I've actually never had a player try to hire henchmen. They invariably try to recruit NPCs for free and that means Im running them.

As a player I have never had a reason or chance to pick up any henchmen. I have though acquired NPCs.

Ive never seen them in use at convention sessions either. The occasional NPC. but never any henchmen.

Quote from: Will;8017463e and other systems are designed more toward that mode of play.

Yeah I'm not thinking 3e, or playing it, I'm more of mind of Call of Cthulhu... if motif is about expeditions into remote places it makes sense to hire a bunch of guys to carry stuff, care for the horses... or bodyguards when going down to the bad parts of the docks to question some guys.
That way you can have the craven toadie who sells out the party to the local cultists or tries to steal the golden idol not realizing there is a curse on it.
 
Loads of examples of such things in books and movies.

I prefer to treat hirelings and henchmen as player controlled resources, with the proviso that I'll step in if something ridiculous or unusual comes up. I find this approach encourages players to think beyond the combat powers, spells, items etc. that their PC possesses and take more control of their environment, plans, etc. A player who is directing a gang of thieves is much more involved in the setting and more actively directing the campaign than one who just has their singular killer character.

Simlasa: A good way to sell it might be referencing The Mummy...

Quote from: Will;801770Simlasa: A good way to sell it might be referencing The Mummy...

That's what I was thinking of when I mentioned "the craven toadie who sells out the party to the local cultists"... the other guy is from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Quote from: Omega;801765I've actually never had a player try to hire henchmen. They invariably try to recruit NPCs for free and that means Im running them.

As a player I have never had a reason or chance to pick up any henchmen. I have though acquired NPCs.

Ive never seen them in use at convention sessions either. The occasional NPC. but never any henchmen.

..."free?"  What is this "free" of which you speak?

Quote from: Old Geezer;801783..."free?"  What is this "free" of which you speak?

Hopefully "free" means they're demanding shares.

There is a certain player type that's got to bargain over everything, though.  

GM:  The men at the bar demand 10 gold on departure and 10 gold on return to enter the dungeon with you.
PC:  I offer them 10 gold flat!  That's real money!
GM:  If you want them to fight, you'll have to buy them arms and armor.
PC:  We'll buy them leather armor and a spear, but we keep the leather and the spear at the end.
GM:  There's 11 guys [twice our number] with crossbows leveled at you.  They demand...  50 gold pieces to let you pass!
PC1:  I offer them 25!
PC2:  No!  We'll pay them nothing, if they depart now!
Me:   I apologize for my idiot friends and pay the 50 out of pocket.

I guess its actually a useful brake on overusing henchmen if you're the GM.  Its frustrating as hell when you're a fellow player though.  I still haven't figured out if these guys genuinely thought they were playing smart, or if they had a streak of "roleplaying means doing stupid wacky crap" in them.

Quote from: Bren;801754Usually I do this. It's the simplest solution and it creates the least work for the GM.

As an alternate, if it seems more interesting or likely that there should be some conflict or tension between henchman and boss or if we think it would be more fun and interesting to actually be able to have conversations beween the henchman and the boss (without Player A talking to herself) then the henchman is run by the GM or by another player. Something like Player A runs the henchman for Player B, Player B runs the henchman for Player C, and Player C runs the henchman for Player A works well in this case.

This is how we ended up handling troupe-style in Ars Magica: every one had their own wizard, but everyone's companion was linked to another player's wizard, and all of the grogs were communal property (with the exception that individual shield grogs wouldn't be played by the shielded wizard's player). We moved to this after learning the hard way that RPing three-way conversations was not a lot of fun for individual players. (E.g., I played my Scots hedge wizard, his herbalist common-law wife, and their adopted changeling child, and other players had similar set-ups initially).

Quote from: Saladman;801787Hopefully "free" means they're demanding shares.

There is a certain player type that's got to bargain over everything, though.  

GM:  The men at the bar demand 10 gold on departure and 10 gold on return to enter the dungeon with you.
PC:  I offer them 10 gold flat!  That's real money!
GM:  If you want them to fight, you'll have to buy them arms and armor.
PC:  We'll buy them leather armor and a spear, but we keep the leather and the spear at the end.
GM:  There's 11 guys [twice our number] with crossbows leveled at you.  They demand...  50 gold pieces to let you pass!
PC1:  I offer them 25!
PC2:  No!  We'll pay them nothing, if they depart now!
Me:   I apologize for my idiot friends and pay the 50 out of pocket.

I guess its actually a useful brake on overusing henchmen if you're the GM.  Its frustrating as hell when you're a fellow player though.  I still haven't figured out if these guys genuinely thought they were playing smart, or if they had a streak of "roleplaying means doing stupid wacky crap" in them.

Example 1:  "They say 'Piss off, you manky bugger' and go back to their drinking.

Example 2:  "They waste you with their crossbows."

I don't know why some players seem to think that either stupid is OK or they can do anything they want.

I had a group surprised by archers, and I specified that they had their bows drawn.  The first level magic user said "I'm going to throw a sleep spell" and got pissed when he got feathered with arrows.

Quote from: Old Geezer;801801I had a group surprised by archers, and I specified that they had their bows drawn.  The first level magic user said "I'm going to throw a sleep spell" and got pissed when he got feathered with arrows.

It's interesting how often characters in film and story either stall for time while hoping for an opportune distraction or actively work to create a distraction and how seldom some players do either. The MU could at least have stalled for time until the archers' arms got tired of holding their bows at the draw.

Quote from: Simlasa;801741I've always liked and used henchmen/hirelings in games I've run... even just having wannabe followers and hangers-on like Kikuchiyo in The Seven Samurai... or 'paparazzi' who follow the famous heroes around hoping for a tall tale to tell.
If there are players at the table who seem up for it I'll hand them over... otherwise I'll play them myself. The strict rules is that they're NOT to be used as 'cannon fodder' or to check for traps or as bait (well, sometimes as bait...).
It's easy enough to set up something like a 'porters guild' that will supply consequences if the party is suspected of abusing them.

I've noticed that all the GMs I've played with over the past several years have shied away from hirelings, "You can't find anyone who wants to hire on"... even actively discouraging them. Maybe because it's more work for them... but it seems like something more, like having them will make us too powerful.

From a DM perspective, for a long time I preferred to have henchmen & hirelings be full NPCs in their own rights, which mean more work, but also gave some additional traction for hooks.  As a player I shied away from hiring any of them unless absolutely necessary. I'm not sure I could say why. Maybe as a player I was worried that the DM's mindset might also like for the to be full NPCs, and that could mean "interesting times."  Yeah, not really sure.

Quote from: Old Geezer;801783..."free?"  What is this "free" of which you speak?

So true. They oft got off with some loot at the end. Or were using the group for some purpose like where I mentioned in an older post, using the adventurers to clear out the dungeon for their own uses. Or as trap detectors, one in a series of such groups.

Thinking back. We actually did use henchmen in our earliest plays of BX.

Early TSR modules tended to give you a good mix of both. Henchmen to hire. Or NPCs who tagged along for their own purposes.

Later modules seem to shift away from that. It was allmost allways later just NPCs tagging along if any and rarely any henchmen up for hire.

Quote from: Old Geezer;801801I don't know why some players seem to think that either stupid is OK or they can do anything they want.

I had a group surprised by archers, and I specified that they had their bows drawn.  The first level magic user said "I'm going to throw a sleep spell" and got pissed when he got feathered with arrows.

I'd modify your entirely accurate observation with "... and they think they're invulnerable to boot."

My enduring choice for the Worst Player Ever To Darken My Door did a very similar thing as his first huge screwup.  So the party's in hill country, and a dozen mounted ruffians are bearing down on them, at the gallop, waving various weapons.  They don't look very welcoming.

So Evan, playing a wizard, confidently tells the group, "Don't worry, I've got this."  The players, most of them raised in a paradigm that when the party wizard says he's got something he likely really does, nod their okays and ready their weapons.  (Me, knowing what spells he has, has no idea what the hell he thinks he can do, but players have surprised me before.)  Evan waits until the bandits are right on top of them ... and throws a Dazzle spell.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Fantasy Trip -- most of you, I imagine -- the effect of the Dazzle spell is to reduce the DX of everything within 15 feet of the caster by three, for three turns, which in TFT lops three off of all physical and combat rolls.  If you port that directly into D&D, say, it has around the same impact.

So, great.  Five of the bandits (how many did he think he was going to get with a 30' diameter circle) are at -3 DX.  That doesn't affect the rest, and it doesn't critically impair the five.  The party did win the engagement, but they got chewed up badly, much more than if they'd taken up a defensive position in the nearby ravine.

Let's just say that my ironclad anti-PvP rule was all that prevented them from slapping the idiot wizard around.

For the most part, I run them.  They're people with minds of their own, not faceless game pieces.

The only times I farm them out to players are when there are a LOT of NPCs, and only in a large-scale melee: I did, for nostalgia's sake, an old-time killer dungeon crawl a couple years back, where the augmented party was encouraged to invite their favorite NPCs.  There were eight of them, and I couldn't possibly handle them all, so I farmed out one each to the players and kept two under my own thumb ... while, as others have said, reserving the right to speak for them and take them over whenever dramatically appropriate.