Allow for Permanent Hirelings as end game content for Dexxers?

While considering the ability to 'bless' items it struck me that blessing an item directly impacts a core part of this game: Thievery and spoils of war. While we all hate it, it remains a valid part of this game and is what makes it so good. So if we were to end up with 'blessed' weapons, it would effectively remove an important element of the villain's play style.

However, if we could allow 1 permanent hireling which could also be equipped with armor, wouldn't that be a suitable exchange? It would not remove the element of risk for losing a weapon while yet providing an awesome end game content for dexxers and 'non-tamers'. These could also be employed in ill deeds as well.



Here is my idea of hirelings:

1. Restrict 1 permanent hireling per character (much later potential for new 'end game' content to allow expanded slots just like taming)
2. Requires max level of fame (not karma) to be had in order to begin the permanent employment contract
3. NPC stats would be capped at those similar to human players.
4. NPC could 'consume' armor and weapons. Upon death all gear on npc would drop on corpse. Also upon death NPC would appear as a ghost following you (like a bonded tame)
5. Upon resurrecting they lose same % of stats/skills as tames
6. You would need to stall/stable hirelings at Inn
7. You would need to feed/give them gold to your npc in order to keep them 'loyal'


**********UPDATE************

Based on thread discussion and debate the ideas are as follows:

1. Allow 1 permanent hirelings = not favored
2. Allow training of hirelings = less favored
3. Allow 'lodging' for NPC hirelings at Inns = Neutral
4. Allow equipping of NPC's for gold cost and consumption of armor item = Favored
5. Provide SLAYER Shields = favored
6. Improve drop rate of Slayer Weapons = Favored

Its a bit like in SWTOR.
You have an npc tp assist you!

I like the idea, its like the warrior u can hire but with alot more potential!

See u!

So I wrote up a long rant about about the tamers vs. everyone theme here. . . but ain't nobody got time for that. You just can't let Denby the Grandmaster Henchman effect PvP.

I think your idea is great!

Yes, would love to train and equip my padawan, then we can have a hireling tournament! :O

Would Anatomy be used to see their stats/skills?

That would be my thought. Wouldn't make plum lick of sense for animal lore to work on them.

@ Godric, I suspect they'd affect pvp about as much as dragons and nightmares. They will help stave off attacks, but if you die to a tame it means you were slower than snot

Thoughts:

Where would the pool of these NPC hirelings be drawn from? Would they have to be taken from the Inns in town? Would they have to be tracked down somehow, like Dragons and Mares are?

What kind of NPC hirelings would be available? Mages, archer, dexxer? BARDS?

Would they be able to be given mounts?

I am concerned about transportation. Magery is needed to gate pets around, so if the hireling works the same way, dexxers would *need* to have enough points in magery, and enough mana, to cast gate from a scroll right? That kinda throws some dexxer builds out the window. How would we get around that? Auto transport of your hireling?

I very much like this idea as a supplement for dexxers. Would for sure add a new element and play style depth to the game.

Rare spawn of "a mercenary" at the brigand camps?

Why turn dexers into tamers?

Cynic in the past has said more availability of slayers would be a huge help to this. I couldn't agree more. I just did an AMIB run with a warhammer of force and repond and was hitting as high as 112. You can also adjust the effect of armor, or the time needed to Bandage Self.

Another monster change that would disproportionately help dexers over other player types is if you increase the impact of low health on monster speed. Right now when they're at say 50% health, they move at 50% speed (numbers for illustration, I'm not sure how exactly it works). Certainly the ability to maintain distance from a monster (when needed) is a big benefit.

It's just more content and its a completely plausible and realistic system. The fact that you can't put your Hired NPC up for the night in the inn is unrealistic, if anything. Also, it would create a TON of role-playing opportunities if there were several classes of Hireable NPC's to work with.

Undead NPC's...
Orc NPC's...
Pirate NPC's...
Knight NPC's...
Paladin NPC's...
Vile "Coincidentally" Grey Mage NPC's...
etc...

To me, its more of a content addition than anything.

I think the Bandage Timer might be a good thing to look into and experiment with. There seems to be a plethora of Slayers for bards and disco/tamers, but a minuscule amount for dexxers, so I think that the drop rates of the actual slayer weapons should be tweaked just a bit. Little changes here and there, though, and see how they pan out. I don't want to see some big sweeping change that's hard to undo, heh.

Is this just for dexxers? Can we equip the NPCs with slayer weapons? Will the new PvM template be the healer-bard?

Everyone always says this, and maybe I'm just out of the loop, but... when was the last event in the orc fort in the desert? And how long since the orc event in Cove? How about that pirate hideout on Bald Island? The last event I knew of there was when Jack got the tattered spellbook, and I think that was over a year ago.

I'm the least role-playing guy here, but to my knowledge I'm the only one who has an entire character (my main one, no less) devoted to utilizing hirelings for a character. He's the "wolf" guy, he runs around with his red wolves, dresses the same color as the wolves, etc. If people were interested in roleplaying with hirelings, wouldn't we see more tamers like a Crazy Cat Lady with a pack of hellcats, or even god forbid someone who decides to go out and use four nightmares instead of the classic two-dragons-and-a-nightmare setup that everyone in Britannia uses?

http://uorforum.com/threads/militia-training-vop.7943/

Militia training exercise. The ability to take on these terathan avengers was pretty impressive. Albeit it took an army of us healing them. I wondered if results would have been improved if the hirelings had been trained up.

The real problem that dexxers face is the disproportionate risk of life and limb. Slayers are great for killing a monster quicker, and this reducing the time that a mob has to hit you with a nuke/heavy melee hit combo. However, for some mobs (like any high end one) this is not a realistic hope because those mobs have so many hitpoints, and can often heal themselves, that they will inevitably get off a few of these combos. I do think that this risk should exist but it should exist for all players, and it doesn't.

A hireling could take the pressure off of dexxers. They should not have the tanking capacity of a dragon, or even a mare, but they can at least take some hits (and be healed).

The other option is to just level the playing field and make monsters attack the players rather than pets/summons - which sounds great to me.

Another option is to reduce the ridiculous rate at which monsters nuke and regain mana. This option, if implemented broadly, is a not as great an option.

I have used nightmares only and that is how I prefered to rack up all my kills, but with so many more pks around I quit going that route. Fully trained I felt the nightmares destroyed everything quicker than drag/ww combos. I have teamed with a guy and we used drakes to take down a frost ogre mage, that was pretty intense.

I don't think hirelings will be anything near what a tamer is capable of, unless you can train them to mine/craft.

This has been the case since 1997. I'm not sure why it is considered such an issue now.

I know that in life if I want to win a bout against a martial artist, I need to learn some Kung Fu. If I want to win a wrestling match, I need to learn some wrestling. I can't just decide that I want to win the Kung Fu match when I have only learned wrestling and then call that not fair when I don't have the skills necessary.

Different skills for different things. Some skills earn more than other skills. I wish a degree in General Studies would put me on the board of a Fortune 500 Company making millions, but that's just not how things work folks. Some skill sets are simply better than others.

That having been said, i'd be interested in seeing ways to make dexxers more viable that actually had some kind of a realistic back story to them and didn't involve a completely Trammel idea.

Because this is UO:R where history is perfected

Well, that's not quite the same thing. If you want to use this line of reasoning then the equivalent from UO to the real world would be building an underground bunker and dropping nukes on your martial arts opponent and then looting his gi.

I agree that different skills have different benefits but all templates should have a proportional degree of risk vs reward. Tamers risk next to nothing and gain the most... I think that's a mistake.

I simply disagree with the whole concept of disproportional risk and the premise that making all classes entirely equal is a perfection of history. I think it is not perfection at all and I don't prescribe to this "more fair" mentality that I am seeing exhibited by many people on this dexxer crusade. Dragons are highly intelligent magical beasts...they absolutely should be the strong creatures that they are currently.

That having been said, I think that dexxers should have the ability to deal out something akin to a "crippling blow" on creatures that aren't traditionally thought of as highly intelligent...or smarter than humans. This would give them a better ability to fight some of the less intelligent higher-end mobs.

I also have said countless times across many conversations that pet deaths should reset them to their fresh tame status. They'd still retain their high stats, though, which is what people really want. I don't see anything wrong with completely re-training something upon death. Risk vs. Reward.

I hope this suggestion isn't perceived as Trammell. I know the bonding factor might feel like that, but it's just too save you 1 week of training a new hire. If they die then you would have to train 3-4 days to get them back to where they were.

Also arming them would require that their gear can be looted upon death. That's a must. It's by no means more tram than dragons.

As Meloc stated the primary benefit is to get the brunt of the damage off the dexter and allow him to heal uninterrupted and take advantage of 6 second heal timer.

As it is I could accomplish all of these things now with hirelings as they are, this suggestion would be more for a suitable content focused mainly on dexters.