Hi folks,
I’m interested in hearing how people tend to determine the class of henchmen when PCs go hiring. Do you tend to let players nominate the class they’re looking for, or if players go seeking Level 3 henchmen and find 2 available, do you then randomise the class? Some entirely different approach?
If randomising, does anyone have a table/method they use, given that I would expect that there would be a lot more fighters than some other classes (e.g. mages).
If PCs are looking for henchmen in general, you can use the table on p. 50 of ACKS to determine how many henchmen are available (based on market class) and the tables on p.248 of ACKS to determine the class, alignment, and equipment of the henchmen.
If they want to hire a specific type of henchmen, and none are available within their current market, then you can charge them as if they are in the next highest Market Class (p. 49) and then roll to see how many and what type of henchmen are available in that market. Increase the time required from weeks to months.
If they still haven’t found the henchmen they are looking for, then charge them at the next highest Market Class again, and increase the time required from months to seasons.
You could also encourage the PCs to travel to various locations to search for henchmen as they can try again in each different market.
I use the 4:2:2:1 ratio for fighter-rogue-cleric-mage, and then roll 1d6 to determine subcategory based on area. (So roll 1d9, get a 3, that’s a fighter sorta thing, roll 1d6, get a 6, that’s a dwarf vaultguard)
I actually built a custom table that accounts for all the Players’ Companion classes, but I’m not sure the best way to post it.
…which is exactly how I do it. Makes it very easy to accommodate additional classes that you’ve made yourself and/or regional variation in the population of potential henchmen.
I just roll ability scores, think about the demographics of the location, give slight preference to classes I know the PCs are looking for, and make a decision from there.
I use the table for determining members of an NPC party on page 248 of the core rulebook. I use this for your bog standard humano-centric settlement.
For dwarven settlements, elven settlements, and religion-oriented human settlements, I made up my own tables, tending to keep fighting-types more common than magic or specialist types.
Alex’s post is interesting about expanding markets, I generally let the PCs hang around and look for a new crop of henchmen each month. I don’t feel too bad about this because they already have a decent retinue that means they can rarely afford to sit idle for an entire month, and because of the aforementioned randomness of how i determine what the NPC is.
How do you get this to work? Not to be too big of a noob…
Nah, my fault for unconsciously targeting developers rather than end-users :\ Next iteration will be a webapp. If you’re on linux or a mac it shouldn’t be too terrible to get working in a terminal, but I honestly couldn’t tell you if it works on Windows (it should, with a python interpreter like IDLE ( https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-279/ ), but it’s untested and there are some things that I expect might break).
I tried opening it in IDLE, but since I have absolutely zero knowledge of Python, I had very little success. I got it to roll ability scores though.
Cygwin may work, also may be a little heavy-handed just to get Python going.
Bookmarked! Thanks jedavis.
(First try:
Carbo (M): [17, 16, 11, 9, 12, 11], L0 Normal Man, HP: 1, AL: L. GenProfs: Art, Language, Manual of Arms, Military Strategy, Seduction, Theology
Guy’s a regular renaissance man. Shame about the 1 hit point.)
Gorgeous! Now, as befits someone on the internet, I will immediately turn from praise to noting the lack of player’s handbook classes
Ask and ye shall receive 
With Player’s Companion spells for mages, too.
Glad you like it!
That fellow looks like nobility, definitely.