Solving the Joinable NPC level problems.

ajwz

I'd like to propose a system where all NPC join your party at level one, and then receive an amount of experience point based on your aggregate party level. In effect, they start at level one but can be levelled up immediately, perhaps many levels at the same time.

This would fix:
1. Recieving an NPC a long way off your current party level (from a pool of perhaps 2 or 3)
2. Weapon proficiencies that you get to pick rather than the defaults
3. Thief skills that you get to set rather than the defaults
4. Hit points that you get to roll for, stopping the issue of playing on max hitpoint on level up but not receiving this for NPC's that join your party later.

OurQuestIsVain

This would be great for metagamers but I don't know how you would implement it from an RP perspective. It isn't as if an NPC would wait until you meet him/her to gain experience, the NPCs exist before you meet them. Personally I would love it if they did this but since beamdog isn't allowed to fiddle with existing content I really doubt they will do this. If this were a mod though I would definitely download it.

Justarius

OurQuestIsVain said:

This would be great for metagamers but I don't know how you would implement it from an RP perspective. It isn't as if an NPC would wait until you meet him/her to gain experience, the NPCs exist before you meet them. Personally I would love it if they did this but since beamdog isn't allowed to fiddle with existing content I really doubt they will do this. If this were a mod though I would definitely download it.

RP is always explainable if people want to.

As for level 1; hey it's not as if Khalid and Jaheira got married in Collage, recruited by the Harpers after graduating due to exceptional M.I.S. scores (Meddle In Stuff) and then drove down to the Friendly Arm Inn to wait for Professor Gorian. Then again, maybe that's exactly what happened

OurQuestIsVain

Justarius said:

OurQuestIsVain said:

This would be great for metagamers but I don't know how you would implement it from an RP perspective. It isn't as if an NPC would wait until you meet him/her to gain experience, the NPCs exist before you meet them. Personally I would love it if they did this but since beamdog isn't allowed to fiddle with existing content I really doubt they will do this. If this were a mod though I would definitely download it.

RP is always explainable if people want to.

As for level 1; hey it's not as if Khalid and Jaheira got married in Collage, recruited by the Harpers after graduating due to exceptional M.I.S. scores (Meddle In Stuff) and then drove down to the Friendly Arm Inn to wait for Professor Gorian. Then again, maybe that's exactly what happened

LOL, true enough. They are level one with no xp when you meet them aren't they They probably grew up in the FAI. Jaheira learned her druiding skills from the cook and Khalid picks up all his fighting prowess from the coat rack. Bentley Mirrorshade throws a party immediately after they leave because they are both bad for business...I don't think I'll ever look at them the same again.

CamDawg

ToB-style NPCs from BG2 Tweaks already does something close to this--you always get the lowest-level version of the NPC (which is usually one) and enough XP to level them up to the version you should be encountering.

Flauschig

Like, no opposition.

Dee

I like @CamDawg's solution. Part of what makes the NPCs unique is how their levels are represented; making everyone a "soft level 1" has a tendency to make everyone the same.

Setting a minimum level for each NPC and then adding to its current XP based on the player's total would make a lot of sense.

CamDawg

I'd like to point out that I'm not endorsing this for inclusion, just letting players know that there are third-party solutions available. Nythrun's Level One NPCs is an even more comprehensive treatment but is not yet BGEE compatible.