Originally Posted by
Grim Portent
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.