Usefulness of Marnid and Borcha.

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Hi all,

I think that most people will agree on limited usefulness of Marnid and Borcha. This seems caused by:

- faulty allocation of skills. These characters are fairly high level and thus level up slowly, meaning their profile takes forever to change. So if their skills are not changed, why not allow the player to configure them, just as he configures himself when starting a new game?

- or make them low level so that they can level up with a noticeable change in their profile faster then now.

- most say they suck in combat. I agree, but the reason seems to be not lacking proficiency, but lacking tactics on their part, and maybe wrong equipment. AFAIU, AI:s are aware of  the CLOSEST enemy ONLY at any given time. The reason for early knock-outs of B&M seems in most cases them getting surrounded by superior numbers.
I have taken some time to watch these boys and I think I can say that on the rare occasions when the enemy are dispersed from the beginning of the fight B&M can do quite well, thank you. Also, I noticed a remarkably improved survival rate for Borcha when eqipped with a lance...
There have been suggestions of changing this, apparently in a simple way, so that the AI:s would be aware of more enemies than one on any given time and avoid being gang-banged.
IMO, some change of AI tactics is a must, if not now than in M&B2.

Otherwise, I advocate to make Marnid and Borcha configurable by the player and then keeping them out of fighting as much as possible.

Regards, Oldtimer
 
Marnid and Borcha's help in the early stages of the game is in terms of their party skills as you already realized, not combat skills. But I disagree with you when it comes to their upgrade speed. It depends on what size your army is, their order in the army when you join a battle and the way you use them in a battle.

If you have a small army, put them on top of the troops list, and when beginning a battle you keep all of your troops but Marnid and Borcha in the spawn point, they rapidly promote to higher levels. Thus, I see nothing wrong with their starting attributes or something else.
 
Hi all,

thanks for your opinions boys. I must say I take it as you directly or indirectly agree with me. Those doing it indirectly point out special ways to use/treat B&M, inclusive of them being beating boys and distraction factors until your "real" troopers go into action. IMO, this acknowledges the basic deficiency of B&M. They are supposed to be party skill boosters first, I agree. But why give Borcha leadership points, when better fieldcraft is far more useful???

What I want is vanilla Borcha and Marnid having skills useful for the hero profile you play. After all they are supposed to be perks for the player, AFAIU. As soon as someone points out that "used this way(i e as normal RL party members) they suck, but if you do this and this and also that they are not so bad" he admits that the basic profile ot B&M does not correspond to their envisaged function in the game.

Regards, Oldtimer
 
I agree.

It's even worse now that they are handicapped when it comes to party skills.

Now they are almost totally worthless.
 
yep, I agree with the thread starter.
why not give them 1 in each "body stat" and about 20 points to spend.
and 0 in each skill with 4 points to spend.
30 in each proficiency with 30 points to spend.
make them lvl1. add ymilia, bring the new version out and - voila, customers satisfied  :mrgreen:
 
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