Randomness of character creation is driving me bat s*it crazy!

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Reiksmarshal

Sergeant Knight at Arms
There are 6 things about character creation that is driving up the wall and I am looking for some relief. I’m starting to work on a video series of character builds and the randomness is a bit much for example the 6 following areas:

1. Parents Look – this is just awful sometimes my black character has Viking looking parents or my Viking has Arab parents.
2. Parents Home Town – There should be an option to pick this for role playing purpose for example my character clan name is dey Praven but my home is Gayland.
3. Horse Color – It is unbelievable that your horse color is determined by the randomness of character creation for the entire campaign.
4. Starting Same Culture Companions – Sometimes you only get 1-2 from your culture and other time you get 7+
5. Brothers Appearance – Sometime he is max height and other times he is the shortest
6. Clan Name – Need ideas and often struggle to come up with one I like.

Thoughts On Possible Solutions:

1. Give us a dice option to re-roll parents look until we get something we like
2. A drop down menu to select or a dice to re-roll home city and have the player start next to the selected home town.
3. At least a drop down menu to select color or a dice to re-roll horse color since you are stuck with the horse color no matter what horse you buy the entire game.
4. There should be a bonus to the number of starting Same Culture companions. Nothing worse than restarting a campaign because there are only 1-2 companions of your culture. I have recreated dozens of characters because companions for my culture were too few compared to other cultures. Maybe there could be a +3 to the number of starting companions to the culture you select.
5. A dice option to re-roll brothers appearance would be fine
6. There should be a clan name generator like there is a first name one. I don’t understand why this is not in the game or at least a pre-selected one with the option to change it.

These are some of the areas I believe could be improved after 1200 hours in the Beta or at least bring some relief for players trying to set up their character with a unique back ground for role playing and immersion purposes.
 
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I’m starting to work on a video series of character builds
It's gonna be pretty short video ?
Max cunning for scouting or max Soc for leadership (and trade eeeeew), 5 endurance for horse armor+, everything else doesn't do anything, the end
"but what about my X build?" it's not a build, it's a grave where a good character was killed and buried before the game even started.

Parents Look – this is just awful sometimes my black character has Viking looking parents or my Viking has Arab parents.
Yeah I think it's your own sliders (especial skin tone) and the first choice in char creation

Horse Color – It is unbelievable that your horse color is determined by the randomness of character creation for the entire campaign.
It's armor colored, who looks at naked horse? No this is weird for sure, I'm surprised they don't just have an actual color per type of horse or a way to change the player's horse color in game.

Starting Same Culture Companions – Sometimes you only get 1-2 from your culture and other time you get 7+
Yeah, and also diversify the roles in different cultures too. Only the aersai get the good medics, it ruins any theme you might have going, unless you're aserai... I guess. If they're going to keep the ill-received random generation they need to make sure every culture has every skill available at equal levels.

Brothers Appearance – Sometime he is max height and other times he is the shortest
He always seems short to me too, but I always make max tall, so idduno.
 
It's gonna be pretty short video ?
Max cunning for scouting or max Soc for leadership (and trade eeeeew), 5 endurance for horse armor+, everything else doesn't do anything, the end
"but what about my X build?" it's not a build, it's a grave where a good character was killed and buried before the game even started.

Not really I have about 10 scripts written out and each should go for 15-25 minutes. Just to give a few examples "The Brute Knight" that has maxed out endurance and vigor with support perks that buffs renown through battle and 165+ hp. The Aserai Sword Master that focuses on speed and speed damage bonus with athletic and rogue perks. With the duelist, surging blow, and slash and dash perks make for a mean combo. Those are just a few examples, but many are role playing and not min maxing the same character build. Also the best 2 perks in the game imo are in the intelligence perk tree with Price of Loyalty and Minister of Health. With Minister of Health you can give your troops an additional 65 hp maxed out and price of loyalty you can get up to 65% off your troop wages maxed out.

Yeah I think it's your own sliders (especial skin tone) and the first choice in char creation

Seems just a little too random and it would be nice to be able to re-roll their look for something more apealing.

It's armor colored, who looks at naked horse? No this is weird for sure, I'm surprised they don't just have an actual color per type of horse or a way to change the player's horse color in game.

If you say so, I don't run with horse armor all the time and even if you do thier legs and parts of their face still show. Personally I perfer black horses for evil characters and white horse for good characters.

Yeah, and also diversify the roles in different cultures too. Only the aersai get the good medics, it ruins any theme you might have going, unless you're aserai... I guess. If they're going to keep the ill-received random generation they need to make sure every culture has every skill available at equal levels.

I agree for example the smith is always Vlandian.

He always seems short to me too, but I always make max tall, so idduno.

I found if you back out to the menu where you change your voice, when you go back in they have a different look but it messes up your character a bit if you do this.
 
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1. When you're creating your character - when you click to the parent screen, you can hit the back button, change a character slider (E.g. like make your voice 1, then 2, then back again) and your parents will refresh... You can go all the way through to your brother intro and back... I just keep doing that until I'm happy with the look of my parents and brother.

2. You can set your home town when you rescue your brothers/sister. By default it is the town where you complete the establishment quest (I.e. Clan size 1, 20 troops, hire one companion). I leave one of those criteria incomplete until I get to the city I want to be my home (E.g. keep my party to 19 troops - and hire the 20th when I get to my future home). From that point, any kids you have, as well as your brothers, sister are all default to there, also any nobles who marry into your family head there.

But if you have kids before you complete the family quest, they'll show up at random city in your culture that the game decides is your home. So try to complete the family quest before you have your first child, otherwise they'll be split.

Also, if you take a city or town before you establish yourself as a kingdom, or if you join a kingdom and are given a fief, that will become your home from then on and new family members/babies will show up there in future. If only you could use that back room in the workshop you just bought as a stash.

So with a bit of thought, you can easily establish a 'home' base that is convenient to how you want to play.

What I would like, is for my kids, and brothers to not look like identical twins...
 
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When you're creating your character, you can hit the back button, change a slider (like make your voice 1, then 2, then back) and your parents will change...

I just keep doing that until I'm happy with my parents and brother.

Yeah I do this too, but it should be a feature in character creation as going back moves some of the sliders and resets your voice. There could be a little dice on the page that shows your parents that allows you to re-roll their look and the same for your brother on the page that shows him.

You can set your home town when you rescue your brothers/sister. It is the town where you complete the establishment quest - Clan size 1, 20 troops, hire one companion. I just don't hire a companion until I'm at the city I want to be my home. From that point, any kids you have, as well as your brothers, sister are all located there, also any nobles who marry into your family head there.

But if you have kids before you complete the family quest, they'll show up at random city in your culture that the game decides is your home. So try to complete the family quest before you have your first child.

Your Parents home town is totally random and you can’t see it until after you started your campaign. It would be nice if you could pick their home town in character creation. For example I was trying to generate a character that was from Ocs Hall and it took probably a dozen times of creating a character to get that location so that it would match my clan name. With Vlandian culture the “dey” is where your clan is from or takes it’s name after.
 
Price of Loyalty
This is a nice perk for sure, but anyone can get it for you while other 275 perks are for party or clan leader only. Ultimately though it's primary effect of money becomes a non-issue, often long before it's actually obtained.

With Minister of Health you can give your troops an additional 65 hp maxed out
What year of campaign did you obtain the minister of health perk? I agree it's very strong, but it seems to take people far too long to reach that level of medicine, even when doing abnormal things to raise medicine. If the game is finished or the character dies before the perk is obtained, how is it any good? I look forward to future improvements to medicine skill and other ways to increase it, but until then I don't consider ultra high medicine a realistic build. I may see what I can do with my max int sister in post game doing forest bandit assisted troop murdering,, she got to 88 medicine in normal play by the time I took the map.

Those are just a few examples, but many are role playing and not min maxing the same character build.
How can it be a build if it's not min/maxed.... error error does not compute...shut down shut down error....

Anyway, I'm not trying to be mean I'm just grumpy about what I view as the lack of viable or useful builds/skills/perks in the game.
 
Your Parents home town is totally random and you can’t see it until after you started your campaign. It would be nice if you could pick their home town in character creation. For example I was trying to generate a character that was from Ocs Hall and it took probably a dozen times of creating a character to get that location so that it would match my clan name. With Vlandian culture the “dey” is where your clan is from or takes it’s name after.

It's not totally random, it's within the culture you are playing under. Other than that, when did anybody IRL ever get to choose where their parents were born? You can choose your home town through your actions in game.

But on the other hand, you're orphaned, homeless, destitute. You build your family up from scratch, from nothing. You are nobody. No noble or king knows of you, or where you're from. If that wasn't justification for establishing your own family and name, your own home, I don't know what is. If you want Ocs Hall to be your home, when you reconstitute your family from it's ashes, Call yourself dey Ocs Hall.

But I get your point. You want to control the premise. I just don't know if that gels with the idea behind the premise of this mode in the game... but perhaps your form of roleplay might work better in the sandbox mode?
 
So many info on the characters looking, yet you haven't mentioned that the children look completely either exactly like mother or father and they don't differ between each other at all.
 
I totally agree, there SHOULD be barber support for clan members and companions to mitigate this issue as well. When going to a barber you should be able to edit anybody in your parties look and I'm surprised this is not a feature to be honest.

For example if I am playing a Vlandian noble clan and I want my clan members to have the Norman back of the head shave look the player should have the option to do this for clan members and companions.
 
Anyway, I'm not trying to be mean I'm just grumpy about what I view as the lack of viable or useful builds/skills/perks in the game.

I don't disagree, there are many options that are redundant when picking your background. For example an option that buffs one hand and two hand is not very efficient and a waste of a focus point if you are playing a one handed warrior.

I would like to see more flexibility, for example your choice only adds one focus point to a skill and the other focus point goes in a pool that you can assign later to allow for more customizable build options in the beginning. This will only aid replay ability in the in end will allow for more unique build options at the start of a campaign.

With the current system I always feel like I have to pick the option that will be the least wasteful on attribute and focus points.

I would love for Bannerlord to have the character build community that Skyrim or Fallout 4 has, if the Devs can figure this out it is a golden ticket for longevity. See fudgemuppets and their MANY character build options as an example.

 
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Does character height make any in game diff? Like weapon reach or smthg? I always just use default.
Apparently, yes.

They do have longer reach, and also gain a higher angular velocity when bonking the enemy which results in more damage being done.
However, they're bigger, so their much easier to hit.

Did not test the point about the weapon damage, so can't say if it's true.
 
You can use the Character creation Mod, it's fabulous, you can edit yourself, of course, and any character in the game, mainly, you can transform your ugly and 1.50 tiny brother in a 1.90 good looking colossus.
 
With the current system I always feel like I have to pick the option that will be the least wasteful on attribute and focus points.
That's how I feel too, it's "well what can I take that sucks less?". I end up going with a mix of endurance and cunning as that's the closest to what I would want, but it's still frustrating because if I say I want Soc or INt instead I feel forced to take mostly Fp where I don't want it.

Does character height make any in game diff? Like weapon reach or smthg? I always just use default.
It does. I used to always make the smallest character for many games, then I made the biggest just for fun and found it just easier to hit people and even a little easier to shoot over shields or land long shots. I think early on they had to change something to make tallest ranged not grossly better, but it still is noticeably better to me. It's very noticeable if you do a tournament fight, you just tower over the enemies in melee and it feels very easy to see what they doing and just wak them. I always make max sized now. There is a small dead space when you're mounted with long glaive where you will wiff over a ground unit at an angle where you would hit if you we normal sized, but you easily get used to just not doing it. It's also slightly easier to use normal length sidearms on horseback, still not good.
 
That's how I feel too, it's "well what can I take that sucks less?". I end up going with a mix of endurance and cunning as that's the closest to what I would want, but it's still frustrating because if I say I want Soc or INt instead I feel forced to take mostly Fp where I don't want it.

Yeah it is definitely something they need and should improve on as this gets closer to release. The system has a lot of potential, TW just needs to loosen the restraints a bit and give the player a little more freedom to create the character they want. I would be willing to make suggestions on how they could improve this area, but not sure they are interested in doing that.
 
So many info on the characters looking, yet you haven't mentioned that the children look completely either exactly like mother or father and they don't differ between each other at all.
A lot of people don't get far enough to notice before restarting their playthroughs.
Does character height make any in game diff? Like weapon reach or smthg? I always just use default.
It makes a fairly noticeable difference. Even in AI hands: back when Arwa was the biggest, baddest chick in the game her regular sideswings would headshot/neckshot you about half the time if you were normal height.
 
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