Companion/Sidekick Class Options Revealed

[Messier-31]

 

Wait, what? Companions shouldn't be customizable too much. Do you customize people you meet in real life? No, they are people with minds of their own, just like companions in a game. Do whatever you want with their inventory, change their colours, pick out of 3 possible class options (this is a lot!)... what more do you want? Hirelings, this is what you want.

So it's okay to choose which of three different class combinations a companion has, what abilities they learn at level up, and what weapons and armour they use, but going beyond that crosses some invisible line of character autonomy?

 

 

From a designers point of view: yes.

 

Let me elaborate: the cRPG games tell a story, there is a plot and history to it. Because a companion was designed to be either a druid, or a chanter, or a mix between the two, I see it as a developers concept for that particular character. It makes no story-wise sense for that character to be a barbarian, or a wizard, or some other mix of two other classes. The design says that this character is what it is, so you shouldn't be able to change it.

 

You play a roleplaying game by roleplaying (duh). If you meet a druid/chanter character, then ACT LIKE you met a druid/chanter, because the story says he/she is a druid/chanter. Don't change the whole background on a whim, because it ruins the whole design. Viconia's story wouldn't have much sense if you could switch her into a bard, no?

[Boeroer]

As far as I'm concerned I'd be happy if you could play your Edér as a Fighter/Pancake if you wish so.

 

p.s.: I know what comes next: don't ask me what a Pancake's abilities are!

[JerekKruger]

From a designers point of view: yes.

Your argument was that we can't customise people in real life so why should we be able to customize the people we meet in game. You then said a certain amount of customisation was enough. The former doesn't support the latter, regardless of whether you're a designer or not.

 

Either there should be no customisation (like in real life) or there's room for debate as to where the line should be drawn. I don't see any reason why the second class in a companion's multiclass combination shouldn't be free, you disagree, but there's nothing inherently correct about your position from a design perspective.

[Messier-31]

Your argument was that we can't customise people in real life so why should we be able to customize the people we meet in game. You then said a certain amount of customisation was enough. The former doesn't support the latter, regardless of whether you're a designer or not.

Either there should be no customisation (like in real life) or there's room for debate as to where the line should be drawn. I don't see any reason why the second class in a companion's multiclass combination shouldn't be free, you disagree, but there's nothing inherently correct about your position from a design perspective.

 

Certain amount is OK, because it is a game, not real life. But still, one should respect the designers view of the character (please vide https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96217-companionsidekick-class-options-revealed/page-6?do=findComment&comment=1981862 )

 

Otherwise, why design a character at all?

Edited February 27, 2018 by Messier-31

[JerekKruger]

You play a roleplaying game by roleplaying (duh). If you meet a druid/chanter character, then ACT LIKE you met a druid/chanter, because the story says he/she is a druid/chanter. Don't change the whole background on a whim, because it ruins the whole design. Viconia's story wouldn't have much sense if you could switch her into a bard, no?

So what is Xoti's character then? I'd she a priest or isn't she? Because I can go either way on a whim.

 

Perhaps her character is defined not by her class, but by her dialogue and, well, her character.

[Messier-31]

So what is Xoti's character then? I'd she a priest or isn't she? Because I can go either way on a whim.

Perhaps her character is defined not by her class, but by her dialogue and, well, her character.

 

By design she's a priest and/or monk. 

 

This is enough for me to know, that barbarian doesn't suit her. But, if there was a personal quest in which she desires to become one, than by finishing it she may be able to switch her class. This was done in NwN2 with Khelgar Ironfist. Note that the change has a story-wise grounds and isn't determined until the end of a story arc. 

[Olauron Mor-Galad]

am not seeing anything 'bout edér teylecg which would preclude him possible joining the clergy, though am honest not knowing what is the actual requirements for such admission.  priesthood admission o' formal religions typical also have rules and duties for those who would minister as other than a lay person.  am not knowing the lore o' such to comment.  if is no such lore, then you got a new problem eh?  edér "taking up the cloth" or whatever is the eothasian equivalent, would be significant and noteworthy.  add rogue or fighter or mixture o' both is hardly narrative essential material as difference 'tween two is simple chosen style o' combat skill, neither o' which is mutual exclusive.  however, add priest to edér and have writers not address the spiritual metamorphosis would be more than a little curious.  failure o' the writers to address such a change for edér 'tween  poe and deadfire would no doubt raise the dreaded immersion hobgoblin, albeit with some justification.  sure, writers could complete ignore the priest aspect and have edér address eothas issues same as his lay character, but failure to make note o' his change from lay status would be, at minimum, a curious and salient oversight for many players o' deadfire.

...

if edér became a priest, we would expect mention.  if any o' Gromnir's close friends became a priest, we would have questions for 'em.  avoidance o' such a topic would be a bit unnatural.  if the writers genuine don't feel comfortable writing while pretending to ignore the elephant in the room, such is a good enough reason for 'em to not try.  am hoping for deeper and more complex characters than poe.  if the obsidian writers see priestliness as an obstacle to a well-written character, then am preferring they don't try and force such an alloy into existence. deadfire is not an exercise for undergrad creative writing aspirants.  give us best effort, or don't do.   

This should already be covered by writers as they are expected to address different endings for Eder including the ending with his strengthened faith.

[Yosharian]

 

So what is Xoti's character then? I'd she a priest or isn't she? Because I can go either way on a whim.

Perhaps her character is defined not by her class, but by her dialogue and, well, her character.

By design she's a priest and/or monk.

 

This is enough for me to know, that barbarian doesn't suit her. But, if there was a personal quest in which she desires to become one, than by finishing it she may be able to switch her class.

This was done in NwN2 with Khelgar Ironfist.

Note that the change has a story-wise grounds and isn't determined until the end of a story arc.

It's ironic that you bring up that particular quest as it's infamous for being terrible game design.

 

Khelgar had absolutely awful stats for a monk and went from being a very effective fighter to being a trash monk, you chose that route.

 

So that's a great argument for more player control, not less.

 

I'm sure you'll argue the opposite, though

[JerekKruger]

Honestly the main thing this discussion has done is reinforced my preference for classless systems. The baggage of class titles, particularly for classes like Priests which are also vocations, hurts roleplaying.

 

Anyway I think I'll excuse myself from this discussion now. I don't think anything is going to be achieved by it at this point.

[Messier-31]

It's ironic that you bring up that particular quest as it's infamous for being terrible game design.

Khelgar had absolutely awful stats for a monk and went from being a very effective fighter to being a trash monk, you chose that route.

 

So that's a great argument for more player control, not less.

 

I'm sure you'll argue the opposite, though

 

Terrible or no, it's subjective to say so.

 

Honestly the main thing this discussion has done is reinforced my preference for classless systems. The baggage of class titles, particularly for classes like Priests which are also vocations, hurts roleplaying.

 

Anyway I think I'll excuse myself from this discussion now. I don't think anything is going to be achieved by it at this point.

 

Classless or with classes, can't have 'em both. What we know for sure is that there is no accounting for tastes.

 

Excusing myself as well

Edited February 27, 2018 by Messier-31

[Fardragon]

 

... there has to be an arbtary cut off.

 

Only if you're set on having companion multiclassing handled through dialogue trees. I can't see why this should be however. What's wrong with having the same character creation screen pop-up upon hiring a companion for the first time?

 

 

1) Because of the unique companion subclasses. Anything selectable by the watcher would have to be selectable by the companion, and visa versa, so you wouldn't be able to have subclasses unique to one companion, like shark spiritshifting.

 

2) Because it would make the companion's appearance, race, and attributes customisable. Eder as an Orlan anyone?

[Yenkaz]

is nothing wrong with choosing to abandon internal coherence.  un chien andalou is kinda a  mind %$*&, but am s'posing there is a place for such. 

 

am actual not having a personal problem with players voluntarily choosing to abandon any semblance o' internal coherence for their game if they so choose.  sadly. 'cause this is a crpg, a considerable % o' players is gonna complain if the game doesn't react to their choices.  the main character is gonna be written so vague as to embrace any class combo, race or gender, which is why crpg protagonists is usual boring. the writers can't do such with the companions w/o making 'em similar dull. the npcs is where crpg stories with vague protagonists is actual developed, and try and make companions infinite malleable ciphers (not the poe class) would be a serious handicap to storytelling.  

 

give choice and people is gonna complain when game doesn't react reasonable, or at all.  Gromnir, for example, were kinda cheesed off when game only reacted to our priest o' wael at one point in the game, and only if we had two tiers o' honest disposition. companions is gonna be written far more specific than the player-- is essential.  pallegina keeps responding to disalogues as if she is the monotonous paladin she were in poe, but bob is playing his pallegina as a bleak walker/berserker, and is complaining to obsidian 'bout lack o' reactivity.

 

is pretty standard for players to have limited capacity to customize companions in story-driven crpgs.  likely gonna alienate fewer folks by simple adopting custom in the genre as 'posed to throwing open companion customization and then needing deal with crpg grognards who bemoan lack o' choice and consequences... and yeah, if you don't like the perfect viable companions as-is, you do have the option o' creating hirelings.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

I agree with insofar as restricting way-off main classes (Imagine being able to make Durance a non-priest, Aloth a non-wizard etc). However I don't see how it necessarily extends to subclasses since it wouldn't create the same lore problems if, say, Pallegina is a Paladin (two choices obv.) / vanilla Chanter or Paladin / Beckoner.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Yenkaz

[Fardragon]

 

is nothing wrong with choosing to abandon internal coherence.  un chien andalou is kinda a  mind %$*&, but am s'posing there is a place for such. 

 

am actual not having a personal problem with players voluntarily choosing to abandon any semblance o' internal coherence for their game if they so choose.  sadly. 'cause this is a crpg, a considerable % o' players is gonna complain if the game doesn't react to their choices.  the main character is gonna be written so vague as to embrace any class combo, race or gender, which is why crpg protagonists is usual boring. the writers can't do such with the companions w/o making 'em similar dull. the npcs is where crpg stories with vague protagonists is actual developed, and try and make companions infinite malleable ciphers (not the poe class) would be a serious handicap to storytelling.  

 

give choice and people is gonna complain when game doesn't react reasonable, or at all.  Gromnir, for example, were kinda cheesed off when game only reacted to our priest o' wael at one point in the game, and only if we had two tiers o' honest disposition. companions is gonna be written far more specific than the player-- is essential.  pallegina keeps responding to disalogues as if she is the monotonous paladin she were in poe, but bob is playing his pallegina as a bleak walker/berserker, and is complaining to obsidian 'bout lack o' reactivity.

 

is pretty standard for players to have limited capacity to customize companions in story-driven crpgs.  likely gonna alienate fewer folks by simple adopting custom in the genre as 'posed to throwing open companion customization and then needing deal with crpg grognards who bemoan lack o' choice and consequences... and yeah, if you don't like the perfect viable companions as-is, you do have the option o' creating hirelings.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

I agree with insofar as restricting way-off main classes (Imagine being able to make Durance a non-priest, Aloth a non-wizard etc). However I don't see how it necessarily extends to subclasses since it wouldn't create the same lore problems if, say, Pallegina is a Paladin (two choices obv.) / vanilla Chanter or Paladin / Beckoner.

 

 

No lore problem. Length of list problem.

 

Pallegina should be a

 

1) Paladin

2) Paladin/Chanter

3) Paladin/Beckoner

4) Paladin/troubadour

5) Paladin/fighter

6) Paladin/blackjacket

7) Paladin/devoted

Paladin/Unbroken

 

Your dialogue choices would scroll off the page. And that is assuming paladin order is predetermined from PoE1. A free choice of paladin order would increase the number of dialogue options needed to 40!

Edited February 27, 2018 by Fardragon

[JerekKruger]

I said I'd bow out, but this is a response from an old post so I'll quickly reply.

 

1) Because of the unique companion subclasses. Anything selectable by the watcher would have to be selectable by the companion, and visa versa, so you wouldn't be able to have subclasses unique to one companion, like shark spiritshifting.

 

It'll require more work yes. Perhaps the amount is too much to justify, though I strongly suspect it's more a case of Obsidian not wanting to overwhelm players with choices.

 

2) Because it would make the companion's appearance, race, and attributes customisable. Eder as an Orlan anyone?

 

Presumably Obsidian would go the same route they did with respeccing in PoE and limit what can be changed.

Edited February 27, 2018 by JerekKruger

[malchiorita]

 

 

Wait, what? Companions shouldn't be customizable too much. Do you customize people you meet in real life? No, they are people with minds of their own, just like companions in a game. Do whatever you want with their inventory, change their colours, pick out of 3 possible class options (this is a lot!)... what more do you want? Hirelings, this is what you want.

So it's okay to choose which of three different class combinations a companion has, what abilities they learn at level up, and what weapons and armour they use, but going beyond that crosses some invisible line of character autonomy?

From a designers point of view: yes.

I lol'd irl.

 

I can understand a certain degree of restriction (i.e. Priest or paladins). But i cant see how giving the possibilities to pick a subclass for eder or aloth can be a wall for developers (which btw, after all the hard work to create and develop all the classes, subclasses, balance multiclass and so on should be more than happy to give us the most freedom possibile to toy around with combination, without forcing us to use hirelings... That would waste the work of developers on companions interactions, quests etc...)

 

Also i dont see a single reason why people should be happy about being limited and why they would want others to be limited aswell.. You want your eder to be a pure basic fighter?you feel that the less option you are given the better? Fine, you can even ignore the chance to multiclass eder or make him a rogue. Let me choose to make him an unbroken or a devoted kkthx

[CottonWolf]

 

 

 

Wait, what? Companions shouldn't be customizable too much. Do you customize people you meet in real life? No, they are people with minds of their own, just like companions in a game. Do whatever you want with their inventory, change their colours, pick out of 3 possible class options (this is a lot!)... what more do you want? Hirelings, this is what you want.

So it's okay to choose which of three different class combinations a companion has, what abilities they learn at level up, and what weapons and armour they use, but going beyond that crosses some invisible line of character autonomy?

From a designers point of view: yes.

I lol'd irl.

 

I can understand a certain degree of restriction (i.e. Priest or paladins). But i cant see how giving the possibilities to pick a subclass for eder or aloth can be a wall for developers (which btw, after all the hard work to create and develop all the classes, subclasses, balance multiclass and so on should be more than happy to give us the most freedom possibile to toy around with combination, without forcing us to use hirelings... That would waste the work of developers on companions interactions, quests etc...)

 

Also i dont see a single reason why people should be happy about being limited and why they would want others to be limited aswell.. You want your eder to be a pure basic fighter?you feel that the less option you are given the better? Fine, you can even ignore the chance to multiclass eder or make him a rogue. Let me choose to make him an unbroken or a devoted kkthx

 

 

I'm broadly indifferent, but from a character perspective the subclasses do imply a kind of background or specialist training, so I can perfectly understand why characters might not have access to them. Like, it would make no sense for Rekke to be able to be a Nalpazca brawler.

[Wormerine]

Josh wanted players to be able to multiclass their companions however they like, with lore explanation being up to the player. If ya wanted your Eder to be a priest or a mage or a chanter it was up to you. The change was never made from ideological reasons but practical ones. Quoting another Josh explenation from Deadfire stream no. 8. He isn't against it, but it seems developing UI to support more broad multiclassing system from companions required more resources than they were believed was worth it. Maybe it will become more flexible with future patches, probably not. It is how it is. If you are not happy with what is provided, feel free to express your displeasure so devs can see it and maybe expand companion multiclassing in the future. 

"How will multiclassing for companions work?

JS: I actually addressed this last time so I don't want to go through it a ton of times again, but there are technical issues that will make it a little difficult for us to do true unlimited multiclassing and respeccing with companions. Right now we have something in where it's basically three main sort of multiclassing options for every character, or rather, there's a base class and two multiclass options. That's what we're currently using. That can expand in the future. I don't want to get everyone's hopes crazy up, nor do I want to say it's impossible, but it is — we basically did an analysis of how expensive it would be to rework the character creation and leveling up system to handle that, and it was not a small amount of work. So, before I say, "Yeah, we're definitely going to do it", I have to caution you that we might not have the time to do that. At least at launch. That's how that is currently."

[Messier-31]

I lol'd irl.

I can understand a certain degree of restriction (i.e. Priest or paladins). But i cant see how giving the possibilities to pick a subclass for eder or aloth can be a wall for developers (which btw, after all the hard work to create and develop all the classes, subclasses, balance multiclass and so on should be more than happy to give us the most freedom possibile to toy around with combination, without forcing us to use hirelings... That would waste the work of developers on companions interactions, quests etc...)

 

Also i dont see a single reason why people should be happy about being limited and why they would want others to be limited aswell.. You want your eder to be a pure basic fighter?you feel that the less option you are given the better? Fine, you can even ignore the chance to multiclass eder or make him a rogue. Let me choose to make him an unbroken or a devoted kkthx

 

 

Not subclass, the current state of things is fine;

You haven't read rest of my posts here.

The issue was speculation of changing the entire class, e.g. the possibility to change Eder into a wizard, a barbarian, a druid...

Edited February 27, 2018 by Messier-31

[JerekKruger]

The issue was speculation of changing the entire class, e.g. the possibility to change Eder into a wizard, a barbarian, a druid...

 

I never intended this. In my ideal version of companion multiclassing companions would still be forced to take as one of their two classes one of their "core" classes (Fighter or Rogue for Eder, Paladin for Pallegina, Wizard for Aloth etc.). I wouldn't want it to be possible to make Aloth a Barbarian/Monk for example. Not sure if that was clear, apologies if it was.

[Boeroer]

"If it was"? 

[JerekKruger]

"If it was"? 

 

I meant was*. I was apologising preemptively for the possibility that Messier already understood that as my position.

 

*Perhaps I meant "were", I have never gotten to the bottom of when it's correct to use "if it were" and when it's not.

[Boeroer]

Erm... I meant that you should have said: "if it wasn't". 

 

Else you would apologize for being clear. I thought you wanted to apologize for being not clear. Or am I missing something?

 

By the way I would never correct or make fun about spelling/grammar mistakes. I mean besides the real great ones like Buttercut, Rodriguez and Direballs and so on.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

Erm... I meant that you should have said: "if it wasn't". 

 

Else you would apologize for being clear. I thought you wanted to apologize for being not clear. Or am I missing something?

 

 

It was a conditional apology. Messier's post suggested he thought I was advocating for complete freedom with multiclassing companions (e.g. making Eder a Druid/Chanter) when that wasn't my intention, so I clarified it. However I preemptively apologised in case Messier already understood my position and didn't need the clarification.

 

Yeah, perhaps that was confusing and not really necessary

 

By the way I would never correct or make fun about spelling/grammar mistakes. I mean besides the real great ones like Buttercut, Rodriguez and Direballs and so on. 

 

And I thought Germans were super strict about grammar

 

I take a similar position on grammatical mistakes, but there is a significant minority of people in English speaking countries that take great satisfaction in correcting other peoples' grammar and using "were" rather than "was" in a conditional statement is one of their favourites, hence my footnote. Ironically most follow the rule that it should always be "were" in a conditional statement, which is wrong, hence some of the time they are making incorrect corrections.

Edited February 27, 2018 by JerekKruger

[Messier-31]

Yes, I aren't :D

[Boeroer]

Ah - now I get it.

 

And I thought Germans were super strict about grammar

Can't speak for all Germans, but I am (I even studied German philology at university for some time) - but only when Germans make grammar mistakes in German. And certainly not in an internet forum. That would be a Sisyphean task.

 

And since English isn't my mother tongue: who am I to judge?