First and foremost: this is a pilot program that currently only applies to the mercenaries for sale in Galadon. And again, only after NCR.

Going forward, certain mercenaries will count as as a "groupmate" for the purpose of calculating experience. This means that, for example, a group of 2 PCs and 1 NPC merc is equal to a group of three PCs. Likewise, 3 + 1 would equal four and thus be a bad thing.

You'll know if a merc counts as a "groupmate" if you see an asterisk when you check your group:

Umiron's group:
< NPC an arial mercenary *>                              100% hp 100% mana 100% mv      0 xp
<58 Con> Umiron                       100% hp 100% mana 100% mv   1800 xp

A couple things to note:
- For the purpose of XP calculation a mercenary is effectively the level of its master, not its own level.
- This functionality should always work as if you simply had one more PC in the group so bear that in mind before asking questions or for clarification.
- It should be impossible to have two mercs anyway, but in case someone were somehow able to get more than one, the code will only ever give you the benefit of the first mercenary.

I plan to observe how this plays out, hunt down any bugs, etc., and then roll it out to more mercenaries.

That's it for now.