How much do healers cost to hire in your games?
My players are talking about hiring a healer to follow them around. Not sure what to charge.
This would come down to the elements within your gaming world and the type of party you have. Do you want the healer to actively participate within the sessions, either through you controlling as an NPC or another player handling the NPC as a secondary PC? How powerful is the healer? What spell lists will he have access to? How many PP or potions/herbs will he carry? Do you even want the party to have a Healer in tow? You could make it cost prohibitive, you could allow him to only sign on for 1 week. The downside to having the NPC is that party will actively have to protect him now. That will change in-game tactics quite a bit and give you as the GM more material to make the sessions more challenging.
Rule #1: Protect the healer
Rule #2: Take out the Spell casters.
Umm.. Rule #0: Kill the Healer first!
We did have one of our players controlling an NPC in a campaign, he had his own spell lists and equipment. I wasn't part of that campaign but I was having fun watching the group play. More recently, our larger group of guys had players pop in and out al the time because it was impossible for 9-10 of us to meet up every single week with any consistency, so the 'floater' guys would take over NPCs for the GM and that worked out great. It took some of the workload from the GM, made the NPC more part of the game, the guys who came over for 1 or 2 nights a month were able to play and be part of the sessions.