NPC Sellsword Companies

**Poach** · May 18, 2013, 04:57 PM

Change the conditions of hiring to the following:

- 3 years service max followed by 1 year cooldown. Same as usual.
- To hire NPC sellswords/sails you must pay them a hiring fee equal to their yearly upkeep. This does not count as their first year salary, this is on top of that.
- NPC Sellsword/Sail companies take 7 RL days to appear in Westeros to serve you. They will appear exactly 7 days after the Moderator posts that they accept your contract.

**Poach** · May 18, 2013, 05:00 PM

Why, you ask?

- Sellswords are an Essosi fad, rare in Westeros. They need to sail here.
- NPC Sellsword companies represent an instant way to procure significant additional troops, which is not fair.
- They are cheaper than hiring troops, so should take longer.
- It will stop people stacking Sellsword companies when they think a war is about to happen for an easy opening advantage: they'll need to wait a week for them to appear.
- Will give player-run sellsword/sail companies more of a chance of being hired, rather than people taking an easy NPC option, because player sellsword/sail companies will be available as soon as they march to where you want them.

**Pontifex Maximus** · May 18, 2013, 06:11 PM

Oh wait, does this count for PC and NPC mercs?

**Pontifex Maximus** · May 18, 2013, 05:56 PM

7 days seems a bit long, more than double the recruitment time of professionals?

**Poach** · May 18, 2013, 06:03 PM

Doubling it would be 6 days, which would cycle poorly considering the 3 year max and 1 year wait periods. They work in 7 day intervals, so I think hiring should too.

**Poach** · May 18, 2013, 06:14 PM

NPC mercs. Player sellsword companies will be ready for action after they march to where ever they're needed (eg if they live in Lannisport and get hired by Winterfell, they're ready when they arrive whereever Winterfell sends them).

It's an effort to balance NPC sellswords vs PC sellswords and professional soldiers: in the Reach right now, when rebellion was imminent prior to LD agreeing to the rebel demands, we had Baratheon and the Rebels engaged in a frantic NPC sellsword buy-up to boost their numbers. This rule is an effort to rework NPC sellsword companies so they're a bit more expensive (not a huge amount) and don't just appear when you want them, so last-minute buy-ups like that don't happen.