Quote Originally Posted by Milodiah View Post
...so he basically banned being able to hand a guy 100 gold and say "come fight bad guys with us and I'll pay you 100 gold again."

See, when someone bans doing something both possible and realistic, like the concept of mercenaries, I have to start losing my respect for them. Was he just afraid you guys were going to break his lovingly-crafted encounters by adding a few more swordswingers into the mix?
Well it's been a couple of years, so I don't remember the specific reason, I think he just didn't want the added complication of extra dudes. We were playing Shackled City, one of Paizo's pre-Pathfinder APs. We pretty much broke it wide open thanks to the changes in item creation between 3.5 and Pathfinder anyways, and I was able to get an Improved Familiar eventually, which ended up being a Storm Elemental from Pathfinder which also tended to break things open thanks to it's crazy bonuses versus things wearing metal.