Hirelings: Making the Players Care

When I started my TS&R Jade campaign, I made a list of 20 randomly armed men-at-arms for the home town. When players wanted to hire some, I'd check their Charisma scores to see how many turned up, and have the players roll d20 however many times to determine who they got to hire that session. And of course, my sons helped me come up with funny names for many of them, like Yuseok (a Korean name that sounds like 'you suck') or Geun Hae (the name of the disgraced former president). Not all the names are Korean, and most are not jokey. But a good number of them are. 

It didn't take long for repeat hires to appear. Players remembered the names, and this made them feel a little more attached.

It also didn't take long for the group to start losing men-at-arms in combat. If a repeat hire was slain, there was a bit more emotion behind it.

At first, I was replacing them. I'd erase the line with that character in my notebook, and come up with another one. I made a random table to roll for their weapons and armor (mostly not very good). 

Early this year, after a particularly rough adventure for the men-at-arms, I told the players that this was it. I was replacing these guys, and that was it. The town of Pine Bridge was running out of young men and women willing to risk death for a bit of coin as hired guards/soldiers. 

Nate had had his PC collect weapons and armor from some bandits they defeated, and he had been loaning these out to any hired men-at-arms to help with their AC and damage potential. But once I made it clear there would be no more replacements (at least not in Pinebridge Town), and men-at-arms continued to die, players hiring them started shelling out for better armors than the brigandine Saro (Nate's PC) was providing them. It helped that at 3rd to 5th level, they've got plenty of cash saved up. 

Even that is not always enough. This past session, one of the men-at-arms was killed, despite wearing plate armor. The monsters got a good attack roll, and he only had 1hp, so he was gone. The players were a little bit upset that they had lost a man. Not terribly so, but there was a lot stronger reaction than there were in the earlier sessions when they thought there would always be a Hau En Wai to replace Nobuo, or a Nguyen to replace Jin Ping.

The men-at-arms are a useful resource, and making them memorable (even without personalities) then limiting their number has greatly increased their value in the players' eyes.

Equipping Henchmen and Men at Arms

I just rolled up 20 potential hirelings for my new campaign. If players try to recruit some men-at-arms or other hirelings, I can roll a d20 or three to see who shows up. 

My son helped me list some names, which means some have some joke names (Chae Du --> Chad, or the actual Korean name Yu Seok, pronounced like "you suck"). And to decide what, if any weapons and armor they came with, and if they had any interesting traits, I made some quick and dirty random tables. 

Each is on a 2dx spread to get bell curve results, except for the ranged weapon subtable. They're rare enough that a flat distribution is fine. Only one PC ended up with a ranged weapon anyway (and has a shield...go figure).

Armor roll 2d4

2: leather & shield

3: silk armor & shield

4: shield

5: no armor

6: silk armor

7: leather armor

8: brigandine or scale armor

[Silk Armor gives AC 8(12) vs melee, but AC 5(15) vs ranged attacks]

Weapons roll 2d6

2: ranged weapon

3: saber

4: dagger-axe

5: hand axe

6: dagger

7: no weapon

8: spear

9: nunchaku

10: staff

11: tiger fork

12: roll twice

Ranged Weapons Subtable roll 1d6

1: short bow

2: pellet crossbow

3: light crossbow

4: sling

5: 2d4 javelins

6: blowgun

Each NPC had a 1 in 6 chance to have a Special ability. Two have them.

Special Ability roll 2d4

2: 1st level mudang (cleric) spell

3: Keen Eyes: find traps/secret doors 1-2/d6

4: Educated: +2 languages

5: Adventuring Gear (backpack, rope, lantern, tinderbox, etc.)

6: 2HD instead of 1-1HD

7: High Strength (+1 to hit/damage)

8: 1st level wu jen (magic user) spell

It's interesting. Almost all have at least some kind of armor. Only one NPC doesn't have a weapon. All of the melee weapons were rolled, but the saber is the most common. Go figure. Rolled lots of 3s when rolling weapons.

Square Circle Retainers

Yesterday in my West Marches game, the players managed to complete the Bugbear Cave in the Caves of Chaos. Those of you familiar with the module will remember that...

Spoiler Alert if you've never played it!


...the bugbears have two prison chambers. In one of them is a renegade bugbear and a captured 4th level Fighter (or Hero). In the previous session the players managed to free the other prisoners. Yesterday, they freed these guys (after slaughtering the captured gnolls, who to be honest had it coming).

Now, I've been having a bit of eye trouble (an eye infection I had a few weeks ago seems to be lingering but of minor annoyance level) and I was having a bit of trouble focusing on the printout (I have the module in PDF, so printed it out for use at the table). 30 year old module with cramped typesetting, then scanned however many years ago and converted to PDF, then printed out doesn't make it the most readable.

The description of the human prisoner is also spread over two pages.

Anyway, I read the beginning of the description: huge and muscular, with a shaggy beard and wild eyes. I kinda glanced over the back side of the description while the players were asking me about him, and saw that he's a berserker who has a chance to "accidentally" strike the players if they fight alongside him.  But I didn't keep reading to the part where it says he'll betray the party the first chance he gets and abscond with the treasure.

Anyway, they were asking for his name, and how big he was compared to the party's Berserker (my homebrew version of the 3E/5E Barbarian for Classic D&D) and the Muscle Wizard (just a Magic-User, but with a 16 Strength and good Constitution as well). He's more muscular than both, with a Str 18. And the wild eyes and beard description made me think of Macho Man Randy Savage.

So, Randy the Savage he became. Oooo yeah!!! And he didn't end up hitting an ally during the next fight with fire beetles. But since he had no armor, when they found the shield +1 in the store room, they gave it to him. So he did abscond with some of their treasure. :D

Anyway, he's now an NPC in town who might be persuaded to accompany the PCs on future adventures.

TL/DR: I made an impromptu characterization of an NPC as a classic era WWE wrestler.

Last night, I was looking for wrestler-themed fantasy art. I've got a picture of Hulk Hogan as a Conan-style barbarian from somewhere (had the picture for many years). I've seen luchador fantasy before. But no one seems to be producing art showing WWF/WCW/WWE wrestlers facing dragons and zombies and whatnot. Curious.

Anyway, I now have a plan to turn a bunch of 80's/90's wrestling characters into NPCs who could become retainers. And they won't all be warrior types. Some will definitely be spell-casters!

Retainers - Overlooking a Rule Again

The other evening I rolled up a bunch of potential retainers for my old & improved West Marches campaign on 3x5 cards. And looking once more at the rules in the Mentzer Basic Set, I again noticed a rule I never used back in the day but had noted when I did my Cover to Cover series.

Once hired, a retainer will serve until their contract expires (as set when negotiating their service) OR until they gain a level.

Frank even made a note that a retainer just shy of gaining a level may ask to stay on just long enough to level up (not that anyone should know in character how far they are from gaining a level, or even that there are levels to gain for most classes, or that killing monsters and taking their stuff is the way to gain levels... so there are a few holes in the concept -- but I like it!).

I guess that's what, in AD&D terms, would separate a retainer from a henchman. The henchman is there come rain or shine, while the retainer is just there to make a buck and if possible gain a level of experience.

Recently, when I have had players with hired sellswords or porters and the like, I have the hirelings make a morale check at the end of the adventure to see if they are willing to stay on. I think I need to remember this "quit after gaining a level" rule, as it means the players will need to renegotiate their contracts if the retainer becomes more powerful/capable if the player wants to keep that retainer around.

I'm looking forward to the extra bit of characterization and complication that having retainers will bring to the game.

Riddle Me This

A necromancer is exploring a dungeon with his trusty skeleton bodyguard, a charmed goblin, and a big bag of loot. He comes to a river of lava cutting across a chamber, preventing further progress to those without magical assistance.

The necromancer casts fly on himself, and then floating disk. But he has a problem. The floating disk is only big enough to carry one of the three -- skeleton, goblin, treasure -- at a time.

If he leaves the skeleton and goblin alone, the skeleton will kill the goblin. If he leaves the goblin and treasure alone, the goblin will make off with it.

So what's the optimal way for the necromancer to get his henchmen and loot across the lava?

Mentzer Basic Cover to Cover: Additional Rules

This section begins with a short notice that these rules can be added to the game once two or three sessions have been played, as they increase the complexity of the game.  I've been playing the full game for so long, and playing many more complex games than Classic D&D, that it's easy to forget how much there was to digest as an 11-year old.  And as I've stated several times in the past, there were several systems we ignored or got wrong for a few years, and sometimes preferred the "wrong" way once we realized the error.  So while many of these things seem like integral parts of "Ye Olde Game," the real "basic" game is even simpler.

In other words, here come the optional rules.

Missile Weapons
If you want to attack hand to hand, it's pretty simple.  Ranged combat adds complexities like range, cover, and the (unstated here actually) tracking of ammunition.  Not overly complex, but I can see how it makes sense to have beginning players and DMs sticking to the simpler melee combat rules for a few games before adding all of this in.

We're given rules for missile devices (bows, crossbows, slings), as well as thrown weapons (spears, axes, daggers, plus holy water and oil).  Devices may not be used within 5', period (unless the target is helpless).  Thrown weapons may be thrown or used in melee, giving them versatility to compensate for poorer range. 

Both holy water and burning oil do 1d8 damage.  Holy water is expensive and only works on undead, but oil is cheap.  Also, while oil requires two hit rolls, it also burns for two rounds.  We never abused burning oil as kids, but in recent games I've found it is a life-saver for low level adventurers.

There's one small mistake in this section, the crossbow is stated to have the best range of any missile weapon, when actually it's the long bow (180' crossbow, 210' long bow).  Rather unimportant, really.

In the oil section, we get a version of what will be called "touch AC" in 3E.  Once a creature is covered in oil (which for some reason appears to requires a hit roll against normal AC), an attack with a torch or other flame only needs to hit AC 10.

Range penalties are different from other editions of the game.  AD&D and its descendants use normal odds for short range, and apply penalties for longer ranges.  Not so here.  Being within short range grants a +1 bonus to the roll, while medium range is at no modifier, and long range is at -1.  Nice and simple, and I prefer it to having to remember 0/-2/-5 like in AD&D or the progressive penalties of 3E/d20.  Not that those are hard, mind you.  It's likely just familiarity and years of use of the Classic system.

Variable Weapon Damage
For us, this went into effect from the get-go.  It's only in recent years that I tried "all weapons do 1d6" (not counting the starter adventures in this book).  We weren't always sticklers for the two-handed weapons automatically losing initiative thing, since we usually used group initiative. 

And despite this, as kids we still had a wide range of weaponry among characters.  We definitely played to type, rather than optimizing, when we were kids.  Often our characters were copies of, or at least inspired by, some character in the media (comics, books, TV, movies, video games).

Combat Maneuvers
This is a bit of a loaded term for me, now, since it's what I call all the crazy martial arts "feats" in Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara.  Here, it simply covers fighting withdrawals and retreats, and paired combat (individual initiative) rules.

Fighting withdrawals are at 1/2 speed, the opponent may move with you, and you both still get to attack/defend normally.

Retreats are at full speed, and the fleeing character may not attack, suffers a -2 penalty to AC, and may not use a shield bonus.  Simple and about as complex as attack of opportunity rules need to be, IMO.

Paired combat replaces the standard group initiative rolls with rolls for each PC and monster (or group of monsters).  This allows players to add/subtract Dex modifiers (and a +1 bonus for Halflings) to the rolls, and makes for a bit more dynamic combats.

I'm all for round-by-round initiative, if the rolls are simple as they are here.  Whether it's group init, or individual, a simple 1d6 (with a couple of modifiers) makes it easy to implement each round. 

Encumbrance
The "basic" Basic game ignores encumbrance, which as this section tells us can get silly.  But then most classic video games ignored it and no one seemed to care.

Here, we're given a functional but abstract system to use, with advice that a more detailed version will be given in the Expert set.  Basically if you're in no or leather armor plus normal gear, you can carry up to 100 cn and still be unencumbered (120' per turn).  Wearing chain or plate armor plus gear slows you down to 90' per turn, and again you can pocket up to 100 cn worth of treasure before being slowed further. 

10 coins to the pound is a bit ridiculous when considering real-world coinage, but it makes for simpler calculations.  I do like how special treasures, like jewelry and potions are simply listed as weighing 10 cn, with gems being 1 cn.  The gems and jewelry, we imagined, were like the types you see in movies.  Honking huge.  I imagine now the intent was that they're usually in a padded case of some sort like actual jewelers use, or will be wrapped in rags or something when carried to minimize damage.

We get capacities for bags and backpacks, and some brief rules for pack mules as well.


Retainers
Retainers get some detailed rules here.  Hiring them should be an adventure of sorts all its own, heavily role played.  There are no "men at arms" 0-level NPCs mentioned in this section, only classed characters.  They get what they are paid, rather than a share of treasure, although bonuses increase morale.  They do take a 1/2 share of all XP earned.

In play, we've always tended to have classed retainers ask for a 1/2 share of treasure (minus magic items) instead of a salary.  0-level hirelings get set amounts of pay and no XP.  Not by the book, but then we didn't use retainers or hirelings much anyway in the early days.

I do like how it suggests that retainers will leave after their contract is up or after gaining a level, but the sheet should be given to the DM so they can use them as recurring NPCs.  Shared world building on a small scale, but I like it.

Hirelings can be expensive, too.  As per the book, the PC should buy ALL equipment for the character.  That's one way to use up some of that treasure at low levels.  Especially if the retainers don't renew contracts.  And considering, why would they?  Many of them have just made a fair amount of money and somehow not been lucky enough not to have been wearing a red shirt. 

Retainers - the overlooked money-sink of low level play.

_________________
And with that, I think I've got one more post to do to cover the final section plus all the end of the book stuff (glossary, ads, character sheet).  Then it's on to the Dungeon Master's Rulebook!

o-bake, yokai, kaibutsu, yurei

Working on the monster chapter of Chanbara right now, and the treasure table.  At the moment, I've taken the "human" monsters out to save space, but since my new page count goal is 96 pages, I think I might throw them back in.  That way, there will be "official" (I really detest the plea to "official"ness in RPGs) stats for yakuza, yojinbo and oniwabanshu bodyguards, ashigaru, daimyo, peasant/artisan/merchant/eta, wandering duelist ronin, and the like.

I need to work up hirelings/specialists/mercenaries pay charts like in the Expert Set now that I think about it. 

For the treasure table, I went a bit less abstract than D&D's alphabetical system.  Sorta similar to 3E/4E (please don't shudder yet), I've divided treasure categories by hit dice.  However, I've subdivided each hit die band into four: incidental, low, average, high.  And monsters don't have a listed treasure subdivision in their stat block.  When placing monsters, GMs will need to decide monster by monster if they should have treasure or not, and how much.

In other news, I reduced the number of special abilities all classes receive.  Before, every class had three or five unique (or nearly so) class abilities, plus access to Maneuvers, Tricks and/or Spells.  By 10th level, human classes had 21 Maneuvers/Tricks/Spells plus 5 class abilities, and Yokai had 22 Maneuvers/Tricks/Spells and 3 class abilities.

Class abilities are unchanged, but total Maneuvers/Tricks/Spells has been reduced to 15/16 at 10th level.  Revised Flying Swordsmen will follow suit.