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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6106254" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Ok, I said "if you unfortunately selected a few sub-optimal candidates and dismissed Sir Stephen the Spear Saint, well that’s the price you pay for being in a hurry when you hire", and you interpret that as:I said "if". You interpret that as "automatically get worst case result". If you say "I pick 6 guys at random" (and since I very much doubt that I have a map to tell me who every second guy, starting with the leftmost, is, then you are picking at random), then I'd roll randomly to see who you picked. I'd also be inclined to suggest a brief "this is the person you see" description, but if you tell me you don't even want that, then fine.If you get lucky, you get half a dozen guys all of whom are prepared to work for the price you've offered (maybe Stephen wants more than Hireling X) and they're the most competent of the bunch. Maybe your luck runs the opposite and you get six worthless guys. Or maybe you make the odds and get a mixed bag in between. You don't automatically get "the worst possible choices", but you likely don't get "the best picks" either.Like most issues, it depends.  Is there some organized Warriors’ Guild where they are sorted by skills and expertise for ready hire, you can pull up and say “6 rookies and a Sergeant for 2 days; light dungeon crawling; must have own horse and longspear”?    Do you have to hire a town crier to locate some candidates?  Probably get more of a mixed bag, maybe farm kids with stars in their eyes, old/unemployed dirt farmers, etc., largely depending on the local populace.  You had, as I understand it, a big city.  You haven’t provided a lot of insights to the recruitment process, other than it sounds like a “send out the crier and hope for the best”. OK, let’s start with what you expect to pay those hirelings.  3 sp a day per the 3.5 SRD, but that’s a minimum.  Maybe you’ll pay 5gp a day for a L1 warrior with a Longspear?  Pretty hefty price increase, so 30 gp per day. That Scroll gets you 2 – 5 creatures from the Summon II list, so you need 2 scrolls to average 5, over 2 rounds.  You need to decipher the scroll (easy in advance).  You need to activate the spell – if you are L3 (same as the CR of a Grell – which begs the question how it handed you your heads the first time), a L7 caster is a DC 8 caster level check – so a decent chance of success, but no guarantees.  Full round casting time – will the Grell be able to get a shot in on you on one or both castings?  The creatures aren’t there at the outset, so they don’t run interference or take attacks of opportunity as the Grell closes in.   If the Grell flees rather than battling to the death, spearmen stick around and Summon Monster expires. And I believe those scrolls will cost 700gp each – that’s over 200gp per spearman.  Is that a result you like?  The wand costs 750 for 50 charges, 2 hours each, and you’re riding horses – they don’t climb escarpments or run all that well in sand.  That’s about 2.5 days travel for a party of 5 – how does that work?  You need to go about 500 miles at what, 40 miles per day (50’ base move)?  You need more than one wand. Where do you buy wands in a new and unfamiliar plane, by the way? Once again, we assume that the GM will be a dick, and that failure once means never having any shot at success. Not really.  Just the clarification that your comments to date paint you as a “my way or the highway” kind of guy.</blockquote>

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