In Kismet: Privateer, you are a mercenary on a hired assignment. However, that doesn't prevent you from hiring your own sellsword. You're limited to hiring one henchman per playthrough--for financial reasons inimical to Zander and Davan's situation--but have three to choose from overall. They have varying price ranges and capabilities to suit your playstyle, and hiring a different merc will definitely alter your experience as you play through the game.

Baldrick

Age: 54
Birthright: Mundane
Class: Soldier
Price Range: Expensive.
Weapon Proficiency: Light Blades, Heavy Blades, Axes/Maces/Hammers, Pole-Arms.
Description: Soldiers have great Life Points, Strength, and Physical Damage Resistance and supplement it with the ability to wear heavy armor and wield nearly every martial weapon in the game. Soldiers get weapon-type based special skills deal heavy damage and inflict nasty status effects. Baldrick doesn't have magic, but he doesn't need it.
Sample Skills:
Clobber: If armed with a axe, mace, or hammer, deals normal damage with an 80% chance to inflict Stun. No Cooldown.
Trip: If armed with a pole-arm, deals normal damage with an 80% chance to knock the enemy Prone (doesn't work well on enemies with less than one or more than two legs). One turn cooldown.
Power Attack: Compatible with every weapon but relatively slow and inaccurate, a power attack deals 2.5x normal damage .

Sophie

Age: 22
Birthright: Karcist Mage.
Class: Healer
Price Range: Cheap.
Weapon Proficiency: Staves/Rods.
Description: Healers are unsurprisingly the go-to class for healing. A fully stocked healer can keep the party's life points up faster than they go down, cure all status effects, resurrect, and regenerate as long as they have the Mana Points to keep operating. Healers are the most powerful and efficient source of dedicated healing in the entire game.
Sample Skills:
First Aid: This non-magical skill expends some Charge Counter to heal one ally of common physical status effects like Bleeding, Poison, and Crippled.
Healer's Touch: This basic healing spell restores Life Points equal to ten times the caster's Magic. The higher the Magic, the greater the Healing.
Healing Surge: One ally gains the Regeneration status effect, regaining 10% of their max LP every turn for a short while.

Vance

Age: 31
Birthright: Karcist Adept.
Class: Woodstrider Adept
Price Range: Moderate.
Weapon Proficiency: Light Blades, Bows.
Description: A woodstrider adept is a ranger, stealthy and woodcrafty and absolutely deadly with a bow. Bow damage is based in equal parts on Agility and Strength. While armed with a bow, Vance can perform "Bane Shots" that bypass needing to learn an enemy's elemental weaknesses to deal damage directly to a class of foe: beast, humanoid, or undead. He can also perform all sorts of standard archery tricks, like twin-shots, and poisoned or magic arrows. Finally, advanced woodstrider adepts can hide from their enemies, making highly effective critical attacks from the shadows.
Sample Skills:
Beast Hunter: A Bane-Shot that deals double damage to Beasts, but half damage to humanoids and undead.
Poison Arrow: A shot that inflicts normal damage and has a 90% chance of inflicting the Poison status effect on susceptible enemies. One turn cooldown.
Twin Shot: Hits two random targets for full damage. One turn cooldown.