Quote Originally Posted by Grim Portent View Post
And mercenaries tended to be a near lifelong career, bouncing from war to war and either not working in between or becoming bandits for a while if they hadn't been paid properly. It's not the sort of thing where you fight for money only occasionally, you invest a lot of money in better equipment that allows you to charge more for your services, so time spent doing something else is time that doesn't justify your prior expenses. If adventurers are doing mercenary work they aren't adventurers, they're mercenaries. Though generally speaking mercenaries work in groups of more than four, so I'm not sure who would actually hire them.
Again you seem to overly focused on narrowly defining adventurer. adventurers can do more than mercenary work even if they can be mercenaries.

like they could do actual exploring for one: new continent gets discovered, adventurers are probably the exact kind of person you want to send to scout it out, as armies as generally expensive to transport across the sea and are generally made to defend the lands they come from. adventurers on the other hand, probably have the most experience with exploring the wilderness, fighting whatever new thing they run into, and adapting to whatever new town or civilization they find.

also a sheriff rallying the townsfolk to fight wights? or something like a flying dragon? them villagers are dead. you might have point when it comes to something like goblins, but DnD worlds are dangerous things and if its anything that has magic or requires better tactics than basically trying to mob them with normal weapons, they're doomed.