With 8 being the maximum number of player characters in a party, would there be a way to add a further 1-3 additional non-player character slots? Specifically, for those times when someone needs to be lead out of an area and is not meant to be a permenant addition to the group, such as Thrommel.
I believe thats a big negative. Eight characters are the max inside the game engine. (however you care to mix your PC's & NPC's)
i think the game tries to hint at the fact you dont need 8 from the very start (that you talk to the monk and barb at the inn) and ive noticed that the more peeps you have the more the game will show anomalies so even if the game could handle 2 more i would highly advise against it
Six PC's are usually more than enough for me, and that leaves sufficient room for all the quests I've done so far (all except "What Lies Beneath").
An alternative is to recruit some NPCs early on and build them up as if they were your own. If you then ask them to leave, they return to their starting points and can be picked up again (it may be necessary to take any vital gear off them first mind as they sometimes sell it if unsupervised!)
I'm actually running through now with just one character I rolled and three NPC's. I had to adjust the party size in the front end to allow me to take additional NPC's, like the ones you rescue and such.
I enjoy running with a large group usually 1 tank, 1 healer and 6 archers (3 fighters/3 sorcs with craft arms/armor). I makes for a slower level gain overall and feels more like an infantry squad. After the numerous ToEE playthroughs it's an interesting mix trying to rely more on ranged damage than anything else. My main question was more directed to Gaear to see if adding even more PC slots was possible in the game engine without breaking it. Ideally, i'd like to have a 10 man squad that could still perform an escort mission when they arise.
And here I thought that this thread was going to be about throwing a large party When I first started playing TOEE years ago my preference was for having as large a party as possible. Probably because I ended up dying so many times. These days I prefer to go with four or 5 max.
I think I remember SA talking about how the game engine starts to have trouble with 7 or more people in a party and that it really can't handle it. I certainly have less wonkyness with a 4 or 5 man party.
I don't believe that's so - the game was designed to handle 8 party members, and them being NPCs or PCs really makes no difference. Sorry but upping the number is not possible because that's core stuff. The only possibility would be to look into adding party members like charms for escorts ala Prince Thrommel.
Even Prince Thromel will not accompany you if you have the max number of NPC's already, as per what the front end is set at. My party of one rolled character and three NPC's could not escort the prince out because I had left the front end at the default setting of 5 PC's and 3 NPC's.
Thrommel was scripted in vanilla to be added to the party like a charmed animal (presumably to avoid the full party problem), but as I recall that was problematic and Co8 switched it to regular joining. So yeah, Thrommel will no longer go in all circumstances. The PC/NPC ratio thing is normal. If you have it set to 5/3 and play with one PC, the game will still allow you only 3 NPCs per the setting.
I just thought I would mention, although it probably won't be a problem for most folks that use a normal PC to NPC ratio in their party.