I should clarify I guess, when I say cosmetic I mean broadly, everything in the appearance tab that doesn't directly relate to abilities or skills or the core mechanical stuff. For the Custom PC at any rate.
Not just their makeup and hair and tattoos, but the heads and the skin color too, all of it. I would also include Voice in that, and go even further to include the custom character's Name as well. I think the player should be able to change that stuff at any point during the game.
For the stuff that is mechanical, and relates to abilities skills or core narrative that would otherwise cause the game to glitch out, then I would still like to see some sort of in-world options to change that stuff at a later point too. Whether through magic or special items or some kind of Genie, but I'm talking above about the stuff that falls into the "looks and sounds" category, rather than the class/skills/abilities/background type stuff.
For Companions perhaps this should be limited, to preserve characterization, only to things that one might easily alter in the in-game reality, such as hair or makeup. That could ideally include Main and Secondary Character colors for clothing, (like it was handled in the original BG games). But at least for the custom PC, I just don't see the value in strictly enforcing many of the initial character creation choices as set in stone for a game like this, especially if there is no technical limitation.
I think the character creation aspect of the original BG games was among its greatest strengths. In-game the player could change their Portrait and Voice set for their custom PC at any point from the Character Sheet tab. In the modern games the Portrait has been subsumed within the 3D avatar models, so I think that stuff should be treated the same way here. In the original BG games the PaperDoll avatar was locked after the initial creation, but the most popular weidu mod was Gatekeeper/Shadowkeeper, which allowed the player to alter the Paperdoll avatar via a secondary application, and I'm sure mods will come out to do the same here. But this is 2021, they should really just build it into the base game. Its good design
I don't see a roleplay downside, only upsides.
ps. Just on the "Name" point. In RPGs naming a character is a big deal, and I understand why its a significant initial choice. Also, because often games would key off the char Names for stuff like how the character/save was stored in the past, so there is a traditiona of treating it more strictly in D&D crpgs I suppose. But its also the simplest thing in the world to imagine someone changing on the fly from an RP perspective. If they wanted to make it more interesting from an in-game perspective, they could have an "Alias" field that overrides the Name for things like dialog, at least from the single player's view.
Last edited by Black_Elk; 05/08/21 08:29 PM.
