"First" Party Member always gets Dialogue Priority?

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In general, Infinity Engine games are set up so that most of the time the character at the top/front of your current "marching order" (or the one closest to the top/front out of those you currently have selected) is the one who engages in dialogue with NPCs. Usually you'd want the character with the highest CHA score to be doing the talking, so you'd either move him to the front of the marching order or only select him when engaging in conversation with NPCs.

However, there are times in these games where dialogue is initated without your consent or where the script overrides your marching order to have the NPC speak with a particular character. This is most memorably the times in the Baldur's Gate series (where you have 1 PC and all other party members are NPCs) when a major villain was only interested in speaking directly with the PC.

Now, one of the first things I noticed about IWD2 was that my first scripted dialogue encounter (where I had no control over starting the conversation) used the first character I created (a surly Deep Gnome meat-shield) in dialogue rather than the character I placed first in my marching order (an eloquent and comely bard) who had been speaking with other NPCs up to that point.

My question is, will this keep happening? Is the first character I generate when creating my party always considered the "hero" or "leader" of the group when important NPCs begin unsolicited conversations with my party?

I just got started, so it's not a *huge* deal to go back and re-create my party from scratch and generate my bard in the first slot, but it's kind of annoying that they don't mention the significance of that first character slot at the beginning.

Now, I wonder what would happen if I left that slot blank and only made characters in the other 5 slots. Hmmm...

 

try making your "first in line" the only one visible to the npc (moving him first, wait a moment, then tell the others to go). I've noticed my barbarian (moves faster) seems to activate certain automatic dialog when hes not the first character.

likely your deep-gnome is a monk (assumption)...monks move faster and thus are the first seen by the npc perhaps. Just a thought.

a note: when you enter the warehouse, i believe the one who spawns closest to the npc gets talked to (lazy npc doesnt wanna yell). Which supports the "first one seen" approach.

Also, there must be a character created in position one when creating or editing a party, otherwise the done button will be disabled and you wont be able to continue.

[ May 27, 2007, 02:24: Message edited by: MindChild ]

 

"Also, you have to have pos 1 have a char, it wont let you continue (play the game) without it in my experience."

ummm , can i get that in english cause i have no idea what you just wrote

 

Sorry about that, corrected with more-correct (not perfect grammer etc) english.

 

He's saying that you need to create a character in "Position One" (i.e. the first slot) or the game won't accept your party.

That "first seen" theory holds up. I moved my bard to the top of the list and then sent in a third member (neither the bard nor the tank) ahead. Sure enough, he was the one engaged in dialogue. Good thinking!

 

just make sure your charismatic bard has dash and a level of barbarian

Maybe she's (yes she, women can be bards too) a little hot headed and she learned to run away from rotten veggie ridden crowds because she doesnt perform well (but she's cute so everyone likes her as long as she doesnt do something outrageous)

see creativity has its advantages