Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The case for hirelings instead of extra Tavs.

So over the last 2 evenings I used the multi-player work around to create a 2 person team and played for a while to see what the experience was like. Along the way I realized as time went on why hirelings are a better choice than multiple Tavs.

You see, as I explored and made choices in the game using the "best" Tav in any particular situation, only the current Tav earned any approval points. As a result both of my Tavs had much worse relationships with the characters around them simply by virtue of only interacting with them half the time.

As an early example, only one Tav could free Shadowheart on the ship and recieve the bonus approval for doing so. After a little more play, she had warmed up to the Tav that rescued her, but was still neutral with the other.

It feels like hirelings are the way to build a team without having to worry about juggling approval scores and having to reload when the wrong Tav took approval points from a convo with a character that another Tav was romancing.

It might be nice if you could hire the mercenaries sooner rather than later, but I understand the logic now.

That’s really only true if you want a hybrid team. 4 Tavs wouldn’t care about any approval scores, right?

The only concern I have is the use of the word "temporary"

If they are like a parking meter and you just keep shoving quarters in then no problem.

They look interesting to me. Hope they have personality.

I prefer the hirelings to be named and prebuilt, as they are right now.

I'm not sure how I feel about getting them from Withers, but I'll have to wait and see how it plays.

Isn't the idea that the soul coins are the hirelings? We give the soul coins to Withers, he cleaves life to body once more, as is his calling.

If they don't have any dialogue, can't be interacted with in any way...maybe have some different selection/battle lines....why not just let us build our own hirelings like in DOS2? They were in there to fill essentially the same purpose (fill holes in the party that would otherwise be Origin characters) but at least you had full control over their customization.

I can see players wanting to fill an entire party with dwarves or drow for thematic purposes, for example. Which isn't really possible with this system.

I think we're at the point where people WANT to find reasons to defend why Larian is doing things certain ways.

More like speculate and try to understand. I never did a full run on BG 1 and 2 with Multi-player, so I'm not sure how it handled things like special powers, stat gains and relationships? Do you have any experience with that, I'd love the insight.

I think that what OP described is all entirely accurate. But I also say that hirelings, had they been implemented as fully created from the ground up, would not have just been extra Tavs. Your issue comes from using the multiplayer workaround that makes the game think they're players. That wouldn't be an issue with fully created hirelings.

Larian should have added a FULL custom party upon creation as they said they would. For some reason, they also got rid of profiles which makes this even harder for a multiplayer game.

They lied. End of.

"Oh you cant help it, said the cat..."

The problem is that once you have another Tav in party they block out certain conversations with Origin characters, so gathering any aprooval with them gets harder just for that.
At least that is how it works in EA.

Same ...

I thought that was just community speculation ...
Or was that confirmed?

Exactly ...
Hopefully Larian will realize that aswell.

Honestly we don't know enough spesifics about the hirelings at this point. If they can be fully customized, meaning class/name/race/appearance (a complete respec) like the PC, then fine. Seeing as they're fully fleshed out already and apparently have had some effort put into them, that's probably not the case though.


Is also unpleasant. While the other companions can leave us for various reasons, Larian have never described them as being "temporary".

Well. I can see why it *would* be fun, but... I prefer the system of Baldur's Gate over that of Icewind Dale.

The thing is, when I play Icewind Dale, I make a party that perfectly synergizes immediately from landing in Easthaven. That party has the best stats across the board and so on. It becomes a purely mechanical game to me.

In Baldur's Gate, you have to work to get your party to perfection. I actually feel more connected to the party than I do with six Charnames, even if - in BG1 your companions have just a handful of lines in the whole game. I much rather have options that make sense story wise. Then again, I am not of the mind that 'I hate the Origin Characters' in the slightest. I like the idea of 'Who can I trust in my camp?' - and that's entirely negated by having a bunch of Tavs standing around with no exclamation marks over their heads. So, for what the game is - of there weren't any hirelings - I'd be perfectly fine with it too. Of course, if you murder all your buddies, you run the risk of having to solo which can be over your head. Personally, I say 'well suck it up and keep trucking' but you know, a hireling or two fills that void.

Still, by that token, I think I would have found it even more enjoyable if I just come across them while exploring. Add hirelings to the pool as I save them or do quests for the order of paladins or a bard's college. Still. I am really, really anxious to see how these hirelings are and if they have something to say at times.

Having said all this. If you decide to play *as* an origin character, you have no Tav support to back you up; and i suspect this might make things more challenging. And even if not, it makes it much less custom, you loose the fun of the character editor entirely and I can see the complaint then. Whilst Act 1 is very well rounded, you're rather locked in who you bring along. And while I think I'll enjoy the story more when I play as Shadowheart - Missing out on the fun of using that awesome editor makes it so I'll not do that for a while.

On Temporary: I think what they mean is, they can perma-die outside of narrative choices. Where everyone else has their story and is able to get raised if they fall in combat, these might not.

The worst part of EA for me was the limitation to the party. Whenever Gale was being coy about a secret he told me three nights ago, or Shadowheart displayed dreadful slight of hand to "conceal" her artifact, I would remember that promise of a fully custom party.

I'm with gaymer; to me, this version falls short of fulfilling Larian's promise.

There's the fact that you can't roleplay as 4 dwarves.
Mainly, though, I will miss the ability to roleplay team dynamics. Tav is currently an orphaned bachelor by default. No family, no worldy ties. Even with just 2 Tavs, you could be mother/daughter newlyweds co-workers room-mates detective partnership
Duos are a big part of pop culture. (Name a more iconic duo than memes and this sentence.) Hirelings don't cut it for me, here, because they don't go through the traumatic event inciting incident. So I can't play through the story of Batman and Robin going to hell, it has to be Bruce Wayne getting tadpoled alone and then hiring a young boy :\

I don't know how serious this post is meant to actually be, but you really sold me on why a full customs on release are a great idea.

I don't remember. It may have been speculation. For some reason, I thought we had to use the soul coins for hirelings, but I can't remember where all that came from right now. Some Larian gazette thing, maybe? I might try to look it up a little later.

I'm with gaymer as well, while I like the hirelings somewhat, they are far too limited to be of any interest to me. Larian really dropped the ball here.
I had hoped for something along the lines of Pathfinder: Kingmaker or WotR hirelings. Well, I guess it's another item on the growing list of needed mods...

It really doesn't make any sense to have strong character customization while denying the ability to customize hirelings and making player agency one of the strong selling points of the game...

The sentiment is serious and some of the pitches are, too.

My original plan was to play a gruff dwarf druid, but the question was : why is he in Baldur's Gate? If he likes nature and being alone, there would have to be a reason for him to be in a big city at the start of the game. My answer was going to be : to reunite with his estranged foster sister. Playing two Tavs would have let me square that circle and given me some breathing room from the origin companions.

In any case, I'm glad I sold you on why roleplaying pairs (or groups) can be so fun. It's the only way to materialize any ties you've imagined between Tav and her pre-tadpole life.

I don't think I'll be doing it myself as I like interacting with companions too much, but yeah, that's a really good approach. Ideas just thinking yesterday that if I do make my character a Baldurian then she would just... not have any friends in the city. No connections, no barmaid who gives her a little extra food because she's a generous tipper, or urchin lad she tosses a silver to because she's been there herself.

Nah sorry but this feels like an excuse.