Whenever my group picks up a hireling, it tends to go a little like this. They're forgotten, mistreated, and left behind the second the party has to teleport out of danger. Is there a better way to incorporate hirelings into a campaign?
Ultimate Campaign has some suggestions for remembering companions (by which they mean "anyone/anything that hangs out with you," not A/Cs only).
Some of that page's other material on followers might apply; they say very little about hirelings per se.
If the party has a base of operations, have people there notice when a hireling comes back and complains of mistreatment, or doesn't come back at all. Make new hirelings accordingly reluctant to join, and demand extravagant advance compensation.
Are there particular kinds of hirelings your players tend to bring along?
Are there particular kinds of hirelings your players tend to bring along?
I recently tried to bring along my first as a PC. Just a dwarven drover to mind the mules. I found stats, a one-line character/personality description, and handed 'em off to my GM. I was a bit taken aback when he said that it was up to the players to play their own hirelings.
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We did! We did!! We did!!!
We ran a homebrew campaign with three 15-point PCs, and each player also got to run a pre-gen 5 or 10 point NPC warrior. The warriors had simple, static feats, like Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Toughness, and Weapon Focus.
It felt very 1st Edition D&D-like.
It was really fun. We got to focus on our PCs, but the NPC warriors helped with both action economy and soaking up damage. They were the same level as us, more or less, so they had equal survivability and were still effective, but they didn't outshine the PCs. Also, since each player had 2 characters, the GM could take the kid gloves off and if he killed a character, the player still had another character to run.
The initial party had my half-orc inquisitor, an Aldori duelist fighter, and Dark Tapestry oracle. My inquisitor became owlbear chow, so I made a sword & board paladin.
I think the NPC warrior henchmen idea would be particularly fun and useful in a party without PC martials. I also think the NPC henchmen idea would work best with a party of 3 PCs or less. In a party of 4 or more, you really don't need the extra action economy and soak. In a party full of fighters, some henchmen adepts or experts or even aristocrats could be fun and useful.
We did! We did!! We did!!!
We ran a homebrew campaign with three 15-point PCs, and each player also got to run a pre-gen 5 or 10 point NPC warrior. The warriors had simple, static feats, like Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Toughness, and Weapon Focus.
It felt very 1st Edition D&D-like.
Well damn. That's a neat campaign premise. You're actually structuring the game around the concept rather than just adding it in.
Tell me though: While running two PCs, did you ever run into the "talking to yourself" problem? It can be weird interacting as two characters having a conversation.
Not really. The henchmen were pretty much quiet and realized they were "extras" supporting the PC "stars." It was more like playing a druid and animal companion, or maybe summoner and eidolon or mage and familiar. The secondary character still had a personality, but generally stayed in the background during social situations; with a 5 or 10 point build, Int and Cha generally got dumped, but they weren't min-maxed (my warrior was a heavy crossbow specialist, but had Str 14, Dex 12, Con 13, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8, I think, and had decent Perception and Survival).
I have played in games where each player played two PCs, and that did have some weird talking to yourself moments. But they certainly didn't dominate any sessions, or even any encounters.
In one game, I played a LG human cleric/paladin and a CG Halfling ranger/rogue. They kind of bickered sometimes, since they had similar goals but different methods. My friend played a mostly mute half-orc barbarian and a homebrew tiny faerie race sorcerer with a squeaky voice, so they were easy to tell apart too.
In another game, I played a CG chaos gnome dragon shaman (3.5) and a N shadow whisper gnome ninja (3.5). The chaos gnome was Charismatic and talkative and a wannabe Consulting Detective, and the shadow whisper gnome was quiet and into wearing gray and eating gruel (his favorite food).
In a current game 5E game, it looked like my 1st level drow bard was going to die (0 hit points, being chased by CR 6 dragon at the end of the prior session), so I made a "spare" wood elf druid, since I didn't expect the bard to live. But 2 players had miss the next session, so we were down our human rogue and dwarf fighter #1 (we still had dwarf fighter #2 (Morningstar and shield instead of battleaxe and shield!), a tiefling warlock, and a human Life cleric (using Magic Initiate to get goodberry for ten 4 hit point mini-potions!)), so I got to play both bard and druid. My bard is a creep that whispers all the time, so it was easy to tell them apart. I only played both because the DM had already prepared for a party of 6, and 5 is closer to 6 than 4, so...
TL;DR: It's not an issue.
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Yes. My game uses the caravan rules out of Jade Regent so they end up being lightly surrounded by a cadre of NPCs who help keep their mobile business afloat. In that context a lot of those NPCs become characters in their own right, helping around camp, rp'ing with them, and growing relationships that a lot of my players get more involved with than the base story lol. Now, I also use stuff like a modified version of Legendary Games' Ultimate Relationships to help that along but it doesn't have to be that way for every game.
If you're looking to use hirelings a lot in your games I would suggest keeping them minor to start. Have them be like doctors, craftsmen, or shamans the party calls on in town to help them with various tasks they aren't good at like say treating an unknown but local illness or coming to them to fix their weapons. Have them be respectful of the PCs if they are well known but have them expect the commiserate respect and not let themselves be defamed with appropriate consequences (hard to buy potions & weapons in town when you've made fun of all the guys who make/sell them kind of stuff). From their I start using hirelings as a way to help show off the difference between PCs and NPCs/villagers. These guys can be really good at their job but DO NOT have the same level of skills that the PCs do to adventure, that doesn't mean they are like mindless servants though, just that they work symbiotically with the players, just like the players do with them.
The other things they can be fun for is once the PCs start to get some acclaim is to start having hirelings show up to act as an entourage. A PC who's now like a member of the landed gentry wouldn't announce himself at court or hang his own coat and blades, that's what a hireling is for. Have commoners start showing up asking to be his herald or young warriors looking to squire them by carrying their shields and sharpening their swords. Now, if the PC treats him like s#&@ and/or gets him killed there should be consequences again since remember, these guys have family and other social connections that will remember this stuff, but by and large if everyone just remembers the 2 maxims of Don't be a Dick and if this is a living world there will be living consequences, than you should be good.
As a GM I'd also say to make sure to remember the names of these guys and start giving them personalities and quirks. It's easier to treat these guys as people rather than things when you turn say, the hireling doctor into the halfling who has a deep love of tea or the local blacksmith into the Og Steelbreaker, who begins each new project with an animal sacrifice to bless his works and act as part of his smithing process.
Hope that helps man ^-^.
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I'm fond of hiring street rats to watch the mounts while we head into a cave or something. If trouble shows up, they blow a whistle and run the hell away. Pay them well enough and they probably won't even steal anything from your saddlebags.
Yes. My game uses the caravan rules out of Jade Regent so they end up being lightly surrounded by a cadre of NPCs who help keep their mobile business afloat.
That's an interesting model for comparison. I have a sort of mental distinction between "the GM's NPCs" and "the players' NPCs." I guess I look at hirelings as characters that the players choose to introduce to the campaign rather than the GM. Jade Regent anticipates that move, throwing a bit of player agency ("Dudes, I'm sick of encumbrance. Let's just hire some porters.") and giving it back to the GM ("If you wish to take a caravan, you'll need to hire guards. Here's a mini game to help you do that.") I'm probably splitting hairs here, but hirelings and "NPCs that the adventure expects you to take with you" seem like different animals to me.
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In my last game, our Gunslinger hired an NPC as his apprentice. He would reload the guns and hand them to the gunslinger, and even shoot himself if needed. He got paid 10 gold a day and got 'training.'
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I'm completely open to the idea of the Leadership feat in my own home game, and we've had some wonderful characters evolve from this.
One character's cohort was a knight rescued from a gnoll slave pit. He'd suffered tortures at their hands, his eyes put out and missing various other body parts, yet he threatened to fight the party if they moved to hurt the other slaves with him, establishing him as an important NPC in the process. Of course they rescued him, the cleric got the opportunity to fix him up with the Regenerate spell they'd just accessed by the end of the story arc, and he swore his life to her and her god in return.
The whole party ended up having an interplanar transport accident soon afterwards, smashing their way into an umbral dragon's castle by accident. But instead of attacking them immediately, the dragon insisted on treating them as his unexpected guests and demanded they accept his hospitality and stay an evening with him. He even showered the with gifts, but of course he had other goals, using enchantment magic to convince the party cleric to express her desire to stay with the dragon a bit longer. Not wanting to pick a fight right then and there, the rest of the party allowed it in order to escape and prepare for a rescue mission later.
Of course, the knight had ended up falling in love with the cleric at this stage. He ended up selling the right to the soul of his first-born child with the cleric to Nocticula in exchange for a +1 holy longsword of dragon bane and various other guarantees that he could defeat the dragon, whereupon there was a climactic battle, resulting in only the cleric and her knight still standing as the final blow was struck, slaying the dragon and winning his love's freedom. The cleric is now pregnant in this current game, and I'm looking forward to the future confrontation over the child's fate with great glee.
A well developed NPC can add a lot of fun to a game, provided they're used effectively as a plot device.
The main problem I have with hirelings... low hit points.
A Fireball could kill the lot of them. There might be so many adventurers (including hirelings) that the bad guys can't pick out the PCs and just start killing all opponents. The hirelings die fast.
They also act like summons if they ever fall into combat, just gumming up the place with more things to track.
You need to hire extra hirelings, because you might leave them with your mounts and gear when you go into a dungeon, and when you come out half of them are dead, or vampired, or zombified, etc, by smart opponents who know to cut off your supply line.
In our game with 3 PCs and 3 PCNPCs (Player Controlled Non-Player Characters), the 3 PCNPCs were of the same level as the PCs, but "just" warriors. They had comparable hit points and BAB and saves, so they weren't useless, but because they lacked class features, they were really easy to run and they didn't take up a lot of time during battles. They also had lower point buys (5 or 10, compared to the PCs 15), so they didn't outshine any of the PCs either.
During the Way of the Wicked campaign to fit the theme of highly charismatic villains building a secret organisation I gave each pc a Cohort. The players varied which character they played sometimes with two groups solving different problems at the same time each consisting of mixed main pc's and cohorts.
They also recruited a large force of minions most of which were not terribly powerful but including a few notable individuals and these minions were used mainly to fulfil their off screen plots , as support assets or as part of an army when they were involved in open battle
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Yes. My game uses the caravan rules out of Jade Regent so they end up being lightly surrounded by a cadre of NPCs who help keep their mobile business afloat.That's an interesting model for comparison. I have a sort of mental distinction between "the GM's NPCs" and "the players' NPCs." I guess I look at hirelings as characters that the players choose to introduce to the campaign rather than the GM. Jade Regent anticipates that move, throwing a bit of player agency ("Dudes, I'm sick of encumbrance. Let's just hire some porters.") and giving it back to the GM ("If you wish to take a caravan, you'll need to hire guards. Here's a mini game to help you do that.") I'm probably splitting hairs here, but hirelings and "NPCs that the adventure expects you to take with you" seem like different animals to me.
I've never really had that distinction. For me, NPCs have always been something that the GM has purview over even when the Players introduces them since at the end of the day, I as the GM end up playing most of them. The player might get to sit down and sculpt the character and help bring them to finished state if they are someone that their character knows really well or something like that, but once they hit the table or get incorporated into the story as events unfold they fall out of that space of control and more into that of the GM. On top of that, players tend to not put much into hirelings they pick up beyond "guy who carries my stuff" which tends to make them into items rather than people, blunting the impact of what you can do with them in the story. Once you let the GM get their hands on them and throw a little character into them you can get someone who the PCs kind of care about and since they are basically around all the time, create narrative around them.
For instance, one of the favorite NPCs in my game's caravan is a commoner who they hired to drive their wagons. They found out he's this kid from around town who wants to be an adventurer like they are and basically ran away from home to join them and stole the family horse. Now, after a few adventures he's managed to gain a level in fighter and he kind of acts as the foil for their own antics, eager to go on adventures but still just a normal kid with fears and worries of his own that help put things in perspective. What's more, it makes any quest they bring him on even more engaging as even though he wants to be there, follows orders, and gets in good hits, there's always the worry that his crowning moment of cool will be cut down in the next when a stray arrow or a spear plunges through him and cuts down their friend. That's what I think is the big strength of hirelings if you want to use them beyond just a skill check, they're a place to build character and make your world feel alive and sculpt an image of what that world is like and how one can interact with it to the players.
Here is a great idea for a cohort for you. Play a rogue, take leadership, and your cohort is a second rogue. You are now guaranteed a flanking buddy in every combat and no one can complain about it. PLUS you are getting double your normal sneak attack damage (minus like 1d6 I think). To make it even better, your cohort can either take the teamwork feats, or just the other rogue feats & talents that you normally would no be able to afford.
Why do you have this cohort? Make it something good. Maybe they are an apprentice or lover.
Another good idea is to take a wizard, priest, etc and have their cohort be a bodyguard sworn to protect them. A priest / cleric with a paladin bodyguard is pretty believable.
Here is a great idea for a cohort for you. Play a rogue, take leadership, and your cohort is a second rogue. You are now guaranteed a flanking buddy in every combat and no one can complain about it. PLUS you are getting double your normal sneak attack damage (minus like 1d6 I think). To make it even better, your cohort can either take the teamwork feats, or just the other rogue feats & talents that you normally would no be able to afford.
Thematically, this makes sense. Mechanically, it's not much of an advantage compared to other uses of Leadership. Any melee ally can provide flanking, and a lower-level rogue is more likely to have trouble hitting / surviving than many other classes. The out-of-combat utility provided won't be that great either; you're a rogue too so you've probably got all the major rogue skills covered.
Here is a great idea for a cohort for you. Play a rogue, take leadership, and your cohort is a second rogue. You are now guaranteed a flanking buddy in every combat and no one can complain about it. PLUS you are getting double your normal sneak attack damage (minus like 1d6 I think). To make it even better, your cohort can either take the teamwork feats, or just the other rogue feats & talents that you normally would no be able to afford.Thematically, this makes sense. Mechanically, it's not much of an advantage compared to other uses of Leadership. Any melee ally can provide flanking, and a lower-level rogue is more likely to have trouble hitting / surviving than many other classes. The out-of-combat utility provided won't be that great either; you're a rogue too so you've probably got all the major rogue skills covered.
True, but another rogue having many of the same scouting skills means you have a scouting partner.
Another idea is having a scouting partner from a different class, like inquisitor, investigator, ranger, slayer, or monk.