Companion question

[Vordae]

How important to the story are the companions?

 

I enjoy this style of game but the way I tend to play them is let the AI control all the companions while I focus on the PC character. Every once in a while I swap to my tank or healer if I need to control something important. This would be pretty easy to do with a team of hired companions I build from scratch. I'm just worried I will miss out on a lot of content if I do that.

[Messier-31]

1. Every companion has a unique quest, so this is the biggest loss in content for you. Some of them are really good.

Companions have something to say every now and then but nothing critical to the story. Other NPC's also rarely talk about/to your companions but

Iovara

is the best and most verbose example of such interaction.

Some quests might play differently if you have a certain someone in your party, but this is not happening very often.

e.g. having the Grieving Mother with you in the Skaen temple under Dyrford makes quite a difference

[jsaving]

Well, companions do have quests associated with them so you do lose some xp and insight into the game world if you do without them.  A few companions (Eder and Pallegina come to mind) provide useful commentary on in-game events while a couple of others (like Durance and Aloth) enable you to better understand in-game lore.  So if you're primarily a role-player, you probably won't want to create any of your companions.

 

For powergamers, on the other hand, the best course of action is probably to create your entire party on your own.  The in-game NPCs don't have optimal stats nor do they generally have extra abilities/items that would make you want to adventure with them despite their shortcomings.  This is a departure from IE games like Baldur's Gate where joinable NPCs usually did have something unique to offer (like Edwin's extra spell slots, Jaheira's expanded spell selection, or Minsc's berserk ability). 

Edited March 28, 2017 by jsaving

[Boeroer]

Actually the official companions are more powerful than your own hirelings - because in the early game until mid game they are one level higher. And in the late game those few stat points which are not in the optimal places don't matter anyway. So for powergamers they are the better choice most of the time.

 

And some of the companions do have special, unique abilities or talents, too.

 

Pallegina has Wrath of the Five Suns, Devil of Caroc is a vessel with all the immunities vessels usually have (immune to charm, poison and so on), Zahua can become the Anitlei which will give him +10% stackable attack speed. Hiravias has the Staegar Spiritshift form which is unique and Sagani has a fox as animal companion.

Edited March 28, 2017 by Boeroer