Character Professions -- the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[Berzerker Jay]

Thought I'd start a thread for discussing especially professions players attempt that aren't working out properly, in hopes this feedback might give the devs some insight into the playthroughs less traveled by in the game. The diversity of ways we could play through Warband was probably the number one reason I kept coming back and gave that game so many hours of my life, and before Bannerlord's release this talk of even more professions from the underworld and beyond was especially what caught my interest.

Obviously the primary profession as imposter-lord rising to conquer Calradia receives attention already, so I'll leave the primary, quest-related profession aside.

I'll discuss some of my experiences with other professions below. Please add your own experiences and any other professions you might have tried or want to try.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

So far in recent versions I've experimented with the following professions, which I'll detail below -- bandit, blacksmith, bounty-hunter, merchant, villager, and gangster.

Bandit: This playthrough starts off fun, but quickly becomes unplayable. Looting is about as profitable as playing around in the practice arenas, and probably less so. If you can go after the caravans then you can do a bit better, but eventually you lose the ability to sell your loot with the whole world angry at you. This could potentially be resolved by allowing criminal players access to bandit hideouts for recruiting and selling loot, and perhaps also a system allowing the player to establish a hideout of their own where other bandit parties will sell their loot, but the player risks being raided by the local lord or a powerful bandit party. I'll detail related points under the Gangster profession.

Blacksmith: Not much to say here, as smithing is known to be overpowered at the moment. I do believe the smithing system can be at least partially fixed by having part unlocks related to the Smithing skill level -- so Tier-V parts don't unlock for a character with 10 points in Smithing, and instead they would unlock Tier-I parts only. Of course more adjustments to the prices of javelins and some polearms and 2-handed swords will still be necessary for balance. Otherwise an interesting profession that can potentially tie in well with Merchant professions.

Bounty-Hunter: All in all, probably the most functional alternative profession currently available to the player. You can take bounties against hideouts, as well as a number of bandit-parties in general. I have once encountered a bounty put on another lord as a bounty hunter, I believe. I'd like to see a bounty quest given by town merchants that spawns a temporary hero leading an upgraded bandit-party with some extra horses for players to hunt down, as an added challenge and for flavour.

Merchant: This profession is so close to being solid, but inevitably the player ends up needing to simply grind away at hauling horses from the south to buyers in the north. I understand the economic system is being fine-tuned, so I'll turn my focus more to the alternatives to commodity-grinding. Quests could be added from town-merchants asking the player to help with securing a necessary trade-route for a shop in town, or similarly finding a better buyer for a product produced in town, or procuring a number of certain weapons for a town's garrison. Beyond that, I'd really like to see a system implemented for investing in the villages -- if the player has a certain requisite relations score with a village headman or landowner, and if the policies of the kingdom are appropriate to how the player is going about it, then the player may purchase a field in the village and contribute to the village's production, either what they already produce or a lesser quantity of something else. That last bit is to reflect how the village is best suited to its primary produce.

Villager: I attempted this profession mostly to explore the game's system, but it was relatively fun. I basically did the quests for my chosen "home" village and its neighbours, as well as protecting the locals from bandit raids. I think for what it's worth, this profession suits the early-game only, and is good as is, although I'd like to see the option of specifying a "birthplace" village as well as the option for characters to choose and move a "home" village or settlement. I think this could open up a lot of interesting potential for new questlines, with different stakes when the village is either the player's home or birthplace. Either way, I really enjoy this as an early-game profession, and the only other thing it can be improved on is by adding a 'Civilian' or non-bannered game-start.

Gangster: This start is probably what the pre-release videos got me most excited for. I was looking forward to warring for turf in the various towns, establishing my criminal empire and undermining the local nobility. I understand a lot of this is in progress, so I'll limit my feedback to other aspects. One improvement to this profession would be the ability to actually network with the town's criminals -- to fence stolen goods (not the current quest, but rather to be the fence itself), to 'garrison' a gang (maybe only bandit troops, due to roguery limitations, unless the player has a certain roguery perk?), to organize gang-fights with rival leaders, to blackmail local nobles and notables, et cetera. I think, also, the implementation of contraband will especially improve this profession, both trade and production of contraband -- perhaps this could work into the workshop system?

 

[Berzerker Jay]

I'll update this thread as I explore these or other professions further. Hope to hear from other players.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Not protesting the move to general discussion really, but just to clarify in case there's confusion -- this whole post is filled with suggestions.

 

[Magello]

The gangster and bandit are the two I am most excited for and have been really let down on. It really seems like there are a lot of placeholders and that it was in the plans at one point. I just really hope it doesn't end up being left out in the end.

Another I wanted to suggest was slaver. I had a lot of fun playing POP and being a slaver in the desert in the south. I would go out and take out bandits, small parties, and the occasional small lord party and then go back to my home cities and sell the prisoners. I had a small fast army specializing in knocking out the enemy and it was a lot of fun.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

The gangster and bandit are the two I am most excited for and have been really let down on. It really seems like there are a lot of placeholders and that it was in the plans at one point. I just really hope it doesn't end up being left out in the end.

Another I wanted to suggest was slaver. I had a lot of fun playing POP and being a slaver in the desert in the south. I would go out and take out bandits, small parties, and the occasional small lord party and then go back to my home cities and sell the prisoners. I had a small fast army specializing in knocking out the enemy and it was a lot of fun.

Good suggestion with the Slaver profession. I hadn't considered that, and it could probably be fleshed out further in the game, too.

I've heard rumours about this and that being left out, but I have a lot of faith in Taleworlds as a development team, and also I assume we're about halfway through development at this point by the version number.

Definitely, the lack of development around the gang system was a bit of a disappointment when I got this game. Of all things the videos were advertising before early-access, that was among the top three if not the top interest, for sure.

 

[Warlord123123]

Bounty-Hunter: All in all, probably the most functional alternative profession currently available to the player. You can take bounties against hideouts, as well as a number of bandit-parties in general. I have once encountered a bounty put on another lord as a bounty hunter, I believe. I'd like to see a bounty quest given by town merchants that spawns a temporary hero leading an upgraded bandit-party with some extra horses for players to hunt down, as an added challenge and for flavour.

There are bounty quests? Lol, 100h and haven't seen one. I guess I stopped talking about quests with NPCs since most were super lame in the beginning of EA

 

[ArturMorhghain]

@Berzerker Jay
This topic inspired me. I really only play the “pretender noble” route. But it feels like each style partially exists in the game. And it felt doable to illustrate what exists now, having put a fair amount of time into bannerlord.

Goal
Basically to create a roadmap mostly based on the original post to show what pieces of each player style exist in-game and where existing gaps are. As I quantified each style, I identified suggestions (many from the forums, some of my own) that might fill in existing gaps for each style. While I know a bit about project management, I know exactly nothing about video game development. So I have no idea how hard or time consuming any of these might be.

Definitions for the table

Recruitment: player style-specific troops
Income (active): player style-specific active funds and whether quests support this style with rewards
Income (passive): player style-specific way to set up and gain funds without doing much more
Quests: non-exclusive ways to flesh out the style of play
Home: the players place to improve, invest in, stash items and troops
Home scene: the interior scene
Marriage: player-style specific characters to marry - basically, non-nobles don't have partners that make sense to marry right now
Rivals: Who you’re going to anger by playing this way

For the bars: Full means fully implemented, etc. Colors are how "easy" to "hard" something feels. Overall this was done with a minimal amount of time in Word so its not super fancy. And definitely I could've missed things.

Character Professions
Bandit

Suggestions:

• Income (active): sneaking into towns/selling in hideouts
• Income (passive): extorting villages [could this be resolved by lords?]?
• Quests: include a new option at hideouts for bandits to issue quests
• Home: take over hideout/create own?

Blacksmith

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: should there be special troops? Or are mercs from taverns sufficient?
• Income (active): some inputs can only be forged
• Quests: develop new quests for nobles, village notables
• Home: attach to workshops?

Bounty Hunter

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: just but no special troops
• Income (passive): should there even be passive bounty hunter income?
• Home: should there be? Should it be hideouts to mirror some of the quests?

Gangster

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: should gang leaders give different troops?
• Income (passive): extorting towns, caravans?
• Home: something in towns?
• Home scene: outdoors exist, not indoors I think?
• Marriage: gang leaders feel pretty natural here

Mercenary

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: maybe just from minor factions?

Merchant

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: Missing caravan masters
• Income (active): should selling profitable workshops be a goal?
• Home scene: There’s nothing short of a keep, but a workshop could suffice
• Marriage: probably should be from town notables

Noble

Suggestions:

• None (I know there are tons on the forums, but for this purpose it feels 100%)

Villager

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: this should be militia recruitment
• Income (passive): love the idea for a plot of land, perhaps also from recruited villager parties?
• Home: a village house?
• Home scene: outdoors exist, not indoors I think?
• Marriage: should this be a notable arraigned marriage? Asking random villagers?
• Rivals: this could include rival village notables whose land you elbow in on

Overall Suggestions

• More quests to support these lines, generally (3 per each?)
• Noble/non-noble option (maybe banner yes/no?) that influences recruiting (maybe only for militia?). Bandit recruitment should work like relationships except based on criminal record
• Should noble troops be limited to pretender nobles? Probably not.
• A “home” for non-nobles
• Non-noble marriage (if nobles marry non-nobles, a reputation hit with most nobles)
• More options for passive income (at least one per line)
• A bandit economy (or at least faux economy) to allow the player to buy and sell outside the standard economy. The current economy is already rather complex and an achievement, which is why I’d suggest a faux economy for bandits.

I imagine allowing recruitment of many more units could induce many, many more calls for balance or complaining about why bandits cannot beat lords, or militia getting beat up by others. So I can see that as a barrier. I’m sure scene take a long time to build. Other pieces feel more achievable but again, I know nothing about development. I'm not really sure which devs would make sense to tag about specific questions, if anyone has suggestions.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

@Berzerker Jay
This topic inspired me. I really only play the “pretender noble” route. But it feels like each style partially exists in the game. And it felt doable to illustrate what exists now, having put a fair amount of time into bannerlord.

Goal
Basically to create a roadmap mostly based on the original post to show what pieces of each player style exist in-game and where existing gaps are. As I quantified each style, I identified suggestions (many from the forums, some of my own) that might fill in existing gaps for each style. While I know a bit about project management, I know exactly nothing about video game development. So I have no idea how hard or time consuming any of these might be.

Definitions for the table

Recruitment: player style-specific troops
Income (active): player style-specific active funds and whether quests support this style with rewards
Income (passive): player style-specific way to set up and gain funds without doing much more
Quests: non-exclusive ways to flesh out the style of play
Home: the players place to improve, invest in, stash items and troops
Home scene: the interior scene
Marriage: player-style specific characters to marry - basically, non-nobles don't have partners that make sense to marry right now
Rivals: Who you’re going to anger by playing this way

For the bars: Full means fully implemented, etc. Colors are how "easy" to "hard" something feels. Overall this was done with a minimal amount of time in Word so its not super fancy. And definitely I could've missed things.

Character Professions
Bandit

Suggestions:

• Income (active): sneaking into towns/selling in hideouts
• Income (passive): extorting villages [could this be resolved by lords?]?
• Quests: include a new option at hideouts for bandits to issue quests
• Home: take over hideout/create own?

Blacksmith

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: should there be special troops? Or are mercs from taverns sufficient?
• Income (active): some inputs can only be forged
• Quests: develop new quests for nobles, village notables
• Home: attach to workshops?

Bounty Hunter

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: just but no special troops
• Income (passive): should there even be passive bounty hunter income?
• Home: should there be? Should it be hideouts to mirror some of the quests?

Gangster

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: should gang leaders give different troops?
• Income (passive): extorting towns, caravans?
• Home: something in towns?
• Home scene: outdoors exist, not indoors I think?
• Marriage: gang leaders feel pretty natural here

Mercenary

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: maybe just from minor factions?

Merchant

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: Missing caravan masters
• Income (active): should selling profitable workshops be a goal?
• Home scene: There’s nothing short of a keep, but a workshop could suffice
• Marriage: probably should be from town notables

Noble

Suggestions:

• None (I know there are tons on the forums, but for this purpose it feels 100%)

Villager

Suggestions:

• Recruitment: this should be militia recruitment
• Income (passive): love the idea for a plot of land, perhaps also from recruited villager parties?
• Home: a village house?
• Home scene: outdoors exist, not indoors I think?
• Marriage: should this be a notable arraigned marriage? Asking random villagers?
• Rivals: this could include rival village notables whose land you elbow in on

Overall Suggestions

• More quests to support these lines, generally (3 per each?)
• Noble/non-noble option (maybe banner yes/no?) that influences recruiting (maybe only for militia?). Bandit recruitment should work like relationships except based on criminal record
• Should noble troops be limited to pretender nobles? Probably not.
• A “home” for non-nobles
• Non-noble marriage (if nobles marry non-nobles, a reputation hit with most nobles)
• More options for passive income (at least one per line)
• A bandit economy (or at least faux economy) to allow the player to buy and sell outside the standard economy. The current economy is already rather complex and an achievement, which is why I’d suggest a faux economy for bandits.

I imagine allowing recruitment of many more units could induce many, many more calls for balance or complaining about why bandits cannot beat lords, or militia getting beat up by others. So I can see that as a barrier. I’m sure scene take a long time to build. Other pieces feel more achievable but again, I know nothing about development. I'm not really sure which devs would make sense to tag about specific questions, if anyone has suggestions.

Really nice work! I like what you've done here.

Only real change I would make to the chart is the colour of the Rivals meter for the Bandit profession -- in my playthroughs around this, that's actually exactly where it becomes unplayable. In short time as you go about your banditry, you quickly end up instantly recognizable and almost universally despised, lords with professional armies coming after you and your rather slow-starting bandit venture. So far I've been at best Clan Tier-II by the time this happens, if I'm playing honest to the bandit playthrough and not doing other things to advance faster. In my opinion, that meter should be red.

On the Merchant, I actually often keep a small handful of faction troops with me, which I believe the AI caravans do as well. In all my playthroughs I actually rarely find the mercenary troops worth having, and I quickly get bored with the armed-trader troops and their lack of progression. Not sure if this is something that should be limited.

I actually really like the idea of limiting recruitment of noble troops to noble characters. We hear in the tavern banter with some wanderers about how because of their noble lineage they feel disgraceful or shameful working for non-noble employers, so I could see it being the standard. That would also be a great benefit to work toward, should the player wish to earn a noble title as a reward through mercenary work or some other feat to impress a ruler. It makes me think of another thing -- maybe non-noble characters might also have a maximum imposed on what tier their troops can be upgraded to, about Tier-III -- and if we're vicious about it, maybe it might be a soft maximum that only warns the player when they're upgrading beyond, and then nobles that spot them may confront them and force these units to be demoted or else face a fight and potential change to relations with the clan and faction, too.

On the Villager and Smith professions regarding troops, for both I generally need a handful of low-tier troops for functionality. For the smith they're needed to carry materials. For the villager it's basically the same, only with grain and hauling other goods -- I generally play it with a self-imposed rule to haul the goods to their parent-town only, not seeking the best price, even if it means I suffer the oppression of the market -- but I avoid upgrading these and where I can I try to get the pre-recruit villager unit. I wish the pre-recruit villager unit were more widely available for this reason, but it actually seems rare unless rescuing from bandit parties.

As to bandits beating professional armies, I think in general it'll depend on overwhelming numbers and asymmetrical attacks. Unless the bandits recruit or upgrade bandit troops to regular professional troops.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Some people might grief me for suggesting this, but I'd actually like to see the standard unit available in villages be the Tier-0 pre-recruit villager unit of that faction. A notable with regular power of 50 or below would have most of its offerings being these units.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Decided to give my best effort to try and pull off the bandit profession in this version, without smithing or any other diversion. So far I'm actually not doing too bad. My bandit is an Aserai horse-archer, so first thing I did was bee-line to Askar. I chose my home-village, Tasheba, and checked in there, found they had a quest, Inn and Out, so I quickly did that. There also was a quest for me to train a few of my fellow villagers, which I of course obliged. I then made my way the final distance to Askar, stopping to check for horses at a village along the way and taking on eight recruits there. At Askar I purchased my Desert Horse, and figured two more to sell near where I planned to start raiding. I took a few mules for the same purpose, and off I went.

I targeted the Southern Empire for the escape routes and vulnerable passes. My hunt started off slow, and finally I settled down to wait by the mountain pass north of Poros. Finally a party of villagers wandered too near, only a little bit bigger than my own party. No matter, I thought, as I could split their formation with my horse and allow my men to outnumber and outflank them for advantage. Of course, they didn't charge, so I did, and I lobbed loose my entire quiver of arrows, then charged in and scared off the pack-animals they were using for cover. I circled and sliced at them as much as I could to break their morale, but then I took a good hit that half knocked me off my horse. I called in my men. The villagers stayed focused on me, hurling their rocks and swinging hopelessly out of reach as I circled and then finally drove into their line as my men met them. It was a glorious bloodbath, and we took some decent loot, mostly in the form of hogs.

Of course, now my little band of 14 bandits were in hostile territory, slowed down by a herd of hogs and with an entire Imperial faction wanting us dead, and suddenly a group of mountain bandits seeing our vulnerability and following after us. Of course they caught up with us, and I narrowly helped all but one of my troops stay alive. We made it to Zeonica, and sold our loot. Not a bad haul. Then we checked in with the local gangsters, found one of modest power with its turf looking vulnerable.... So two thugs guarding it, easily dispatched with my flyssa...well, almost killing me actually. The gangster showed up to defend his turf soon, facing against my mamluke bandits and I. I broke through their lines and started attacking from the opposite side as my men, and they fell like sacks of grain. The loot this time was great, all at great selling points in Zeonica.

And now I venture back to Southern Empire territory....

 

[Berzerker Jay]

The beginning is always so fun.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

So my bandit is still doing actually pretty good. I think my strategy of going after the Southern Empire is paying off. I'm making a modest but steady income, but also I'm only keeping now 17 Tier-II troops. I'm operating mostly in and around Husn Fulq, and have easily managed to evade an Imperial army in the area as well as its vanguard parties, and I finally managed to take out a party of villagers that happened to be carrying about 160 grain, which happened to sell for roughly 11 denars a piece in Husn Fulq.

So far I still don't have a criminal rating, and I'm still not at the level where I can take on the caravans, where the profession tends to fall off track and become problematic. This start so far is actually probably my best at it, though.

I'm a little hung up on abandoning a character I really enjoyed over the clunky skill-development and leveling system right now, so probably going to go play some Running With Rifles for a bit and blow stuff up.

 

[niekdegrijze]

Then we checked in with the local gangsters, found one of modest power with its turf looking vulnerable.... So two thugs guarding it, easily dispatched with my flyssa...well, almost killing me actually. The gangster showed up to defend his turf soon, facing against my mamluke bandits and I. I broke through their lines and started attacking from the opposite side as my men, and they fell like sacks of grain. The loot this time was great, all at great selling points in Zeonica.

you attacked the gang leader in the town scene without a quest? I didn't know you could do this.

Nice AAR. Makes me want to start a new campaign. I'am holding of until the new terrain feature at the moment. I am really hoping Talewords simultaneously adds more features to the bandit/gang mechanics, this was indeed one of the most promising new additions and therefor one of the more disappointing missing feature.

 

[Philozoraptor]

Problem with all the other (other than feudal) supposed professions is that they are means to an end (feudal gameplay), and this seems to be by design. Each of them would require lot of features to be legit thing and that is not going to happen any time soon given the speed of feature development, however maybe some of these will be fleshed out in DLCs and expansions Paradox style in a few years.

The main problem is how money can be spent right now - gear, armies, town and castle upgrades - all of this are things crutial for feudal gameplay. You cannot buy expensive civilian villa as merchant or influence politics of city or even kingdoms from the shadows, you cannot really become robber baron etc. The issue is that many core feudal gameplay features are missing or are underdeveloped (proper diplomacy, relations with other lords fleshed out, proper combat tactics and sieges, etc) and it would be contraproductive for devs to spread too thin given that they have issues developing current features.

But otherwise nice suggestions, they just clash with the reality of Bannerlord development.