Heroes are able to get the service of hirelings; these can be mercenaries, laborers, skilled artisans, etc… A mercenary or bodyguard will work 18 to 24 hours for the player during adventurers. But what about a local smith? If you pay a hireling to do some artisan work for you, will they work 16 hours per day or only 8 hours?
After all, most D&D games are happening in a medieval setting of time. People didn't work only 8 hours per day. It's interesting to know since a player skilled in smithery can make a progress of 5 GP per day (during a downtime of 8 hours).
If hirelings were to work 16 hours per day, then we could calculate their daily progress in crafting as 10 GP per day (or 7.5 GP; should they work 12 hours). From my understanding, a PC could have a downtime of 16 hours.
It's nice to know, since equipment could be made faster and the daily cost of a hireling would go down by half.
Edit: I would also like to add the thought that an adventurer could be a patron of a smithery with a skilled hireling. Would this person work for the player with a 5 GP or 7.5/10 GP daily progress? 16 hours of work with 8 hours left to rest seems harsh, but was it that uncommon in the medieval time?
Best Answer
I would argue that pressing the smithy for a "rush job" would leave him inclined to demand more money than usual for the speed. Strictly from a game mechanics perspective, as DM, I would up the asking the price in proportion to the speed gain. So the item would get crafted twice as fast, but it would still cost the same amount of money (or maybe a bit more.)
It may be true that people in medieval times didn't punch a clock 9 to 5, like today, but it's also true that they didn't generally stay out after sunset (because it was DARK without street lights.) The existence of magic, of course, is an X-factor that could swing things in pretty much any direction you like.
Hirelings aren't mindless automatons who will just bend over backwards because a PC threw a carefully calculated amount of gold in their face. Expect the local smithy to react accordingly when a heavily armed wanderer breezes through town and asks him to work overtime to get this macguffin done ASAP.