Two of my players are asking if they can swap henchmen.
I’m inclined to say yes, in this specific case, because the henchmen in question spend 80% of their working time with the opposite PC - really, the only defining trait of whose henchmen they are, is who signs the paycheck.
Bu I was curious if there was an official rule or guideline that I missed.
I don’t see why not. It’s probably worth a roll on the Henchman Loyalty table because of the changing circumstances, though.
Within the context of the game world, the characters would each have to release the henchman from their service and then allow the other player to roll to recruit the new henchman.
From the meta-game point of view, you could simply allow the players (as compared to the player's characters) to swap control of the henchmen, leaving the in-game relationship intact.
We’ve actually had this come up once…a Lawful retainer leaving the employ of what increasingly became obvious as a Chaotic Dwarf. I let her move over to serving the nice Lawful Cleric have her…but in part because he’d had no luck with retainers. When she levels she might leave the group entirely, we’ll see how the Cleric treats her.
The first option is what we ended up doing: it’s risky to release and then try to hire again, but both players had the charisma and decided to go for it.
The henches ended up getting slight raises, though :-).