Telecanter, as usual, had a really great idea.
I, as usual, didn't learn about it until long after the fact. I'm a little slow sometimes.
Nevertheless, I was very drawn to Telecanter's handling of the situation. There are a ton of Hireling Generators out there on the web, and static tables printed up in books. None of them have ever really done it for me, though. Sooner or later, you're going to run through all of the interesting traits on those charts, and all that's left is the boring dreck. That's especially true in Old-School games, wherein hireling death-rates border on genocide.
"Congratulations, Grand-Wizard Eloatia. You've just hired a beet farmer with fungal growth under his toenails to carry your most priceless treasures through the Underdark."
Whoop-dee-doo.
Instead, Mr. T outlined very broad categories of traits that hirelings can have, with the rest left up to the DM's diseased imagination when rolling the NPC up. That way, your players never have to encounter the same bastion of the unwashed masses twice.
I'm with you, but also quite lazy, so I made an Abulafia page to randomly generate these poor, hapless hirelings for me on the fly when I need them. The only major change I made to the original tables was to include transgendered and cross-dressing people to the gender chart, because why wouldn't I?
I now share this blatantly ripped-off resource with all of you.
Click here to start the funsies: Hireling Traits generator.
I, as usual, didn't learn about it until long after the fact. I'm a little slow sometimes.
Nevertheless, I was very drawn to Telecanter's handling of the situation. There are a ton of Hireling Generators out there on the web, and static tables printed up in books. None of them have ever really done it for me, though. Sooner or later, you're going to run through all of the interesting traits on those charts, and all that's left is the boring dreck. That's especially true in Old-School games, wherein hireling death-rates border on genocide.
"Congratulations, Grand-Wizard Eloatia. You've just hired a beet farmer with fungal growth under his toenails to carry your most priceless treasures through the Underdark."
Whoop-dee-doo.
Instead, Mr. T outlined very broad categories of traits that hirelings can have, with the rest left up to the DM's diseased imagination when rolling the NPC up. That way, your players never have to encounter the same bastion of the unwashed masses twice.
I'm with you, but also quite lazy, so I made an Abulafia page to randomly generate these poor, hapless hirelings for me on the fly when I need them. The only major change I made to the original tables was to include transgendered and cross-dressing people to the gender chart, because why wouldn't I?
I now share this blatantly ripped-off resource with all of you.
Click here to start the funsies: Hireling Traits generator.
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