Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General OCD is killing me! Need companion info

Hi Guys

I have restarted about 5 times already, in order to find a character build i am happy with. but one thing is still bugging me. I know that i will pickup 2 companions really soon in the first town. I know their basic classes as well. what i do NOT know is, what are their SKILLS and TALENTS ? I am trying to avoid duplication.

for example, if one of them has Pet Pal, or Leadership talent, then i don't need to waste this point on my characters. likewise for lockpicking or stealth or lore or blacksmithing, etc.

so can you please give me details on the companions starting talents and skills and attributes? thanks!

Jahan has Scientist talent which gives him +1 to Crafting and Blacksmithing. The rest are purely combat talents and abilities for both these characters.

Hey Hiro,
Fellow OCD gamer here.

Just starting myself so sorry I can't help you. If you have, would you be so kind sharing the min-max information that you've gathered so far?:)

Actually, I'm really curious as to whether or not Larian ended up adding more Companions to the game. I don't mind having Maddie in my party, but I'm just not a big fan of Jahan. If those two are literally my only choice of recruits for the first half of the game (or the whole game, for that matter), I'll go ahead and recruit him anyway, but I'll definitely be disappointed.

There are only 2 companions for now. More will be added in some future patch. If you don't like them you can recruit henchmen in the Hall of Heros in Homestead.

There are currently only the two companions. You can, however, hire various henchmen to fill pretty much every roll possible. You get access to the henchmen very early in the game (assuming you don't already know this).

As to specific stats for the two companions;

Madora
Str 8
Dex 5
Int 5
Con 7
Spe 6
Per 5

Abilities:
Two Handed 2
Body Building 1
Men-at-arms 2

Talents:
Comeback Kid
Opportunist
What a Rush

Skills & Spells:
Battering Ram
Crushing Fist
Dust Devil
Helping Hand
Melee Power Stance

Jahan
Str 5
Dex 5
Int 8
Con 7
Spe 5
Per 6

Abilities:
Willpower 1
Aerotheurge 2
Hydrosophist 2
Blacksmithing 1
Crafting 1

Talents:
Elemental Affinity
Far Out Man
Scientist

Skills & Spells:
Minor Heal
Rain
Bitter Cold
Blitz Bolt
Head Vice
Teleportation

Both started at level 3 when I acquired them, I don't know if that changes based on your level.

Eh, the henchmen are okay, I suppose. They weren't enabled the last time I played with the Beta (or if they were, I didn't notice them), but I'm skimming through them now. There are a few in there that I might use, but I can't help but notice that several of them have literally useless skills or talents (several, for example, have Charisma or Politician - both of which have absolutely no effect because NPCs won't actually talk to them). But then again, I'm going to assume that these Henchmen were designed by fans, rather than the Larian team.

I think I'm more disappointed simply because I find the personalities assigned to Jahan and Madora to be rather interesting, with their various conversational interjections and slowly unraveling back stories. Henchmen make for more control over your party make-up, but also deprive you of the personality. I'm sure that many people who play Original Sin will remember (fondly or otherwise) Jahan's brusque temper or Madora's paranoid ravings, but very few people will remember Henchmen like "Ragnar Bezerker" or "Theodore Boozebelt" (no offense intended to the people who designed them, of course).

Regardless, I'm certainly glad to hear that they're still working on adding new companions to the game. To be perfectly honest, that sort of revelation is ALMOST enough to prompt me to put off playing the game until they've added more of the fully fleshed-out NPC Companions.

The lack of companions and making the perfect party setup I would like kinda makes me lean heavily towards starting a game with 2x Lone Wolf. And then play with companions in a later playthrough...

On further study, I find it particularly hilarious that something like 25% of the Henchmen stink. As in, they LITERALLY stink. Apparently, Stench is one of the more popular Talents for them, because they can't actually be penalized for it (since NPCs refuse to talk to Recruits and Henchmen anyway).

On a related note, there are a lot of useless skills and talents scattered across them, too. I already mentioned that Charisma (and by extension, Politician) are both useless on a henchman, but this also extends to Barter (since again, NPCs won't talk to them, which precludes trading). One of the extreme examples of this is Claresta, 1st Level Cleric, who's starting stats (+3 Int, +2 Spd), Skills (+1 Barter, +1 Charisma, +2 Lucky Charm), and Traits (Pack Mule, What a Rush) almost literally make her into nothing more than a mule for carrying stuff (no weapon skills, no magic skills). There are also several minor examples of characters with Talents that they gain no benefit from, such as a Ranger who has no magical skills - but still has the "Far Out Man" talent. In one particularly comical case, there's a low-level warrior who's specialized in using Two-Handed weapons - but doesn't actually have enough Strength to wield one.

From a min-max standpoint, it's worth keeping in mind that any Recruits or Henchmen WON'T get bonuses from Traits, so a player trying to plan out the perfect party will want to keep any Trait-affected skills on their two main characters. Early-on, this includes skills like Barter, Charisma, Crafting, Leadership, Lucky Charm, and Pickpocketing - all of which are skills you'd only want to build on a single character anyway (since there's no benefit to spreading them out, and some of them are useless to Henchmen anyway). Sneak is questionable, since my current experimentation seems to imply that unless you're ready to do a lot of micromanaging, it's not worth having more than one character trained in sneak (and even then, your Main Two can get a bonus to Sneak from one of the Traits). Although I haven't seen it yet, I seem to recall both Blacksmithing and Lockpicking being affected by Traits as well during the Beta, so those might be more ideal on the Main Two as well - but otherwise they can be safely relegated as Henchmen duties.

This quickly makes a lot of the Warriors (Knights especially) and Rogues less than ideal henchies, from a min-max standpoint. It also rules out most of the "Crafting" and "Leader" henchies, since one of the Main Two will more efficiently fill those roles. This results in the most ideal henchies being the bare-bones Rangers, Wizards, and Warriors who have a focus on combat-oriented skills (such as the way Madora is built).

From a party layout standpoint, the henchies tend to drag behind the rest of the group when you're moving around (although this can be adjusted somewhat by rearranging the party order with the drag-and-drop portraits). Personally, this has led me to mostly stick to using range-based henchies such as rangers and wizards.

Companions and henchmen can still trade.

Couldn't you just change those henchmen or companions to fit your taste by using the editor (can't try it myself, still waiting for my gog key) ?

From an attribute standpoint? Sure. From a personality/story-interaction standpoint, no. Madora and Jahan are unique in that aspect, because they're the only Recruits who are integrated into the story - all the others are two-dimensional cut-outs who are defined by their stats.

So if you're willing to edit your character stats, the editor will probably work for those purposes. I'm more talking about the players who want to work within the boundaries of the game's guidelines, without resorting to actually altering the rules.

Oh, and Raze, I stand corrected on the Barter issue. So Barter isn't useless on Recruits/Henchmen. Charisma still is, though.