Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24302820-20180101030511/@comment-24302820-20180110024556

Hiring someone with a class, codicil, et al. is even simpler in some ways. We take the total skill cost, multiply that by a hundred florins, and add it to the 300f kicker. Since the time to learn a class is expressed in weeks, months, or years--rather than hours--you can ignore the time-to-learn stuff. We use the same proficiency-to-apprenticeship conversion as before, because employers don't give a shit about the game-mechanics differences between apprenticeships, proficiencies, suites, and classes. That's basically it.

Suites are much the same, but we use the adjusted time-to-learn or the skill cost, whichever is cheaper for the one doing the hiring.

The complication for classes, codicils, et al. is that most of them will have other requirements beyond their component skills. These requirements reduce the number of people in the general populace who might have this class, and this reduction of supply increases demand in the form of higher wages. Increase wages by an extra 10% if 90% of the population could qualify. This inflates to an extra 20% if only 80% could qualify, an extra 30% if only 70% could qualify, et cetera. If less than one-percent of the population could learn this class, then wages double.

For example, only about 60% of the world could learn how to be a rogue, since that class requires a 9 Agility. It takes 4 skills to become a rogue, so the monthly wages would be (400+300)x1.4=980 florins a month, if you had some reason to hire someone with that skillset. If you wanted to hire a death knight, this class has a skill cost of 13, with four prerequisite skills, for a total of 17. Only about 20% of the world would fit the demographic attribute requirements, so this increases wages by 1.8 times. Hiring a death knight would then cost 3,600f a month.

Here are a few other considerations. Hiring someone on a contractual basis, such as a mercenary, doubles the wages. Hiring them for short term work, essentially day-labour, triples it instead. If you expect them to bring their own specialised equipment, like a coachman's wagon and horses, or the arms and armour of the aforementioned mercenary) increase wages by one and a half times. Since this is Midian, all of these stack. So let's say you contracted out that death knight from before to wreak havoc on your enemies. This is a base wage of 3,600f, and you expect him to bring his necromantically infused armour, this would triple the base wage to a grand total of 10,800 florins per month (or 540 guilder). You could buy a destrier or a prized racehorse for the same money that you're spending on a two-month contract. But boy, won't your enemy be miffed when he wakes up one morning to find that all of his family's faces have been put on the wrong bodies. Totally worth it.