How I Use Henchmen and Hirelings
I recently made a video on my YouTube channel about all the various additional party members characters used to adventure with in old-school D&D games: henchmen, hirelings, retainers, mercenaries, specialists, followers, and so on.
Why did early Dungeons & Dragons assume all characters would be adventuring with these "hangers-on" when they delved into the dungeon?
That was the question I set out to answer, and as it turns out, it seems to have been a question a lot of folks were curious about, as it's become my #1 most popular video in the past 28 days, despite it only having been "live" for about five days now. So, I thought a companion piece here in the blog might help expand on my thoughts a bit.
What's the Difference Between Henchmen & Hirelings?
This is one of the questions I saw asked most often in the comments on my YouTube page, and to be honest, it's one I struggled with often as a novice player back in the early 1980's.
Here's a very quick guide to all the terms and what they mean:
- Henchmen: These are loyal companions, usually with class levels, who are loyal to their employer and accompany characters over time across many adventures. They earn experience points and will level up (slowly). They are lieutenants, sidekicks, trusted advisors, and friends. In certain versions of D&D, such as the 1981 B/X Rules, these are called Retainers, but are otherwise the same.
- Hirelings: These are, usually, 0-level people hired as torch-bearers, treasurer-bearers, camp watchers, and so forth. They typically only accompany PCs on a single adventure, but proper treatment and success on an adventure can help bring hirelings back.
- In Original D&D (the 1974, or "White Box" Edition), all categories of NPCs a PC could hire are lumped into the single category of Hirelings. In that edition, "Hirelings" encompasses standard hirelings, but also henchmen, mercenaries, and specialists.
- Mercenaries: These are a form of hireling, but they are professional soldiers hired for specific jobs (guards, caravan escorts, soldiers for domain play, etc.). One thing a lot of folks miss is that the rules (in 1981 B/X D&D) state they will not accompany you "on adventures" but will perform military duties in a wilderness setting.
- Specialists: These are noted as being non-combat and non-adventuring, but are NPCs hired to perform specific services, such as being an alchemist, animal trainer, engineer, ship's captain, etc.
- Followers: These are the NPCs gained by a PC upon achieving a specific level. Clerics, for example, gain a number of "fanatically loyal" followers upon achieving 8th or 9th level (depending upon the edition one is playing). The PC does not have to "recruit" their followers; they appear upon the PC achieving the level indicated in the class description.
Why the Henchmen & Hirelings System Worked
Morale & Loyalty Mechanics. No matter if you're using Original D&D, B/X, Advanced D&D, or another of the TSR-era versions of Dungeons & Dragons, they all include rules for determining loyalty of paid NPCs. Charisma is a huge boon in these editions because it determined not only how many Henchmen you could have, but also their loyalty factor. A low Charisma meant you could have fewer henchmen, and also that they would be more likely to desert or betray you when danger arises. Your Charisma also affected the chance of a potential hirelings to agree to your offer for service. Depending on the edition you're using, a very low roll during hireling recruitment could mean the potential applicant attacks you! In other cases, it might mean that word spreads quickly and all further recruitment efforts in that town are done at a penalty. Again, Charisma is your friend and it's not a "dump stat" that it often gets labeled as.
Gold for Wages and for XP. One way to avoid PCs acquiring campaign-breaking amounts of gold was to find ways for them to spend it on things they needed, and hirelings and henchmen can use up a lot of gold. In addition to their wages, you also many times had to pay to equip them, and often the hiring PC also had to cover the cost of room and board, depending on the nature of the adventure. Acquiring all of that gold was difficult, but gold is heavy, so PCs would often hire people to carry and guard the treasure until plans could be made to remove the treasure to the safety of a town. The rules assume this kind of symbiotic relationship between the acquisition of gold and the people who carry and guard it. At the end of the adventure, the hirelings and henchmen have to be paid, usually from a share of the treasure earned during the adventure. Henchmen also earn XP, at a rate of half that of the PCs. One way to help henchmen level up quicker, so they are more capable on an adventure, is to reward them with a bigger share of treasure, so they earn XP quicker, given that in TSR-era D&D, XP was earned mostly from gold (or the gold-piece equivalent, for things like artworks, gems, etc.). All of these rules are related to each other, and to remove or change one part does have consequences that you may not have thought of.
Expeditions. The inclusion of hirelings and henchmen in the early games sets the tone for the feel of the campaign. Instead of small strike teams of three or four characters venturing into a dungeon, you instead had expeditions of player characters, trusted henchmen lieutenants and sidekicks, and often dozens of torch-bearers and treasure-bearers. It made the dungeon delve a much bigger occasion, and one can imagine folks living in a village or town coming out to witness the event of the newest parade of adventurers and their entourage on their way to face the challenges of the nearest dungeon.
Why We Lost It
Over time, even during the end of the TSR-era, many games saw henchmen and hirelings vanish. Much of this was due to the streamlining of the rules that more and more started to focus on individual characters as "heroes" rather than parties of adventurers hoping to survive and earn a little gold to pay their bills.
Compare that with the cover art for the 2nd Edition Advanced D&D Player's Handbook, with cover art by Jeff Easley. Gone is the adventuring party. In its place is a warrior with sword raised on a majestic Pegasus, charging right toward the viewer, ready for action. Yes, there are two more figures riding behind the warrior, but they are smaller in the background and out of focus. The attention is on the single warrior figure on the front. This is not a tired adventuring trying to figure out where to go next in the dungeon after stopping to rest and clean his wounds and his sword. This is a hero out to save the world.
This seemingly small change has continued to affect most modern versions of Dungeons & Dragons, with narrative, cinematic and story-based games becoming the norm. Seldom are parties of adventurers are expeditions to explore dungeons and treasure. Instead, small groups of highly specialized heroes are being sent on missions with world-spanning (or sometimes universe-spanning) consequences.
Shorty Silverbeard. Dwarf (Miner)
- STR 14 INT 9 WIS 15 DEX 8 CON 12 CHA 6
- AC 6 [13] HP 8 AL Neutral 11gp; Chainmail; war hammer; hand axe x2; various mining tools like small picks and shovels; lantern; tinderbox
- Rate: 200gp/month.
- Quirk: Very bad habit of singing dwarf mining work songs, even in inappropriate circumstances.
- STR 10 INT 14 WIS 6 DEX 9 CON 13 CHA 8
- AC 5 [14] HP 5 AL Lawful 15gp; Chain mail; sword; short bow; quiver of 20 arrows; Elven flute; 10 sheets of paper with song lyrics in a leather case; quill and ink
- Rate: 150gp/month.
- Quirk: Carries a small rock she claims is her muse. She talks to it with an uncomfortable amount of intimacy.
- STR 8 INT 11 WIS 9 DEX 13 CON 14 CHA 13
- AC 7 [12] HP 6 AL Neutral 5gp; Leather armor; shield; short sword; sling and sling stones; whip; 50' of rope; guard dog; cart with iron cage
- Rate: 250/month.
- Quirk: Allergic to cat dander. Refuses to go within 20' of cats or any cat-adjacent creatures (e.g., great cats, manticores, sphinxes, etc.).
Bringing Back Henchmen and Hirelings
If you want to try to bring back henchmen and hirelings in your current game, here are some tips and ideas.
- Have a list of NPC hirelings and/or henchmen looking for work, and have them advertise at local taverns or other public areas, so the PCs are constantly seeing ads for people looking for work. This alerts the players that these types of people live in the world, and helps them understand that hiring such characters is a normal part of adventuring. It also helps with world-building, because the kinds of people who are advertising for work lets the players know what kinds of jobs are common in the world.
- Have a small stack of index cards ready to go including a name, an area of expertise, a strength, and a weakness for each potential hireling/henchmen. This helps the players tell these NPCs apart and also helps endear them to the people they are hiring.
- Think about your world and, if appropriate, including some "weird" NPCs available for hire. I have a character concept in my Alchemy, Explosives, & Inventions book called an "arcane investigator" who is based mostly on Agent Mulder from the X-Files along with the main character from a comic book series called "Fairlady," a "fantasy noir" series about a private investigator. It's a relatively unique concept, but it tells you a lot about the world if the player characters come across an ad for someone like this offering their services.
- Don't forget the mechanics. If you do include these kinds of NPCs in your game, don't forget to also think about the wages, their XP advancement, and their morale and loyalty. Having a henchmen or hireling run away during a crucial moment, or betray the hiring PC unexpectedly, helps create drama and fun in a session.
More Information
If you want to learn more about the history of hirelings and henchmen across various TSR editions of D&D, make sure to check out my deep-dive YouTube video on the subject here.I'd love to hear your thoughts on using henchmen and hirelings. If you're playing a more "modern" edition, would you ever consider bringing back this concept into your campaigns, or do you prefer keeping it a smaller party? Would your players be open to tracking the stats and actions of a handful of NPC hirelings and henchmen? Share your thoughts in the comments!
When I've played and run D&D type games, the players have been very keen on getting pets like guard dogs -- dogs seem to be very popular in our games! -- or birds to use as scouts, or even sheep to send into the dungeon to set off traps! But actual hirelings have been very rare.
ReplyDeleteI think it's because there's a sense of them being extra work; even basic characters can feel like another thing to track during combat, another bunch of encumbrance to organise, more rations and potions to keep in mind, and so on. You can offload this by handing control over to the other side of the GM screen, but that's just moving the problem, not solving it.
I think it's more of a psychological hangup than an actual problem, as most OSR-type games are simple enough that running two or three characters isn't too much of an extra "load", but as the games get more complex and characters get more individual abilities, it becomes less psychological and more practical.
Ive had some thoughts about solving this "mental load" problem in the past but nothing compelling enough to get to the table.
On a related note, I'm playing in a Vaesen campaign at the moment, and that bakes hirelings into the game mechanics, although for the most part they tend to be background characters, essentially "upgrades" for your home base. There are a couple that can come along with the players on their investigations, but we haven't invested in those yet.
Thanks so much for commenting, Kelvin! I really appreciate it! And, I enjoyed your blog post with your ideas (I just commented there). As you've probably followed along, my daughter and her friends are all about pets - they've got two wolf pups and a turtle that my daughter's elf carries around in her backpack (she was inspired by wanting to originally play a Mandalorian style character and having a levitating device carrying an alien).
DeleteI agree that in modern systems with having to track feats, skills, subclasses and tons of level-based powers that it could be too much to try to track during a game. But your point that for an OSR game it's much easier, is very true.
Thanks again!