I'd like to have female half orc character models worthy of a high charisma, like my p&p Barbarian Samurai (it's basically a completely broken build I stumbled onto, its fun)
And I like the Drow and the underdark stuff, and of course, I remember an old motto that related to a series of fighting games, it was called "No Mai, No Buy."
"No Viconia, No Buy" doesn't roll off the tongue as well, but I haven't done a BG Saga run without her yet so BG3 better not let that happen or I really won't want it. :P
@deltago "Right. It’s better to have Saravok’s confirmation to becoming a Grand Duke on hold for a month and a half as Gorion’s Wars travels the country side attempting to gain that critical experience, as opposed to if you do not make it back to Baldur’s Gate in time to stop the ceremony you need to confront Saravok in a completely different way as he plans his war."
You're right. Having the game wait for the player IS better. Don't put a time limit on my playtime.
Let me put it another way. The game adapts to the speed you get things accomplished to the point that, unless you are using walk throughs, you will never even know that the game has timers.
It wouldn’t be like “get this point or you fail,” such as with Minsc getting to the Gnoll fortress, more like “this opportunity passed, but another one opened up completely.”
-Unique Dialogs for characters based on sex, race or background. Even I loved PS:T and the bg series they lack in that regard. Since they go with D&D.5 unique classes dialog can be more complicated, but it would be a plus.
Make your character´s stats meaningful to solve quests, add dialogue choices, etc ( no more half-orcs with 3 int, 3 cha talking poetry and wooing wenches in old english). I want that my character race, skillset, stats mean something.
-Some rogue/stealth quests and a cool thievery/trap/pickpocket system. Let us hope a thief guild is back. The burglary system in larian´s DoS was acceptable, I´d like to see what they plan to do.
-Lore, lore, lore and more lore.
-Múltiple options to solve quests. One thing I loved about games like Age of Decadence is that you have different approaches to solve main quests: Stealth, brute force, bluffing...
- I know that sadly it was really misused in the last years, but I really like that "my actions and decisions impact the world". I´d like to see some factions you can choose to join, different paths that changes with your choices... so I have to replay the game lots of times.
Normally when some developer said that cursed phrase "decisions that matter" my eyes start to roll, but I hope that we can see some of this for real. Games like tyranny or DAO showed how the same world can be so different depending on who is your character and what choices he/she made. And please, do not use the kotor solution (Does not matter what my character did until now, in a simple dialog I define the end of the story).
-Some ability that open new interactions with the world. Something the option to talk to animals, see things that happened by touching objects medium-like, talk to spirits or the dead. Games like DoS, Shadowrun and others did it well and add tons of fun.
Spell and environmental effects interactions, same as in D:OS.
Non-combat skills being utilized to solve quests and explore the world.
.
+1000 to this, totally agreed.
Let me use my skills. D&D 5e has some cool skills that have great potential: Deception, performance, animal handling, investigation, perception, acrobatics, sleight of hand... I hope they will find a system so you can use them, in combat and outside of combat.
One of the things Larian did, and did it well in DoS games was the reactivity with the world. Not only in combat, but you can interact with the world in many ways, not only in combat: change the weather, crafting or cooking by mixing things or using logical tools like mills, forges, light fires, move crates or barrels to create barriers or solve puzzles, people that chase you if you rob them, douse fires or create them, clean pools of venom, etc.
And in combat and alter the battleground in your benefit (or the enemies alter it to make it difficult for you)
5. Mod support. I know it's impossible on console, but without mod support this game won't last long enough. The crucial part of BG Saga being so popular even today is because of incredible modding scene, and modders finding new ways to create something exciting and inovative. Larian give them proper tools to do such great stuff!
I think this is basic to make a faithful community and a long-lived game ( see skyrim, fallout or the bg series)
Nevertheless, dropping the chance to miss feels like a more fundamental change than either of the above, and not one I feel good about. It just requires rebalancing and changing so much else in the game line on-hit abilities like vorpal hits. Hell, imagine the green slimes from BG 1 with auto hit.
I suspect Swen has an issue with save-or-die mechanic, not the small randomness with expected result. Those slimes are perfect example of this problem - if they hit, you die. That's not how good combat design should work, and that's exactly why first chapters of BG1 were so bad compared to endgame and BG2 - your victory should depend on your skill and tactics, not on random chance.
I can understand people disliking the save or die mechanic - but those who do dislike it are less likely to be fans of Baldur's Gate. For people who played D&D in their introduction to gaming, the possibility of dying if you don't choose the right tactics was ever-present. There are so many ways to die, which can certainly be very off-putting if you're used to playing games where death is unlikely. However, the random factors in the game and the possibility of death is also a large part of the reason why some people have played the game for so many years (as opposed to playing it, saying "I enjoyed that, the graphics were really good" and then never playing it again).
I have no objection at all to Larian making a very different game, nor am I at all bothered about that being called BG3 - I feel no sense of ownership of the setting or the gameplay mechanics. I would, though, like to see a new game which maintains the same sort of combat balance as there is in D&D. I'm not rushing to judgment on whether that will happen. However, for the head of Larian to say that having misses in a video game is a problem, suggests that I am not going to be among his target group ...
Modern gaming taste, imo, has thankfully evolved beyond this. I think the problem with this system is that it highly rewarded save-scumming style of play in the IE games. And that stuff takes players out of the RP immersion.
It also meant that you often weren't engaging in the combat in a way that was intended per DnD rules and in ways that broke immersion. As I've said in another thread, RTS-style kiting was a supremely dominant tactic especially in early parts of BG. But it's not at all how the original tabletop system was supposed to work. And, without using kiting, the early parts of BG didn't offer you much of a toolset to beat bad dice rolls, and just one roll could give you a game over.
Also, reducing miss frequency doesn't guarantee an easier game. Since it's a mechanic that works both ways. If anything, more frequent hits is arguably harder, since the enemies only have to kill you once. You have to kill them every time. Imagine fighting wolves and gibberlings that never missed!
@DinoDin tastes differ, I accept that. The point that I was making is that it doesn't look like Larian is aiming to cater to my taste. Although BG is commonly described as an RPG, I very rarely use role play. To do so I think becomes more difficult when you've played the game thousands of times, but my tastes in any case are to enjoy the combat system rather than RP opportunities - which is why my comments focus on that.
I suspect most long-term players save-scum less over time and personally I've only played no-reload for many years. BG is particularly suitable for that because of the challenging nature of the game, not in spite of it.
My introduction to D&D was in PnP and I disagree that the rules enforced any particular style of combat - I think they encourage a huge amount of flexibility in fact. Kiting was certainly part of my experience in tabletop, though (like everything else in the game) the results of that were less predictable than in a computer game. To give an example, in BG you know certain enemies never have missile weapons and hence you can safely kill something like gnolls without ever coming into reach of them (you can do the same in melee of course if you micro-manage and take advantage of their slow weapons - but that's another story). In my experience the DM would almost certainly allow you to kill a group of gnolls like that once. However, if you tried repeating the same tactic he would discourage that - so you might find the gnolls now had missile weapons, or had trapped the surrounding area. That difference is not related to the rules system though, but the greater flexibility of humans compared to computers.
The developers obviously agreed with you a little bit about the problem of bad dice rolls as they included some protection in the game against being one-shotted if you had fewer than 14 HPs. I can certainly see how new players can struggle early on to avoid death, but that seems fine to me - the casualties for new soldiers in a war or new explorers venturing into a wilderness would be expected to be high. With experience / meta-knowledge all threats in BG can be entirely eliminated if you've got the skill, knowledge and desire to do that.
In relation to miss frequency I continue to believe that reducing miss frequency will in fact guarantee an easier game - that's because it increases predictability. If you know that a gibberling will always hit you (and you still only have a few HPs - and that's something else Larian might change) you would never go into melee with them. In my case I'm not a great no-reload player partly because I take too many risks - for instance by staying in melee combat when the enemy could kill me with a couple of quick criticals. That's part of the way I get my fun though - the small possibility of death maintaining interest where there would be none if the result of a battle is certain.
I would love to see the AD&D ruleset used for this game. But I think WotC wants to promote the latest edition. So I would think it will most likely be 5th edition. (5ht edition is still the most recent, right?)
Given that they're calling it Baldur's Gate III... if they can create some sort of tie-in to the Bhaalspawn saga of BG/SoA/ToB I think that would be kind of neat. I mean, the saga is finished but something about the aftermath of it, or a legacy that it leaves, that still meaningfully connects to those events.
I'm expecting that the story will be set in the post-Spellplague era which is after 1395 DR. Life has more or less returned to normal with respect to magic, but arcane magic users aren't using the Weave any longer. They had to relearn spellcasting without the Weave. And there are the "spell-scarred" that can still harness the blue flame yet attached to their spirit (? Do I have that right?) that swept over Toril and wiped out magic during the Spellplague and Sundering.
Nearly all of the NPC heroes of the Bhaalspawn saga have passed away except a few members of the longer lived races.
I don't think they should reference Abdel Adrian, because the games allowed your player created character to save the world. They can write to so that it's vague about who the hero was.
So anyway, regardless of what I would most like to see, I'm more curious about how they will use the current setting and ruleset to tell a tale that may in some way ultimately still have a tie-in the the Bhaalspawn saga.
@Lemernis , I'm pretty sure they've already said that this is going to be a completely new story that has nothing to do with the Bhaalspawn saga. It may or may not contain some easter egg lore references and cameos.
@Lemernis , I'm pretty sure they've already said that this is going to be a completely new story that has nothing to do with the Bhaalspawn saga. It may or may not contain some easter egg lore references and cameos.
Ah, okay, thanks Bel! Yeah, it makes good sense to tell a whole new story.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find the final resting place of some characters from previous games or hear something about the longer lived ones.
That would be fitting. Some sort of homage. Actually, at only a century after the Bhaalspawn saga, theoretically a drow, elf, dwarf, or half-elf NPC companion in BG/SoS/ToB could easily still be around and even joinable. Halflings and half-elves would be toward the end of their average lifespan, though. Not that the game will make any of them joinable, I'm sure it won't. But surely some of them are still around.
As much as I disliked the idea of the Spellplague and Sundering at the time when I first read about it back when, looking at it today I'm now kind of warming to the idea of how Toril was changed by it. It looks like any character that is spellscarred by the blue flame that ripped apart the Weave, can be customized in 5E. That's kind of neat. And I'm intrigued by how the geographical landscape was changed as well. To my surprise I'm actually feeling... pretty okay... with this post-Spellplague Faerun.
Just make the game give a warning: if you exceed 6 companions, XPs will be very diluted, while you will also summon more and/or stronger enemies.
(another alternative is to tie the party limit to your charisma: if you sacrifice your other skills to get 15+ charisma, you can hire more companions, but if you totally dump your charisma for min-maxing, chances are that you might even be forced to go solo)
(another alternative is to tie the party limit to your charisma: if you sacrifice your other skills to get 15+ charisma, you can hire more companions, but if you totally dump your charisma for min-maxing, chances are that you might even be forced to go solo)
Say hello to the first thing people mod out if this became true.
Did you know that in bg1, charisma/reaction already determines the response of joinable npcs. But if you use a secondary party member with high charisma (like imoen) to talk to the npc, he or she may still join.
I've enver used charisma as a dump stat. It also determines how likely morale failure is to occur. I never even knew Khalid had a reputation for running away until registering with these forums.
I've enver used charisma as a dump stat. It also determines how likely morale failure is to occur. I never even knew Khalid had a reputation for running away until registering with these forums.
Heh, I have the same attitude.
Even when I'm not palying Paladins, I like to play charismatic characters.
Then again, I usually dislike dump stats in general.
Even if I roll alot (lack of self-restraint there.. =( ), I kinda dislike to have low stats.
I rather sacrifice a point in dexterity or, more rarely, constitution than have low INT/WIS/CHA.
Heh, I have the same attitude.
Even when I'm not palying Paladins, I like to play charismatic characters.
Then again, I usually dislike dump stats in general.
Even if I roll alot (lack of self-restraint there.. =( ), I kinda dislike to have low stats.
I rather sacrifice a point in dexterity or, more rarely, constitution than have low INT/WIS/CHA.
This. I was never a fan of lowering a stat to 3 in order to raise more meaningful ones. I don't mind dump stats, but that typically means an 8 or 7 in an extreme circumstance. I usually like Charismatic characters, so my dump stat is usually Wisdom, which I then RP as a lack of common sense.
Then again, I usually dislike dump stats in general.
Me too. Nothing against players who like min-maxing, but I dislike the idea of having a character with a dump stat SO low that it would actually become a hindrance in their daily life. How on earth would such a character even manage to function prior to becoming an adventurer? Assuming that we're using the minimum of 3...
Low Strength - Such a character would be so weak as to be barely able to dress themselves, almost like being a bedridden cripple. On bad days, they might not even have the strength to lift food to their mouths and would probably need 24 hour care because they'd be incapable of carrying anything heavier than a can of Coke without getting winded a few rounds later.
Low Dexterity - This character would be such a monumental klutz that they're the sort of person who trips and falls just trying to step onto the sidewalk. Constantly. They'd be forever dropping things, and using that food example above, imagine watching someone trying to spoon food into their own mouths and missing 20 times in a row (and probably spilling all the food onto the floor in the process). That's how ridiculously uncoordinated they'd be.
Low Constitution - This character would be the classic "skin and bones" character, somebody who looks so frail that a stiff breeze would blow them over. They'd be constantly getting sick from even the mildest infections (which in turn would be life-threatening ailments, even if it was just a common cold), so to imagine a character like this willingly going into, say, a goblin cave or wading through a sewer would probably mean they'd die the next day from like 24 different sicknesses.
Low Intelligence - Somebody THIS dumb is barely more intelligent than most animals. They would not be smart enough to even speak a language properly, being able to communicate only in grunts and a few important words (like "Hungry", "Tired", "Ouch"), and they would never be able to learn anything beyond a few simple tricks like a trained dog or horse. Like the classic gully dwarf from Krynn, they'd probably also be unable to grasp the concept of numbers beyond "one" and "more than one". (Don't ever ask a 3 Int person to go shopping. They'd just give the shopkeeper a confused stare, then shove the entire sack of gold at them and happily take a single carrot.) What's more, they'd probably also never manage to grasp the concept of names, so trying to ask them to distinguish between, say, the party cleric and the party mage, the barbarian would simply say "Friend", but be unable to tell you the difference between them.
Low Wisdom - Wisdom governs the ability to perceive and interpret the world, so somebody with this low Wisdom would be constantly off in their own little dreamland, barely aware of what's going on around them.(Or conversely, they might also hallucinate constantly, seeing and hearing things that aren't there.) Someone with this low Wisdom is somebody you could try to get the attention of, but you have to shout and yell and snap your fingers in their face before they finally pay attention to you. They'd also be terrible at "reading" people; if you saw somebody with a look of rage on their face stomping down the street, you'd probably give them a wide berth, but to this low Wis person, the bared teeth = smile = they want to play!
Low Charisma - A lot of people think that Charisma equates to physical attractiveness (it's not) + the ability to influence others, but Charisma also governs your determination and force of will. Somebody with low Charisma is generally unenthusiastic and indecisive, and somebody with THIS low Charisma would be beyond depressive, barely able to muster the will to even get out of bed in the morning. In fact, somebody with low Charisma would not have been able to push themselves to do the heroic feats that the PC does; they'd be constantly plagued with melancholy and sloth to even make the attempt. (This is why I always give my characters at least 10 Charisma. They may have self-doubts, but they pull themselves together when it counts.)
Zaxares, you are strongly right. An charname with 3 INT should't be even able to speak properly, mainly considering that bestial animals had 2 INT( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/canines/wolf/dire-wolf/ ) but IMO on P&P, role play someone with 5 CON can be interesting. Imagine an might goblin with 5 CON and 20 INT carried by goblins like an emperor and unable to even walk properly, if the DM is willing, it can create interesting chars
About charisma, charisma determines a lot of things. Including the "magnetism" of the person in quesiton.
Most cRPG's don't represent well what "low attribute" means. There are exceptions. On Fallout 1/2, play with a low INT charname means that you can't speak properly. On VtMB, if you decide to play as a Nosferatu, who due disfigurement has an max seduction of ZERO, you can't even be seen by people and is a masquerade break. While other clans can get free blood dolls on nightclubs, prostitutes refuses the nosferatu screams and run...
Playing a low charisma character could be interesting too.
A powerful character, who is plagued by depression, insecurity and anxieties.
Why is he in the adventure in the first place? His best (and probably only) friend draged him with him.
A paladin or bard character could have taken a shine to him and constantly tries to motivate him and improve his mental health.
In fact, playing a min-maxed character in p&p *can* be interesting, if the character is played by a good player. The character may be a nigh-perfect killing machine in battle, but playing such a character out of battle (even better in a low-combat campaign) can be challenging and interesting.
But playing a ..broken character is hard. I once played a alcoholic cleric and it is pretty difficulty to constantly keep track of the problems and way to easy (and tempting) to ignore the downsides.
But one small correction:
I think you overestimate the downsides of an ability score of 3.
They are the lower end of the spectrum, so I would think it is more a case of severe disabilites.
As in a character with con 3 has glass bones or something similiar.
Not really hero material, but with a good reason it could be done, but finding such a reason as to why a character so unfit to be an adventurer is doing that is not easy. And you need to have the RP skills to pull that of convincingly.
Low Charisma - A lot of people think that Charisma equates to physical attractiveness (it's not) + the ability to influence others, but Charisma also governs your determination and force of will. Somebody with low Charisma is generally unenthusiastic and indecisive, and somebody with THIS low Charisma would be beyond depressive, barely able to muster the will to even get out of bed in the morning. In fact, somebody with low Charisma would not have been able to push themselves to do the heroic feats that the PC does; they'd be constantly plagued with melancholy and sloth to even make the attempt. (This is why I always give my characters at least 10 Charisma. They may have self-doubts, but they pull themselves together when it counts.)
But Minsc has a below average charisma (9) yet he has more determination and force of will than many other joinable characters.
And Xan is the most depressive character in the saga, yet he has a charisma of 16.
I think that a charisma of 3 suits Hodor from Game of Thrones.
@_Connacht_ Charisma is the leadership stat. Its how well you can inspire others to follow you. Who exactly would follow a disabled ranger who can lose control and go bserk at the drop of a hat?
Comments
I want to spank my foes with angry braziers, statues, curtain rods, wine bottles and carpets.
The stats for objects are surprisingly potent too. You could animate 10 knives with +8AB, 1d4+4 damage and 20hp.
I know Larian would like that too.
I'd like to have female half orc character models worthy of a high charisma, like my p&p Barbarian Samurai (it's basically a completely broken build I stumbled onto, its fun)
And I like the Drow and the underdark stuff, and of course, I remember an old motto that related to a series of fighting games, it was called "No Mai, No Buy."
"No Viconia, No Buy" doesn't roll off the tongue as well, but I haven't done a BG Saga run without her yet so BG3 better not let that happen or I really won't want it. :P
Let me put it another way. The game adapts to the speed you get things accomplished to the point that, unless you are using walk throughs, you will never even know that the game has timers.
It wouldn’t be like “get this point or you fail,” such as with Minsc getting to the Gnoll fortress, more like “this opportunity passed, but another one opened up completely.”
-Unique Dialogs for characters based on sex, race or background. Even I loved PS:T and the bg series they lack in that regard. Since they go with D&D.5 unique classes dialog can be more complicated, but it would be a plus.
Make your character´s stats meaningful to solve quests, add dialogue choices, etc ( no more half-orcs with 3 int, 3 cha talking poetry and wooing wenches in old english). I want that my character race, skillset, stats mean something.
-Some rogue/stealth quests and a cool thievery/trap/pickpocket system. Let us hope a thief guild is back. The burglary system in larian´s DoS was acceptable, I´d like to see what they plan to do.
-Lore, lore, lore and more lore.
-Múltiple options to solve quests. One thing I loved about games like Age of Decadence is that you have different approaches to solve main quests: Stealth, brute force, bluffing...
- I know that sadly it was really misused in the last years, but I really like that "my actions and decisions impact the world". I´d like to see some factions you can choose to join, different paths that changes with your choices... so I have to replay the game lots of times.
Normally when some developer said that cursed phrase "decisions that matter" my eyes start to roll, but I hope that we can see some of this for real. Games like tyranny or DAO showed how the same world can be so different depending on who is your character and what choices he/she made. And please, do not use the kotor solution (Does not matter what my character did until now, in a simple dialog I define the end of the story).
-Some ability that open new interactions with the world. Something the option to talk to animals, see things that happened by touching objects medium-like, talk to spirits or the dead. Games like DoS, Shadowrun and others did it well and add tons of fun.
+1000 to this, totally agreed.
Let me use my skills. D&D 5e has some cool skills that have great potential: Deception, performance, animal handling, investigation, perception, acrobatics, sleight of hand... I hope they will find a system so you can use them, in combat and outside of combat.
One of the things Larian did, and did it well in DoS games was the reactivity with the world. Not only in combat, but you can interact with the world in many ways, not only in combat: change the weather, crafting or cooking by mixing things or using logical tools like mills, forges, light fires, move crates or barrels to create barriers or solve puzzles, people that chase you if you rob them, douse fires or create them, clean pools of venom, etc.
And in combat and alter the battleground in your benefit (or the enemies alter it to make it difficult for you)
I think this is basic to make a faithful community and a long-lived game ( see skyrim, fallout or the bg series)
Hear, hear!
@DinoDin tastes differ, I accept that. The point that I was making is that it doesn't look like Larian is aiming to cater to my taste. Although BG is commonly described as an RPG, I very rarely use role play. To do so I think becomes more difficult when you've played the game thousands of times, but my tastes in any case are to enjoy the combat system rather than RP opportunities - which is why my comments focus on that.
I suspect most long-term players save-scum less over time and personally I've only played no-reload for many years. BG is particularly suitable for that because of the challenging nature of the game, not in spite of it.
My introduction to D&D was in PnP and I disagree that the rules enforced any particular style of combat - I think they encourage a huge amount of flexibility in fact. Kiting was certainly part of my experience in tabletop, though (like everything else in the game) the results of that were less predictable than in a computer game. To give an example, in BG you know certain enemies never have missile weapons and hence you can safely kill something like gnolls without ever coming into reach of them (you can do the same in melee of course if you micro-manage and take advantage of their slow weapons - but that's another story). In my experience the DM would almost certainly allow you to kill a group of gnolls like that once. However, if you tried repeating the same tactic he would discourage that - so you might find the gnolls now had missile weapons, or had trapped the surrounding area. That difference is not related to the rules system though, but the greater flexibility of humans compared to computers.
The developers obviously agreed with you a little bit about the problem of bad dice rolls as they included some protection in the game against being one-shotted if you had fewer than 14 HPs. I can certainly see how new players can struggle early on to avoid death, but that seems fine to me - the casualties for new soldiers in a war or new explorers venturing into a wilderness would be expected to be high. With experience / meta-knowledge all threats in BG can be entirely eliminated if you've got the skill, knowledge and desire to do that.
In relation to miss frequency I continue to believe that reducing miss frequency will in fact guarantee an easier game - that's because it increases predictability. If you know that a gibberling will always hit you (and you still only have a few HPs - and that's something else Larian might change) you would never go into melee with them. In my case I'm not a great no-reload player partly because I take too many risks - for instance by staying in melee combat when the enemy could kill me with a couple of quick criticals. That's part of the way I get my fun though - the small possibility of death maintaining interest where there would be none if the result of a battle is certain.
Given that they're calling it Baldur's Gate III... if they can create some sort of tie-in to the Bhaalspawn saga of BG/SoA/ToB I think that would be kind of neat. I mean, the saga is finished but something about the aftermath of it, or a legacy that it leaves, that still meaningfully connects to those events.
I'm expecting that the story will be set in the post-Spellplague era which is after 1395 DR. Life has more or less returned to normal with respect to magic, but arcane magic users aren't using the Weave any longer. They had to relearn spellcasting without the Weave. And there are the "spell-scarred" that can still harness the blue flame yet attached to their spirit (? Do I have that right?) that swept over Toril and wiped out magic during the Spellplague and Sundering.
Nearly all of the NPC heroes of the Bhaalspawn saga have passed away except a few members of the longer lived races.
I don't think they should reference Abdel Adrian, because the games allowed your player created character to save the world. They can write to so that it's vague about who the hero was.
So anyway, regardless of what I would most like to see, I'm more curious about how they will use the current setting and ruleset to tell a tale that may in some way ultimately still have a tie-in the the Bhaalspawn saga.
And Drizzt fighting Wearbears.
These two things will prove that Larian
Ah, okay, thanks Bel! Yeah, it makes good sense to tell a whole new story.
That would be fitting. Some sort of homage. Actually, at only a century after the Bhaalspawn saga, theoretically a drow, elf, dwarf, or half-elf NPC companion in BG/SoS/ToB could easily still be around and even joinable. Halflings and half-elves would be toward the end of their average lifespan, though. Not that the game will make any of them joinable, I'm sure it won't. But surely some of them are still around.
Just make the game give a warning: if you exceed 6 companions, XPs will be very diluted, while you will also summon more and/or stronger enemies.
(another alternative is to tie the party limit to your charisma: if you sacrifice your other skills to get 15+ charisma, you can hire more companions, but if you totally dump your charisma for min-maxing, chances are that you might even be forced to go solo)
Say hello to the first thing people mod out if this became true.
Heh, I have the same attitude.
Even when I'm not palying Paladins, I like to play charismatic characters.
Then again, I usually dislike dump stats in general.
Even if I roll alot (lack of self-restraint there.. =( ), I kinda dislike to have low stats.
I rather sacrifice a point in dexterity or, more rarely, constitution than have low INT/WIS/CHA.
This. I was never a fan of lowering a stat to 3 in order to raise more meaningful ones. I don't mind dump stats, but that typically means an 8 or 7 in an extreme circumstance. I usually like Charismatic characters, so my dump stat is usually Wisdom, which I then RP as a lack of common sense.
Me too. Nothing against players who like min-maxing, but I dislike the idea of having a character with a dump stat SO low that it would actually become a hindrance in their daily life. How on earth would such a character even manage to function prior to becoming an adventurer? Assuming that we're using the minimum of 3...
Low Strength - Such a character would be so weak as to be barely able to dress themselves, almost like being a bedridden cripple. On bad days, they might not even have the strength to lift food to their mouths and would probably need 24 hour care because they'd be incapable of carrying anything heavier than a can of Coke without getting winded a few rounds later.
Low Dexterity - This character would be such a monumental klutz that they're the sort of person who trips and falls just trying to step onto the sidewalk. Constantly. They'd be forever dropping things, and using that food example above, imagine watching someone trying to spoon food into their own mouths and missing 20 times in a row (and probably spilling all the food onto the floor in the process). That's how ridiculously uncoordinated they'd be.
Low Constitution - This character would be the classic "skin and bones" character, somebody who looks so frail that a stiff breeze would blow them over. They'd be constantly getting sick from even the mildest infections (which in turn would be life-threatening ailments, even if it was just a common cold), so to imagine a character like this willingly going into, say, a goblin cave or wading through a sewer would probably mean they'd die the next day from like 24 different sicknesses.
Low Intelligence - Somebody THIS dumb is barely more intelligent than most animals. They would not be smart enough to even speak a language properly, being able to communicate only in grunts and a few important words (like "Hungry", "Tired", "Ouch"), and they would never be able to learn anything beyond a few simple tricks like a trained dog or horse. Like the classic gully dwarf from Krynn, they'd probably also be unable to grasp the concept of numbers beyond "one" and "more than one". (Don't ever ask a 3 Int person to go shopping. They'd just give the shopkeeper a confused stare, then shove the entire sack of gold at them and happily take a single carrot.) What's more, they'd probably also never manage to grasp the concept of names, so trying to ask them to distinguish between, say, the party cleric and the party mage, the barbarian would simply say "Friend", but be unable to tell you the difference between them.
Low Wisdom - Wisdom governs the ability to perceive and interpret the world, so somebody with this low Wisdom would be constantly off in their own little dreamland, barely aware of what's going on around them.(Or conversely, they might also hallucinate constantly, seeing and hearing things that aren't there.) Someone with this low Wisdom is somebody you could try to get the attention of, but you have to shout and yell and snap your fingers in their face before they finally pay attention to you. They'd also be terrible at "reading" people; if you saw somebody with a look of rage on their face stomping down the street, you'd probably give them a wide berth, but to this low Wis person, the bared teeth = smile = they want to play!
Low Charisma - A lot of people think that Charisma equates to physical attractiveness (it's not) + the ability to influence others, but Charisma also governs your determination and force of will. Somebody with low Charisma is generally unenthusiastic and indecisive, and somebody with THIS low Charisma would be beyond depressive, barely able to muster the will to even get out of bed in the morning. In fact, somebody with low Charisma would not have been able to push themselves to do the heroic feats that the PC does; they'd be constantly plagued with melancholy and sloth to even make the attempt. (This is why I always give my characters at least 10 Charisma. They may have self-doubts, but they pull themselves together when it counts.)
About charisma, charisma determines a lot of things. Including the "magnetism" of the person in quesiton.
Most cRPG's don't represent well what "low attribute" means. There are exceptions. On Fallout 1/2, play with a low INT charname means that you can't speak properly. On VtMB, if you decide to play as a Nosferatu, who due disfigurement has an max seduction of ZERO, you can't even be seen by people and is a masquerade break. While other clans can get free blood dolls on nightclubs, prostitutes refuses the nosferatu screams and run...
A powerful character, who is plagued by depression, insecurity and anxieties.
Why is he in the adventure in the first place? His best (and probably only) friend draged him with him.
A paladin or bard character could have taken a shine to him and constantly tries to motivate him and improve his mental health.
In fact, playing a min-maxed character in p&p *can* be interesting, if the character is played by a good player. The character may be a nigh-perfect killing machine in battle, but playing such a character out of battle (even better in a low-combat campaign) can be challenging and interesting.
But playing a ..broken character is hard. I once played a alcoholic cleric and it is pretty difficulty to constantly keep track of the problems and way to easy (and tempting) to ignore the downsides.
But one small correction:
I think you overestimate the downsides of an ability score of 3.
They are the lower end of the spectrum, so I would think it is more a case of severe disabilites.
As in a character with con 3 has glass bones or something similiar.
Not really hero material, but with a good reason it could be done, but finding such a reason as to why a character so unfit to be an adventurer is doing that is not easy. And you need to have the RP skills to pull that of convincingly.
But Minsc has a below average charisma (9) yet he has more determination and force of will than many other joinable characters.
And Xan is the most depressive character in the saga, yet he has a charisma of 16.
I think that a charisma of 3 suits Hodor from Game of Thrones.