Because
Sergeant
After trying the game with death enabled (albeit not through choice) I've had a few thoughts on it and wasn't sure if they chimed with anyone else's views on it.
Death works fine for MC and lords as long as chance is low and applied in all battles not just player fought ones. Lords can be replenished by highly skilled replacements as long as there is a population to sustain them. Lords dying makes the world dynamic. MC dying makes you careful how and when you fight and it's a nice challenge to start again if not (although this isn't me voting to remove the option to disable death and aging as I like the old warband style of game as well).
Death for companions on the other hand is a pain as they level so slowly and have worse skills and gear than decent tier soldiers you command and so have little to no place on the front line and even if you micro-manage them as a group that you send to the back of the field (which you have to do each battle and which means they'll never get better) they are still doomed in the crap shoot that is sieges where they will be randomly thrown against enemy walls, regardless of your wishes.
Companions fit into 2 categories
Combat who are no better than the troops around them (and often worse) and exist purely to provide buffs to the unit they are assigned to.
Non Combat who shouldn't even be on the battlefield.
In either case they will get taken out in a fight again a decent tier enemy soldier as they are mechanically no better and due to the price of gear usually worse. It feels like why bother to invest in a combat companion at all as the buffs from them aren't game changing. When considering the comparatively small number of non-combat wanderers you can recruit in the game they are also potentially impossible to replace, if you have a bit of bad luck, which also seems like poor design when they are the only way you can actually get a good engineer or medic in the game.
The same goes for companions in caravans, who you develop little to no attachment too and so there death is more of an irritation than a emotional impact. Again there is only a limited pool of wanderers who are any good at running a caravan so again they might not be able to be replaced, but their death is pure RNG and as unlike everyone else in the game you need a named character to run your caravans it gets really annoying.
Therefore I'd be much happier if they were treated separately and you could turn their chance of death on and off at least for ones in your party and caravans.
On an unrelated note would anyone else like the option for the damage reduction options players have to be applied to all Lords as well? I really like the idea of Lords being that much tougher in general to make them stand out a bit more? Really good lordly gear would work too of course.
Death works fine for MC and lords as long as chance is low and applied in all battles not just player fought ones. Lords can be replenished by highly skilled replacements as long as there is a population to sustain them. Lords dying makes the world dynamic. MC dying makes you careful how and when you fight and it's a nice challenge to start again if not (although this isn't me voting to remove the option to disable death and aging as I like the old warband style of game as well).
Death for companions on the other hand is a pain as they level so slowly and have worse skills and gear than decent tier soldiers you command and so have little to no place on the front line and even if you micro-manage them as a group that you send to the back of the field (which you have to do each battle and which means they'll never get better) they are still doomed in the crap shoot that is sieges where they will be randomly thrown against enemy walls, regardless of your wishes.
Companions fit into 2 categories
Combat who are no better than the troops around them (and often worse) and exist purely to provide buffs to the unit they are assigned to.
Non Combat who shouldn't even be on the battlefield.
In either case they will get taken out in a fight again a decent tier enemy soldier as they are mechanically no better and due to the price of gear usually worse. It feels like why bother to invest in a combat companion at all as the buffs from them aren't game changing. When considering the comparatively small number of non-combat wanderers you can recruit in the game they are also potentially impossible to replace, if you have a bit of bad luck, which also seems like poor design when they are the only way you can actually get a good engineer or medic in the game.
The same goes for companions in caravans, who you develop little to no attachment too and so there death is more of an irritation than a emotional impact. Again there is only a limited pool of wanderers who are any good at running a caravan so again they might not be able to be replaced, but their death is pure RNG and as unlike everyone else in the game you need a named character to run your caravans it gets really annoying.
Therefore I'd be much happier if they were treated separately and you could turn their chance of death on and off at least for ones in your party and caravans.
On an unrelated note would anyone else like the option for the damage reduction options players have to be applied to all Lords as well? I really like the idea of Lords being that much tougher in general to make them stand out a bit more? Really good lordly gear would work too of course.