Sorry, I guess my understanding of the thread was different from yours. I didn't mean to talk down to you. As for mercenaries though, I thought that they were what you use for custom parties. In the other crpgs I've played that feature them, mercenaries was just the in universe justification for creating random characters. A custom party does mean just a party of mercenaries. What do you think custom party means?
I understand that a lot of folks use "mercenaries" as a term to mean filling out a custom party. I prefer a different approach. As if you were at a gaming table and your character wants to hire help. So the DM creates some mercenaries that are selling their services. Some of them more useful than others. I think that would be a more interesting way to have mercenaries in the game.
And as far as a "custom party" goes... just let it be a custom party with whatever background the player wants to give it, mercenaries or otherwise.
For me that would be a bad kind of mercenary feature. I like them most for offering the opportunity to make a party member visually as I prefer him/her. I'm absolutely sure for example that I would not at all like a Barbarian mercenary made by Larian or the average player. So give me the possibility to choose class, sub-class etc. AND the visual appearance of a mercenary.
It's less immersive than your way for sure because of course you cannot create other beings in reality, but I don't care for immersion in this case.
