Dragon 397Unearthed Arcana: Henchmen and Hirelings
By Robert J. Schwalb
Need someone to crew a ship, carry gear, or translate ancient texts? Hire some help!
Talk about this Article here.
otherwise, pretty cool hireling stats.
I love this article. The hirelings in particular are just brilliant.
I've given the players in my Dark Sun game an "alternative reward" in an easier-than-easy companion character, and I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to increase the size of their group with hirelings.
I have nothing bad to say about this article at all. Mr. Schwalb, once again, should be commended.
-O
Regarding pets: Mightn't the Shamen's spirit buddy be added to the list alongside familiars? Anywho, I love the idea of background options for smaller and less significant pets. Would be nice to have a Feat or two to make them slightly better, but I guess there's probably enough options that additional complexity isn't warrented.
I also love the sameple henchmen, my favorites are the disgraced knight and heartless assassin. Makes my head spin with quest hooks involving these folks!
Thanks! You guys could make this bearded fat guy cry a little.
Just so you know I'm going to have to humbly request a Seeker, Runepriest, and Str Cleric articles.... preferably with powers and the feats and stuff.
I know I've written two of the three and I, like you, am left waiting for room in the schedule of doom.
i hope that those are seeker and runepriest.
str cleric, imo, should never have been born. now, i'll tell you how i REALLY feel.
;)
I know I've written two of the three and I, like you, am left waiting for room in the schedule of doom.
Lol good to know. Thanks and keep up the good work! It may sound like flattery but a most of the time your articles feel like the sole reason I bother to still read the magazine articles.
I know I've written two of the three and I, like you, am left waiting for room in the schedule of doom.
i hope that those are seeker and runepriest.
str cleric, imo, should never have been born. now, i'll tell you how i REALLY feel.
Agreed.... but it is there and it shouldn't be left in the dust.
It's great to receive these official hireling/ henchmen rules on my last two days as D&D Insider. Thanks to the author!
Cool article.
"Nonadventuring men and women do the things that heroes are unable or unwilling to do. What good is a knight without the suit of armor someone else made?"
These ideas are prompting me to introduce hirelings into our campaign that can craft the uncommon magical weapons and armors that the new rarity system suggests should only be found while adventuring. Perhaps at a daily cost of standard x5 the craftsman can create one item during an extended rest of his given expertise (heavy blades, leather armor, etc.), of his level or lower, if he is supplied the raw materials. Created items would count against the treasure bundle/found items of the adventure.
On the one hand, I like the introduction of hirelings and hencmen.
On the other hand, I think the hirling cost table could end up being something of a nightmare, as I feel any cost table that isn't "magic items" ends up being, for the following reasons:
- In my group, this would immediately fall into the same black hole that things like rituals and strongholds dwell in. The only way to make money in 4e is to adventure, and the gold players recieve is thus very finite and strictly capped. My experience has been players will never pay for things like this when they could be buying magic items instead.
- It creates a "price for service/level" benchmark that players could (rightly, I would imagine) expect to well exceed per day of service when they take up adventure at the behest of a patron. How many 1st level adventures start out with the "village elder offers you 200 gold to go solve the goblin problem at sorrowfast bridge" hook? What do you say to the player who states "well the guy who holds a torch gets 15 gold per day, so an actual adventurer is easily three times the standard rate each, per day". Other then of course pointing out that this is yet another situation where the economy of the world doesn't make sense and wont be benefiting them!
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
First Strongholds and now this. I am 100% certain my players will be showing up next Thursday night with printed copies of this article in their hand shaking it at my face saying "Mr. DM, this must happen and the sooner the better".
Awesome stuff and I'm looking forward to trying out a few henchmen as soon as I can.
Quick question.... because this is unearthed arcana, does that mean we won't see any of these types of characters in official adventure modules/dungeon mag adventures? That would be a real shame because this is the sort of detail I love in a premade adventure.
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
In my 3e days I ran a campaign with very little monetary wealth. A lot of products/services were bartered for. I also used faction reputation as an alternative form of currency. You could "spend" your reputation with a faction to get them to build things for you or have members tag along with you. In game, we described it as calling in favors. You built up rep by doing quests, killing certain types of monsters, etc. Very similar to the system in WoW, except the rep was something you could spend and you could also lose rep with one faction if you gained it with another. That forced the PC's to make some interesting decisions.
You could probably use a similar system to get hirelings if your players only ever use money to buy magic items.
I have mixed feelings about this article.
On the one hand, I like the introduction of hirelings and hencmen.
On the other hand, I think the hirling cost table could end up being something of a nightmare, as I feel any cost table that isn't "magic items" ends up being, for the following reasons:
- In my group, this would immediately fall into the same black hole that things like rituals and strongholds dwell in. The only way to make money in 4e is to adventure, and the gold players recieve is thus very finite and strictly capped. My experience has been players will never pay for things like this when they could be buying magic items instead.
- It creates a "price for service/level" benchmark that players could (rightly, I would imagine) expect to well exceed per day of service when they take up adventure at the behest of a patron. How many 1st level adventures start out with the "village elder offers you 200 gold to go solve the goblin problem at sorrowfast bridge" hook? What do you say to the player who states "well the guy who holds a torch gets 15 gold per day, so an actual adventurer is easily three times the standard rate each, per day". Other then of course pointing out that this is yet another situation where the economy of the world doesn't make sense and wont be benefiting them!
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
In my 3e days I ran a campaign with very little monetary wealth. A lot of products/services were bartered for. I also used faction reputation as an alternative form of currency. You could "spend" your reputation with a faction to get them to build things for you or have members tag along with you. In game, we described it as calling in favors. You built up rep by doing quests, killing certain types of monsters, etc. Very similar to the system in WoW, except the rep was something you could spend and you could also lose rep with one faction if you gained it with another. That forced the PC's to make some interesting decisions.
You could probably use a similar system to get hirelings if your players only ever use money to buy magic items.
Perhaps as an extension to the article, it would be nice to see the return of the "Leadership" feat from 3.*. Not as a feat, but at least mechanics similar to the feat that gives the pcs access to free/discounted henchmen as well as real-estate based on their level and a measure of their notoriety.
I have mixed feelings about this article.
On the one hand, I like the introduction of hirelings and hencmen.
On the other hand, I think the hirling cost table could end up being something of a nightmare, as I feel any cost table that isn't "magic items" ends up being, for the following reasons:
- In my group, this would immediately fall into the same black hole that things like rituals and strongholds dwell in. The only way to make money in 4e is to adventure, and the gold players recieve is thus very finite and strictly capped. My experience has been players will never pay for things like this when they could be buying magic items instead.
- It creates a "price for service/level" benchmark that players could (rightly, I would imagine) expect to well exceed per day of service when they take up adventure at the behest of a patron. How many 1st level adventures start out with the "village elder offers you 200 gold to go solve the goblin problem at sorrowfast bridge" hook? What do you say to the player who states "well the guy who holds a torch gets 15 gold per day, so an actual adventurer is easily three times the standard rate each, per day". Other then of course pointing out that this is yet another situation where the economy of the world doesn't make sense and wont be benefiting them!
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
You might want to have a chat with your players if you are suffering from argument 1. For one thing, you can easily compensate the group as a DM for gold spend on less direct items. For another, the treasure bundles assume you will spend at least some of it on other stuff and by the time you reach higher levels that few 100 gps have no visible impact on the magic items you can buy/craft. In any event, my players never worry too much about it. They recently gave away an unknown magical gem as payment to a pride of displacer beasts and paid for a ritual to find said pride without even flinching.
Hving said that, 15 gp per day for 1st level hirelings seem to be a lot...
I have mixed feelings about this article.
On the one hand, I like the introduction of hirelings and hencmen.
On the other hand, I think the hirling cost table could end up being something of a nightmare, as I feel any cost table that isn't "magic items" ends up being, for the following reasons:
- In my group, this would immediately fall into the same black hole that things like rituals and strongholds dwell in. The only way to make money in 4e is to adventure, and the gold players recieve is thus very finite and strictly capped. My experience has been players will never pay for things like this when they could be buying magic items instead.
- It creates a "price for service/level" benchmark that players could (rightly, I would imagine) expect to well exceed per day of service when they take up adventure at the behest of a patron. How many 1st level adventures start out with the "village elder offers you 200 gold to go solve the goblin problem at sorrowfast bridge" hook? What do you say to the player who states "well the guy who holds a torch gets 15 gold per day, so an actual adventurer is easily three times the standard rate each, per day". Other then of course pointing out that this is yet another situation where the economy of the world doesn't make sense and wont be benefiting them!
I'd rather there be some other sort of party resource that hirlings drained, but I would admit to not knowing what that would be. I guess what I really wish was that the next Unearthed Arcana article was one that dealt with fixing the 4e economy, or creating some sort of "Wealth" level that covers expenses such as hirlings, strongholds, and most rituals, leaving gold for the purchase of magic items.
You might want to have a chat with your players if you are suffering from argument 1. For one thing, you can easily compensate the group as a DM for gold spend on less direct items. For another, the treasure bundles assume you will spend at least some of it on other stuff and by the time you reach higher levels that few 100 gps have no visible impact on the magic items you can buy/craft. In any event, my players never worry too much about it. They recently gave away an unknown magical gem as payment to a pride of displacer beasts and paid for a ritual to find said pride without even flinching.
Hving said that, 15 gp per day for 1st level hirelings seem to be a lot...