Hirelings

Hirelings are those sorry souls that—for money, glory, or stranger needs—venture along with adventurers into the gloom and danger. They are the foolhardy that seek to make their name as adventurers.

Hirelings serve a few purposes. To the characters, they’re the help. They lend their strength to the player characters’ efforts in return for their pay. To the players, they’re a resource. They buy the characters some extra time against even the most frightening of threats. They’re also replacement characters, waiting to step up into the hero’s role when a player character falls. To the GM, they’re a human face for the characters to turn to, even in the depths of the earth or the far reaches of the planes.

Hirelings are not heroes. A hireling may become a hero, as a replacement character, but until that time they’re just another GM character. As such their exact HP, armor, and damage aren’t particularly important. A hireling is defined by their Skill (or Skills) a Cost and a Loyalty score.

A hireling’s skill is a special benefit they provide to the players. Most skills are related to class abilities, allowing a hireling to fill in for a certain class. If you don’t have a ranger but you need to track the assassin’s route out of Torsea anyway, you need a Tracker. Each skill has a rank, usually from 1 to 10. The higher the rank the more trained the hireling. Generally hirelings only work for adventurers of equal or higher level than their highest skill.

Skills don’t limit what a hireling can do, they just provide mechanics for a certain ability. A hireling with the protector skill can still carry your burdens or check for traps, but the outcome isn’t guaranteed by a rule. It will fall entirely to the circumstances and the GM. Sending a hireling to do something that is clearly beyond their abilities is asking the GM for trouble.

No hireling works for free. The hireling’s cost is what it takes to keep them with the player characters. If the hireling’s cost isn’t paid regularly (usually once a session) they’re liable to quit or turn on their employers.

When hirelings are in play, the players may have to make the Order Hirelings move. The move uses the loyalty of the hireling that triggered the move:

Hirelings do what you tell them to, so long as it isn’t obviously dangerous, degrading, or stupid, and their cost is met. When a hireling find themselves in a dangerous, degrading, or just flat-out crazy situation due to your orders roll+loyalty. On a 10+ they stand firm and carry out the order. On a 7–9 they do it for now, but come back with serious demands later. Meet them or the hireling quits on the worst terms.