Handling Hirelings

Cost: Intoxication just got added to my mental list, just for your dwarf, noofy.

I think we're all pretty much on the same page. A lot of what Tony said is what I was talking about as well—no surprise, since he's running the game I'm playing—but Tony explained some of it better. And I like that he more explicitly addressed how the DM principles and moves apply toward using hirelings.

One thing neither Tony nor I mentioned in this thread is that part of Tony's original thinking behind hirelings, as mentioned in the Apocalypse D&D 3.0 draft, was to use hirelings as a way of managing variable numbers of players over time. If someone new joins the group, you could "promote" a hireling to be that player's character (especially if it's just for one session); or if someone drops out or isn't available one week, their character could be "demoted" to hireling status. That's part of the reason why I think it's important to have some kind of class trait for hirelings, even if as hirelings they have very limited or no use of any class abilities. That said, I'm not sure that that kind of functionality is easy or desirable to incorporate into the hireling rules.

Oh yeah! I totally forgot about promoting and demoting.

Also, there's a house rule I've used to some good effect. When your hirelings fight alongside you, they do damage equal to their level each round (maybe +1 if you've armed them well, +any magical bonuses due to spells or magic weapons). When a monster fights a hireling one-on-one, the monster does their hit dice in damage (minus armor, minimum one).

One handy effect of this is that when the party charges into a room and pair off with opponents, there's an easy, low book-keeping way to track what's happeneing off in the corner where Joe the Spear Carrier is fighting Goblin #4.

That's definitely some good stuff, Tony.

My thinking thus far is that only hirelings with Skill: Warrior add to damage. That NPC healer just isn't that useful in a fight. Maybe a few other Skills also add to damage to a lesser degree, like tracker.

What's in my head so far:
PC Class -> Hireling Skill
Bard - > ?
Cleric -> Priest/Healer
Fighter -> Warrior
Paladin - > Protector
Ranger -> Tracker
Thief -> Expert
Wizard -> Adept

Healer Skill adds healing to Make Camp, and/or speeds up natural healing (which isn't in the rules). Maybe also can provide combat healing, at a cost. Possibly something like "When you call for healing from a hireling in combat, take -2 forward as you try to get their attention. They heal you X."

Warrior adds damage to Hack and Slash, maybe also some bonus to positioning or something. Some variation on Bend Bars?

Protector at least allows you to redirect damage to them, maybe something more as well? Might even provide a Dodge bonus.

Tracker has Follow Trail in some form. I guess it could even be keyed off of Make Camp, like "When you Make Camp, choose one trail leaving your camp site, the tracker can follow it until a significant change."

Expert can pick locks and disarm traps. This one might have to include a roll. Something like "When an expert picks a lock or disarms a trap, roll. 10+ they do it quick, 7-9 long enough to cause some trouble." Tracking and disarming are hard to fit into this model.

Adept could add damage to Cast a Spell, or maybe have some kind of on-demand buff/damage along the lines of the healing, above.


Promotion and demotion should be pretty easy, assuming I can some up with something for Bard. Especially if some of these abilities scale with level, so having your friend's 5th level character as an NPC is better than some 1st level hireling.

Love it Sage! That's clean and straightforward and tied to the PC's 'missing' moves. Neat. My ideas are :)

I like the idea of each +1 to a move being costed. In my AW adaption, its 1 Treasure per +1 or +1 forward to a move (as many times as you like, provided you pass your Order Hirelings move), per adventure (getting back to town)

Maybe Bard could be 'Promoter', 'Negotiator' or 'Leader', and potentially add to your Carouse, Adventure Hook or Parley or Outstanding Warrants or Order Hirelings (excluding themselves!) - Making them a very useful and therefore very expensive hireling!

Using my adaption of the AW Barter Rules, each Hireling costs 1 Treasure per move bonus per adventure. Thus if you hire a Bard with all of the above talents, she would cost the adventurers 5 treasure per adventure! (regardless of whether they all come into play) Better hope the dungeon is fully stocked.

The other sneaky option is to hire many specialist hirelings that only contribute +1 to one move for 1 treasure apiece. This however leads to a rather large and unruly gang of folks when you miss your order hirelings roll!

For the Bard, I could see going two ways.

One, call the skill "Minstrel", and follow Noofy's suggestion by having the skill add to the Carouse and Outstanding Warrants moves.

Two, call the skill something like "Tale-spinner" and have it add a bonus to Spout Lore.

Either of those could also provide a bonus to Parley, if that's not over-powerful to have that in addition.

I think the hireling is missing the old morale check from D&D.

So far we've been thinking of a morale move for groups, such that a group can split up when it's attacked too much. Hadn't really been looking at it for hirelings, since I ther Order moves covers that pretty well.