Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion NPCs you would take with you as companions

Imagine a romance with Sazza. How she falls in love with the hero and then brings love gifts like a dead fish or something, because that's the gift par excellence among her people or something haha....

And if you then flirt with someone else in the camp, begins to actively sabotage this, so that he suddenly has a handicap in battle times, so that we hold him / her for weaker or so.... Would certainly be very cute.

As an option too.

With how badly Larian implemented Halsin as a companion, I have no faith in them adding in any more NPC's being turned into companions. However, if the modding tools they release will give modders the chance to work their magic, I would love Rolan and Raphael being companions.

As to why people follow my guy around, it's because my Tiefling Azrael is a himbo, he may not be intelligent or literate, he has no need intelligence as a Sorcerer but he is good looking, has high charisma, can punch people to death with his bare fists (2 lvls of monk and strength being his 2nd highest stat) and can charm the pants off of anyone, even a dragon like one of his grandparents, I'm hiding his scales until he's around Lvl 10-12.

Nettie would be an option.
She seems more like something very simple and as a story character somewhat typical of the story.

If you could give her a role, then that of a rather healing druid, with a special druid role that includes more natural healing and a special shapeshifting form, like a forest nymph or dryad, which then has as abilities many healing spells and regenerative spells, as well as protection, for example, bark skin, poison resistance or something.

Since she acts as a healer in the grove, I could imagine this as a possible Nettie variant.

Otherwise, I like Kagha better thematically because she's more complicated and thus has a deeper story component.

Not really a fan of Nettie...
Kagha is more interesting anyways.
I don't think having an Emerald Grove Druid is a good idea anyways.

Nobody.

I would just want the current ones, including Minthara/Halsin to have much more content.

Morghal, she seems friendly enough, it's the duergar pretending to demand money our of you when you get to the Grymforge, but then turns out to just be joking.
We need some more playfully "hostile".
Plus Duargar calling true souls "Twat-soul" is hilarious.

You can call Nere Twat Soul as a bard, which he really hates. He throws a temper tantrum after that

Would be nice to have cool duergar companions, in prefer female ones of course.
Either I never got that or took her way to seriously... didn't her one bit.

Uhh here we go XD Some could just move into my camp. I adopt all strays, and I would just love to have more of them.
Also I agree on I'd just want more content for our existing flock, they are all awesome and there needs to be more of them, rather than more companions with too little content.
But in the spirit of the question:

Raphael - I have no idea how that would work but I cant get enough of that stupid devil and gosh I would love to romance my fav pillow princess.
Dammon - he is just awesome! And sweet. And strong. And I want him to hook up with Karlach.
Rolan - yeah yeah I dont care he is awesome and Id love having him in my party.
Zevlor - look we have Jaheira but Id love to have more middle aged companions. I mean Halsin is theoretically middle aged but Zevlor has just this little something. Maybe its because we see more of Zevlor. Halsin seems to have hardly any content. Maybe I am just old, maybe its the horns. I just like my people with horns.
Alfira - we desperately need a Bard companion and she is awesome and can sing. Imagine her singing in the background every battle!
Barcus - the worst adventurer you could have, but gods it would be hilarious!
Abdirak - tbh before BG3 I did not read into dnd lore at all but I didnt get evil godess at all from our interaction with him. I'd really have loved to learn more about him and how and why he worships Loviatar. Super interesting and again, I adopt all strays. I'll make a village of this camp yet.
Lucretious - fabulous, necromancer, what more do I have to say.
I am not to keen on Nettie but I'd have loved a fem Dwarf companion.

Alfira as a bard and Ellyka as a ranger. I have a soft spot for them. But honestly I’d love to see some of the current companions fleshed out more. That would be my priority. Justice for Karlach, am I right?

Nettie isn't even the best healer in the Grove, she's second best, everything Nettie would have would be copied and pasted from Halsin, however instead of a bear it'll be another animal.

Yeah Kagha has that evil edge to her which makes her stand out however even then she'll have to get rid of that ugly haircut if she wants to join my party.

Haha Yeah I hate her hair too.
Kanga can go a good route, bad route and or whatever... Would love to have her over Halsin plus wouldn't mind seeing her interact with Jaheira.

Anyways as I've said before somewhere; I'd love to take Xeph, Alfira Nadira as companions...
I see Xeph as a Barbarian/Fighter. Alfira we already know.
Nadira iirc says she ain't a fighter but she could learn.

There definitely was a couple more female Teiflings that I liked.

I think in this case the quantity services the quality, albeit indirectly. Mainly it just gives more opportunities to explore a character concept without overburdening them with too much to carry. The existing recruitable companions are a bit overwrought in my view already, or at least a bit overwrought compared to what I'm looking for in a Baldur's Gate game. When the character sketches are a bit looser and more impressionistic, that allows the player to project onto these characters in a way that's more open ended and flexible, but which still ties into the story. Too much detail, and things can drift quickly into disappointed expectations or incongruities that become hard to reconcile. Disconnects between the first impression and the final rendering.

I also think the rough sketch approach lends itself somewhat better to comedy and light-heartedness, since it's mainly surface there, whereas if you really plumb the depths then the characters become sorta too real, and the comedy can turn tragic. Comedy is probably harder in it's way, because it's ephemeral and subject to taste and can be difficult to translate, but when it works it's timeless. Like Monty Python is still going to be funny, even if some of the jokes don't quite land anymore in the same way. It's got that special something and you know what it was trying to be. To me Baldur's Gate, the original, was primarily levity (albeit with some light dabbling into gravity) but it was a loving sendup of the D&D genre and laden with inside jokes and goofy riffs. The plot is basically Highlander meets 'everything you ever read about the Forgotten Realms', meets Duck Soup. So maybe that feeds into my feelings on the characterization in these games with the bar somewhat lowered on what's required to make me smile.

In BG1 the character Jaheira had a grand total of what, maybe 50 spoken lines? Like over the whole 100-some-odd hours of gameplay. These were each 1 line phrases, which were essentially all barks and interjections and banters. At least half of those were cross companion banters. So basically a couple barks aimed at each potential companions and the rest were battlecrys or running commentary. You know like "This city is a blight on the landscape. Better to have let the land grow wild." That was pretty much it. Yet she managed to make an impression there through her VA and her hook was solid. Things stirring the south and such. Taking some swipes at Khalid and Charname and Imoen, pretty much everybody. It was enough to get the ball rolling, not quite enough by today's standards. BG2 had much more on this score, though a fair bit less than BG3 Origins, and is about at the level I'd hope to see for the BG3 non-origin companions.

I think we could divide things up pretty readily with a couple simple rules of thumb for who might make the shortlist...

If the NPC character is a major vehicle for main plot story delivery, then they should probably be tabled until the point in the game where that part of story has largely been resolved. This might preclude some NPCs from hopping into the mix until the mid-game or the end-game. Or if the character is already attached to an Origin storyline, in that way that Mizora rides Wylls coat tails, or Voss has a lot to say to Lae'zel, those characters would be endgame most likely. To even make it feel worth it at that point, they would probably need associated extra content, a few fights that basically follow after them since the game is almost over at that point.

If the character is a merchant, then you'd need a way for them to basically bring on a shopkeep or someone who takes over their operation in order to maintain a functional game. All that loot just gets transferred to the stand-in merchant, so the character can hit the road with the party. They might bring along a thematic piece of equipment from their shop inventory, but leave all the gold and the rest, so as not to unbalance the game by having the party suddenly get rich that way. Still if they have fetch quests, like Dammon and the iron for Karlach, those interactions might follow the character rather than the shop.

If the character has a natural pairing with another character, then the gameplay and recruitment should probably swing off that. Since this mirrors the kinds of pairs and breaks we had in BG1, a similar set up could work. But there should be options to break a pairing that don't require us to kill one character in order to keep the other. Or at least not unless that's already somehow thematic for the characters. Instead the breaks there could be via some dialog mazes, or resolving a quest that provides a natural outro, so the hangers-on can exit stage left without too much disruption.

If a bit character is going to die as part of some other bit character's story, then that death scene should be really spectacular. Since a timeless and enduring death scene is every bit players secret vanity goal hehe.

Otherwise I think pretty much everyone is fair game, provided they have a couple lines and a couple fans. That said, if the character is going to be a romantic trope, this should be telegraphed well in advance so we can pick the right trope. Mostly this holds with the current companions, though there are a couple notable switcheroos. Minthara starts out all Natural Born Killers like some sort of Bonnie and Clyde thing, but ends up pretty sentimental. Halsin presents as one sort of thing, but then takes over what might have been Minthara's backstory in the 3rd Act somehow. Both seem to be a bit of a bait and switch, though it seems to have worked out a lot better for the Minthara fans I guess, from what I'm reading in the other thread. I think this is a bit of the 'trailer not matching the movie' situation. Like I don't really know what happened there, I think Halsin started out Rom Com in tone, but then went off the rails into The Sleepers? I don't know, he's not a top pick for me really cause I get bored in the second act, but if there were 3 other Male NPCs, who all had a similarly jacked physique and a pleasing demeaner, maybe they could have split some of that material across a couple different characters so it could have been done more deftly? Subjects for the other thread I guess on that one, but main point being, if there's going to be romance it should kinda deliver as advertised.

Also they should just maybe try to avoid the big switcheroo thing to the extent possible, and offer mostly happy endings there and the happily ever-afters, cause this is a game. People can learn the school of hard knocks in life elsewhere I think, since this isn't a thing that lends itself particularly well to gameplay mechanics. For the NPC recruits I would divide that stuff into lots a generic romance barks, and a couple setpieces. Taking a bath, sitting by the fire, the star-lit walk, all that sort of stuff, keeping it pretty light. Also for any path that might lead to romance with a character, there should also be a platonic friendship path, and a more adversarial frenemies path, that is equally developed. Goal here should be parity, and probably trying to avoid torch romance in favor of stuff that's a bit more even keel.

If a character really falls flat, then the upside here of not getting too attached, is that Durge can maybe just eat them to prove a point! Hehe and hopefully there'd still be someone else around after that who might pick up the pieces.

Here this is the last big headshot collection I managed to throw together during EA. I pulled them all from the fextra, but the newer BG3 wiki is better. I'll try to redo it at some point with the favs mentioned above and trying to hit the square format so maybe they could double for boards avatars or whatever. I think this thread can carry the concept forward for the Full release, so it'd be nice to get a similar image with the updated looks. I think I had the 50 shot spoiler'd in the other thread, but I'll just drop it here for memory lane stuff.



Some of these visualizations have changed, mostly in the outfits, but sometimes the hair or the cosmetic elements. Some companions actually made the grade, so probably don't need to be up anymore, but this is the old one. The EA npcs with the old look might be fun somehow as Doppelgangers along a doppelganger themed path. Or I don't know, but some of the old looks still got some charm!

With Roland the Wizard/Sorcerer you get a 3 for 1 package deal, I could see his sister Lia being a Fighter/Paladin she doesn't seem to be magically gifted like Rolan but does believe in doing the right thing, and Roland's brother Cal being something like a Bard or Warlock pretty much a charisma based class, so he can deescalate the situation whenever his 2 older siblings are bickering.

Okay unpopular opinion here, but I don't really like Alfira, honestly, just not AT ALL my kind of look, the pink hair, the clown outfit, just no..
But hey, each to their own, I'd not be opposed to her being an option, as long as we also got Quil as an alternative, too.

She isn't even a bard in DnD sense, she is a musician.

Given her singing is awful enough to make squirrels hate it, I'd say she's got the psychic damage of Vicious Mockery down, though.