I actually think mercenaries should only cost money if you dismiss them. While being a part of your party, they gain room and board with you, AND they share equipment and loot as long as they are members of your party. As soon as you dismiss, though, they should want a "share of the loot" especially if you take all their gear before dismissing them. I mean, isn't that usually how adventurers work? They'll join a party for a cut of the loot as opposed to some up front fee?
Possibly but I can foresee significant issues with implementing this.
When you dismiss them, can you just say "no" to paying the merc? Or does the mercenary just automatically steal X gold from the party stash upon dismissal? If so, the party could try to spend it all buying magic items before dismissing the merc, and thus having no money to actually pay the merc with.
Would the merc then steal a certain amount of loot from the party, gp + equipment + consumables? How would this be implemented: randomly? That could be incredibly aggravating.
And in both of the above situations, it becomes the optimal solution to just kill the merc instead of dismissing them, so you can reclaim your lost equipment and not have to pay their fee. It's all around just easier to have a gp cost upfront, that theoretically is essentially un-reclaimable from the recruiter - either by being a too-high DC to steal back, or (my recommendation) just disappearing entirely from the game.
Yeah. Could be a bit of a challenge to implement, and if so, I'd rather just have the standard Pathfinder pay up front merc. The main thing I want is fully customizable and dismissable. Frankly, in Pathfinder, I found that I didn't care for most of the companions they offered, and making my own custom characters was much more fun. I suddenly got into the game a whole lot more when I could create my own. However, a party of 6 allowed me to create 4-5 custom characters and still have room for at least 1 or 2 of the comanion characters the devs created so that I could do companion quests if I wanted. Also, the ability to dismiss a companion is awesome if that companion is really not working out well. Then I'm not stuck with some shmuck custom companion that I really don't want anymore in my party - having to reload to some way back point before I hired them just to get rid of them.
But as far as the idea of paying for them after you dismiss them, yes. Paying the merc could be in monetary value either by letting them keep equipment you'd already equipped them with or by paying an outright gold fee. In other words, if their fee was 1,000 gold, and you already have them equipped with 500 gp worth of equipment, the final cost would be 500 to let them go. OR, if you are a shady, evil type, you could kill them and take all their stuff. That's entirely up to you, the player. My evil drow charlatan sorcerer would absolutely order Lae'zel to kill some merc who signed on thinking he was going to get a fair share only to discover he was in a party full of evil people who would use him and murder him when they were done with him. Shoot. Whether you pay up front or if you want to dismiss them, I think that option would TOTALLY make sense.
And I would 100% love to have the ability to hire them and not have them in the immediate party sometimes but to remain at camp until you need them again. That way you could make a bunch of mercenaries and have them at camp, mixing and matching your party however you like and whenever you like. Maybe there'd be a maximum companion count at camp, or a camping supply cost for each companion you have at camp, so that you don't have like a million companions all sitting at camp, but I would absolutely love to have the ability to hire and fire endless numbers of mercenaries.
