Using AD&D's Spying Table to Resolve NPC Missions

AD&D is a game in which the player characters are expected to overcome challenges themselves. This is made most explicit in the section on NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS, and is embodied by the guiding principle that dealing with NPCs "should be expensive and irritating" - that is, that player characters seeking aid from outside sources should be dissuaded from doing so by the mere fact that those DM-controlled characters will be extremely costly and annoying to recruit, convince, placate, and the like. This is made explicit in the section on HIRING NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS TO CAST SPELLS OR USE DEVICES:

I'm sure that there are many other examples in the text, although my Ctrl + F skills are failing me at the moment to dredge up more evidence. You will have to trust that I've read enough AD&D to be an authority on the matter when I say that this sentiment is apparent in Gygax's writing even when he doesn't spell it out in so many words.

Deserted castles dot the landscape, but do not exist solely for the convenience of player characters seeking strongholds of their own. There are roads to the dungeon built for ease of access, but they're not free to use. Towns and cities are full of NPC adventurers looking for work and high level NPCs with a great deal of power, but henchmen are not easy to find, and high level NPCs are more likely to use the player characters for their own ends than they are to aid them. Dragons' lairs contain mountains of treasure, but henchmen will not stay and guard them on the player characters' behalf. Player characters can find a cleric to cure them of their diseases, but it will cost them dearly.

One exception is, of course, hirelings - those NPCs which the player characters hire and pay on a regular basis (daily or monthly, in the case of standard hirelings, or monthly only in the case of expert hirelings). Most of these are not the adventuring sort, however, and mainly serve to do those mundane or tedious tasks on behalf of the player characters which would make for dull gameplay if handled by the player characters themselves. A limner can draw up a heraldic device for the fighter, an armorer or blacksmith can toil away in the player character's stronghold, and a properly equipped sage can conduct research to come up with the answer to some question in which the player characters have an interest.

Hirelings will go on adventures sometimes, but these are never without the party present. Bearers and porters might carry treasure from the dungeon back to town, linkboys might bear torches or lanterns, pack handlers and teamsters might deal with beasts of burden and vehicles, a scribe might keep the party's map of the dungeon, and a ship's crew might ferry them along a river or across a lake to expedite their forays to and from the site of adventure, but these are all supplemental to the party of player characters - never a replacement for them.

The one hireling which embarks on their own to engage in what we might recognize as "adventuring" activity is an exceptional sort of expert hireling - the Spy:

The spy is a type of assassin NPC which can be recruited much like any other hireling or henchman. They are similar to the sage in that they follow their own bespoke set of gameplay rules and in that their principle purpose is the obtaining of information. The difference is that - while yes, it would be cool if the information the party needs is located in an ancient tome inside a long lost library, and they must adventure to obtain it - the sage's purpose is to abstract the dull work of actually spending months of game time poring over the texts for the answer to the question, whereas traveling to a castle to gather information about the ruler's mustering of forces, infiltrating a secret society, or posing as important officials to gain access to their resources - all without being discovered - is a bona fide dangerous adventure that the player characters well and truly could engage in themselves, and it would be fun to do so.

Whether or not it's a good thing that this potentially fruitful adventuring activity can be handed off to an NPC is not really my concern. Why this particular adventuring activity can be handed off to an NPC and yet the party cannot, say, hire another party of adventurers to conduct some other mission on their behalf (or send their henchmen, their mercenary army, or other followers to do so) is a more interesting question.

It's not such a confounding question, really. The answer is that spying, for one reason or another, is an element of adventuring which Gygax felt comfortable allowing the player characters to engage in at a distance. Going into dungeons, clearing out monster lairs, and laying siege to strongholds is the meat of adventure, and player characters should be involved in those activities themselves.

Except they don't really need to - not 100% of the time. When a necromancer moves into some ruined tomb the player characters cleared out at 1st level and starts raising the dead, why shouldn't those same characters - now rulers of their domains with huge armies and companies of henchmen - be allowed to send those henchmen off on their own adventure to deal with the problem while they focus on more important matters? Why shouldn't they be able to delegate the work of clearing monster lairs from their territory to their mercenary army? When some petty lord in a humble tower stops paying taxes, why should we stop the game to go put him in his place?

The answer is, obviously, because that stuff could be fun. You can send your henchmen to the old dungeon to clear it out again - you just play as your henchmen. You can send the captain of your army to chase the goblins off your land or bring your vassals back into the fold - you just play as the captain commanding the troops. It's all adventure, and worth being a part of.

But maybe sometimes the players don't want to spend a bunch of game time playing out that sort of thing. Their characters have other stuff to do, and they want to get to it. Is that such a crime? Maybe. But I think it should be an option on the table, and if we can abstract spying missions, surely we can abstract other adventuring activity involving NPCs, and I think AD&D's ASSASSIN SPYING TABLE provides a pretty good framework for doing so:

I would argue in favor of ignoring the specifics of this table (that is, the fact that it pertains to spying missions in particular) and instead focusing on what it represents more broadly. On the Y axis, we have the level or strength of assassin, spy, or, more generally, the NPC(s) undertaking the mission. On the X axis, we have the degree of difficulty of the mission. The Simple, Difficult, and Extraordinary categories are defined as such:

While these are all defined within the framework of spying (what sort of action is required of the spy and the resulting chance of discovery), I don't see why they can't be generalized.

For example, the Level Of The Assassin/Spy might instead be the average level of the henchmen sent to clear out the dungeon, or the level of the commanding officer leading the army to clear out the monster lair or lay siege to the stronghold. 

If henchmen are sent to clear out a dungeon, whether the mission is Simple, Difficult, or Extraordinary could be determined by the level of the dungeon relative to the level of the henchmen. If the henchmen are, on average, 4th to 7th level, a dungeon of 3rd level or lower might be a Simple mission (65 to 80% chance of success), a dungeon of 4th to 7th level Difficult (40 to 55% chance of success), and a dungeon of 8th level or higher Extraordinary (20 to 30% chance of success).

If an army is sent to clear out a monster lair or lay siege to a stronghold, an owlbear den or small stronghold (a small shell keep, tower, moat house, or friary) might be Simple, an ogre lair or medium stronghold (a large shell keep or small or medium walled castle) might be Difficult, and a village of 300 orcs or a large stronghold (a concentric castle, large walled castle, or fortress complex) might be Extraordinary. Such an army led by a 5th level captain would have a 25 to 70% chance of success, while the same army led by an 8th level captain would have a 35 to 85% chance of success. You can also use your understanding of the complexity of different location types when determining a mission's difficulty.

We're also given the amount of time required to accomplish the mission:

This does not include travel time to and from the mission location. Simple missions require 1d8 days (average 4 or 5 days), Difficult missions require 5d8 days (average 22 or 23 days), and Extraordinary missions are left to the referee's discretion. If we want to proceduralize it, we could call it 9d8 days (9 to 56, average 40) or 10d8 days (10 to 80, average 45 days). That seems fair. If the players want it done faster, they should do it themselves. This also ensures that they are limited in the number of missions they can have their henchmen, hirelings, and followers conducting at any given time. If players rely too much on these resources, they will soon find themselves spread thin.

In spying missions, there is always a chance that the spy is discovered:

The chance of discovery is a function of the time spent spying (longer missions are more dangerous), the level of the spy (the use of low level spies is more dangerous), and the precautions taken by the spied upon (more prepared targets for spying are more dangerous). Being discovered automatically results in mission failure and imposes a modifier to the SPY FAILURE TABLE which generates more disadvantageous results on that table.

Since this is very specific to spying, and the missions which I'm talking about are not concerned with being "discovered", we might recontextualize this mechanic instead as a "chance of complication". The mechanic is already very much left up to the DM's judgment, so we can get weird with it, using these modifiers to account for any other mitigating factors not already accounted for by our initial calculation of the mission's chance of success - that is, any other considerations which might negatively impact the mission's chance of success.

In the case of the dungeon, are there undead present, and does the dispatched party lack a cleric? Are there monsters which can only be harmed by magic weapons, and does the dispatched party lack these tools? Does the dispatched party have a map of the dungeon? Have wards and traps beyond the ordinary been placed there? Is there some higher level monster present of which the party is unaware?

If the target is a monster lair, are the monsters organized by some more intelligent force than is known? Are the monsters expecting an attack? Do they possess some especially powerful magic item? Have they made an alliance with other monsters in the area? Is the terrain especially unforgiving towards a large army? 

If the target is instead a stronghold, is it ruled by a powerful spellcaster? Does the ruler keep a pet dragon? Does the garrison possess other monstrous creatures like griffons or ogres (such as those strongholds detailed in OD&D)? Is the stronghold well provisioned to withstand a siege? Does the ruler have a spy of their own among the player characters' followers? Is an allied army rushing to meet the besiegers in the field?

The last bit to consider is the SPY FAILURE TABLE and its modifiers:

Again, we can loosely interpret these results to suit our purposes:

• On a result of 01 to 35, the mission simply fails and can be reattempted, but the duration must be rolled again. The time spent on the first attempt is wasted. 
• On a result of 36 to 60, the mission fails, and further attempts are 90% likely to fail as well. We can interpret this as the denizens of the dungeon, monster lair, or stronghold taking additional measures to thwart further missions against them. 
• On a result of 61 to 80, the player characters' agents are caught, imprisoned, and not heard from again.*
• On a result of 81 to 95, the agents are caught and tortured. In the process, either they are killed, they reveal some information which the party does not wish to fall into enemy hands (something about the party's plans or interests, or maybe a vulnerability of their own stronghold), or they are turned to the enemy's side.*
• On a result of 96 to 100, the agents are simply killed or turned to the enemy's side.

*A result of 61 to 95 can also result in the agents being set free, but only if doing so would disadvantage the party in some way. Perhaps they are cursed or infected with a disease and sent back to the player character's stronghold to spread it among their other followers, or perhaps they are unknowingly given a device by which the enemy can scry upon the characters and monitor their activities.

As you can see, "discovery" (or in our case, an unforeseen complication) greatly increases the chance of something bad happening as a result of mission failure. Difficult missions are also more likely to yield unfortunate results when failed. Missions of Extraordinary difficulty are for some reason less likely to result in a bad outcome upon failure (still trying to wrap my head around that one).

It is also worth shouting out the brief aside on Fanatical Spies:

This is very flavorful and very spy specific, but we can use it. Rather than killing themselves (which is the bit that feels very specific to spies), perhaps certain NPC followers are so loyal and devoted to their player character masters/causes that they simply refuse to allow themselves to be captured or turned, forcing their enemies to torture or fight them to the death, rather than betray the player character. This would be an excellent opportunity for a loyalty check.

This bit also points us back to the EXPERT HIRELINGS section (at the top of this post) to determine how much it costs to employ a spy. While we're concerned with henchmen and hirelings already in the player characters' employ with some sort of set compensation (either shares of treasure or a certain amount of coin per month), it does make sense that undertaking an especially dangerous or involved mission such as this would warrant some kind of bonus pay.

Instead of referencing the information about spies, however, let's flip over to the PHB and the table MINIMUM FEES FOR ASSASSINATION:

This table lists the amount of gold earned by a player character assassin for a successful assassination. This is a function of the assassin's level and the level (or notoriety) of the victim. I imagine it could also be the amount of gold the player characters must pay to hire an NPC assassin to do their bidding - after all, why not? Might as well make use of those assassins' guilds running around AD&D towns and cities.

We can also use this as a reference for roughly calculating what sort of "bonus pay" player characters might have to pay out to their followers for completing some mission. The 3rd level henchmen sent to clear out a like-level dungeon would receive a bonus of 225 gold pieces (plus any plunder from the dungeon itself, presumably), the 5th level mercenary captain sent to lay siege to a 9th level fighter's stronghold would receive 900 gold pieces, and the 8th level captain sent to battle an orc army would earn somewhere around 4,000 gold pieces to distribute amongst the soldiers under his command.

Getting others to do your dirty work isn't always fun, but at higher levels of play, player characters have access to lots of resources, and lots of options when choosing what they'd like to do next. I don't see anything wrong with letting them delegate some of their responsibilities so that they can prioritize the goals in which they're personally invested without the world falling to ruin around them. I for one think it's neat that player characters with enough resources can simply hire a spy to infiltrate a secret society on their behalf, or pay an assassin to go kill that evil wizard for them so that they can do something else. 

I don't see a system like this getting much actual use at the table. Most campaigns probably won't reach this level of play, and when they do, I imagine that most players will want to play out these scenarios themselves (whether as their own characters or by assuming the roles of their followers), but I think it's interesting food for thought and wanted to demonstrate how it might work in practice.

Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to resolving player character-orchestrated NPC missions this way. You can also use this method to resolve other NPC "missions", sort of like a "faction turn". Does the rival adventuring party clear out the dungeon and steal the player characters' glory out from under them? Does the villainous wizard successfully create that new magic item or spell they've been working on? Does the upstart gang of thieves in town overthrow the reigning Guild? There are many potential uses. 

AD&D is full of these odd little resources that you don't see very often in modern TTRPG materials, usually covering some very specific scenario which doesn't come up all that much in play. It's fun to let these odds and ends inspire you and let your imagination run wild with creative new ways to utilize them. 

Warring Guilds and Rogue Assassins Plague the Streets of AD&D

Thieves guilds and assassins guilds are ubiquitous in AD&D cities and towns. Both assassins and thieves are found on the DMG's city/town encounters matrix:

The assassin entry tells us that not only are cities and towns assumed to have a Thieves' Quarter, but also that (many) assassins may be encountered "at the guild":

The thief entry tells us that "other thieves encountered will be on guild business":

Thieves can "build a tower or fortified building of the small castle type for their own safety", but only within or very close to a town or city:

This calls into question why thieves are listed as potential masters of castles - including medium and large ones - in Appendix C within the procedure for generating fortresses in uninhabited areas:

...but this is certainly not the only contradiction between the PHB and DMG, and isn't particularly relevant to this post, so I won't dwell on it.

What is relevant is that if a thief does build a stronghold, they may use it as a headquarters for a gang, and in so doing attract thief followers. However, if they do so they will "bring the enmity of the local Thieves Guild". This will result in a war which ends "only when and if all the Master Thieves on either or both sides are dead, or if the thief character removes to another locale" (where, presumably, there is simply another Thieves Guild to contend with):

Similarly, the PHB tells us that "most towns and cities" are home to an Assassins Guild which "controls an area of from 10 to 100 miles radius around the headquarters town or city", and that "all non-player assassin characters are members of such guilds". A player character assassin who is discovered in a guild area will be invited to join the guild. They may decline, but will be sentenced to death if they perform an assassination while not a member of the guild:

Later, we are given more information about the nature of the Assassins Guild headquarters, which is "always within a large town or big city", but must be "nondescript" and safeguarded so as to avoid "attention and unwanted notoriety":

Compare that to this paragraph from the section of the DMG on poison, which describes the Thieves Guild as "an accepted part of communal society", so long as they stick to doing things that thieves do. The Thieves Guild can provoke the enmity of the Assassins Guild by engaging in acts which bring unwanted attention (or unwarranted blame) to the latter, or which are seen to step on the latter's toes:

This suggests that while the Thieves Guild may be at war with an upstart gang outside of their organization, and the Assassins Guild may condemn to death an outsider carrying out unsanctioned killings, the two organizations may also be in conflict with each other.

Unlike the thief, who can simply start a gang but must then go to war with the local guild, an assassin must assassinate or otherwise kill the local Guildmaster Assassin to attain 14th level (and later do the same to the Grandfather of Assassins to attain 15th level):

The headquarters of the Grandfather/Grandmother of Assassins can take a variety of forms but, unlike the local guild headquarters, is obvious and "must be located well away from all communities":

(Here we have another inconsistency with Castle Sub-Table II.B. That table lists the assassin as a possible master of the castle, but they can only be 14th level. 14th level assassins are Guildmasters, though, and their headquarters "is always within a large town or big city". As Grandfathers/Grandmothers - 15th level assassins - are the only assassins who build headquarters in uninhabited areas, it would be more accurate for the assassin on Castle Sub-Table II.B. to be of 15th level. But I digress yet again.)

The local Guildmaster Assassin commands 7-28 lower-level assassins. If the Guildmaster is killed, 75% "leave the area" (presumably to defect to a Guildmaster in another city or town) and new (1st level) assassins eventually arrive to fill the ranks:

The DMG goes on to state that the Grandfather/Grandmother of Assassins always has 28 followers of 2nd through 8th level, plus 4-16 of 1st level, and that when they are overthrown, as with the Guildmaster, 75% of these followers desert:

Since Guildmaster Assassins are referred to as "the local Guildmaster Assassin", whereas the Grandfather/Grandmother of Assassins is referred to as "the Grandfather/Grandmother", I'm going to conclude that there is only one such Grandfather/Grandmother of Assassins in the entire world, similar to The Great Druid:

It is my conclusion then that those assassins who desert when the Grandfather/Grandmother is supplanted do not return to the guild or defect to another but instead become masterless rogue assassins who wander the world, employing their skills in unsanctioned killings (thus making themselves persona non grata within the newly established order). 

They may even plot to overthrow the new Grandfather/Grandmother (the player character) once they've accumulated sufficient power. This would require reengaging with the guild structure which, since they've already deserted, may not be the intention. In any case, the player character assassin would be wise to closely monitor any new Guildmasters within their domain!

The assumption that there is only one Grandfather/Grandmother of Assassins and that assassins who desert in the wake of one's thus killing leave the guild forever is at odds with the previous declaration that "all non-player assassin characters are members of such guilds", but I've already demonstrated Gygax's tendency towards contradicting himself. Gygax may also simply be describing the status quo at the time when campaign play begins, not accounting for every possible action the player characters might take during the course of a campaign.

Whether this is another contradiction or I'm simply over-interpreting or making a false assumption, the idea of rogue assassins roaming the world is at least a fun one with interesting gameplay implications, so I'm willing to accept it at face value.

All of this, in fact, is highly gameable information. A player character thief may start a gang and provoke a war with the Thieves Guild. A player character assassin may decline to join the Assassins Guild and be condemned to death for unsanctioned activities, or join the guild and climb the ranks to Guildmaster or even Grandfather/Grandmother and so have rival (and even guildless) assassins plotting to kill them. But also keep in mind that anything the player characters can do, NPCs can do too.

Whether or not there's a player character thief or assassin in play, these organizations are assumed to be present in all AD&D towns and cities and will be operating in the world on their own terms. The player characters may be unlucky and run into thieves or assassins in the streets of the town or city, but perhaps they can also help out the local guild by toppling the upstart gang or capturing or slaying the rogue assassin. Perhaps the players help the upstart gang of thieves or mistakenly hire a rogue assassin, thus earning the enmity of the respective guilds. Perhaps they employ poison in some high-profile skirmish in the city, and now the Assassins Guild is out for their blood.

In summary, pit your guilds against each other for control of the streets, and let your player characters get mixed up in the conflict or caught in the crossfire. Remember that all dealings with thieves and assassins are wrapped up in layers of intrigue, subterfuge, and esoteric rules. The guilds are everywhere, and something as simple as helping or hiring the wrong person or putting a bit of poison on your blade may be seen as the opening salvo in a protracted war with AD&D most dangerous organizations of burglars and cutthroats.