Henchmen & equipment

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Is there no way to give equipment to your henchmen? I'm furious that the stupid git is still in leather while I'm carrying around three suits of armour! Same goes for weapons and soforth. Anyone who knows?

 

Too bad. Might be a good idea to implement that in later expansions? I mean, sharing equipment is pretty basic stuff, you should be able to do that.
Another thing, I really liked the pack mule in Dungeon Siege. Great idea. (Instead of using your poor followers as beasts of burden)

 

Someone has made a custom script that allows you to trade with / equip the henchmen. The author also claims to have greatly enhanced the poor AI of the henchman. The mod can be obtained from the author's web page . [SP Admins: this might be a useful addition to the NWN "Editors, Hacks & Tweaks" page]. The author also has a discussion topic going in regards to this mod over at the official Bioware NWN General Discussion forum, should you want more details. The thread can be viewed here .

 

Looks cool, but it sounds now like more as Diablo 2 with that inventory thingy.

 

Bah, useless whining! I actually like the idea of "independent" henchmen where you don't have to worry about their spells, abilities or equipment. Just go with the flow. The game has worked fine for me so far, as I like to think it as something of a roleplaying when you really are only in control of yourself. Well ok, I would be stupid not to admit their AI gives thoughts of suicide from time to time, but it's nothing too overwhelming.

 

The link I posted earlier allows you to download the AI enhancement mod seperately from the inventory mod (thought I would clarify that since it isn't obvious from my last post)

I agree that micro-managing your henchman's inventory goes against what the designers had in mind - a better roleplaying experience derived from playing only a single character. To this end, I also agree with having the NPC's accept only basic commands and otherwise acting of their own free will (though the actual implementation of this needs some work, hence the AI patch). Though managing multiple characters in the BG series was fun in its own way, the gameplay sometimes felt more like a RTS rather than roleplaying.

Keeping the single player in mind, though, some improvements could have been made:
- Allowing more than one henchman, possibly based on charisma of main char. As it is, the single player campaign encourages a lot of players to multiclass their character who otherwise wouldn't if they were playing in a full party online, where they would be free to play their specific intended roles. It's more fun to play in a party with a variety of skills and talents that complement each other (and no, I'm not talking about anticipating every single quest / situation in the game). Currently, roleplaying something like a pure Bard is somewhat discouraged by the 1 henchman limit, IMHO.
- Giving the henchmen more of a unique, fleshed out personality like the NPC's of the BG series (random dialog, more romances, commenting / advising on your decisions, bickering amongst each other, special henchmen quests, etc).

I think the above would still allow the player to focus exclusively on their own character, while still providing the single player with the party-based adventure experience that multiplayer (and D&D in general) is all about.

I guess the good news is that this can probably be accomplished in player-created modules using the toolset (I hope?)

 

Well said, Achilles! I agree that managing every detail in your henchman's inventory is not really in ley with the RPG experience, and that's not really what I was after. I just want to be able to give the bugger a magic armour when I've got three and he's got none. Maybe he considers it cheating... Several henchmen would be great, especially if the AI made them smart enough not to waste every spell first chance they got.
Happy adventuring!