Why Hire Adventurers?

[Saintheart]

There's always a motive:
https://critical-hits.com/blog/2015/...stment-bubble/

So the OP's most trusted adviser to the lord of the state is not in fact an adviser, he's an Evil Chancellor.

After all, per the OP, the lord of the state is a clueless moron who doesn't even know what a goblin looks like, and indeed isn't even sure they exist. But the trusted adviser certainly does, because he's got a financial interest in seeing the goblins rooted out ... something that might well come to light if the lord's knights and/or militia go poking around up there. So the trusted adviser suggests the hiring of adventurers ... and doesn't even pay the price of having to hire them himself to do his dirty work. Indeed the trusted adviser might have even paid the goblins to start raiding villages for a smaller sum than it cost to hire the adventurers (compare average treasure value of CR 1 goblin band versus average hiring rate for level 5 or 6 adventurers or whatever) and left the lord of the state to hire the adventurers, clearing the way for the trusted adviser's strip-mining dwarven confederates.

[Jophiel]

If it's a first level adventure, it's probably more like the mayor wants to hire you because getting the lord to send a force would take time and isn't certain. Need to send someone out on a journey to the lord's keep, get an audience, wait for him to make decision, wait for him to muster the troops and send them back, etc. If you can hire on some mercenaries rather than wait for all that or risk the militia made of locals, it's better to just send the adventurers to kill 10-15 goblins with a short rest somewhere in the middle.

If it's actually the scenario presented in the OP where you have enough goblins to be pillaging and burning entire towns across the realm rather than hassling local outlying farms and caravans, you're probably dealing with a situation above that of your government-issued Studded Leather & Short Sword town guard and you could either be sending a bunch of your men, sending your better trained men and risking them or sending a group of paid individuals who are powerful enough to take on the threat but represent less of a loss if they die than your 3-4th level knights and field commanders. At the very least, send them after the goblins directly while your men spread across the remaining settlements for defense.

[King of Nowhere]

an army generally has more firepower than a group of adventurers (generally, but it depends on the setting and the assumptions). but adventurers have unparalleled mobility and versatility. they can teleport around, use a lot of magic to overcome virtually any obstacle. an army is good at taking and controlling land. they are separate tools, used for separate needs.

and any state with resources would try to secure adventurers in their fighting force. they are useful, and it's better than leaving them around to cause problems.

[jjordan]

Don't forget that the ruler of the land might need access to a band of adventurers at some point. In a fantasy world a prudent ruler has to keep in mind the fact that there might be dragons, sorcerers, and assorted creatures that need slaying and extra-planar invasions to be stopped and quests to lift curses to undertake. A ruler that doesn't have at least a few professional adventurers to call on can hardly expect to remain a ruler for very long. I used this excuse to justify all sorts of leniency shown to murder-hobos.

[Mutazoia]

Echoing expendable and cheap.

Raising, training, and equipping a standing army is expensive and time-consuming, especially if you don't have a large population to draw from in the first place.

Adventurers come pre-equipped and for the most part, pre-trained. Just point them at the problem and wait for results. If they die, you don't have to pay and you can bet that they've at least whittled down the numbers on those pesky goblins a bit before kicking the bucket.

It's a bit like using Favor or Door Dash to go get fast food for you. Sure, it might cost you a bit more than it would if you went and got it yourself, but is it really once you factor in the time it takes to get in your car, experience traffic to your burger joint of choice, wait in line at the drive-thru, wait while the idiot in front of you says "I'll have a....ummmmmm....." a few dozen times before making up his got-damned mind (like seriously you KNEW you were going to Mickey D's couldn't you decide what you wanted on the way there?) paid for the food, experienced traffic on the way home (including that idiot who apparently has never heard of "right turn on red"), and returned safely home (only to realize that you ate half of your fries during the drive) before you can enjoy your food versus picking up your phone, ordering food and doing any number of far more enjoyable things with your free time while someone does all of the above in your stead. And you get to keep all of your fries. If the driver never delivers your food, you're not really out anything (just contact customer service for a refund).

[Telonius]

Knights are the regular army. They're big, take a while to set up, are expensive to equip and pay, and require a lot of logistics to sustain. Adventurers are the special forces. They're small units, highly mobile, mostly self-supporting, and can change tactics (or even strategies) extremely quickly. You wouldn't send the adventurers against an actual invasion force (except as a discrete mission to support the regular army). Same way you wouldn't send a regular army against bandits; that tends to result in catastrophes, or needing to explain to a very upset Emperor what happened to his legions. Sometimes adventurers are the right tool for the job.

[Jay R]

Because as soon as your most powerful military unit marches out to remote villages, it's a perfect time for your rival to attack or raid. You have guards to guard your lands, not to take trips.

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A group of high-level combatants who have no loyalty to you, and who make their living by killing others and taking their stuff, are staying in your capital right now. Is this really the best time to send your troops away?

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NPC: “I want you to go to the black swamps of Telgar to investigate why people are disappearing there.”
PC: “Don’t you have a squad of extremely powerful ninjas rumored to be the best in the world at that sort of spying?”
NPC: “Yes. I’m sending you in to investigate what happened to them.”

—————————–

In a Flashing Blades campaign, I had Richelieu invent a series of missions that took the party all over Europe because, while their success rate was excellent, the collateral damage was too high (chateaus set on fire to erase clues, riots begun to distract the authorities, etc.). Richelieu finally concluded that he wanted that level of chaos and destruction to take place elsewhere than France.

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The characters are hired by a Great White Wizard to sneak into the Black Mage’s castle to steal the Ruby of Power in his throne that is the source of his power. After they go through the traps, monsters and other dangers outside, they have to make their way through the guards and castle traps, finally arriving at the treasure vault, to find the Great White Wizard calmly sitting and holding the ruby.
PC: “If you were coming here, why did you hire us?”
GWW: “To take all the risks, of course. Once the Black Mage’s full attention was bent on killing you, I had no trouble slipping in.”
PC: “Why didn’t you at least tell us?”
GWW: “Because the Black Mage can read lower-level minds. Why do you think you wound up facing every minion he had?”

[Tanarii]

Ultimately, adventurers are special forces teams. They'd be considered for use any time using conventional forces are going to be an issue.

[Vahnavoi]

You don't hire adventurers because "adventurer" is not a profession. It's a catch-all term for people who go on adventures... and quite often that's the only thing those people have in common. Less charitably, it's a term for people who enjoy and go out of their way for dangerous and exciting experiences.

What you're talking of is hiring of mercenaries. And in the sample situation, hiring mercenaries is a bad idea & the feudal lord in question should find themselves a better advisor. If you are feudal lords with loyal underlings, you send THEM on the "adventure", or rather, military operation. That's why you have them.

The chief reason for a feudal lord to hire mercenaries is because they DON'T have loyal underlings willing to do their damn job, AKA military service. This could happen, for example, because they have substituted monetary payments for said service - so the feudal lord can pay someone else to that job.

There are other reasons, like false flag operations others have mentioned, but they don't apply to the sample scenario.

[Mechalich]

You don't hire adventurers because "adventurer" is not a profession. It's a catch-all term for people who go on adventures... and quite often that's the only thing those people have in common. Less charitably, it's a term for people who enjoy and go out of their way for dangerous and exciting experiences.

Right, and it's also an extension of D&D's pretensions towards generic-ness. The average quasi-medieval fantasy world presents local government with all the standard problems of medieval (or early modern) existence, plus some additional thorny ones on top. It's entirely possible that, depending on the nature of said problems, there will exist specialists for handling them. The Witcher universe is a fine example: it has a monster problem and it developed a specialized group of monster hunters to handle it (the Witcher world is rather crapsack, so this didn't turn out so well, but the theory is sound).

Specialized highly mobile units that handle specific fantasy problems whether for hire or not makes a lot of sense, but they won't be generic, they'll be attuned to whatever the major widespread problems are. Only in a true kitchen sink scenario, where every village and dale has a different problem, do you get generic 'adventurer' problem solvers.

[Tanarii]

IMX the difference between adventurers and mercenaries is hair thin. The primary difference being they'll often take a "contract" from an Old Man Quest Giver based purely on expected loot received. Or even just find their own jobs based on expected loot.

[KorvinStarmast]

IMX the difference between adventurers and mercenaries is hair thin. The primary difference being they'll often take a "contract" from an Old Man Quest Giver based purely on expected loot received. Or even just find their own jobs based on expected loot.

Or, one of them has a map, or a rumor, or a lead on "a place deep in the dark woods where a crumbled tower stands, under which is a treasure of {some value expected} guarded by a deadly {something(s)}. The bones of previous claimants litter the ground around the tower..."

I still do those now and again.

[Satinavian]

Ultimately, adventurers are special forces teams. They'd be considered for use any time using conventional forces are going to be an issue.

Let us not forget that the OP never mentioned D&D. For all we know this is a question for WHFRPG 2ed. We shouldn't make too many assumptions based on specific systems, especcially when it comes to power of adventurers vs militia/knights.



As for paying the adventurers with their loot, that only works if there is reason to suspect treasure. And if there was, that would also be another reason to send the knights instead of letting foreigners take it.

[Anonymouswizard]

Let us not forget that the OP never mentioned D&D. For all we know this is a question for WHFRPG 2ed. We shouldn't make too many assumptions based on specific systems, especcially when it comes to power of adventurers vs militia/knights.

In WFRP it's less 'a group of five each armed to the teeth or with spellcasting foci' and more 'five people, none fully armoured, looking as unspellcastery as possible with a sword, a club, a crossbow and a small but vicious dog'

It might not have been system or setting specific, but there were setting implications.

[icefractal]

In this kind of arrangement, adventurers are just another type of mercenaries, so the question would be why hire mercenaries?

One big reason could be that you don't often need them. If your kingdom is seldom threatened, then it could make more sense to hire mercenaries when needed than pay to maintain a standing army all the time, especially if you have friendly neighbors. You'd still have a personal guard, but you don't want to throw them into an unknown situation like this and end up defenseless.

Now as for whether you'd hire a particular group that just entered town, that comes down to rep - do they have one? Even if "adventurer" is a recognized social class, a low-level party doesn't necessarily look different than a mid-level one. And as with levels in general, I'd assume that in most worlds there are many more low-level parties than high-level ones. So just being an "adventurer looking" group doesn't mean you can handle a significant threat. If "adventurer" is not a recognized thing in the setting, all the more so.

That said, hiring them and sending them on their way can be done in parallel to sending out messages or building up your own forces, so if the cost isn't too high (and you're probably only paying half up front) then you might as well just do so for the chance of an easy success.

[TeChameleon]

There's also the fact that any halfway-savvy lord... or even one with basic pattern recognition... will rapidly come to realize that these adventurer types are all-but-universally under a fearsome and unpredictable curse known as 'the plot'. And you do not want to get any of that on you. Better to find some sort of problem to get the adventurers out of town as quickly as possible, and hopefully lead to the usual chaos, destruction, and death typical of the plot happening to someone else, somewhere else.

[Lord Raziere]

There's also the fact that any halfway-savvy lord... or even one with basic pattern recognition... will rapidly come to realize that these adventurer types are all-but-universally under a fearsome and unpredictable curse known as 'the plot'. And you do not want to get any of that on you. Better to find some sort of problem to get the adventurers out of town as quickly as possible, and hopefully lead to the usual chaos, destruction, and death typical of the plot happening to someone else, somewhere else.

eh, thats getting into meta-territory.

the more likely explanation is that adventurers are simply trouble. they tend to cause chaos just because they can, because they are bored. don't let them get bored.

[Vahnavoi]

In my games, I often cut the middle man out, so to speak. That is: the characters are part of the army, navy etc. military organization, or in a more feudal system, either are vassals to a lord or lords themselves. Instead of the characters being hired, they are frequently looking to hire specialist helpers themselves. And rather than "quests" being given by outsiders, most adventures are self-motivated exploration.

[a_flemish_guy]

adventuring also requires certain skillsets that your regular troops won't have

your men at arms that can form a shieldwall of 200 aren't going to do that in the goblin hole, let alone your knights who can ride in a wedge formation
your court wizzard is probably more proficient at divination and enchantment then evocation and the local bishop uses his wisdom score to settle disputes and keep the peace rather then casting spells, even the local criminal guild mostly settles for threatening shopkeepers into paying protection money and smuggling illicit goods

none of them have any idea why you'd need a 10 foot pole and if they needed rope they'd just get it when they need it and what use do any of them have for a wand of cloudkill?

[TeChameleon]

eh, thats getting into meta-territory.

the more likely explanation is that adventurers are simply trouble. they tend to cause chaos just because they can, because they are bored. don't let them get bored.

Heh. More-or-less what I was trying to say, just in a less meta fashion. Chaos and destruction tends to follow TTRPG adventurers like flies around a dung cart- looking at it from the outside, we know it's the plot; from the inside, it must seem like they're under a horrific curse, sometimes.

[Beleriphon]

In WFRP it's less 'a group of five each armed to the teeth or with spellcasting foci' and more 'five people, none fully armoured, looking as unspellcastery as possible with a sword, a club, a crossbow and a small but vicious dog'

And if they're really, really lucky one them might be a dwarf.

My favourite setting is Avernum for this stuff. The first game the group is thrown into an underground exile realm named Avernum. Your ultimate goal is to escape. A bunch of stuff happens in between. Second game the group are soldiers employed by the army, after the Evil Empire from the first game invade. They get tasked with doing aventurey stuff because they're the first humans the new alien weirdos spot and demand they come visit. Avernum 3 has the group being employed by Unspecified Operations to go scout at the behest of the crown.

[SarahCornel]

What about Green Arrow?

[Chauncymancer]

Knights and other proper forces a noble has cost money all the time (or need land) to sustain them. It is an investment that you really should use when you have the need instead of paying even more money for mercenaries.

If they are in a more settled region, I try to think of a reason why it's adventurers instead of professional soldiers (if the players aren't professional soldiers.) They could be hired for an assassination, or a scouting mission, or a false flag operation, or smuggling. Something you don't want to have your name stamped on officially. Shadowrunning, to borrow a term from another game.

What you're talking of is hiring of mercenaries. And in the sample situation, hiring mercenaries is a bad idea & the feudal lord in question should find themselves a better advisor. If you are feudal lords with loyal underlings, you send THEM on the "adventure", or rather, military operation. That's why you have them.

The chief reason for a feudal lord to hire mercenaries is because they DON'T have loyal underlings willing to do their damn job, AKA military service.

If we're actually using say, medieval England or France as our inspiration for this fantasy world, then there's actually a deeper misunderstanding we can address that clears up the issue of why to hire adventurers.

From a modern understanding we have a tendency to mistake the relationship town guards, men at arms, and knights have with their lords as an employee relationship, but it's actually closest in modern terms to jury duty.

"Knight" is not a job. There are five small business owners in your duchy (three commercial farms, one winery, and a realtor) who, as a condition of the license by which they operate their business, are required to respond to summons for "Knight Duty" and if they've already served more than nine weeks in the last two years, they're allowed to respond to the summons with "No."

"Town guard" is not a job. There are three local trade unions (book binders, wheel makers, and blacksmiths) who, as a condition of the license that allow them to organize, are required to maintain a program where employees who volunteer to be police officers after their work shifts for two weeks are paid time and a half.

The percentage of actual, full time, not expected to be working in some vital industry four days a week, soldiers in your generic medieval kingdom who are not mercenaries already is asymptotic to 0.

So you have two choices. You can write a letter to one of your local private citizens summoning him to Knight Duty. He's allowed to take a full week to respond, and then another full week to actually arrive. You can do that to him only maybe three times a year, so this had better be one of the top five most dangerous things to happen this year or next year.
Or you can splash around some silverware and get a mercenary company in the goblin camp tonight.

[KorvinStarmast]

If we're actually using say, medieval England or France as our inspiration for this fantasy world, then there's actually a deeper misunderstanding we can address that clears up the issue of why to hire adventurers.

Spoiler: Great summary

Show

From a modern understanding we have a tendency to mistake the relationship town guards, men at arms, and knights have with their lords as an employee relationship, but it's actually closest in modern terms to jury duty.

"Knight" is not a job. There are five small business owners in your duchy (three commercial farms, one winery, and a realtor) who, as a condition of the license by which they operate their business, are required to respond to summons for "Knight Duty" and if they've already served more than nine weeks in the last two years, they're allowed to respond to the summons with "No."

"Town guard" is not a job. There are three local trade unions (book binders, wheel makers, and blacksmiths) who, as a condition of the license that allow them to organize, are required to maintain a program where employees who volunteer to be police officers after their work shifts for two weeks are paid time and a half.

The percentage of actual, full time, not expected to be working in some vital industry four days a week, soldiers in your generic medieval kingdom who are not mercenaries already is asymptotic to 0.

So you have two choices. You can write a letter to one of your local private citizens summoning him to Knight Duty. He's allowed to take a full week to respond, and then another full week to actually arrive. You can do that to him only maybe three times a year, so this had better be one of the top five most dangerous things to happen this year or next year.
Or you can splash around some silverware and get a mercenary company in the goblin camp tonight.

Having just finished a short bio of Alfred the Great (the Fyrd being summoned was a non trivial undertaking) and Edward I (Longshanks) recently, you've hit the nail on the head. Oh, and with the Mercenaries, if you keep them hanging around long enough and not get that mission done, they'll be very expensive to keep on,
and (getting a little into Renaissance Italy at this point)

if they don't get paid they will no longer be in your hire, so they'll likely go and serve someone who will pay them - and who might be your foe!

Which takes me to a guiding principle as a DM for the "I need adventurers" set up for adventures when it's an outside agent:

1. Time factor: "I need it done, and I need it done in this many days/weeks/months because I can't do it myself because {X} bigger problem." (If the adventurers discover something I need to know also, so much the better).
2. Payment terms, and success definition, agreed in advance. If the adventurers do it and are not satisfied with their fee, the NPC may be in for consequences. (And not just violence: PCs are pretty inventive in ways that they embarrass NPCs whom they take a dislike to. See the Skywrite spell, for starters).
3. Once mission is complete, make sure they know that "Lord and Lady Hamaneggs over the mountain have advised us that they need help with the dreaded Scrapple Gang!"
This achieves two things: an adventure hook, and these lethal, dangerous PCs are now somewhere else.
If there's a bard in the party, it's better that they seduce someone else's daughter / niece / cousin / son / mistress / spouse, not the Quest Giver's!
(Wait, should that really be in blue text?)

[Satinavian]

"Knight" is not a job. There are five small business owners in your duchy (three commercial farms, one winery, and a realtor) who, as a condition of the license by which they operate their business, are required to respond to summons for "Knight Duty" and if they've already served more than nine weeks in the last two years, they're allowed to respond to the summons with "No."

I know. But that doesn't change anything. You are still effectively paying those knights by providing them land to sustain them and having this limited access to their martial service is what you get in return.

Now, the problem was "golins" raiding your villages. Which means the enemies are very close and actually threaten your subjects and holdings. That is exactly the situation where you should use your knights and levies instead of mercenaries because
a) they don't need to move far and can repel the raiders on a limited time budget
b) they are more motivated.

That your knights and their armed retainers are not full time fighters and don't owe you uninterrupted long term service is a problem, when you want to go to foreign lands or plan to do long campaigns. Not when you are defending your own villages (some of which should belong to knights holdings anyway).

[Mechalich]

That your knights and their armed retainers are not full time fighters and don't owe you uninterrupted long term service is a problem, when you want to go to foreign lands or plan to do long campaigns. Not when you are defending your own villages (some of which should belong to knights holdings anyway).

Indeed. If the powers that be in a region need to hire outside mercenaries to defend their home region that almost always a sign that something has already gone horribly wrong. There should be a system in place for home defense. The precise nature of that system will vary in time and place, but it should exist.

Now, in the medieval context, and some others as well there tends to be 'unclaimed' land that's surprisingly close to civilization where there are no local defenders. This often includes extensive marshes (ex. The Outlaws of the Marsh), deep forests (ex. Sherwood Forest), or inhospitable hills (ex. Highlanders). These areas, though they may be within the borders of a state, even a strong state, effectively exist outside state control and local defensive forces may consider it beyond their mandate to deal with anything within those zones. This often creates a situation where some threat to the local government can raid from a place of relative safety because the local defensive forces refuse to go into such areas in pursuit. This is often a particular problem when some important trade route passes through/near one of these outlaw-sheltering areas.

So in this situation if the local authorities want to 'root out' the problem rather than simply mitigate the damage through a defensive posture, that's when you call on adventurers.

[Tanarii]

Clearly the lord needs to be a retired high level adventurer themselves. They might choose to farm out contracts to up and coming adventurers for smaller threats while they deal with bigger ones plus running their domain of course.

[Mike_G]

I know. But that doesn't change anything. You are still effectively paying those knights by providing them land to sustain them and having this limited access to their martial service is what you get in return.

Now, the problem was "golins" raiding your villages. Which means the enemies are very close and actually threaten your subjects and holdings. That is exactly the situation where you should use your knights and levies instead of mercenaries because
a) they don't need to move far and can repel the raiders on a limited time budget
b) they are more motivated.

That your knights and their armed retainers are not full time fighters and don't owe you uninterrupted long term service is a problem, when you want to go to foreign lands or plan to do long campaigns. Not when you are defending your own villages (some of which should belong to knights holdings anyway).

The knights and levies are better suited to defending the villages from attack, while you send the adventurers to seek out and destroy the source of the attacks. The whole "do recon, infiltrate the goblin lair and wipe them out" is a Special Ops" kind of thing.

Sending your forces out searching for the raiders pulls troops away from the villages and leaves them more vulnerable, and they are probably more trained for open battle rather than doing recon type stuff anyway, and you don't want to lose too many of your forces, because, first of all, those are your people, and second, you need them to do their day jobs once this is over.

Adventurers going out goblin hunting don't deplete your defenses, since they aren't a standard part of your forces, they specialize in search and destroy tactics rather than village defense, and they are expendable in ways your own people aren't.

[Satinavian]

The knights and levies are better suited to defending the villages from attack, while you send the adventurers to seek out and destroy the source of the attacks. The whole "do recon, infiltrate the goblin lair and wipe them out" is a Special Ops" kind of thing.

There is a reason hunting is such an important pasttime for feudal nobles, knights and men at arms. It is training for war. Additionally it is your people who know the lay of the land.
There is literally nothing that makes foreign adventurers any better at recon than your troops. If you have an army that can't do recon, you have issues. Of course system dependend again but most adventurers are not exactly wilderness specialist. And adventurer parties don't have the numbers to send several scouting parties out.

Now, if at the end is some underground goblin dungeon, sure maybe adventurers are better at infiltrating that, it is kinda supposed to be their speciality. But maybe it is a goblin war camp instead, which is far more likely considering the goblins are a very new and recent threat. Goblins are not even underground dwelling at all in most settings i know.

As for the costs again, adventurers don't tend to be particularly cheap. And the goblins likely won't have any treasure considering that what they stole from the villages is probably foodstuff and animals. And the adventuers will know that.

[Pauly]

Indeed. If the powers that be in a region need to hire outside mercenaries to defend their home region that almost always a sign that something has already gone horribly wrong. There should be a system in place for home defense. The precise nature of that system will vary in time and place, but it should exist.

Now, in the medieval context, and some others as well there tends to be 'unclaimed' land that's surprisingly close to civilization where there are no local defenders. This often includes extensive marshes (ex. The Outlaws of the Marsh), deep forests (ex. Sherwood Forest), or inhospitable hills (ex. Highlanders). These areas, though they may be within the borders of a state, even a strong state, effectively exist outside state control and local defensive forces may consider it beyond their mandate to deal with anything within those zones. This often creates a situation where some threat to the local government can raid from a place of relative safety because the local defensive forces refuse to go into such areas in pursuit. This is often a particular problem when some important trade route passes through/near one of these outlaw-sheltering areas.

So in this situation if the local authorities want to 'root out' the problem rather than simply mitigate the damage through a defensive posture, that's when you call on adventurers.

Not just the “bits we nominally control but don’t have the resources to manage” borders between countries were a significant problem for policing.

“The Steel Bonnets” by George MacDonal Fraser is a history about the border regions between Scotland and England. Since the Scots could only enforce their laws in Scotland and vice versa, border jumping after committing rustling, assault, murder and other types of mayhem to avoid prosecution was the norm.