Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Poll - Hirelings.

So this time i have very specific question in mind.

As it seems so far, concidering info we got from last Community Update, some Content Creators and Red Queen ...
Hirelings are in everything what we know as regular companions, minus Origin tag.
They have set races, classes, some backstory ... the usual stuff.

We can change most of those things tho ...
Some of them was confirmed in Community Update ... some was never mentioned so we can only guess.

One of changes that was never mentioned is their Race.

We know Larian will not allow our PC to change their Race ... and that is not necesarily a bad thing, bcs when our main character gets trough the story as a Tiefling, helping his kin ... it would feel really weird if he would in the end turn into a Gnome.

But what about Hirelings?
I would say there is no such conflict, bcs they are there just to fill our party, with no story of their own being told ... but maybe im wrong.
Anyway, would you like to have option to pick/change their Race?
Thats what im asking today.

And i add my opinion, right off the bat!
Bcs i would love to!
I was really looking forward for my Single-Race parties ... mostly of xenophobic Githyanki, where it made the most sense to me.

I just somehow cant grasp the concept Larian had in mind ... group of 4 Badgers, no problem ... group of 4 Fighters, hell yeah ... but group of 4 Dwarves? NEVEEEEER!
Just ... why?

Do you want option to pick/change race of your hireling? single choice
	Yes
	No
Votes accepted starting: 13/07/23 11:26 AM
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I don't see the point of sticking to a Larian creation for a character that doesn't interact with anything in the game.

Chicken.

Yes, otherwise it will be impossible to create parties that consist only of 1 or 2 races outside of multiplayer.

I wish they were strict on companions for narrative cohesion. No race change, no respec of attributes (attributes is supposed to reflect the character from a RP perspective) and no changing of subclass (at least first level).

And less strict on hirelings (full customization).

Instead, they seem to allow almost fundamental change of companions despite it making zero sense story wise and you are stuck with half-baked hirelings? Why???

+1
Origins - unless played by PC - should be class fixed in stone.
Hirelings - "so, you want to hire a Hlf-Orc Sorcerer? Let me check the catalog .... yes, I have one! One careful non smoking lady owner ... ermm ... no! I didnae mean to say that! I meant to say "a very hardworking, bright lad!"

I can assume because it seems to be exactly the same system they use for respec for all - player / companion / hirelings. So its just simplicity. Could be they thought that is good enough for players/hirelings and more than people expected for companions.

Can I have an option of no I don't need it but I think it should be in the game because a lot of people want it and it doesn't cause any major issues and all the creation screens already exist.

I think it's strange that we may not be able to choose hireling races. There's really no good reason they've given these characters set backstories

If I want to create a custom party I will do as I do now if it's available.

If that's not available I'll get some help from friends and create a multi-player game and then just play the game locally.

The reason I play custom parties is so I can recreate characters from a specific campaign or story, so other than the odd time where I really need a Bard or Monk or Paladin or differently aligned Cleric in my party I don't see me using the Hireling system. (Unless of course I can change both the name and race of the Hireling)

Thank you for reminding me ...
Its also imho worth mentioning that as we all know there is a workaround, the problem is that this works perfectly when you have litterally full custom party ...
Once you invite even a single Companion with story (not sure how it will work with non-origin companions, but i asume same as with origin one) there start to be problems ... i allready mentioned it several times in other topics, so if you remember that feel free to avoid rest of this post.

Main problem that exist with workaround, is that the game is still convinced its basicaly multiplayer with 3 PC ...
Second big problem there is, that Larian added dialogues for our PCs to state their mind and goals on key events in game ... aka freeing Sazza, resp. fiding out about Priestess Gut ... offered help from Auntie Ethell ... deciding if we join Goblins or not ... and many more.
In such situations sadly, any conversations with our Companions is overwritten by this.
Leading to loss of story and reputation gains with our companion.

Personaly i think that options for our PC to express if they want to trust someone or not is good ... not so much if all those PC are controlled by us in single player game. :-/

But one could certainly hope that Larian somehow fixed overwriting of dialogue triggers, and this will no longer be a problem. :-/

It depends what hirelings ARE - are they really completely custom but limited characters that we collect on our journey (soul coins?) or do that have at least some amount of personality - custom VO barks, portrait etc.

If they are created fully using Tav’s assets, than limiting anything (including their number) seems rather unnecessary. A custom mercenary creator (akin to Pillars of Eternity) would seem like a simpler option - unless engine doesn’t allow for character creation once the campaign is going, and Larian opted for a workaround using the respec feature.

Honestly they need to allow us to edit hirelings in a way that brings up the char creation process.

+1

I was hoping for a system like the one in Pathfinder WOTR where recruiting a mercenary opens up the character creation menu and let's you build from scratch, this is rather disappointing. If they're already semi-established characters with their own appearance, name and backstory I hope they at least have their own unique voices, I'd find it a bit annoying if I hired some guy and he sounded exactly like my main character.

The wording in the community update is a bit vague:

"Should you so choose, you’ll be able to create a custom party without any Origins, opting instead to have Hirelings join you on the road – mercenaries who can be hired to join your team temporarily.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, there are 12 Hirelings available for you to recruit – one for each class. Each has their own name, visuals, and race, and can be respecced at any time."

So they can be respecced, assuming completely, probably even Race and Name. Seems like an extra step, but maybe they thought this makes it easier for people who are not to familiar with D&D and RPGs in general.
What I'm wondering is the "join temporarily" part. That just makes no sense to me at all.

Larian lied. We were supposed to have a full party of custom at creation.

I think it was a development issue. It was probably easier to code pre-made characters and then, should you want to change them, you could go to the respec feature and it would call up the 'respec'. This was probably significantly faster to enter into the game rather than calling upon the entire character creation section of the game from a text prompt. There is no other explanation for why they did what they did, it makes zero sense. It had to be from a sense of expediency regarding the development of the actual game and that this approach was easier and used less resources as they rush to the finish line.

Could you please point me to the communication Larian gave where they promised that creating a full party of 4 would 100% be in the game?