Hireling costs in compendium?


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Going back to prior editions, I suggest 1 sp as baseline subsistence labourer's wage; 3 gp/month. Hazard pay might be 10 times or that, so 1-3 gp/day for the torchbearer going down the dungeon with you. Skilled NPCs such as armourers and sages may earn up around 100gp/month.

Re mercenaries:
I think NPCs who know they're minions won't willingly go dungeon crawling at any price, since it's certain death, but will serve as garrison troops and fight the occasional mass battle. I suggest 2 sp/day or 6 gp/month for a typical infantry soldier, IMCs he'd probably be a 5th to 8th level minion. Again hazard pay would be 10-30 times the normal rate.
 

Dude.

The problem here is that a 1st-level linkboy shouldn't get paid 450 gp per month. Heck, he shouldn't get paid 100 gp per month! Pricing him via comparison to a treasure parcel doesn't help the fundamental issue of absolutely destroying even the slightest bit of sense about the D&D economy.

Dude. ;) I was just showing some of the logic. This is how I use it:

o Hirelings expect a weekly payment of one-tenth of a RMTP of their level (and double that per day for danger pay); this can be negotiated

(Though I never actually use danger pay.)

That's for standard monsters who can fight, e.g. for Human Bandits that works out to about 17.5 GP per week.

Hiring other guys is a little more complicated. What I did was assign different labours or professions a Level. "Lackies, Limners, Porters, or Linkboys" are all 1st-Level labours/professions, and they come in groups of 10. A 1st-Level RMTP averages out to 120 GP, I think; so 12 GP per month for a single Linkboy, or around 4 SP per day.

A "common meal" per the PHB is 2 SP, so anything less than that and it's going to be hard to survive.

Now here's something I haven't considered. When running a ship would you pay the crew individually, or just hand-wave it and assign it a higher Level? Looking at the prices for Vehicles in the AV, I'll bet they work out to Treasure Parcel amounts for magic items... yep. A Greatship (with a crew of 20) has the same cost as a 12th-level magic item, or 13k. If we went with 1/10th of that for a week, that'd be 1,300 GP. A 12th-Level RMTP averages out to 7000 GP (700 GP per week); 20 Sailors, assuming that's a 1st-Level profession, would be 240 GP/week, though that wouldn't include officers.

Eh. I guess it would depend on having a ship yourself and hiring a crew vs. hiring a ship to do your bidding.
 


Don't forget linkboy's cool minion power of sheding light in a 5 square burst. That alone must be worth something. Torches ain't cheap you know, oh wait...
 

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