Hiring mercenaries


Advice


Apart from hiring hireling as a Service (Corebook 159), it seems hard to find out the cost of NPCs when the PCs want to hire them. Any suggestion?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Unless Ultimate Campaign has rules on it, I don't know of any rules for this. I'd probably expect the asking price of mercenaries to be whatever PCs of that level would accept for payment.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

If you pay for a mercenary, you could use his average Profession (soldier) roll per week.

For a 3th level warrior, it should be around 8 GP / week (10 + 3 rank + 3 class = 16 /2 = 8).

This is for commun not so dangerous job, like escorting a caravan or working as a bodyguard. For realy dangerous mission, you could add a extra cost (x2, x5 or even x10).


I'd second Blaphers' recommendation, with the caveat that if a mercenary has an NPC class, you (usually*) knock off around 10% in their prices.

The mercenaries might not know that they're NPC-classed, but they do know their abilities and jobs and can get a decent idea of how much they're worth.

EDIT: ninja'd! Leaving mine up, too, though.

Another alternative is that, as mercenary work is a dangerous job, it could be modeled by the Profession skill... sort of. They require twice the sum that would be granted as if by Profession (mercenary) if the most skilled had rolled a natural 20, and all the hired members** had successfully used Aid Another.

(I'd also recommend having an accountant who has a high wisdom, skill focus (Profession [mercenary]), and so on***.)

This allows you a semi-rules-dependent (albeit heavily fiat'd) way to determine a rough amount of gold.

Increase the cost by increments of 10% for danger, volatility, and general expectations.

Some other elements might be added (food, clothes, etc.), depending on the mission in question.

* Some might be arrogant or exceedingly lucky leading to inflated prices, or humble or exceedingly unlucky leading to deflated prices.

** Or, depending on the group or set-up, all the members.

*** This allows the classic "No, Captain, you're not supposed to negotiate the contracts! You always accept them for too cheap!" type scenarios.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Hiring mercenaries All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.