Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What kind of companions would you like to see?

I would like to see non-ideological companion to carry my stuff around.

Oh yes, that would be so nice. Maybe a Half-Orc buddy with 20 STR?

This?

My favourite companion was always Lydia. Best delivery, any game

Too bad she likes to use Giant airlines without a parachute.

Ok cool, new page

In addition to a Dwarf Companion (critically important) I'd also like to see a companion with a unique summons, familiar/animal companion/other.

I'm thinking especially of Tiax with his Ghast in BG1, and how that pretty much made the character from a utility standpoint, even if Thief/Cleric was already pretty useful in itself. It's hard to say what might be best functionally when we don't really know who else is showing up, but some consideration of cross-over with the other PCs in the party so that there are ways to sub companions in/out without having any one Companion feel too essential to ignore. I'm still really hoping that these Origin companions are window dressing, and that the real companions will be greater in number with many more options in the mix.

Right now we are missing a second melee fighter/mule option, and its pretty noticeable if you decide not to roll with Lae'zel.

I feel like they spoiled us a bit, by giving us a lvl1 Companion with 19 strength and 14 constitution, already decked out in Half Plate from the get go. Also with an option to be an Eldritch Knight, like that's going to make most of the runners up look pretty weak sauce by comparison.

But we need another wrecking ball to compete. Perhaps the inverse: a mauler with very high Con and moderately high STR say?

Again, a Dwarf would be a good fit for that. This one isn't rocket science. Just because its a staple and has been done to death shouldn't preclude it. They should look at that as a challenge, like how to make a character type so familiar actually interesting, without breaking the trope fundamentally.

I never used Tia much, but he seemed interesting. But by the time, I've met him, my group was pretty set.

IKR

Btw yeah, I suspect Lae is not going to be very popular, I'm actually incentivized to play a beefy meelee guy myself just so that I don't have to bring her along. (Don't take it as a sign to change her Larian, I love to hate Lae, and I don't want her to be nice).

What I'd like is maybe a beefy/tanky dragon sorcerer who is meelee focused and gets more powerful as his health goes down? His fires would burn hotter and hotter as he is more and more desperate. That would make for an interesting, high risk, high reward risky pseudo-tank. The Dragon bloodline already makes you quite a bit more tanky and Sorcerers have CON as a recommended stat for some extra HP. It could be a she too, but I would prefer a human female sorcerer more then a male one. Dunno why , I just feel it's more fitting

Science still disagrees. And there is a lot of evidence that this is wrong. For some people, being able to express the gender they want to express is enough without any bodily changes - most people depart partially from the archetypes and most cisgender people aren't fully masculine or feminine. However, there are some people whose gender dysphoria leads them to literally chop off their breasts or penis because they so feel they don't belong - and I'm not talking about gender affirming surgery, I'm talking about people who end up dying, bleeding out, because they just chop off their own body parts because they don't match. Transgenderism is not the result of sexism, and it is absurd to suggest it is - it is the result of the sloppy way that biology works where people are born with bodies that don't match their internal conceptions of what that body should be. In fact, gene variants have been tied to being transgender just earlier this year - what has been found relates to estrogen receptors in the brain.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm


Plenty has been done on where the advantage is one way - such as with pay, promotion, whether or not there are laws governing what you can do with your own body, etc. While both men and women can be funneled into artificial gender roles that deny them who they are, the vast majority of oppression that is one way flows against women. The only exceptions I'm aware of is with child custody (which feminists have fought against the presumption that the mother is the best candidate) and with the presumption of who can commit rape (whereas feminists forced the FBI to redefine rape to recognize that women can rape men).



There is nothing suggesting that these people exist in the way that you describe them. They have gender, but their gender is right near the center of the spectrum so that they are left unable to comprehend gender and think they don't have one. They aren't outside the spectrum, they are balanced between the two extremes.

In MMORPGs these are called mules - but if we get a proper DnD product, you can have an actual mule - or horse - or hippopotamus - to carry your stuff around. What you want are mounts and pack animals.

@VeronicaTash before I reply, wanna take it to Private? I think most people here had enough of this topic, and while I would love to continue I do not wish to derail the thread further.

Please make it private.

Oh man the absolute salt.
well i assume that when everyone just resorts to namecalling that i at least made a dent into their stubborn heads.
>last century ideas
>live in a very small village
man you two realy seem to think im from some kind of podunk village, not because of my views but because you seem to assume that this tactic has any effect on me.

Judging by your arguments ive been on the internet longer than both of you.
Ive witnessed the tail end of the atheism versus religion proto culutre-war and im well aware that when you start comparing your adversary to someone from a previous century or a small village (man, dont you people love stereotyping others? pot, kettle..) youve realized youve got nothing to add in the field of argumentation.

you just revealed your own biases and arrogance about your position.
Im not subscribing to your framework.


>Yes, there is a crisis of masculinity today, in post-feminism society, because we have discovered that the way we used to think man should be, that ain't shit

Speaking of revealing your biases. I think you dont even KNOW what we "used to" think a man should be.
Is Stoicism bad? Are you in favor or against stoicism in the face of crisis? Given the current situation thats an interresting thought.
What abotu self saccrficie? is that good? or bad?
Because from your previous posts im somehow thinking that what you equate to "masculine behaviour" is not the "prescribed masculine behaviour" that one can attribute to the past at all, but rather juvenile male behaviour.

>Tbh feminist theory AND evolunionary psychology are both pseudoscience.

One of them is an academic field, one of them is an ideology.
One of them engages with its critics, one of them doesnt.
Evolutionary Psychology can predict outcomes, feminist theory can not. Which is a pretty good indicator wether or not a hypothesis is any good or not.
And before you ask me about sources, look up the Scandinavian experiment regarding career choice and upbringing in which it was hypothesized that upbringing alone dictated what careeers you were interrested in.
In the end the study concluded that males were still more interrested in "thing" related fields such as mathematics and engineering.

Not to mention that evolutionary psychology is NOT a fully "Nature" aligned field in the nature vs nurture hypothesis.


>Yes, I have never studied it, just like Sordak. The difference, I won't name drop a field of study I am not familiar with just to support my argument.

Say i hypothesize that if i drop an object, it will fall down. Am i namedropping physics? I mean i have studied some physcis in my chemistry major, but at the end of the day im not a physcis major, or a maths major.
I know how Hartree-Fock calculations work, i still probably wont be any help explaining the Schrödingers equation to you mathematically.

Am i just namedropping?
Your logic isnt working out. You can use something without having studied it. Ive read papers on it and articles by people who have studied it, that seems to be sufficient for making an argument on a video games website.

If you want. Though it does immense good for people like Bruh to actually be exposed to truth as opposed to living in a bubble immune to science.

Oh yeah and another one i cannot ignore.

"Its not my job to educate you"

Hahahhaha oh man! What is this? 2015? Man i wanna go back. I wanna go back to laughing at tumblr otherkin blogs saying theres 80 different genders and how its not "Their job to educate me".

That was a simpler time

>Science disagrees

another good red flag for anyone wanting a nuanced discussion. Science is not a singular thing, there are debates.
Ive actually just dropped out of this discussion to read a few articles about the nature of consciousness and specifically p-zombies, might get some books on that. Blindsight was one hell of a read and introduced me to the concept.

Either way, its a view that comes from people that dont engage with rigorous study and review a lot.

It also explains the contention on the other page.
The idea that evolutionary psychology has "non proveable premises" or something along those lines.

I knew this would come up because its listed under "Criticisms" on the Wikipedia page. And its exactly what someone would point out if he read about this subject for the first time when opening this wikipedia article and hoped that a source that *i* provided would give him a counter argument against my point.

Well for anyone swayed by this argument i advise you to read the wikipedia article yourself, if were all wikipedia scholars here, and continue reading past the first paragraph on the criticisms page where you realize that this criticism is not something that is "True" and that the same argument can be made about Astrophyscis, Paleontology and Geology.

Fields that im pretty sure none of you actually question.


Lets take another bite at this.
You probably agree that Evolution exists. That through evolutionary pressures and sexual selection certain traits are enhanced and others are not.
Fine.
We can also agree that through this process, there are different sexes and that females carry children while men dont.
We also can probably agree that men and women have different hormonal balances right? Because that relates to pregnancy.
And we can probably also agree that children of young age and different gender react differently to stimuli.

I dont know how controversial you consider this but its something that is generaly agreed on.

If we can agree on those things, then why would it be logically unfeasable to yout hat due to evolutionary pressures in our prehistoric past, men and women differ in behaviour?

I mena this is super simple stuff but we need to unpack this.
Give me an argument against it. Since i just made an argument in favor of it.




And before anyone of you accuses me of beeing a neanderthal again, NOTE that Evolutionary Psychology, or lacking that, my assertion, is DESCRIPTIVE not PRESCRIPTIVE, meaning that it discribes something that IS not something that OUGHT TO BE, so there is no moral consideration here, neither does it say what a man and a woman "ought" to be

lets maybe not and pretend we did
If people don't have anything more to say specifically about the Companions, can we just let it go?
They don't seem to lock people here, but they do lock the threads.
No reason to let 20 pages of commentary get sunk to debate the finer points off topic.

-----------------------------------

Back to the subject, just to take it further with the companions cross-over idea...

Shadowheart: A Half Elf Cleric of Shar/Trickery Domain.
Abilities are in flux but as of now she has STR 10, DEX 15, CON 13, WIS 16, CHA 14
She rocks chainmail and a Mace+Shield combo by default
Divine Spellcaster Damage/Healing/Tricks who mainly operates at range.

I think the obvious sub for this one would be a Druid archetype since they provide a similar healing utility and similar stat spread typically.
A scimitar+buckler combo is pretty traditional there, and while leather isn't the greatest for AC they have other spellcasting options like barkskin to help out in the fray, but they are similarly 'not up front' in the melee. Primarily AoE/summoning casters in the popular imagination, with some similar flair depending on which circle is selected for utility or rp dissembling type spells. Just like Shadowheart is a bit of a mystery by design, a Druid could offer a similar sort of secrecy bent. Shadowheart presents as neutral evilish, and I think a druid with the neutrality element would be a decent sub there. Shadowheart seems to have a soft spot for the animals, and so a Druid sub could provide a similar animal commentary off the cuff, in spots where those lines are delivered. Top simulacrum contenders among the current NPCs I think would be Kagha, since she also has them pointed ears, and similar phenotype, and would probably be pretty demanding in the romance angle. I like Halsin, but I think the more natural fit for a sub there would be for Wyll. Minthara is another possible sub here for Shadowheart, they seem to be almost identical from a utility standpoint. Maybe a pair of subs for each current companion would be productive.

How about the other Companions? Do you see any subs among the NPCs that seem like they'd fit well for a switch?

I mentioned Lae'zel getting subbed for a Dwarf tank type. But we also got Astarion and Gale and Wyll to mull over. Who might you switch out of them, or examples from NPCs?

I am a scientist, I bet you are not. Please keep your obnoxious ideology to yourself.

Sure you are, Bruh. I'm a political scientist, but not a biologist, but if you were a scientist you should be aware of the literature which you clearly are not.

I personally think that Druids could be a nice tank of bear-shape were to be given some tanky abiilties. That being said I was never a fan of druids, so I actually prefer a dwarf fighter type.
As for Gale, I definitely wasnt a sorcerer companion, and Astarion could be substituted by a ranger, who could sneak around like he does.
I personally love Astarion the most out of all the companions so far so I don'r know if I need a sub for him at all.

So you are not a scientist then. Thanks for letting me know.