An evil party wouldn't necessarily kill Astarion, they would use him...
If this isnt instruction, then tell me what is is.
Oh, dear... bless your pea-picking heart.
Fine, I'll indulge you: notice the adverb 'necessarily'? I'll explain what it means: not necessarily — what has been said or suggested may not be true or unavoidable. In context: "
wouldn't necessarily kill" - killing is not unavoidable. To put it in simpler words, which you can't possibly start another argument about: You have two
options: to kill or not to kill him. If you don't kill him, you can use him. It is a
choice which I highlighted.
Hand on heart, I honestly don't care about your ingame choices and I wouldn't waste time trying to control anyone's way of playing.
There, is that clear enough?
All I am here for, is to
discuss our current companions, possible future companions & any hints we might have about them. And since the OP was worried about the lack of 'good' companions, I provided info about datamined companions with quotes from Sven to support them.
Players like chubblot have done a wonderful job of scouring the game files for info, and since most of that hasn't changed since patch 1 (regarding the number of total companions) odds are good that the total number of full-fledged companions will be 8 (Astarion, Gale, Lae'Zel, Shadowheart, Wyll,
).
From what we know so far, any additional options will come from mercenaries (hired & customized by the player further along the story), mods or player-created 'companions' (as you can do by starting separate instances now).
If we ask nicely enough and often enough, maybe we can convince the devs to provide a single-player version of the multiplayer experience, so those who want to play with a fully custom group, can do so.
The idea
judoka(OP) mentioned has been brought up many times both here and on reddit so there is interest in this option.
The player might lose out on some quests and lore (where the companions' backgrounds tie in with the main quest) but could optimize their party without having to worry about approval ratings (and possible betrayal).
