The 2D6 Reaction Roll

Hot Take: The very best table in all of D&D is the 2d6 Reaction table. When you want to know how a certain NPC or monster reacts to the players outside of combat, you use the 2D6 Reaction table. Here I will show you two versions of this table for examples, and talk about a third use for the 2D6 table.

Here's the first one: a Hireling Reaction table.

When your PC makes an offer to hire another man for a simple task or for dungeoneering, he will offer that man some money or other compensation.  You as the Referee will roll on this table to determine whether the potential employee likes the offer or not. You can modify this roll by +1/-1 based on the Charisma of the hiring character if you want to, or by other factors. Because the range is only 2-12, I would suggest using modifiers no larger than +1/-1.

Good Bunglers are Hard to Find

In the middle, you can see that there is an "Uncertain" result.  In the case of negotiations for money, goods or services, this usually means the NPC wants more than the PC has offered in some way.  In such negotiations of a sort common to your campaign, usually something like hiring men for dungeon trips, it's good for the Referee to give the several players an idea of what the going rates are. Otherwise, they are likely to vastly overpay or to insult their candidates!

Here's the second one: the Monster Reaction table.

When your PCs are in the dungeon and they come upon monsters, sometimes the monsters just want to fight. That is okay!  But sometimes, it's not clear what they want to do! This is especially true for normal-types in the dungeon or in some other uncivilized place. When you don't know what the monsters want to do, or if you just want to be surprised for yourself, use the Monster Reaction table! It should be possible for the PCs to ally with some of the dungeon monsters. Not everything has to be a fight. If it's always a fight, that's boring and also more deadly than it has to be.

A third 2D6 roll is similar to but not the same as the tables. That is the Morale Check.  Each monster and each hireling (but not your personal assistants) have a Morale Score.  In OD&D this score for your hirelings is based on a Loyalty score in a convoluted way that I have personally dropped.  But in any case, each NPC and monster has a Morale score.

When the PCs ask their men to do something more dangerous than the PCs are doing; when the PCs ask their men to do something outside their job description, such as asking a torchbearer to fight monsters, and after the dungeoneering trip, I like to roll one time and compare that roll to the Morale scores in question.  If the NPCs fail their Morale check, they run away, surrender, or quit.

When the PCs fight monsters, I check Morale once when the monster side has their first casualty and again when half the monsters die.  A failure in either case results in surrender or flight.  If they pass both checks, they fight to the death.  (Fighting-Men of 4th level or better also force a check immediately due to their fearsome presentation.)