I don't understand the logic of gating companion characters behind a particular path. It's like somebody forgot that it might actually be entertaining to have an Evil character in a Good party, or a Good character in an Evil party?

Companion conflicts should play out while adventuring in-party, not precluding the possibility before you ever get the chance. All the companion recruitment quests are overly involved right now. It's too easy to lock yourself out, and the party comps (particularly for the Durge run) are very limited. There just aren't enough full companions in this game to be doing all these party breaks, and it shouldn't require so much meta on the player's part.

The first thing Larian asked EA players to do was evaluate and provide feedback on the "Evil" path. That was day 1, patch 1 of the EA in 2020. This had the effect of making players think that our 5 original Origin companions were basically the Evil Party in this game, and that the Good companions would be coming later on. But other than Karlach, our "Good" origin companions never materialized. Instead the 5 fab all had to be given a 'talking to' about playing nicer and putting their most agreeable foot forward. Their verbal barbs were traded out for 'thank yous' and their grimaces turned into smiles. Now of course people are on about Minthara as an afterthought, but honestly they asked, and got an answer on that one. But then they proceeded to put these companion conflicts everywhere, making it an "Either/Or" instead of an "And" right from the getgo.

Reducing the available party comps to such a degree limits overall replay, cause you only have to do that path once to realize that it's not really worth it. There's no, 'I wonder what would happen with Minthara and Wyll or Minthara or Jaheira doing the evil Durge route?' You know, strange bedfellows having to work together. No funny banter or hidden paths there, cause we know the good guys are just going to quit if we don't pick them first in dodgeball. Nevermind keeping your enemies close, or going deep undercover, or anything like that. It's just a miss in my view. There's a whole charm to playing a villain that comes from pushing your "good" or "neutral" companions down the darker path, reigning in the more willful companions to maintain a powderkeg crew etc. You lose that when it's up-ended by initial party locks.

Right now it's like every companion in the game has the spell "Know Alignment" as a passive, even though this edition of D&D ostensibly did away with that concept. Somehow everyone is always already in the know on this stuff, even our companions who don't have tadpoles. They're all clairvoyant I guess? we can't even use our illithid wisdom to muddy the waters? What's the point of taking the Charlatan background? hehe. It's as if we all had the word "Evil" tattooed on our foreheads, (which I guess is the case if you get the brand from Gut) but still! lol

It's just a bizarre way to set it up.

[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]

Last edited by Black_Elk; 03/10/23 05:08 PM.