Hiring Adventurers. Help with Pricing? (Per Day)

[Darkholme]

My players like cohorts, and in the sandboxy game they're playing in, I don't mind the idea of them hiring Adventurers to work for them.

So I'm trying to work out the math for what to make as a price for hiring adventurers. I'm using excel to do the heavy lifting for me.

I'm coming up with a scheme based on flat prices, and one for percentages. flat rates first.

As how I'm determining it, I'm using the costs for spellcasting.

So for my upperbound, I have the price for a wizard casting every spell they know.

I know that in a typical adventuring day, they may not go through all of them at the higher levels though.

So the question becomes, What are they likely to go through?
4 fights per day
x rounds per fight.

So in combat I can see them having to cast their highest 4x spells per day, on average. How many rounds is the average combat?

Then I can add on other fees like a resurrection deposit, and a deposit for if the wizard loses his spellbook, and some hazard pay. I can also come up with price modifiers for high ability scores.

It could shape up to a nifty essay length document, but I need to figure out how many rounds the average combat is.

[Kilmore]

What level are the players and the hirelings? What kind of reputation do the PC's have?

[Darkholme]

Kilmore wrote:

What level are the players and the hirelings? What kind of reputation do the PC's have?

I'm trying to come up with a general pricing scheme.

I want to come up with a base price for hirelings of each level. With the assumption that they'll face CR appropriate threats)

Then come up with modifiers for if the NPC is facing very dangerous threats.

It shouldn't matter what level the PC is though. If you want to hire a 5th level wizard to cast a spell, he has a flat price. If you want to hire him to cast all of his spells, that costs 550 (Assume Cantrips are free in this bulk package). If you want him to cast the number of spells he's likely to go through in an average day in level appropriate dungeons (say if he were the 4th member of a 5th level party), how many of his spells is he likely to have to cast?

I want to be able to look at a table and say for example:
They want a level 5 character to work for them.
>>That will cost X per day for level 5.
They want it to go up against CR 8 things (say theyre level 8)
>>X%Extra in hazard pay based on their level difference.
And he wants the following deposits made
>>True Resurrection (cost of spell)
>>Deposit on a spellbook/familiar if applicable,
which they get back if they aren't needed.

Then add the numbers together or punch them in a calculator, and voila, I have a price per day for the NPC.

[Darkholme]

The piece of the puzzle I'm missing is the average number of rounds per combat (so I know how many spells to charge for).

[EWHM]

Consider what your players have been paid when the adventures they went on were at the behest of some employer. Usually it's a moderate amount plus you can keep all/most/everything but a single item in terms of the treasure that you find. That's the normal procedure. If your players have decent counterintelligence skills, they can often get stuff like that done for free just by starting rumors/planting evidence or riddles or the like that the 'Caves of Cthulhu' has a rich trove of treasure where adventuring groups of appropriate level can find out about it.

[wraithstrike]

Twice the NPC's level in gold per day squared, and their share of the loot. As an example if they hire a 5th level cleric then the cleric gets 5gp a day. If there are five people in the party including the cleric then the cleric gets 1/5th of the treasure. Their lives are on the lines also, and asking someone to fight dangerous monsters should not come cheap.

[Tarren Dei]

Level cubed per day per adventurer (NPC classes -1 level)

0 level = 5 sp
1 level = 1 gp
2 level = 8 gp
3 level = 27 gp
4 level = 64 gp
5 level = 125 gp
6 level = 216 gp
7 level = 343 gp
8 level = 512 gp
9 level = 729 gp
10 level = 1000 gp

Single use items including spell components come from the PC's pocket.

[wraithstrike]

wraithstrike wrote:

Twice the NPC's level in gold per day squared, and their share of the loot. As an example if they hire a 5th level cleric then the cleric gets 5gp a day. If there are five people in the party including the cleric then the cleric gets 1/5th of the treasure. Their lives are on the lines also, and asking someone to fight dangerous monsters should not come cheap.

That should be 100. 5x2 squared

[Thane36425]

Keep in mind that it doesn't make sense to offer the NPC higher pay than the PC's can expect to earn themselves nor to offer such high daily pay that they will run out of money just paying the NPCs. 100 gold pieces per day plus a treasure share is a princely sum for a 5th level character and certain to devour much of the loot if it takes a few days to carry out the adventure. Paying by the spell would do this even faster.

In older editions, characters were often offered a fixed monetary reward for a given adventure. Offering an NPC with character levels an equal share of the reward plus a share, or half share as some rules I have seen, of the loot should do. Without a reward like that, I'd be inclined to offer a smaller gold piece per day stipend plus reasonable expense ouf of the party pool plus a share of the treasure.