Pathfinder: cost of hiring a bounty hunter

[ppf66208]

I need to hire a bounty hunter to kidnap someone. I found a bounty hunter in the reference document: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/nPCGallery/mercenaries.html but it doesn't say how much he costs to hire. Are there any rules on hiring someone like this and the cost for doing so?

[calam]

There are no real rules for hiring someone above level 1-3 in pathfinder. Ultimate equipment under hirelings states that:

This listing is for any other sort of typical employment not covered by another service or job in this section. An untrained hireling is a crier, laborer, maid, mourner, porter, or other menial worker. A trained hireling is a mason, mercenary warrior, carpenter, blacksmith, cook, scribe, painter, teamster, and so on. The listed price represents a minimum wage for an adequately skilled worker, and an expert hireling usually requires significantly higher pay. The listed price is a day's wages (generally 7–10 hours of work per day).
Typical equipment for a guard or mercenary warrior is studded leather armor and a club, shortsword, or shortspear. Most guards are off-duty soldiers or city watchmen, though some are unskilled laborers with a talent for fighting.

This is listed as being 1-3gp a day but as I bolded above what would fall under adequately skilled seems to be level 1-3 NPCs since a typical guard is stated out as a level 3 warrior in the NPC codex.

If I would make my best GM guess I would probably say in the upper hundreds for an easy no risk job to a couple thousand for someone like a head of a city but this is just a guess. buy pricing it like an encounter of that level might help

TLDR: There's no official rules that I know of so you'll either have to estimate or price it like you're the guy paying the adventurer.

Also since this is pathfinder it would fall under the D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 board since it's a 3.5 based system

[tomandtish]

More importantly, any rates you find for bounty hunters might not apply anyway. Normally, bounty hunters are bringing back persons who have a specific bounty placed on them. For example, Nale was worth 35,000gp alive, and 10,000gp dead. That's posted, and then bounty hunters decide if it is worth the time and effort. Occasionally a more powerful figure may make specific bounty hunters aware of a bounty (think Vader in Empire Strikes Back), but it is still a bounty situation (many of which are at least quasi-legal if not fully legal). As a general rule (yes, there are exceptions), a true bounty situation is payable to anyone who brings in the subject.

Kidnapping is technically something completely different. That's a criminal act. You don't hire bounty hunters to kidnap people, you hire criminals. You may have a bounty hunter who is willing to do this, but they aren't functioning as a bounty hunter when they do it.

In short, what you have is not the Empire of Blood offering up a reward for Nale (dead or alive). You have Nale going to Gannji and Enor and trying to hire them to kidnap Haley so he can torment Elan. Bounty hunters may not be as good at this as expected because they may be more used to operating within the law (or tiptoeing on the edges anyway).

Incidentally, that whole segment with the mistaken identity might provide some good info. How much does your person think they'll spend in the attempt? What's a reasonable (or not so reasonable) profit? What's the risk? (And if it's truly kidnapping then breaking the law is certainly one of the risks). As the comic shows, Gannji felt that 8000 was too little to provide extra profit for what they went through with the Elan/Nale fiasco. So, am I kidnapping a 0 level farmer's daughter? Maybe a couple 100. Want me to kidnap Elminster's daughter? You CAN'T have enough.

[Spore]

You could adapt the costs from Lesser Planar Ally. A typical mundane bounty hunter lacks the SLAs, but is possibly more skilled (rogue, ranger or similar classes). But there should be no "cheaper when following own targets" clause if you only have a nameless NPC instead of a NPC with goals or possible side targets (that can be cashed in somewhere else).

[LibraryOgre]

Generally speaking, you less "hire" a bounty hunter and more put a bounty out on someone, and those who are interested go after the bounty. The higher the bounty, the more people are attracted to it.

However, if someone WERE to hire a bounty hunter, I'd put it on the same scale as hiring an assassin... you may not be killing the person (which is usually more illegal), but are instead bringing them back (which is generally harder), so you have a wash in cost. 1e had a table for assassination fees, ranging from 50 for a 1st level assassin to kill a 0th level person, to 250,000 for a 15th level assassin to kill a 16th level or higher person (keep in mind that 15th level was maximum level for an assassin in 1e, and levels were generally lower). Those were accounted as minimums.