Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hiring mercenaries from the Zhentarim

I want to be able to hire mercenaries from the Zhentarim. It is one of the things they are supposed to provide after all. It would be good if you could create other characters for your party. Getting the preset hirelings from Withers doesn't really work for me.

Especially if they'd do the betray you at a plot point if you turn against Zhent interests thing
Actually maybe a half-companion, who you can hire and customise class/looks but has a Zhent personality and voiceacting and short story relationship (think Minsc?) and if you get their trust enough they won't betray you?

I'd prefer that over Withers, honestly. Pathfidinder and Larian's own Divinity Original Sin 2 did something similar. I never really liked the 'Withers' npc and how he's used, and the current hireling system is really not great at all.

Not only from the Zhentarim, also in tavern's like Elfsong, and why not already in Druid Grove where you find Wyll - I mean: they are training for combat. And other places like this. It is a need to have on the second playthrough I think. They must do something about that system, now that everyone had a chance to play with the premade Larian characters and get to know them.

The Withers system seems rushed and immersion-breaking quite frankly. I guess it's cool to have him in camp for resurrections (although I never personally had to use him for that) - but for hirelings it's just stupid and yeah, like I said; feels extremely rushed. I mean most of them don't even look cool in any way, two of them have the same facial tattoo and to be honest the "hide self" spell makes most of them look better which is just an absolutely bummer in a game that has so many cool features and details as bg3.

The hireling system is just crap in it's current implementation, it just feels tacked on.

Hiring adventurers should be possible from every hub location and they need to be fully customizable, including name, race and background. If players want to make a party of 4 dwarf fighters or whatever, let us do it.

Making a party of Dwarfen adventurers would be great. I would like to make a party of Lolth Sworn Drow on the path of vengeance.

The entire system feels puzzlingly pointless, since it's not even remotely adequate at addressing the request to have "a custom party from the start", but the weirdest thing is that it doesn't even come with the benefit of twelve particularly well-curated characters in terms of aesthetic.
They all seem rejects of the "random button" being spammed during the character creation and a few of them feel almost specifically designed to troll the player.

It's not supposed to address custom party, it's supposed to address "help I killed/offended so they left all my companions"

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