Best Ways To Use DnD Hireling Mechanics In Dungeons & Dragons 5e

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Back in the 1970s, when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were figuring out the gameplay for , they added several rules for how a player's characters could hire underlings and recruit followers as they leveled up. As was updated to new editions and drew farther away from its tabletop war-gaming roots, the game mechanics for hirelings and recruitment receded to the background, and adventuring parties ceased to enlist them as a matter of course. There are, however, still ways that players of 5th Edition can recruit followers in their games and make them a fun part of the overall role-playing experiences, without being too mechanically awkward.

Few of the exploration and combat gameplay mechanics in first edition came out of thin air. The notion of moving warrior figurines around a map and rolling dice to determine their effectiveness in battle was common in tabletop wargames of the 1960s and 70s, and the fantasy combat rules made by Gary Gygax for the wargame were tweaked by Dave Arneson for use in his proto- dungeon-crawling sessions. Instead of two players commanding small armies of figurines in medieval battles, players each controlled a single heroic fantasy character, cooperating with each other to overcome challenges set by the Dungeon Master. In this context, hirelings may well have been the relics of the 's wargaming roots.

In the for 1e (technically called by its creators), hirelings are first mentioned in the section about a player character's six abilities. The entry for Charisma primarily describes the utility of this ability score in terms of how many "" a player can recruit; a player character with 15 Charisma, for instance, can recruit seven henchmen and has a +15% bonus to percentile dice rolls made to keep said