were bound to pay rather exorbitant rates for the sorts of odd things they often wanted.

Truthfully our modern notions of trade and economics are very foreign to pre-modern times. A REALISTIC medieval town of say 1100 AD wouldn't even have shops where you could spend coin at all. Virtually all production was handled by people bound up in various types of labor and trade obligations and there simply was no such thing as retail sales. The best you would do would be itinerant traders who distributed the few outside goods consumed by rural settlements. In a village the notion of purchasing some sort of good would have been ridiculous, everything made there or brought there was accounted for and needed by someone.

 

[Manbearcat]

The crew would not have any real combat potential, I plan on just making them minions for combat purposes, their main purpose is just helping to maintain the ship effectively. So they wouldn't leech experience from the players and would mostly be available for role-play purposes and ship vs. ship sequences, if any of that would make an impact on the cost.

If I was running 4E now I might do something differently. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] probably have some good ideas.

I would handle this one of three ways:

1) If they're just background color and truly have no impact on resolution (combat or noncombat), then I wouldn't do anything with them. Treasure in 4e is just another aspect of PC build, so anything it is spent on needs to be an asset and have legitimate impact in resolution for it to actually be allocated. Handwave the payment. It occurs in the fiction, basically as Shrodinger's $, but no mechanical exchange of PC currency.

2) If they're going to have an impact on resolution and you want to stat them out so they can be played by the PCs, then (a) treat them as a full standard creature of the PCs' level, (b) up the encounter budget by + 1 to account for them, (c) and just divide the xp gained by the party + 1. They can be a group of minions divided by the xp budget of aforementioned standard creature. You can give the PCs an encounter power that lets them reroll 1 skill check in a Skill Challenge that involves the vessel and/or the high seas. Again, they're paid experts, but no exchange of PC currency.

3) Treat the crew as magic items so there is real exchange of PC currency for assets. Let each PC access the effect of, say, 3 Elixir's of Aptitude (50 GP apiece) throughout the course of their journey at sea with the crew. They're just tapping into the knowledge/expertise of the crew when they cash in their 50 GP currency and ticking off 1 of their 3 uses. Just a little bit of pseudo-director stance player fiat that works within the PC build rules and is thematically coherent.