The wages in the table on p52–are those per merc or per 10? Everything with mercenaries seems to be in sets of 10, but per merc makes a little more sense.
They are per mecenary.
For comparison purposes, an unskilled laborer earns 3gp per month. Militia conscripts receive equivalent pay. A heavy infantryman earns 12gp per month, which is as much as a skilled laborer, but still less than a skilled journeyman in a trade guild. A heavy cavalryman earns 60gp per month, more than a master craftsman.
Here’s another question re: mercenaries (thanks for the quick answer, Alex!)–if one were to try and hire one as a henchmen, what level would they be?
The situation here is that an NPC has a force of mercenaries as garrison, and I want to allow them to moonlight as henchmen for the PCs.
Conscripts are obviously 0 level commoners. What about slingers on up?
From Domains at War:
MERCENARY VETERANS
Most mercenary units try to avoid actual warfare, preferring to be deployed to patrols, garrisons, and punitive expeditions against peasants. After all, real fighting leads to real dying, and dead mercenaries collect no wages. As a result, the average mercenary is a 0th level normal man (1-1 HD, attack throw 11+, damage by weapon).
Mercenary units with experience of real war are known as veterans. Veterans will generally be 1st level fighters or explorers. They will have morale scores 1 point higher than the base morale for their troop type. If recruited into a leader’s army, veterans must be paid twice the wages of normal troops of their type. Up to 25% of mercenaries hired (e.g. 100 out of every 400) may be veterans.
DESIGNER’S NOTES: MERCENARY AND MEN AT ARM LEVELS
Under Raising Armies, we describe the average mercenary or man-at-arms in ACKS as a 0th level character. However, in Mercenary Veterans, we explain that one in four mercenaries is actually a 1st level fighter.
These demographics are derived from those in the core rulebook in ACKS. Inn Constructing the Campaign Setting in the core rulebook for ACKS, we explained that for every 20 people, there would be one 1st level character, and for every 50 people, there would be one 2nd level character, and so on.
However, a military unit has considerably more leveled characters than the overall population. As explained under the rules for Conscripts in Chapter 2, troops are drawn from just the 10-30% of the population that consists of able-bodied military-age adults. Leveled characters are likewise drawn from this top 10-30%, so the proportion of leveled characters in this group will be about five times higher than in the overall population. The result is that for every 100 troops, there would be 61 0th level characters, 25 1st level characters, 10 2nd level characters, 3 3rd level characters, and 1 4th level character. In Domains at War, we have focused our attention on the 0th and 1st level characters.