Nice idea.Personally, i'd love to see the Hireling content expanded, and actually make them useful. Make it to where you can hire something like a NPC Paladin, where he has Weapon Skills and Chivalry, which raise as he uses them and you can inspect his skills with a "Report" command. Give us the ability to equip armor/weapons on them like we can with vendors. Have them lodged at Inns, similar to stabling. Maybe even add special requirements to hiring certain advanced hirelings, like Paladins won't join anyone with negative karma, etc.
Currently, hirelings do gain skill and stats as they fight, but there are three big problems with them. Their weapons/armor wear out and break, and you can't give them new equipment. They cannot bond, so any training put into them is wasted when they die. There is also nowhere to lodge them for when you don't want them around at the time.
I see no reason at all you would have to tie this to a new skill. You would have to balance the abilities of the hirelings to keep that from being overpowering, but no need for another 120 points out of our 720 limit.Nice idea.
You'd have to tie this to a new skill like Leadership. ...
But then wouldn't the devs have to rebalance all of the spawn in the game? Wouldn't characters suddenly be way overpowered? (hint: yes) Adding new abilities without a corresponding trade-off would badly unbalance things. But perhaps I'm overlooking something. Do you have an answer for this?I see no reason at all you would have to tie this to a new skill. You would have to balance the abilities of the hirelings to keep that from being overpowering, but no need for another 120 points out of our 720 limit.
There are several games that make use of hirelings and do a very good job of it - Skyrim and Neverwinter come to mind. The hirelings have different abilities yet can gain skill through play, and can have supportive or combat skills. It makes some content playable that otherwise you struggle with. This would be especially nice for off-peak hours or on shards that have small populations.
Nothing would have to be rebalanced. It just means, especially on smaller shards where you can't find a group for anything short of multiboxing, you can actually have an NPC to help you out some and make your own group.But then wouldn't the devs have to rebalance all of the spawn in the game? Wouldn't characters suddenly be way overpowered? (hint: yes) Adding new abilities without a corresponding trade-off would badly unbalance things. But perhaps I'm overlooking something. Do you have an answer for this?
No need for new skills to control hirelings. I'm not talking about making Hirelings as powerful as a Greater Dragon, or even a Dread Warhorse. Afterall, Tamers invest anywhere between 200 - 340 skillpoints into taming/controlling those. Just more along the lines of a Vollem's (bondable) usefulness.Nice idea.
You'd have to tie this to a new skill like Leadership. This would determine the number of fighters you could control as if they were pets. You'd need to pay them instead of feed them to keep loyalty. Any who lost loyalty would have a chance of attacking their former employer. Perhaps a secondary skill could be used to reduce their cost. Maybe a melee skill or eval int.
One might also want a new stat like charisma, but this might be asking more than the system can bear.
This idea could use a little discussion to bring out the potential problems, but Playeretc. made a very creative suggestion. Nice.