Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hirelings : confusing and limited. We need full customisation. Also, full Custom PC parties in SP.

No - they are not. It's only the mirror-thing that now works for them. Which means you can't change race, subrace, background etc. etc. - but yeah: you get to change genitals and hair and stuff like that. If that was what you were waiting for. But customizable hirelings? No. That is not what we got.

Okay, that's kind of what I figured. That's not fully customizable. It's an offered compromise for those that want fully customizable characters. The fact that this it is only a compromise leads me to believe that they never intend to offer fully customizable companions, which means the multiplayer work-around might be the only option for that until some brilliant modder comes up with an alternative.

Guys... you come across as incredibly entitled. Developers can't just provide all and every tweak to their product that every user imagines. They are obviously taking steps to address common feedback - so maybe be a little thankful for what they have worked to deliver?

Thank you for your constructive criticism. I'll take it under advisement.

I am incredible thankful. Lack of thankfulness or entitlement has nothing to do with it. I have a simple wish to be able to create FULLY customizable companions in this amazing game. This is a feature that most cRPG's have. This game actually even already has that feature, if you play in multiplayer mode. For these reasons it is not an unreasonable or entitled feedback, it is also not a idiosyncratic little tweak - it is a core element of a good cRPG for me, and many others. There has been A LOT of common feedback to support this viewpoint. One of the many people who supported this view is you. You wrote:


So to reiterate: I am incredible thankful for this game. I freaking love it. That is why I just want to be able to play it like I play all my other favorite cRPG's: With fully customizable companions (just like you do!). It is such a simple thing. And that is probably why it makes me so annoyed that it is not in the game yet. I am sure it will be one day. But I hate the fact that I have to wait to play the game my way. But what annoys me the most is probably that we can't seem to get an explanation as to why.

Point of order. In looking at the Hotfix notes, it says that Hirelings can fully adjust their appearance and name through the Magic Mirror. I've never used the Magic Mirror yet, does it allow you to change which voice a character uses as well? If that's the case, than I do believe that this implementation actually is fully customizable companions, albeit not through what I would consider "normal" means. If you can respec their class from the ground up via Withers, and then completely change their entire appearance, voice and name via the Magic Mirror, you can absolutely have a fully customized party. No? Of course you have to wait to hit level three before you can even buy hirelings, so for quite a bit of the beginning of the game you'll be forced to use the narrative companions. After level three, though, it does seem as though a fully customizable party awaits... if you've got the gold for it.

Edit: Just realized that if you can't change the race of the hirelings in the magic mirror then it isn't actually full customization. So, again, better than before, but still not really what we've been asking for.

It says that there are the same limitations to the magic mirror as with the Tav character. Meaning: you can't change race, sub-race, background, etc. It also doesn't say that you can change hirelings names. I have not tested any of this. I have only responded to what was written in the hotfix notes. I might be pleasantly surprised if the text is wrong. I highly doubt it.

Yup, I was just reading further into that as well. Made an edit to note that very thing. Ugh! I'm with you Lyzrl, what possible benefit is there to not just letting us make a custom party?! It's not like they don't already have the mechanics/coding available to do it. Sheesh.

Can you change the name of the hireling though?

My guess would be no, specifically because of the language in the notes for the hotfix. It says, with my emphasis: "You can now change your name through the Magic Mirror." And: "the Magic Mirror will now allow your hirelings to change their appearance." The way I read that is that the mirror allows the main character to change their name, hirelings to change their general appearance, and nothing else. I won't have a chance to play around with it until tomorrow morning to verify one way or the other.

Frankly, if we got fully customizable hirelings as they are written now, I'd still be a little underwhelmed. I don't like that they are zombies. I don't need a backstory because that can be my own head canon, but making them zombies ruins them. I like the game but I still want to be able to create a custom party from scratch like I can in all the other D&D/Pathfinder games I've played. And I'd rather have ambiguous backstories for my companions than a skeleton bringing them back from the dead to serve me.

With Patch 3 came some change but with following restrictions: "There are some restrictions: your appearance, voice, pronouns and nether regions can be changed, but your race/subrace and body type cannot".

I really wanted to make a playthrough with 4 Drows looking to customize them into Albae of the Markus Heitz Universe "The Dwars". Sadly i cannot! There is only one Drow in the hireling menu, then Minthare and my PC. So I am still missing out on one more.


Long Story Short - I still support the idea of being able to fully customize Hireling, including race, subrace etc. and I rly hope Larian gives it to us.

+ Glad you wrote such a nice post about it!

This isn't entitled. People have been asking for this for a very long time.
This is not what we're asking for.

Sure we can fix the goofy names. We can make them look how we want.
We're still locked to races and subraces they chose.
We're still locked from having dragonborns, or multiples of a race.

Why? Because you're so adamant about a TAV not being changed?

Fine. Then clone the Magic Mirror and give us the Hireling Mirror.
You have all the coding for the Magic Mirror.
Duplicate that to a new object that only works on Hirelings.
If the TAV tries to use it, it rejects them.
If a hireling tries to use it, it allows you to change anything you want via the character create menu stuff.

You literally have ALL the components needed to do this. It is something that could be done in a couple of days at most.
Just copy pasting the bits from the various locations, changing identifiers and stuff.

Edit: And it even comes pre-broken as a further taunt.

Means for the moment, your Drow hireling is always male, so is your Tiefling one.
In all, there is just no real defense for this "improvement".

Yes. I did.

Strange. I wonder why Larian isn't allowing a change of body type and race for hirelings. There has to be a reason.

Obviously, folks would prefer talking to Withers, then getting a hireling by going to the character creation screen and making their hireling. I'm trying to understand why this wouldn't be an option if it's so clear that this is what so many people want. Again, there has to be a reason, and I'd rather understand the reason than be upset about it. (In fairness, I probably wouldn't use the option anyway.)

Possibilities:

1. Maybe there's a technical issue with bringing in non-anticipated body types and races for anyone but Tav? Something that affects cut scenes? Like when the hireling is talking, for example. Could it be that another body type or race might not be able to open their mouth when talking or some such?

2. Maybe they're saving it for a definitive edition? Holding out on some of the good stuff to get more excitement when the definitive edition drops?

3. Maybe a fully customizable party would negatively impact their analytics? Perhaps they want to know how many players are picking this or that companion for this or that portion of the game.

4. ???

My idea would be - being able to hire friendly/saved groups of adventurers/soldiers with no quests and being able to respec them and alter their appearance. It would solve the problem of 4 companions of the same race.
This way you could recruit
in 1st act - Tieflings, humans, drow, gnomes, githyanki, for evil playthrough - duergars, goblins, red capes from the marsh
in 2nd act - tieflings, harpers, which could be elves, humans, half elves
in 3rd act - groups from Baldurs gate - I guess there could be the rest of races - half orcs, halflings, dragonblood.

Yeah, see, I'd be far less upset about this if Larian just gave us some kind of statement about why they aren't giving this feature to us. As it is, to me it presents bad optics. They clearly understand that their players want to adjust things with the hirelings/companions or the Magic Mirror would never have been implemented. They also clearly have all the programming infrastructure in place to allow us to do it. The fact that they're just making these weird incremental increases to how much you can adjust, but not giving us the full-fledged ground-up customizability apparatus is confusing. If there's a good reason, just tell us. If there isn't a good reason, well...

I don't even want to be able to change the hirelings or origin characters. I don't even want to be able to change Tav. What I want is to start the game with 4 custom characters, even without a magic mirror and all that jazz. I don't want zombies, but if I can just have some companions built from scratch with nothing to say, that's fine. If they can do one better and give them some generic dialog, even better. If they allow you to choose where to plop them into the story, bonus points! (E.g., you can start with two Tavs in the ship, gain another Tav on the beach, and maybe a fourth Tav shows up at camp, or maybe even more options, like having a Tav in a jail cell, in the middle of a fight with some creatures, etc.) Everything after 1 Tav + 3 vanilla Tavs is bonus; I'd be happy with the minimum, though.

If you haven't already, please head over here and submit a vote on the survey, because that is precisely what I would like as well, and I'd like the survey to reflect a strong cross section of forum users.

Thanks!

Honestly made an act just to bitch and to vote in that poll Temohjyn posted. It feels kinda wild I can't fully customize a hierling (merc) - I'm fully content in one playthrough with my companions I just think there is infinite replay value in being able to run back the campaign with custom characters instead of sitting through the same stale companion quests and dialog you'll see over and over. Even if you love the companions or hate them it doesn't matter there is only so many lines of dialog created for us to consume. Sometimes I just want to play the game enjoy the mechanics and decisions without having to engage with the same content that my companions interact with - or just completely wanting to engage with the game with custom homies.

They're already put behind the barrier of gold and having to be level 3 and having to get withers. That is alright as other CRPGS also put the mercs behind some sorta progression wall. Pathfinder makes you pay gold based on level and I believe even hits them down a point or two on level (which feels insane to me). Just let me make a fully customized merc via the Tav creation kit. pls larian your game fucks