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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xyanthon" data-source="post: 3034858" data-attributes="member: 9181">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).</blockquote>