Originally Posted by Sordak
To add to that: Hirelings, aka characters that are throwaway, is exactly where you LEAN INTO the tropes.
This is where you do the Stout Dwarf fighter (seirously: wheres the bloody dwarves?) , the Elf Ranger, the Old wise Wizard.
This is not where you put a non binary half orc paladin.
Im not going to be thrileld about a character like this on the best of days and if that character then also has no dialogue or quests to make me warm up to him, then all you did was make a character im not going to pick.

Remember NWN1 Shadows of Undrentide with the whacky companions? The cleric/rogue dwarf and the half-orc sorcerer? The only decent NPC was a human paladin who you couldn't choose. People, including me were as annoyed as hell. Eventually the paladin was made recruitable by a mod.