In the light of additional research and playtesting, a few unit costs seem "off" to me.
What would you think of the following changes/corrections:
Bowmen - Reduced from 15gp to 12gp
Crossbowmen - Increased from 12gp to 15gp
Longbowmen - Reduced from 30gp to 20gp
I’m all for it. As it stands, the only logical reason to hire bowmen is that you’ve already hired all the available crossbowmen.
Sound good to me too.
Crossbowmen always seemed like a better deal for cost when compared to bowmen/longbowmen since bows only had an advantage with cleaving (which comes at levels beyond your average merc). D@W changed that somewhat, at least on the large scale. Historically, good English longbowmen were MUCH harder to train and had a significantly better rate of fire compared to the more powerful-shooting crossbowmen, but this distinction is difficult to model in a game and you tend to end up with a simply weaker mercenary for your money.
I’m fine with the change from a balance standpoint (and a “I have to pay for this expensive crossbow and bolts” standpoint).
yeah, when you’re not paying for the crossbow itself, crossbowmen have an incredibly higher bang-for-your-buck. I discovered this in my home campaign at low levels when the party hired about a dozen mercenaries to travel with them through the wilderness and guard the entrance to dungeons.
Sounds good to me too.
There were jokes about how hiring crossbowmen and then getting them killed could be profitable since the arbalest alone sells for more than their monthly wage (which is true for the equipment of most mercenaries, but more obvious with crossbowmen). There are obvious moral and practical problems with this sort of thing which is why it stayed as a joke.
I think it stands to reason that a portion of the monthly wage of a crossbowmen would be the amortized cost of their gear plus what is presumably more expensive monthly maintenance on the thing.