If you have to "stone-paper-scissors", you change to another partymember. Then, switch back to the one with stone paper scissors. After that, you have to end the dialogue and you automatically won the stone paper scissors.
I wish there was a bug that would let me automatically
lose the minigame.
Because sometimes losing is clearly better.
For instance, when you enter the abandoned church in Cyseal you need to convince stone guardians. If you succeed, you get 2.1k XP and can't fight them. If you fail, you get 6.5k XP for killing them and they drop a nice 1h sword.
I started a game to see how little XP I could get before being able to hire companions in the Hall of Heroes. I followed these steps to achieve this:
...
At this point you only have 5380 XP and are level 2. Hiring a level 1 companion now will not hinder your progress at all. Remember that when the game ends you will probably have reached at least level 20. When you reach level 21 you have 3080000 XP. Why all this fuss about companions being useless? If you are going to stick with two companions the entire game, the current system is not a restriction at all in my opinion. If, however, you would like to create a lot of companions and level them all up, then you cannot get them as high as your two heroes. But why should the game allow that? It is almost like cheating if you have 20 companions to choose from and can pick the two most suited for each and every task in the game.
Wow, all this metagame and you still couldn't get to them at level 1. That's a solid fail, bro.
But here's the real problem: henchmen (except Cain) just can't compete with companions now. You get companions for free, they start at level 3 and have some nice abilities. Particularly, Madora has Dust Devil which is otherwise unavailable so even Cain is of limited appeal. Jahan's preset is less exciting but he has Minor Heal and Rain so in my eyes he qualifies as a utility/healer.
Buying skill books early on without points in Bartering costs you arm and leg so it's awfully unfair that henchmen come with just one starting ability.
If there were a "create custom henchman" option that would let me make all the stat/skill choices and select 3 abilities like I do for main characters, then of course henchmen would be very useful. Right now they are totally useless. Full stop. End of story.
