The Adventurer's Hall

[rjshae]

 

Those advocating personalities for the custom companions are completely missing the point of their existence.

 

Custom companions allows the player to have complete freedom in determining their thoughts, histories, personalities and so on. Those who wish to have more 'defined' companions or companions with personalities will be able to recruit the companions crafted by Obsidian.

I completely disagree. Lephis is correct. I don't just want to play out their personalities in my head or write it somewhere that I can click on occasionally. I would like it if I can completly design a companion, including a personality which actually manifests itself in the game.

 

There's no reason they couldn't do both: allow a limited set of basic, pre-configured personalities, plus a tabula rasa option. They would then need to insert various trigger points to cause a custom companion to blurt out one of a fixed set of responses. E.g. "Tis' something most unnatural here, and I want no part of it" or "I've got a bad feeling about this". A tabula rasa character would simply say nothing at that point, leaving it to your imagination.

Edited October 29, 2013 by rjshae

[Failedlegend]

One thing I've always wanted to do is have "custom companions" with NPC stories because I like having specific groups but I also like certain characters but their builds or classes don't mesh...ie. The 3 characters I want to chill with are all clerics....the stat modifiers/trainers always help with this but they take a while to come about and theres always some things that are hard-coded in to the game...it would be nice if the Adventurers guild allowed us to retrain the NPCs for the ground up. My friends call me the Roleplaying Powergamer....I like having the best of both worlds...awesome storylines and full control over the mechanical aspects although I'll usualy sacrifice power to fufill any roleplaying constraints I've made for myself or if I think something doesnt fit the character.

 

If thats not possible having the "mercs" have minor personalties so they actually talk and give advice during conversations but never actually leave the party in disgust or w/e would be nice, just enough so I don't feel like I've purchased a bunch of automatons.

 

Adding both things would be great actually as my group will likely end up as a mix of companions and "mercs" although I'd be ok with an "Automaton" option for people who hate roleplaying.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Failedlegend

[Larkaloke]

Voice sets according to personality type rather than according to class is something that I'd prefer, I think, which is at least similar to what some people seem to be proposing. I rarely actually use the voices in Icewind Dale for the classes they're intended for, but it can get a bit odd at times if a fighter starts shouting about using their mighty magic or such.

 

Adding both things would be great actually as my group will likely end up as a mix of companions and "mercs" although I'd be ok with an "Automaton" option for people who hate roleplaying.

Do you consider your PC in every game to be an automaton, then? I'm curious about that. I understand that some people don't like to have more than one PC at once (although it's quite the opposite for many others, myself included), but I don't understand why some people either imply it's not possible or imply that they'd rather make no characters at all if they had that choice. From my point of view, the "hate roleplaying" option is to have characters with prebuilt personalities, but I suppose that just goes to show that different people often have very different ideas of what makes for good roleplaying.

[Failedlegend]

Voice sets according to personality type rather than according to class is something that I'd prefer, I think, which is at least similar to what some people seem to be proposing. I rarely actually use the voices in Icewind Dale for the classes they're intended for, but it can get a bit odd at times if a fighter starts shouting about using their mighty magic or such.

 

Adding both things would be great actually as my group will likely end up as a mix of companions and "mercs" although I'd be ok with an "Automaton" option for people who hate roleplaying.

Do you consider your PC in every game to be an automaton, then? I'm curious about that. I understand that some people don't like to have more than one PC at once (although it's quite the opposite for many others, myself included), but I don't understand why some people either imply it's not possible or imply that they'd rather make no characters at all if they had that choice. From my point of view, the "hate roleplaying" option is to have characters with prebuilt personalities, but I suppose that just goes to show that different people often have very different ideas of what makes for good roleplaying.

 

 

In general when playing by myself I make myself the PC so that where his "personality" but the others are sort of just bags of stats that follow me...the only time I like doing a full "blank slate" is in a multiplayer game than yeah thats fantastic for roleplaying but if I'm playing solo I prefer to have the NPCs so its LIKE I'm playing with other people but I do like being able to control their mechanical side (stats etc.) so I can still have a varied party (I like expereincing different classes)

 

That said one thing I like doing in IWD (no NPCs) is make the party my family and friends and play those characters based on how I view those people...it kinda of sucks BUT if I could give them basic personalities a la Wizardry 8 it would help flesh them out a bit.

 

I do agree though personalties should be made with no links to any paticularily specific class. Just personality archetypes...agrressive, flirty, goofy, sketchy, etc.

[Chairchucker]

Those advocating personalities for the custom companions are completely missing the point of their existence.

 

Custom companions allows the player to have complete freedom in determining their thoughts, histories, personalities and so on. Those who wish to have more 'defined' companions or companions with personalities will be able to recruit the companions crafted by Obsidian.

I got the impression that the sole 'point' of their existence was to enable party make ups (combinations of races and classes) that weren't necessarily possible with the NPCs available. The rest of it is something you've just made up then.

[Larkaloke]

In general when playing by myself I make myself the PC so that where his "personality" but the others are sort of just bags of stats that follow me...the only time I like doing a full "blank slate" is in a multiplayer game than yeah thats fantastic for roleplaying but if I'm playing solo I prefer to have the NPCs so its LIKE I'm playing with other people but I do like being able to control their mechanical side (stats etc.) so I can still have a varied party (I like expereincing different classes)

 

That said one thing I like doing in IWD (no NPCs) is make the party my family and friends and play those characters based on how I view those people...it kinda of sucks BUT if I could give them basic personalities a la Wizardry 8 it would help flesh them out a bit.

 

I do agree though personalties should be made with no links to any paticularily specific class. Just personality archetypes...agrressive, flirty, goofy, sketchy, etc.

Ah, I see. That explains it. I prefer to make the PC fairly different from myself, and quite different every time I play through a game. If I have more than one character, then I like to also make them quite different in personality. Perhaps it's partly because I'm used to playing more than one character at a time when playing face to face roleplaying games as well that I actually prefer to have more than one PC if I can.

 

I'll always find myself thinking idly about what the characters would be doing while I'm not in a fight or a dialogue or some such (while going from place to place and so forth), and unless they are specifically stated to be doing something I've no idea what the NPCs would be doing, so that annoys me and they often come off as being the blank ones to me because of that. Sometimes I'll take them just to be different, but it's definitely not my preference.

 

Picking a personality specifically would annoy me, unless I suppose it had very little effect, because it would be likely to clash with whatever personality I came up with for the character. It would annoy me in the same way that having a fully voiced PC does, although not nearly so much (I'm not sure there's any other single feature that a roleplaying game has ever had that annoys me that much). The option of selecting no preset personality would, of course, have the same effect as not being able to pick any in the first place, and be cool and fine.

[forgottenlor]

Voice sets according to personality type rather than according to class is something that I'd prefer, I think, which is at least similar to what some people seem to be proposing. I rarely actually use the voices in Icewind Dale for the classes they're intended for, but it can get a bit odd at times if a fighter starts shouting about using their mighty magic or such.

 

I also never picked an Icewind Dale voice because of the class its supposedly associated with. Some classes had a number of appealing voices, others did not. However, I did try to assign the voice that shouts about lthunder and lightning to some type of spell caster. I also think by linking a voice to a "personatliy type" you can have more interesting comments than when they are tied to a class or profession.

Edited October 31, 2013 by forgottenlor

[Osvir]

I want a Difficulty Option for the Adventurer's Hall!

"Closed for Business!"
- Can't recruit ANY members from the Hall (Lose all V.I.P's? Too bad for you! You'll have to do with what you got!)
- Can't reinforce the Stronghold

OR

- Can only recruit a limited number of recruits from the Adventurer's Hall
- Costs A LOT to Hire

OR

- I will learn everything there is to learn about modifying the game and create "Closed for Business" myself as an add-on difficulty node

[Gfted1]

You want to create a mod to prevent you from using hirelings instead of simply choosing not to use the Adventurers Hall? Am I understanding that correctly?

[rjshae]

I want a Difficulty Option for the Adventurer's Hall!

 

...

- Can only recruit a limited number of recruits from the Adventurer's Hall

...

 

I thought there was already a built in limit of 8 NPCs you can recruit from the Hall.