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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 1764873" data-attributes="member: 5868">First, the mercenaries are probably mostly Warrior 1's, so they're not going to be terribly efficient in hunting monsters out of caves and the like.Second, clearing an area as large as the Stonelands requires a massive amount of manpower.  Not only to you have to kill or drive all the baddies off, but you have to constantly garrison and/or patrol it.  110 mercenaries is barely enough to get started.  Maintaining a reasonably self-sufficient outpost for any length of time is probably going to take about 30 soldiers -- so with that many you could perhaps man three static garrisons who have enough perople for local security patrols, but not much else.  110 is enough for a moderate-sized flying column to put down larger-scale raid, but then they're doing that, who is patrolling the outlying areas, providing security, or doing provisioning and manning outposts.As a point of comparison, a modern rifle company is about 140 men, and even when motorized they'd have a hard time truly controlling and area 10km on a side, let alone an area the size of the Stonelands.  Ditto for more mobile modern cavalry troops -- so you can imagine the difficulties with medieval weapons, transport, and logistics.Here's what I'd suggest:- Make them realize the extent of the logistics (feed, water, guarding supply lines, etc).- Decide on a strategy (fixed garrisons, patrols, etc)- Use the mercenaries as your plot hooks -- Patrol X stumbles into a large hobgoblin encampment, say.  The PC's can direct the mercenaries to dig them out, but it will take the whole band (and meanwhile other baddies slip in past the unmanned/unpatrolled outposts), or else the PCs go in and do it while the mercenaries hold down the cleared area.In any case, over time it should become clear that they need significantly more troops than what they have.</blockquote>

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