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.

"You can miss out on huge amounts of character-specific dialogue that were crafted in the Old Belgian Style over thousands of hours of coding, writing, editing and voice acting."

And? So? Perhaps, the people don't care about the joinable npcs are just rather enjoy creating their own characters. It's all about choice. That's the stated goal, anyways.

So how do you fix this gamebreaking issue when I'm playing

A) Solo with no party
B) Multiplayer with 3 friends and we all have custom Characters

I guess I'm going to put this game on a shelf. I tried doing mods and couldn't get a custom party. I'll check back in with the next update and hopefully we can have custom characters in a few months. Rather than play through the game now, I'd like to have a novel playthrough with the party I want. I doubt anyone would even care if they scrapped the whole mercenary system because that is not an appealing option.

I'd be happy with three extra slots in camp where a custom character can go. It would be nice if they could all be tadpoled, but I'd settle for mercenaries that stick around and don't have vessel dialogue. Even better would be you can create custom characters during character creation and either start with 1, 2, or 3 of them at the outset or some predetermined meeting point, like one of them is on the beach where you find Shadowheart, one is in the jail cell in the grove, and one "randomly" shows up when you make camp. There's room for one more in the nautilus, so you could also start with two characters there, either just showing up when you hop out of the pod or replacing one of the dead thralls with an "almost dead" custom companion.

Another option would be to replace origin characters (as if they were killed when you met them) and meet the custom characters where there would have been an origin character, but that seems unnecessarily destructive.

Love the signature Doomdrake. I wish Larian had the level of respect for the source material that Tactical Adventures do.

The ability to have custom party members (and not temporary zombies - animate dead is already a thing) is a pretty obvious thing to include for a role playing game. I think Larian's vision is more like a narrative adventure game than it is a true role playing game though. They saw the recent DnD movie and thought "Imagine if someone made this into a game..."

So hirelings are basically only there to pick locks for you if you end up staking Astarion.

Making party members as un-equal as origin companions compared to hirelings doesn't really work. They're both pre-made characters you can respec. Just hirelings don't have any content.

A game like this needs 12+ companions even if it means drastically cutting their content. There is no middle ground with "hirelings".

I would guess this decision is due to Larian putting a lot of time and effort (+$) into making the origin characters and they want people to experience them.

That said, I would love the option to use fully custom parties, particularly for later playthroughs of the game.

Hopefully they add this option along with a photo mode in a future patch/update.

I made like this for my current run except I have used 4 slots so I have no access to the origins characters now.

Thank you for confirming. I'll try again.

I still can't get this to work. It won't let me start a second session. Did you get your game on Steam? I'm wondering if the problem is because the game installed in the Steam directory. I tried copying the game into another directory but when I launched it, Steam started to download it again (and I can't seem to be able to stop it so have to wait for the download to finish). This is so frustrating just to get a fucking custom party.

To be a little more constructive:

I suggest instead of the "difficulty" screen that shows up when you start the game, you could add a few more options. Starting with the easiest to implement (least amount of coding time):
1) Point Buy setting. Have it initially set to 27 with a "warning" that if you decrease the number, the game will have increased difficulty relative to the difficulty setting that is chosen and if you increase the number, the game will have a decreased difficulty relative to the setting. I'd also add the option to apply a Point Buy setting (not necessarily the same as that of the main character) to Origin characters if you respec. You should also be able to spend 3 points to increase to 16 or 17 and 4 points to increase to 18.
2) Randomized attribute toggle. I guess it would be easiest to randomize and set point buy to 0. That would make it unnecessary to change the character creation screen, but I think that's fine because if you were just planning to reroll until you got what you wanted, you could set point buy to whatever you wanted instead. You can also have more than one randomization option (e.g., 3d6 for "hard", 4d6 for "normal", and 5d6 or more for "easy").
3) Bonus Feats selector. I would include an option to gain a Bonus Feat at each Level or every other Level, as well.
4) Unlock Level Cap. The easy version would allow you to advance beyond 12th Level only if you multiclass. I don't think this one matters much because 12th Level is close to endgame anyway, but it would be easy to implement.
5) Additional custom character toggle (at least so you could have two custom characters and leave a couple of slots open for vessels or origin characters). There is space for one more custom character in the mindflayer ship without preventing Lae'zel and Shadowheart from joining. Ideally, the custom character would also get a point buy and/or randomized attribute toggle because some players might want their "main character" to have better attributes.
6) Additional custom character numerical selector. There are several places where you could meet a custom character, such as "on the beach," "when you first make camp", "in a jail cell," "left for dead" (e.g., with the other bodies in front of the first goblin village), "dead" (a body pretty much anywhere you might find a dead body and that can be raised with a revivify scroll, such as in the place where you meet Withers), or "wandering around or investigating a location". With a little more effort, you could find your third custom party member in a location that depends on background or class, such as a Sorcerer or Wizard investigating the Harper site outside the Druid Grove, a Cleric or Paladin who is dead in Withers' room or the owlbear lair, a Druid or Ranger who is mingling with the Druids and is interested in joining your quest, a Rogue or Warlock is in the jail cell in the Druid Grove, a Fighter or Monk is left for dead outside the Goblin Village among the dead bodies, a Bard who is trying to help the Tiefling Bard at the Grove when you show up, etc. If you have two custom characters that might show up in the same place, you can have one of them just show up when you make camp.
7) Open a full character creation screen when you respec origin characters. Vessels, too, I guess, but I doubt anyone will use vessels if you can have custom characters.
8) Increased party size toggle. I don't see much reason to go beyond 5 characters, though I know some players might like that. At the very least, an increased party size toggle would allow you to have 4 custom characters (single or multiplayer) and one origin tagging along.

With these changes, you could probably make all difficulties Tactician and rely on the player to choose how easy the game is by giving themselves more attributes or feats. I estimate about +10 Point Buy drops difficulty by 1 (so if you were on Tactician with +10 Point Buy, that is the equivalent of "Balanced", and with +20 Point Buy, "Story").

Ngl I was kinda suprised the hirelings cant be really edited. I thought the idea behind them was to give us options for different builds and stuff but you cant really change their lvl 1 stats. Just your level up choices

That is my guess as well, or at least it was until I . That happened just shortly after leveling up to level 4, and before we've even defeated all the goblins and their masters in Act One. If you spent countless hours on custom voiced dialogue for a companion, only to input a cinematic scenario that carries the possibility of them dying before the story has even really started, it shows a lack of respect for all of your own hard work. If there are codified scenarios where companions can be killed at camp(!), let alone while adventuring, programmer/voice actor effort doesn't seem to actually be a huge priority.

100% agree, the hireling system is a dumpster fire. If you, Larian, yourselves don't care whether or not the companions die, just let me build a hireling from the ground up like the Pathfinder games do. Generic Half-elf (Wood elf) fighter girl ain't cutting the mustard.

I doubt there are enough people like me to merit this, but I'd really like Larian to come out with a statement the effect:

1) "We are not going to enable players to make multiple fully customizable characters for a custom party" or
2) "We are going to enable players to make multiple custom characters for a custom party"

I played hundreds of hours in EA and stopped because I figured I should wait for two things: Increased Level Cap and the ability to build a custom party. (Of course, I also wanted Act 2 and 3.) Larian gave tantalizing hints that the desire to create custom parties "had been heard" so I was absolutely certain that was going to be an option. When it wasn't it was far more disappointing than if Larian had just said, "we aren't going to allow players to make custom parties." Then, at least, I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Act 1 wasn't as fun the second, third, or fourth time around. So I don't want to spoil Act 2 by playing with a party that is not what I really want. If Larian would just let me know whether I should wait, that would be awfully nice. I'd happily hold off for many months until custom party creation was implemented. If it's never going to be, I'd rather just do my best to respec the origins and/or vessels into something close to what I wanted and get back to playing.

There are plenty of people who want to create full custom parties, I doubt Larian is foolish enough to ignore them forever. Especially with the limited selection of companions.

If they understand what players want, they'll add it in a patch/DLC or as part of a "definitive edition".

Yea I agree - I have given in to the fact I may just need to respec a party and use my imagination to fill in the rest - I've even shortlisted which NPCs allign most with my characters . But it would be great to know whether thats what I need to do, or whether custom parties will be released.

I work for a company with a really good reputation for dealing with customer feedback. They listen to all channels at releases and shortlist a few of the top features requested by users and communicate there plans within the following month - so maybe Larian will do the same in time.

I'm crossing my fingers, hoping you are right.

Playing a full custom party has been beyond enjoyable for me. And well any and all dialog I might be missing is just a bonus.

Thank the gods for the Custom Party workaround.

I have had zero issues. I have killed off most of the Larian NPC's upon initial meeting. Found them to be quite annoying. I also don't initiate hardly any dialog. I pretty much kill on sight. Not sure if this has helped or not with potential full Custom Party game play issues. *Shrugs*

This issue irritates me immensely. It's either an oversight, or just a very sloppy decision, and I cannot come up with any space between the two. It's a party adventure game, of course people are going to want to use their own -PARTIES-. The game cannot be balanced around just having one custom type of character, because multiplayer is a thing. I mean for the ability to be there as part of multiplayer, and it all having to be implemented it -feels- like an extra obvious thing for it to be present in single player, and like they went out of their way to not include it. If it's being held back for a definitive edition, then I'll go push on a refund now. I haven't played 10 minutes since release because of this, and if it's being held on purpose for later, I won't support that level of nonsense.

I had an idea for a party that was four monks, having left a monastery and being spit into this world. Well, that story doesn't include Astarion, and it's his face on the cover, so I guess I'm not allowed to play it unless I break my game. The Multiplayer hack workaround at least used to leave you unable to change any companions, and would make you watch repeated cutscenes as technically all four characters were "players". That is way too sloppy and janky for me, and not what I even baseline expect from a party adventure game of any kind of merit.

I saw a statement by Larian that they were making big changes that had to do with changing your appearance after character creation that was "much requested." Hopefully that was just code for full respec of origin characters because I've seen a lot of requests for full respec of origin characters but very little for being able to change your hair later. That's a start but I'm crossing my fingers that it isn't just a haircut. At the very least, if we can change the race, background, and class of an origin character, we can get an almost-custom character out of it, though a fully customizable party without messing with the origins is still preferable, at least to me.

I can understand why they don't have fully customizable hirelings on release, but I really hope they change it in a future update. Kenshi is a great example of the fun that can be had by being able to make a completely custom party. It gives it more of a sandbox feel. Another thing from Kenshi I wish they would implement is not moving the camera to a character by single clicking a portrait. Let me select a character who might be further away with a single click so I can command them to come to the spot that I am looking at. Double click should move the camera to the character, not single click select. Sorry tangent.