101 Bad Hirelings

[Bohandas]

191.) The uninspirational minstrels from Monty Python and he Holy Grail who sing unnerving things about the dangers ahead ("he was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp, or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken...") and memorialize embarassing moments in song (" Brave asir Robin ran away. When danger reared it's ugly head he bravely turned his tail and fled; yes brave sir robin turned about and gallantly he chickened out")

[sengmeng]

192. Lydia from Skyrim.

[Lord Lemming]

192. Lydia from Skyrim.

I don't get why everyone hates Lydia; I quite liked her. In my hundreds of hours playing the game, I can count on one hand the number of times I (unintentionally) got her killed. She's a reliable damage sponge, does decent damage early on, and can lug around hundreds of pounds of dragon bones that would otherwise be quite a pain to drag back to town.

193: The Black Knight. A legendary warrior, clad in imposing black armor and armed with a deadly greatsword.

He's also a quadruple amputee, can only attack by attempting to bite the legs of his enemies (through his face-concealing helmet), and never lets anyone pass ANYTHING.

From Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for the two or three people who may not get it.

[sengmeng]

I don't get why everyone hates Lydia; I quite liked her. In my hundreds of hours playing the game, I can count on one hand the number of times I (unintentionally) got her killed. She's a reliable damage sponge, does decent damage early on, and can lug around hundreds of pounds of dragon bones that would otherwise be quite a pain to drag back to town.

Sorry, should have said "classic Lydia"

Her dialogue was really irritating when the game first came out, to the point where they patched it to make her less of a pain. Let that sink in.

[Bohandas]

194.) Constantly sick and vomits on everything
195.) Chef with comically poor hygeine

[Floopay]

I've done incompetent employees in the past.

One schtick that never gets old, is to give them a PERFECT applicant. Then when he gets hired, they learn that he's really just an excellent liar, with zero work ethic. The one I had used to take jobs, and he'd come back saying they were completed and etc. A few weeks later, they found a host of PO'd clients.

It turned out, their merc was just going off and doing his own thing, and then he'd lie to the clients. He'd tell them he slew the dragon, or bandits, or whatever it was. Then he'd come back, and take a new job. However, most of the clients got so bogged down in handling the issues the merc was supposed to handle, that it took them forever to get back to the merc guild and demand their money back, and for them to actually handle the problem.

He basically destroyed their reputation with a buttload of clients. It was awesome, the party wound up doing some pretty epic quests and jobs to build their reputation back up.

Just something to consider.

Thanks for reading,
Floopay

[Bohandas]

197.) A legendary oracle or guru who turns out to speak in vapid or irrelevant but vaguely deep sounding statements that resemble a cross between fortune cookies and snapple facts

[Cisturn]

198) Chet the Vet - This guy has been henching for a while now. He knows the ins and outs like the back of his hand. But he's pricey, and he's going to tell if you if he doesn't the PCs plans (He never likes the PCs plans). All of this would be tolerable, except that a few months ago Chet had a breakdown and now he's petrified to go anywhere near a dungeon. So you can expect Chet to argue literally any plan that involves adventuring.

199) Lucky Bill - he's a nice enough guy most of the time, but whenever he sees a potion he's compelled to drink it on the spot. Why? He doesn't know. But it's always worked out well for him so far.

200) Giselle the Alchemist - She's a highly specialized and very competent brewer of fine potions. The only issue is that her supplies are back home at the lab. So she really can't do anything right now except take some samples and sit around. The worst news is she's not even very skilled at hireling things anyway.

[Wraith]

201) Sir Bearington

Buckethead. So phenomenally ugly that he wears a bucket with eyeholes over his head at all times. Nobody has ever seen what he looks like, and that's probably for the best.

202) Conversely, Lord Buckethead

[Bohandas]

203.) Higgins- This stout warrior would be a formidible addition to the team, if he hadn't been polymorphed into a tiny rat

[goto124]

203a) When the Polymorph is somehow dispelled, it turns out the human is just a regular civilian with no combat skills.

203b) It's just a rat.

[Spore]

204) The named mook: Destined to die within the next two minutes, this hireling is often clad in red clothing. His entire conversation is between "I think it's safe" and "This looks a bit dangerous" with the former being the more dangerous sentence. For him, at least.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

205 Inspired by a real people. A human Bard liar. We have people who claim to be Navy Seals or Marines or Rangers. Let one of those get hired thanks to their tall tales and humor is sure to follow.

[Bohandas]

206.) Cleve - Interrogation specialist - the most intimidating thing about this interrogator is how clearly deranged he is. In addition to using methods akin to the soft cushion torture from the "unexpected spanish inquisition" episode of Monty Python he's also convinced that he can communicate with inanimate and inert objects and attempts unsuccessfully to use them as spies

207.) Sailor who can't swim and is afraid of water

208.) ineptly lecherous hireling who makes passes at warforged and dromite party members

[Lo'Tek]

209) The double fake exit strategy

A travelling snake-oil merchant of small trinkets wants to skip town safely and cheaply with a simple con: hire as a merc with special knowledge, fake a client with a simple matching mission (find flowers), get paid by guild to skip town, sell some trash on the side. If the PCs do not notice that something is fishy with him/her, they must decide if they write it off or go for a search and collect (-> shakedown).

210) Tolana, the wannabe

A disgruntled person complains about a mission the guild never took, sold by young lad Tolan who never worked for them.
The name is fake and "Tolan" turns out to be even younger than the customer described, woefully underequipped and very dead. Bonus guilt points if the description of the corpse has someone remember recruitment day. Can be saved if PC guild runs a school (-> missing student).

[FreddyNoNose]

211) Grunk the Monk: A long time wanderer, part time adventurer, poet and hand to hand fighter. He is old, dresses in traditional monk clothing. At one time he worked as cook on a wagon gang. He once assisted an extraplaner being who rewarded him by permanently casting upon Grunk three spells: Detect Invisibility, Protection from Evil, and Protection from Normal Missiles.

212) Killie the Bid: Former crooked auctioneer who got his name from fixing auctions. He talks quickly and loudly and some believe he is immune to silence spells.

213) Jenny the Witch: Hot looking witch who doesn't possess many abilities. Her potions often wrong leaving the imbiber with purple skin for a day or two. Although sometimes the potions are of double strength (ex: healing potion does double healing) or double duration.

214) Seyser Koze: An inept and incapable man that people tell horror stories about.

[ElFi]

215) The Questionably Sane Inventor
This blonde, bespectacled woman seems normal enough, until talk turns to matters of SCIENCE, at which point her voice drops to a lower octave and she'll ramble on until exhaustion if not stopped. Has a noted tendency to cannibalize anything even vaguely resembling machinery to construct an ever-growing arsenal of debatably-useful inventions, which tend to explode if they're nudged wrong and show a distressingly common trend of gaining sentience and attempting to declare their unmatched superiority over all organic life. That being said, if you need a coffee machine fixed up, she's your girl.

216) The Princess from Afar
Between the wild neon hair and oddly-toned skin, it's clear this sword-wielding Amazon isn't from around here- in fact, she's so not from "around here" that she's not entirely sure where her home actually is; hence why she's following a bunch of adventurers around in the first place. Capable in combat when needed, but often throttles enemies demanding information about her homeland (even in the middle of battle), then killing them before they actually get a chance to respond.

217) The Talking Cat
This Awakened white-furred feline is quite insistent on the fact that he isn't accompanying you, you're accompanying him. Apparently, his former master designed him to lord over all other cats, forgetting the fact that A) cats aren't that smart and B) Awakening the housecat that you've been keeping on bargain-bin cat food might've not been the best idea in hindsight. Fancies himself a master strategist and tends to disagree with the party on any sort of plan that isn't unreasonably convoluted (or involving a couple of explosions).

Why yes, they are all based off of characters from Girl Genius.

[Bohandas]

218.) The Chronomancer. In this case it turns out that "chronomancer" means a wizard that smokes a lot of chronic.