I'm having a blast on my current play through by limiting myself to Companions from within my culture.
There are disgruntled sentiments floating around the forum on the topic of companions, which up until this current play through, I'd find difficult to refute. There's obvious utility to cherry picking your top 5 companions from the encyclopedia, but this leads the player to considering their companions as barely distinguishable from their other clan members; they're just soldiers with scouting.
In a desperate effort to defeat in game Nihilism, I've decided to become a massive racist and refuse to hire anyone from outside of the Battanian cultural stock; therefore the only 3 available companions from Battania are now my brothers in arms! Despite their appalling stat/focus point distribution, and no apparent 'party role' amongst any of them, we're steamrolling our way into Calradian mediocrity. Not bad for a bunch of peasants from the pub united under a banner of bigotry!
Its a delight to watch them tip toe away from uselessness as they train their desperately neglected combat skills into that of an average warrior. Oh, such fun is to be had in cheering on naff companions skewering looter kebabs from the backs of mules!
Should any of the boys die in combat (God-Forbid), then I have noted a way I can continue my aspirations of a Battanian ethno-state (once vicious retribution has been delivered). The 'XXX want's his daughter found' quest provides a new potential companion for hire! She will be level 1 with absolutely no skill in anything, and therefore almost impossible to level up, but if she's got some minerals and decent gear, training her into a solid companion from level one could be well worth the time! It doesn't get much more immersive than scooping up renegade village peasant girls and turning them into your most hardened veterans - I'd be the Sun Tzu of Battania!
If you're bored and think your companions are soulless husks, they probably are. You selected them purely based on their statistics, and surprise surprise, they're nothing to you but statistics. Want some character? Find a reason to hire that lunatic in the pub that calls himself a scholar. His idiosyncratic stats,1 intelligence, 60 engineering, and an even more absurd 80 two handed skill (somehow acquired in a library) are far from top tier; and sure, he won't be your best troop, not for a while yet anyway, but he can promise you a few laughs in attempting to get there.
Long live the new bonkers wanderers!
There are disgruntled sentiments floating around the forum on the topic of companions, which up until this current play through, I'd find difficult to refute. There's obvious utility to cherry picking your top 5 companions from the encyclopedia, but this leads the player to considering their companions as barely distinguishable from their other clan members; they're just soldiers with scouting.
In a desperate effort to defeat in game Nihilism, I've decided to become a massive racist and refuse to hire anyone from outside of the Battanian cultural stock; therefore the only 3 available companions from Battania are now my brothers in arms! Despite their appalling stat/focus point distribution, and no apparent 'party role' amongst any of them, we're steamrolling our way into Calradian mediocrity. Not bad for a bunch of peasants from the pub united under a banner of bigotry!
Its a delight to watch them tip toe away from uselessness as they train their desperately neglected combat skills into that of an average warrior. Oh, such fun is to be had in cheering on naff companions skewering looter kebabs from the backs of mules!
Should any of the boys die in combat (God-Forbid), then I have noted a way I can continue my aspirations of a Battanian ethno-state (once vicious retribution has been delivered). The 'XXX want's his daughter found' quest provides a new potential companion for hire! She will be level 1 with absolutely no skill in anything, and therefore almost impossible to level up, but if she's got some minerals and decent gear, training her into a solid companion from level one could be well worth the time! It doesn't get much more immersive than scooping up renegade village peasant girls and turning them into your most hardened veterans - I'd be the Sun Tzu of Battania!
If you're bored and think your companions are soulless husks, they probably are. You selected them purely based on their statistics, and surprise surprise, they're nothing to you but statistics. Want some character? Find a reason to hire that lunatic in the pub that calls himself a scholar. His idiosyncratic stats,1 intelligence, 60 engineering, and an even more absurd 80 two handed skill (somehow acquired in a library) are far from top tier; and sure, he won't be your best troop, not for a while yet anyway, but he can promise you a few laughs in attempting to get there.
Long live the new bonkers wanderers!
