Why have NPC's?

First thing i do is go marry Fruella so she can start getting XP right away. Before we go fighting she has chainmail and a shield. Then it's time to rock and roll.

 

i like to change NPC's as i go along, i cleared the moat house with elmo and melany, and now at Nulb i'm going to pick up the 2 sisters.
later on at the temple i'll try the 2 orcs, and so on.

never tried Fruella cause you can't get rid of her. thats just wrong.

 

Why the script for Fruella was written the way it is, you'd have to ask the game writers. There is script saying she should leave but she refuses to go. Until to death do us part sort of thing. She should be like the rest of the npc's and leave when asked. In my daring rescues of the countess and prince i'd like to leave her in Hommlet, but that's not an option. One of the modders could probably change that. I'm not sure.

 

I think it's because Fruella doesn't want to let her man out of her sight for fear he'll run off and never come back! ;-)

 

Could be. He might be the only one around dumb or desperate enough to marry her . The T1 module says she's handsome but bossy. She's just a big pushy farm girl. A little rowdy with a bit of a mean streak. I love it when she gets to 8th level and has greatly improved strength and armour. She becomes a terrific fighter and I like Fruella.

 

Gives a whole new meaning...

...to the term 'animal husbandry'. Personally, I never liked the wilting lilly type myself. Too delicate and prone to distraction, if you take my meaning. I prefer the strong, independant and sporty type that'll take charge of things...every now and again.

 

I think I was put off Fruella becuse the first time I played the game I didn't marry her untill my party was about level 6 or 7 and she just didn't get along with her sadist cotroling husband. I would normally hire Burne because my parties always HAD a shortage of spell casters (Altho I've never played without a cleric) speaking spellcasters are there any sorcerers in the game apart from Darley? and are there only 3 wizard NPCs?

 

basically the only reason to ever take an npc is:

1. So that they may die and you could loot their corpse
2. Due to roleplaying reasons.
3. Because people want to experiment with the concept
4. Because you want to hear their witty banter.

Some of those reason conflict. For example, reason 1 is obviously evil thing to do... and conflict with most party's roleplaying.
And sometimes roleplaying requires NO npcs (like this one time where I played a party consisting of two brothers and the girlfriend of the older brother).
I can't stand dealing with NPCs in computer gmaes because they are played by a computer, not a DM. As such, they die way too often as I cannot control them and excercise proper strategy.

 

You don't need to play with any npc's, especially with the pc patch count. You can have some of everything with 8 pc's, or 7 just in case you might need a certain npc, like Elmo or Burne. NPC's are an option for people who want to use them. All buffed up with 5 magicmissile, 4 fireball, and 2 icestorm, with a wand of magicmissile(x5), he's a pretty tough wizard. I always take him to the temple. He earns his looting money.

 

I've often wished for a means to get Darley earlier in the game. (for some reason, shes my favorite NPC) and to not have her scare off the villagers. She is, after all, an Alu-fiend, and can shape change at will. I suppose, my biggest complaint is that some of the coolest NPCs arent available until later in the game.

 

I agree that NPC's can be a real hassle. I'm not playing with Drifter's patch so they usually sell what I don't want them to sell and keep a bunch of useless crap. My elmo is running around with Excalibur plus the melany quest holy sword and an additional chainmail +2 to the +3 one he already has. Can't get rid of it...but although my party is slightly evil, my experience so far is that Elmo and Meleny are really damn useful and make an excellent addition to any party. I've hired and killed 3 other NPC's so far and Wonnilon will most likely be next. By the way, for some reason I can't level up Wonnilon(he does it himself) or ask him to sell me his equipment..

 

I usually pick which ones i want before starting a game. I Like to plan out characters and npc's before hand. I usually have a theme in the npc selection such as prisoners (wonnilon, pintark, and tuelk...the others suck, well tuelk could be better but pintark is good) or races that are normally unplayable (Oohlgrist, Darley, Scorpp, tuelk, and Pintark).

 

spoiler





Yeah it annoys me that even if Darly is in her human form people don't like her in your party and it'd be cool if she could change and change back again, druids have animal shape and Kella has her magic ring so I've been wondering if that sort of thing could be done with Darly

 

Well, I like the idea of NPCs. The BG1 and 2 NPCs were out of this world, espesially after modders got done with them. The best of them had their own lives, their own back stories, their own goals and rich personalities. Fantastic stuff.

Unfortunately, the very best ToEE NPCs are only about on the level of the unmodded BG1 NPCs, if that. Very disapointing. The inventory control problems made the ToEE NPCs worthless in the unmodded game, but I don't mind the level of looting they do with Liv's mod. Still, I don't bother with them much at this point; they are fun to use once or twice, but they don't have enough to say after that.

 

i'm not sure that this can be done without changing her "evil outsider" status, or at least changing the way the game handles "evil outsiders" in the party. and i'm not sure how that would be done, but maybe it can?

You should also be able to make the other NPC monsters that can join you invisible and not get a negative reaction from people you try to talk to.