Paying the Crew - How To

[tcharleschapman]

In the Jade Regent, in order to have someone work on your caravan they had a monthly wage. Skull and Shackles does not appear to have this set for a crew of pirates. In order to sail the Man's Promise, the ship needs a crew of 20. Minus the PC's (6), that is a crew of 14. How much plunder is needed to pay the crew? How often do they get this pay?

Thanks!

Tom

[Weren Wu Jen]

The Sidebar on page 12 of Pathfinder #56 (Book 2 of Skull & Shackles--Raiders of the Fever Sea) has all the details.

Basically, when you sell Plunder, deduct 1 point to pay the crew.

Cheers!

[tcharleschapman]

Thank you! Haven't purchased part two yet.

[Fitzwalrus]

As WWJ says, the "1 point of plunder" rule is the default for this. It works but is a bit arbitrary (in practice, the more plunder you capture the smaller the crew's share becomes, which would probably be cause for mutiny IRL) but as a handwave it's fine.

Historically booty was evenly divided into "shares". Depending on the wording of the pirate charter of the crew in question, the average crewman got one share, more experienced hands got slightly more (a "share and a quarter", or "...and a half"), minor officers or skilled hands got two shares, and the captain got three or more. Some crews also allocated "ship shares" for the maintenance and repair of the ship itself, but that wasn't a universal thing. The system varied from ship to ship, so a bit of research might be in order.

There have been a couple of suggested alternate systems proposed (by sabedoria (tied into his alternate ship combat rules) and dungeonmeister, IIRC) that took a little more work but gave a more "historical" result. Unless you're doing major RP interplay with the general crew in your campaign it's not a crucial point, so use whatever moves things along best for you.

[Ernest Mueller]

In our pirate campaign we use the "shares" method. Usually ship-taken prizes aren't really the PCs' main income so it's fine (shares only apply if you take part, so a PC landing party that goes and kills some monsters gets to keep it...).

[FrankManic]

The tricornes and parrots brand of pirates were usually fairly democratic and handled loot by shares. Captain got two shares, Quartermaster got two shares, experts (doctor, cooper, carpenter, gunners) got something like a share five, and everyone else got one share. Repairs, ammunition, food, sail and timber, and medicine were paid for in common. There was also a system of "Health Insurance" - Anyone injured or maimed was entitled to additional monies which varied by the type of injury - A leg lost or an eye lost for instance.

Pirates were paid out of the "treasury" when they left the ship, which they could typically do any time they made port. It was in everyone's best interest to play this straight - A ship that was known for paying everyone what they were due had a much easier time finding crew.

Basically - No one got "Paid". If the ship was successful in capturing a prize then everyone got a share of that prize. A good prize could be enough to let a pirate retire, buy property, and live comfortably for the rest of his life. It could also be enough to drink himself to death in under a month. And most ships weren't terribly successful.

Privateers had different systems - They usually had at least some legal authorization and the ships were usually privately owned and backed by investors. They often still used a share system but the investors would receive the lions share, captains took a much larger percentage, and crew got less. But they had advantages. For one - You were less likely to be hanged for piracy on landing. Privateers were also likely to be better equipped - Pirates made do with whatever ships and guns they could steel while privateers were often purpose-built fast raiders. Privateers typically had a much stricter hierarchy, but it still wasn't anywhere near as brutal and awful as the Navy

Navy ships had pay, which was crap, which is why pretty much everyone was so keen to defect to a pirate ship if they got a chance. You could face terrible danger and horrible conditions on a navy ship for next to no pay, or you could face terrible danger and possibly less horrible conditions on a pirate ship for the promise of a substantial prize.

I've decided that the Wormwood is an exception, held together by Harrigan's force of personality and little else. He doesn't care a whit about the crew he took on in The Wormwood Mutiny - He just needed warm bodies to keep his ship functioning until he had time to recruit a proper crew. If any of them turned out to be capable pirates? More's the better.

[brvheart]

The question is what to pay when you have more than 1 ship. 1 point of plunder seems fine with 20 crew, but with 75 they will get a bit testy on 13 GP.

[Kain Gallant]

I'd probably do 1 point of plunder per ship under your command.

I'd further develop this to scale up base on the crew or ship size (1 point for a crew of 20, 3 points for a crew of 60, etc.).

[BzAli]

In my group, I leave it fully to the players. If they decide to share 1 plunder point among 80 crewmembers, the crew will be very displeased. They'll quickly discover that several of the crewmembers desert while in port, and that their DC's to recruit crew via diplomacy suddenly faces a -5 penalty due to having a bad reputation.

On the other hand, if they give the crew about half of the plunder, and pay for repairs and ship upgrades from their own shares, I'll happily award them a +2 morale bonus on skill-checks relating to sailing and functions aboard ship, since their highly motivated crew is performing at their best. They'll also have bonusses on crew recruitment, and occasionally NPC's will approach of own initiative, and ask if they're looking for a good master carpenter, and such.

This also goes for discipline aboard: To harsh, and the crew will desert, to lenient, and they'll have fights and deaths amongst the crew, and people showing up at battlestations with hangovers.

There's plenty of potential for roleplaying in running a pirate crew. I often give the captain some cases to judge, some clear-cut (a nightwatch fell asleep. What's the penalty for that?), some not so (crewmen gambled while on shore leave. Now the loser refuses to pay up), and some where the enforcement of the rules will hurt the ship (Owlbear, your favourite schock-trooper in boarding enemy ships, have murdered a crewmen. Someone possible told him to, but Owlbear won't betray his friend. Do you kill Owlbear, which will hurt your future boarding, and possible upset his friends among the crew?).

[deathbydice]

Well, paying shares (and half shares for lubbers, double shares for lesser officers) it tends to keep the crew down, or rather at a manageable level^^
Everything off a boat is fair game (and yes, some pirates will plunder, if not specificially ordered not to.. it's a roleplaying game after all ), landwork is not.
They might need to go into renegotiations on underwater shares^^

[Terraneaux]

See, this is why using skeletons for the basic unskilled labor of the ship is highly effective. It keeps costs down somewhat dramatically when you have a galley that you're running off of like 20 breathing people.

[Marex]

How would magic items and potions play into the "shares" method? If the party keeps all the magic, then over time, they aren't going to get much in the way of gold right? I would think that the crew would see magic items as treasure/plunder, and just think of selling it for the money. So if a PC wants to keep the +1 cutlass, the crew would expect their shares to be compensated in some way, right? Does the party need to buy back any magical loot from the ship's stores when they take down another ship? Crews generally want their fair cut of the loot, right?

Has anyone run into this?

[Cpt_kirstov]

Personal items usually go to the slayer of the person. I've thought about a 10% boat tax for selling a personal item that you got from a ship (vs a dungeon for example)... but found that made too much paperwork for me. I figure the crew are getting their share of potions by killing the 'background bad guys' in boardings, so they don't care.