Hirelings as Specialists

Well I just made the mistake of consuming an entire Reese's Fast Break bar at midnight, so let's talk about the Thief Class! Now full disclosure, I am by no means an expert on OD&D, nor have a I played it. But by golly have I heard a lot about the thief class. 

"The thief fails too much at low levels to the point of being a hinderance" "The thief took away what should have been tasks the whole party can partake in and master (re; Lockpicking, trap disarming)" "The thief can't see in the dark" and so on and so forth, to the point that I've been told there's a kind of OSR tradition in making a blog post about "fixing the thief."

Well, true to the Macedonian warlord I was named after, it occurred to me to just cut the Gordian knot on this one by joking, "Re; Thieves - I still love how Dragon's Crown (vidya game) handles it, where the Thief is meant to be a hireling not a PC." and it got a surprisingly good response! Specifically the idea (which I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest or implement) that Hirelings can be (mechanically) more than boots on the battlefield and extra satchel space. Each should be a Specialists in their own right who can help the PCs bypass challenges and/or confer additional unique benefits.

Rannie the Thief

Let's take Rannie (from Dragon's Crown), who could easily be slotted into any campaign, and is the quintessential thief archetype. For the uninitiated, Dragon's Crown is a High Fantasy side-scrolling beat-em-up, heavily inspired by the old school Dungeons & Dragons arcade cabinets. Rannie is a Non-Player Character, who follows behind the brutally efficient players on their action packed journey. You can order him to pick locks on chests and doors, disarm traps, and to my vague memory he also helps you pick up gold. Classic thief being a thief. I mean just look at this guy:

The smug grin, the moody yet colorful hood, the coin flip! He's an extremely railable twink the definition of what I think of when I think of a thief in a high fantasy party! So let's use him as a template for our Hireling Specialist Thief. (I don't know OD&D super well, so what I'm about to suggest is all going to be very rules-agnostic and conceptual)

Let's say these specialist have Specialist Points (SP) that they can expend during the crawl at the party's behest. Maybe you can only recharge this SP by resting at town (or offering an upfront sizeable payment bonus). As a Thief, Rannie can spend his 8 SP on one of the following:

• (1) Master Locksmith - Any locked door, vault, chest, etx can be opened by the Thief in a minute or less.
• (1) Trap Sense - The Thief becomes acutely aware of any traps around for 6 Dungeon Turns
• (1) Minor Disarm - The Thief can disarm a minor trap (ex: rigged chest, pressure plate, etx) in a minute 
• (3) Major Disarm - The Thief can disarm any room sized trap in a minute - Roll d6, on a 1 they take some damage from fumbling. 

All of a sudden Rannie is another precious resource to be managed and an NPC well worth protecting. But there's more! Imagine our little Hireling as an index card, with a juicy little part labeled "Passives":

• The Thief collects any coins the party misses in rooms they explore, and will give the party a 50% cut of their findings.
• The Thief has a massive satchel that can hold 50,000 coins. They're more than happy to hold onto the Party's coin, but will not allow them to soil the stash with any additional types of items, and will also refuse to hold anything else. ((Keep in mind this means if the thief goes down or turns traitor, they take all that gold with them))
• The Thief knows the exact price of most of the non-arcane treasures you hold, and has fences for contraband you're looking to sell.

Then maybe we throw on your more typical OSR roll tables to figure out our Thiefs demeanor and motivations. Rannie is Kindly and Smug, and his motivation is Fortune.

Adding More Specialists

Consider our little Index Card Hireling, and the variety of hirelings that could be available. Having trouble with undead? There's a Priest Hireling in town, though he's a bit of a grouch. Need healing in the dungeon? Well there's that Physicker Hireling the GM rolled up in the Elf Village. Lots of arcane languages down in the depths? The local professor might be interested in being a Scholar Hireling. Need a little boost to your campfire meals? You could ask the GM if the bartender you all like could be hired out as a Cook Hireling.

The possibilities are endless, but with this you can give a bit more crunch and uniqueness to Hirelings, beyond simply calling them a Knight or Torchbearer. And this is before you get to the cool weird Hireling Specialists you could do: Beast Tamers, Portal Weavers, Storm Callers, Cheats, you name it!

I keep hearing talk of Spells and Items as Metroidvania / Zelda Styled power-ups in TTRPGs which you attain in one place to gain access to another. Specialists could be a fun "unlock" to throw into this mix too. Ahh this Dungeon has a few cave-ins, if only we had the Tunneler Specialist. We're going after pirates in a cove? Hmmm, maybe we should bring our Piscine Specialist we met through that unique questline, just in case there's areas that can only be reached by staying under water for a long period of time.

It also gives incentive to build rapport with certain Hirelings, and for each to truly stand out from one another in more than just a roleplay sense. 

Introducing Hirelings

That's about all I wanted to say and pitch in on the matter! So before I go I wanted to add a little idea my friend @waffleboycony had for introducing a Thief Hireling, which I absolutely adore. Here's my version of it:

After a long week of dungeon plundering, the party has returned to the jeweler in town to sell off their rare gems. They come out with quite the haul of 100 GP. Outside, leaning beside the exit, they see a man in a green cloak flipping a coin. He scoffs as the party exits. 

"'Suppose none of you know you sold a Dragon's Tear Ruby, did you?"

The party is baffled.

"They ain't easy to find those. Why, just one of them would fetch you 150 GP easy, never mind two. But hey, you're the adventurers! I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job."

The Knight approaches, "Who are you? And how do you know we had rubies?"

"Well you can call me Ronnie the Thief! I'm a bit of an expert on gems around these parts." He offers a hand to shake. Before the Knight's palm reaches his, Ronnie gives his hand a bit of a flourish and holds out a large ruby with black edges... just like the set the party had retrieved.

"And I knew you had the rubies because I made sure you didn't sell this one." He hands it over without a fuss. "We'll call that the trial package. If you're looking to hire someone who knows their stuff, you can find me in the Troll's Ankle Tavern!"