Hirelings and Henchmen

The PHB’s pay scales are a baseline, not a fixed schedule. What a hireling expects, and what they will accept, is governed by local conditions — the scarcity of their skill, the nature of the work, and what the market in a given place and time will bear. Customary and reasonable is the governing principle. A rate that would be generous in a market town may be insulting on a frontier where skilled labor is scarce and dangerous work is the norm.

Retention is not a table determination. Whether a hireling stays is a function of how they have been treated, whether the terms of their engagement have been honored, and whether the work has been what they were told it would be. A hireling who has been dealt with fairly and paid on time does not need to be rolled for.

The vanilla loyalty system depends on alignment, which does not exist in Oath-Bound, and on class structures that have been substantially revised. Those mechanics do not apply.

In their place, loyalty tracks two things: the nature of the relationship, and the reputation of the person being served.

A hireling with no formal bond to the party is primarily self-interested. Pay them well, treat them fairly, and they will stay. Give them reason to doubt the arrangement and they will not.

A hireling or henchman who has sworn a bond of service — even a simple personal oath of employment — is in a qualitatively different relationship. The obligation has weight on both sides. They are more reliable under pressure, and less likely to leave when a better offer appears. That reliability comes at a cost: you carry a genuine obligation toward them, and failing it has consequences that go beyond losing their service.

For leaders of any standing — and particularly for those whose followers are oath-bound — reputation is the determining factor in who will work for you and on what terms. Someone considering swearing service to a character is assessing that character’s history: how previous followers have been treated, whether obligations have been honored, whether the character’s word has proven reliable.

A reputation for fair dealing and kept oaths attracts better followers and commands greater loyalty from them. A reputation for the opposite does the same work in reverse, regardless of what is being offered in pay.

Reputation in this sense is not a mechanical stat. It is the accumulated consequence of how the character has conducted themselves, and it travels ahead of them.