Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jadebrain Mar 05, 2012 8:08:34	Hello everyone, In a Pathfinder campaign, my party has recovered, along with some artifacts, a little over 2,200 gold. Since we recovered the gold in ruins near a town that has been plagued by devils and devil-worshipping bandits, and the ruins we recovered the gold from are basically an old section of a city which the town is sort of the remnants of, I have decided, with the agreement of my party members of course, to donate most of the gold back to the town, with the suggestion to hire some mercenaries to protect the town. What I'm wondering is if there are any official rules for hiring mercenaries as retainers; if there are, great, and if there aren't, I want to know from all you history buffs out there what the cost of mercenaries would be on a monthly and/or yearly basis, based on historical data from real life. And, of course, by "mercenaries," I'm not talking about just anyone who needs a job - I'm talking professional. Right now, I'm thinking of donating about 1,600 of the gold we found to the cause - of course, I'll talk it over with my party members first.
#2 Unahim Mar 05, 2012 9:05:05	I'm pulling the following rules from the 3.5 books, which should be close enough in situations like this to be directly applicable. It suggests the base, minimum wage for a "trained hireling"(which specifically mentions mercenary warriors, which I guess would be lvl 1 warriors[not fighters] + a somewhat higher level officer or two) is 3sp/day. This means 100 of them, for example, would cost 30g a day. That would last the town 53 days. Of course, if the town is small and you only need, like, 20 mercs on hand, then they could have them for 266 days. Note that this is the minimum wage, and DMs may decide mercs want more. Just defending a city seems like an easy job though(unless it's under constant siege) so perhaps if the city offers free food and lodgings, they'd accept it? After x amount of days the town will be back to its previous state though, so maybe you want to look into more permanent solutions.
#3 jadebrain Mar 05, 2012 9:49:05	Yeah, a more permanent solution sounds needed, if 1600 gold won't cover a year on minimum wage. I suppose I could ask my DM how much time the party would have left in the town - my character, who is a fighter, and one with a decent Intelligence score, could probably drill some fighting skill into the townspeople, given enough time. He also has a few ranks in Profession (Bodyguard), though I'm not sure if that would be similar enough to substitute for Profession (Soldier) to aid in training. Also, he has ranks in Craft (Nutritional Food), so I suppose giving them a few recipes wouldn't hurt. I'm not sure what the other party members can contribute, though - we just (potentially) lost our Cleric, who would have been our best person to provide a small amount of training in medicinal arts (and I'm not even sure about that; I don't know if our Cleric is/was trained in Heal), and our Magus, who is a combat jack-of-all-trades, would probably only be able to provide a little bit of magical training. I'm not even sure what impact this will have on our campaign; the only reason we're in this village is to retrieve an artifact from the ruins in order to join the Pathfinder Society, which my character hopes will help him find his missing king. In the meantime, my character is basically acting as his king would have ordered him to, and since his king is a fair and just ruler, he's helping to defend the innocent while he searches. Basically, the only reason we're helping this town is for roleplaying purposes, but that seems good enough for the party and me. Tangent aside, are there any other more permanent solutions for helping the town?
#4 Unahim Mar 05, 2012 17:22:51	Why not a combination of your two ideas? Instead of training the townsfolk yourselves, hire a couple of people to do it for you. If you get 4 or so people(someone for swordsplay, an archer, someone with healing skills and a magical adept) and you keep those on for a reasonable amount of time, the villagers can probably learn enough to stick up from themselves. Once they do they simply have to pass things on to the next generation themselves, and the 4 people you hired wouldn't be needed directly anymore, but maybe the city decides to keep them employed, who knows? If you can do that and have money to spare, some equipment and infrastructure is probably your best bet. Let them make(not buy, since that'd be double as expensive) weapons or a pallisade or something. Should do the trick. You don't need to prepare the village for a huge catastrophy here, by just doing the above they should be able to get through most problems that could reasonably beset a village. Anything more than that means the DM is out to destroy the village anyway, in which case you could've armed them with repeating, self-reloading rocket launcher and it wouldn't have mattered: if the DM wants it gone, it is gone :p Most DMs I know will recognise you've made an (unsollicited) effort to improve the fate of this village though, and they will honour that by not messing with it unnecessarily just to rub it in your face ^^ (Although my characters have, on occassion, seen things go down in flames which they had put time and effort into, but only when the DM felt it provided a suitable emotional impulse to get the next stage rolling)
#5 navar100 Mar 05, 2012 19:17:09	If you care to go this route - the goldpieces last long enough until at least one of the party takes Leadership feat and have a Cohort and especially Followers protect the town. The town becomes your home base, and the party is recognized as Defenders of the Town. Engaging the world, caring about NPCs go a lot farther than RAW goldpiece spending.